This week the world witnessed another humanitarian crisis. Tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees (previously Yezidi’s, Christians and other minorities) crossed the Turkish border fleeing from the onslaught of the Islamic State (IS).

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around 70,000 refugees have reached Turkey and it is expected that hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees will arrive at the Turkish border in the coming days and weeks.

Turkey is a party to the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention); nevertheless, it is one of a handful of countries that still maintain the geographical limitation, which limits the scope of the Refugee Convention to ‘persons who have become refugees as a result of events occurring in Europe’. In 2013, a new Turkish asylum law was adopted (Law on Foreigners and International Protection) providing a considerable improvement compared to the former Regulation dealing with asylum and migration issues. However, the geographical limitation has not been lifted. Asylum applicants from non-European countries may be granted “conditional” refugee status and shall be allowed to reside in in Turkey on a temporary basis until they are resettled to a third country. Applied to the current situation in Turkey, this means that refugees from Syria and Iraq cannot obtain a refugee status granting them long-term protection. As a result, some Syrian refugees undertake a dangerous journey to the EU to seek asylum with the aim of obtaining a permanent residence permit.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis, Turkey has provided ‘temporary protection’ to more than 500,000 Syrians (mostly Sunni Arabs) and the ongoing developments will continue to put more pressure on the reception capacity of the Turkish authorities.

Although the scope and limits of ‘temporary protection’ in international refugee law are not yet clearly defined, there are certain standards of treatment that have to be respected by States. For example, refugees should be provided with the basic human reception conditions such as food, shelter, and basic sanitary and health facilities. In any event, States have to respect the non-refoulement principle, which is laid down in Article 33(1) of the Refugee Convention. This fundamental principle prohibits States from returning a person back to a territory where his life or freedom is threatened, including denying entry at the border to a person who is fleeing persecution. Closure of the borders to Kurdish refugees by the Turkish authorities, as international organisations and media have reported, would result in a violation of international refugee law.

The protracted refugee situation has placed a heavy burden on Turkey. Tensions have also risen between the refugees and local communities. A long-term solution to the refugee crisis cannot be accomplished without the assistance of the international community. At the EU level, the European Commission announced to increase its aid to Syria and surrounding countries. More important is to increase the resettlement places by the EU Member States and the humanitarian admission of the most vulnerable refugees as envisaged.