Content of International Protection

The LFIP provides three types of international protection status in accordance with Türkiye’s “geographical limitation” policy on the 1951 Refugee Convention.

1. Persons who fall within the refugee definition in Article of the 1951 Convention and come from a “European country of origin”[1] qualify for refugee status under LFIP, in full acknowledgment of Türkiye’s obligations under the 1951 Convention. The Turkish legal status of refugee under LFIP should afford rights and entitlements in accordance with the requirements of the 1951 Convention, including the prospect of long-term legal integration in Türkiye. The numbers of persons who qualified for refugee status have never been transparent but in an event organised in October 2021, PMM informed that there were 28 refugees in Türkiye.[2]

2. Persons who fall within the refugee definition in Article of the 1951 Convention but come from a so-called ‘non-European country of origin’, are instead offered conditional refugee status under LFIP. Conditional refugee status is a Turkish legal concept introduced by the LFIP for the purpose of differentiating in treatment between 1951 Convention-type refugees originating from ‘non-European’ states and those originating from ‘European’ states. The status of conditional refugee affords to beneficiaries a set of rights and entitlements lesser to that granted to refugee status holders and to subsidiary protection holders in some respects. Most importantly, conditional refugees are not offered the prospect of long-term legal integration in Türkiye and are excluded from Family Reunification The number of people granted conditional refugee status has never been made public. However, PMM informed the public that there were roughly 2,000 conditional refugees in October 2021.[3]

3. Persons who do not fulfil the eligibility criteria for either refugee status or conditional refugee status but would however be subjected to death penalty or torture in country of origin if returned, or would be at “individualised risk of indiscriminate violence” due to situations or war or internal armed conflict, qualify for subsidiary protection status under LFIP. The Turkish legal status of subsidiary protection mirrors the subsidiary protection definition provided by the EU Qualification Directive. Similar to the conditional refugee status holders, subsidiary protection beneficiaries receive a lesser set of rights and entitlements as compared to refugee status holders and are barred from long-term legal integration in Türkiye. Notably however, unlike conditional refugees, subsidiary protection beneficiaries are granted family reunification rights in Türkiye.

[1] For the purpose of “geographical limitation” in regards to the interpretation of the 1951 Convention, Government of Türkiye considers countries members of the Council of Europe as ‘European countries of origin’.

[2] QHA, ‘Göç ve uyum konulu toplantıda Türkiye’deki göç olgusu anlatıldı’, 17 March 2021, available in Turkish at: https://bit.ly/3ObT7eb.  

[3] ibid.