Broad agreement on Turkish refugee repatriation reached

A broad agreement was reached on Friday between Turkey, Iraqi officials and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on a plan for the organised voluntary return of hundreds of Turkish refugees of Kurdish origin in Iraq to their homeland. The repatriations will be carried out under conditions of safety and dignity, according to the agreement. "The next step is that the parties will go through their own processes to sign the agreement. This means the text will go to government authorities in Turkey and Iraq to be approved and signed," spokesman for UNHCR in Turkey, Metin Corabatir told IRIN in the Turkish capital, Ankara on Friday. "It's difficult to say how soon repatriations will take place as there would be a mass information campaign before this," he added. With some 13,000 Turkish Kurds living in northern Iraq, the need for a large scale repatriation plan was essential, officials maintain. Most of them live in the Mahmour camp in the southeast of the northern governorate of Arbil, home to some 9,200 refugees, with the rest residing in cities. The Turkish Kurdish refugees are the third largest group of refugees in Iraq. They fled their homes in southeastern Turkey in the early 1990s following conflicts between the Turkish army and Kurdish rebels in which thousands were killed. The refugees first settled in Atrush, where two camps were established in the southwest of Dahuk in northern Iraq until they were moved to the Mahmour camp in 1998 by the government of Saddam Hussein. The camp is maintained by UNHCR, which supplied residents with basic provisions and shelter. Up until now there was no framework for a voluntary repatriation en masse of the refugees from northern Iraq. Participating in the second round of three day talks were the visiting US Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Arthur Dewey, the United Nations Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees Kamel Morjane, the Iraqi Minister of Displacement and Migration Muhammed Jassim Khudayir and senior Turkish officials. The first round of talks also took place in Ankara on 20 November and since then the officials had been working closely to reach this agreement. Since the end of the second Gulf war earlier this year, some 45 Turkish refugees assisted by UNHCR have returned home. In total the refugee agency has helped 2,200 refugees to return home to Turkey since 1997.