Report on İzmir Removal Center Visits (January – March 2025)

Mülteci-Der has been providing crucial legal aid to detained migrants, asylum seekers, temporary protection status holders, and refugees across Turkey for more than a decade. Based in İzmir, the association’s dedicated team of lawyers offers comprehensive legal support nationwide. These legal professionals are committed to ensuring that the rights of migrants and refugees are protected under Turkish and international law.

In addition to their office-based work, the lawyers of Mülteci-Der also conduct regular visits to Removal Centers (Geri Gönderme Merkezleri), where migrants and asylum seekers are detained. During these visits, they provide direct legal services to detainees, assisting them in navigating complex legal processes such as appeals against deportation and applications for international protection. Furthermore, Mülteci-Der uses these visits to assess the living conditions and treatment of detainees within the centers, helping to highlight and address any human rights violations or inadequate standards of care.

This report provides a detailed analysis based on visits conducted to the İzmir Harmandalı Removal Centre between January and March 2025. These visits were undertaken to assess the conditions of administrative detention, provide legal support to detainees, and monitor compliance with national and international legal standards, including the right to due process, access to healthcare, and protection against arbitrary detention and refoulement. The findings reveal the persistence of systemic issues previously documented in past reporting periods, including chronic overcrowding, inadequate medical care, procedural ambiguities, and insufficient protections for vulnerable individuals such as women, children, and persons with chronic illnesses or disabilities.

In addition to these long-standing concerns, the report identifies several escalating issues, including increased psychological distress among detainees and a growing trend of indefinite detention without access to legal remedies. These developments reflect deepening structural deficiencies within Turkey’s detention regime and raise serious concerns about compliance with fundamental human rights obligations.