Turkey’s Interior Ministry has announced that since the beginning of 2026, approximately 9,000 Afghan migrants have been detained for lacking legal documentation in the country. According to the ministry’s report, over the past five years, Afghan nationals have constituted the largest group of undocumented migrants arrested in Turkey.<\/p>\n
Data shows that from 2021 to the present, more than 370,000 Afghan migrants have been detained in Turkey. Following Afghans, citizens from Syria, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran rank next in the number of arrests. The Interior Ministry added that the total number of undocumented migrant arrests in Turkey has exceeded 1.1 million since 2021, with tens of thousands more detained by security forces in the early months of this year alone.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, some Afghan migrants have voiced complaints about harsh living conditions in Turkey. Wahid Amin, an Afghan migrant residing in Turkey, stated that job opportunities for Afghans are limited, rent is high, and wages in many workplaces are not paid on time.<\/p>\n
The widespread detention of Afghan migrants in Turkey is occurring simultaneously as Afghanistan faces a wave of returnees from Iran and Pakistan. Previously, the Taliban-led Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations announced that from the start of 2025 until the end of that year, about 1,821,000 people returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey.<\/p>\n
Migrant rights activists emphasize that treatment of migrants must adhere to legal standards and humanitarian principles. Ali Reza Karimi, a migrant rights activist, stated that legal frameworks should be provided to allow migrants to reside and work legally. Another activist, Mohammad Jamal Muslim, identified poverty and hardship in Afghanistan as the main drivers of illegal migration, adding that authorities should collaborate with international organizations to manage the crisis.<\/p>\n
The ongoing increase in detentions and forced returns of migrants continues amid many observers citing the Taliban administration\u2019s inability to create job opportunities and improve the economic situation as a fundamental factor in the persistence of risky migration flows\u2014a situation that continues to challenge thousands of Afghan families both inside and outside the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since early 2026, Turkey has detained 9,000 Afghan migrants amid rising returnees to Afghanistan from Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}