Turkish border guards are indiscriminately shooting at Syrian civilians on the border with Syria, as well as using excessive force and even torture against asylum-seekers and migrants trying to cross into Turkey, Human Rights Watch said in a report April 27. The report cited hundreds of deaths along the border in recent years, with several killings and abuses this year. Since the beginning of 2023, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has recorded 11 deaths and 20 injuries along the frontier caused by Turkish border guards. Human Rights Watch independently documented and verified two such incidents.

Between August 2015 and June 2018, Turkey erected a three-meter-high wall topped with razor-wire along most of its 910-kilometer border with Syria to combat smuggling and irregular border crossings. Since then, Turkish border guards have routinely used violence to block Syrians trying to flee hostilities and dire conditions, beating and firing on them, and summarily expelling them back to Syria.

See our last reports on Syrian refugees in Turkey.