The Turkish government will limit the foreign population of certain neighborhoods to 20% as of July, effectively shutting off 1,200 of these neighborhoods to further immigration, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu announced on Saturday. With economic pressures rising and Turkey already hosting millions of Syrians, Soylu said that border security and deportations would be stepped up.
Soylu told a meeting of Turkey’s Directorate of Migration Management that under his government’s current policy of restricting the foreign-born population of certain neighborhoods to 25%, some 781 neighborhoods in 54 provinces have been closed to foreigners.
From July, Soylu said that this quota will be dropped to 21%, closing a total of 1,200 neighborhoods to new arrivals, “in order to prevent the concentration of foreigners in certain regions in our country.”