De facto identity documents (part II): “faking fakeness” in refugee protection

Guest post by Bart Klem. Bart Klem is an associate professor at Gothenburg University. The unresolved sovereign status of Northern Cyprus does not only affect its citizens but also its migrants. Being a refugee in the cracks of international law has manifold implications. This is Part II of a three-part series on Northern Cyprus. Read Part I here. 

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) may be an international pariah. It is not an isolated backwater. It attracts large numbers of international students, labour migrants, and refugees (alongside tourists and pensioners).  

The fuzzy status of the TRNC enables these migrants to reach Northern Cyprus with relative ease. It has a loose visa entry regime. But because of its troubled status, the TRNC also offers ramshackle human rights protection (as Emmanuel Achiri and I discuss in this recent article; see also Olga Demetriou’s wonderful book and policy brief).  

A “person of concern”  

This is “Rishad”.   

Given his uncertain legal status, he does not want to be recognizably photographed. Rishad was born in a Middle Eastern country that he does not want me to name. He lived there all his youth, but when the war violence reached his town, he fled. 

He did some internet searching and registered for a university in the TRNC. Having paid the first tuition fees upfront, he could fly in and get a visa on arrival. He was unable to pay the remaining fees, so he hoped he could work alongside his studies. 

But he struggled to survive, dropped out of university and became homeless. No longer a student, his visa expired. To complicate matters, his passport also expired. Given that the TRNC is not a recognized state, there are no embassies (apart from the Turkish one). Soon after, he was arrested by the police and thrown in prison.  

International Human Rights Law and International Refugee Law are supposed to apply to all, everywhere. But a conflicting norm of international law prohibits states and international organisations from establishing formal ties with illegal states, such as the TRNC. 

Being a refugee in the TRNC thus becomes a contradiction in terms. The notions of “asylum” or “refugee” do not exist in TRNC law. And the UN refugee organisation (UNHCR) does not operate on TRNC soil, fearing it would be seen as implied recognition, as I learnt in an interview with UNHCR staff. 

UNHCR thus works via a proxy (the Refugee Rights Association) and provide refugees with a peculiar document: a protection certificate. It was this letter that brokered Rishad’s release from prison. 

This personalised certificate with the UNHCR logo and signature (see left) states that Rishad is a “person of concern”, and it calls on the authorities not to deport him. With the certificate Rishad now lives in the TRNC.  

A de facto status in a de facto state 

These so-called “persons of concern” thus carry a document that protects them from deportation, even if it does not formally exist. These people have a de facto legal status within the laws of a country that itself has a de facto legal status. Precarities therefore abound. 

This is “Idris” 

Like Rishad, he is from a country that is at war, and he has worked and lived in different countries leaping from one temporary status to another. He finished his university degree in the TRNC a decade ago. Unable to return to his country of origin, he stayed illegally and took on informal jobs until he was issued a “person of concern” certificate.

Though it has protected him from deportation (thus far), it does not give him a formal residence status, nor does it allow him to work. Few people are aware of this document and no one seems to understand it, he explains. “The bosses I am working under don’t know anything about these letters. The people in the government office also don’t know it.” 

The TRNC government could ignore the request not to deport him whenever they see the need. Like Hilda (Part I), Rishad and Idris cannot travel. The UNHCR certificate will not help them enter another country, nor will the TRNC allow them back in after they have left. They are stuck in country that is itself stuck. 

Unlike TRNC passports, which are spurned because they are issued by a purportedly illegal entity, these certificates are issued by a perfectly legal entity (UNHCR) in the name of international law.  

Rebecca Bryant calls this a double inversion. External actors pretend not to engage with the TRNC by creating a duplicate entity when they really do – they “fake fakeness”. She uses the example of the hamburger chain Burger King which operated under the name Burger City in Northern Cyprus, thus making it look like duplicate, even if it really was Burger King. The certificates that Rishad and Idris carry are similarly “fake fakes” from this perspective: legally ambiguous documents, which really are (or ought to be) UNCHR refugee status determinations.  

A self-referential pyramid scheme 

Being a refugee in the TRNC conjures up a paradox. The right to asylum is protected by international law but any claim to be a refugee falters on the contradictions of an entity that simultaneously has a legal existence and doesn’t. 

Idris and Rishad thus have an implied status, afforded by a placeholder document. This certificate is issued by UNHCR, a quintessentially legal entity that is mandated by its statute to uphold International Refugee Law. But because of its interaction with the TRNC, UNHCR creates a shadow legality. 

It is tempting to think of the TRNC and other de facto states as an anomaly, a left-behind territory that needs to somehow be accommodated in the international order of states. But a closer look at the legal identity conundrums of the TRNC’s de facto citizens and its de facto migrants and refugees begs the question: do these anomalies stem from the TRNC or from the way international actors engage with it? As a state in drag, or a joker, the TRNC simultaneously mocks itself and the international arena that surrounds it. And in doing so, it exposes the self-referential pyramid scheme of sovereignty, statehood and international law.  

The author thanks Emmanuel Achiri, Oğuz Haksever, Darrian Traynor, Ayman Makarem, Hisham Rifai and Marika Sosnowski for their contributions.  

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