Germany: Turkish Nationals’ Applications for Asylum Increased by 200% From Last Year

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Turkish asylum seekers in Germany experienced a 200 percent increase in applications since the previous year.
• Afghanistan and Iraq were the most important contributors to asylum applications in Germany after Turkey and Syria.
• Between January and October 2023, Germany recorded a total of 286,638 asylum applications, marking a 67.5 percent increase compared to 2022.

The influx of Turkish asylum seekers to Germany has seen a 200 percent increase in applications since last year, placing them as the second largest group after Syrians.

Economic decline and escalating living costs are catalysts for this mass migration, while increased restrictions on freedoms and improved human rights violations are further contributing to the unfolding crisis.

Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) data revealed that Afghanistan took third place with a total of 45,955 applications, out of which 43,958 were initial applications. Following closely, Iraq accounted for a total of 10,477 applications, with 9,484 being initial applications.

Between January and October 2023, it recorded 286,638 asylum applications in Germany, encompassing both initial (267,384) and subsequent (19,254) submissions. According to the same source, this represents a growth of 67.5 percent surge compared to the same period in the previous year when 159,669 initial applications were made.

Such data show that a total of 19,506 applications in 2023 belonged to children born in Germany under the age of one year.

Throughout this ten-month span, the Federal Office concluded 216,603 asylum procedures, achieving an overall protection rate of 51.9 percent. Within these decisions, 48,737 applications were denied, while 55,368 procedures involved alternative settlements, such as Dublin procedures or cessation due to the withdrawal of asylum applications.

Moreover, the comprehensive timeline for processing initial and subsequent applications across the entire federal territory averaged 6.7 months. BAMF data also revealed that the annual procedural timeframe, which includes all decisions made in the past 12 months, averaged 4.2 months.

During the last month, the BAMF registered a total of 33,513 asylum applications. Among these, 31,887 were initial applications, constituting the majority, while 1,626 were subsequent applications. As a result, there was a significant increase of 14.3 percent in the number of initial asylum applications compared to the preceding month.

Within the same month, the Federal Office offered decisions on the asylum applications of 22,998 individuals. This marked a slight uptick from the previous month’s total of 22,303 and a more substantial increase from the month prior, which saw decisions on 18,994 applications.

Based on previous Schengen Statistics, Chinese nationals submitted a total of 927,604 visa applications throughout the period spanning from 2018 to 2022, representing a 5.06 percent difference when compared to the second-highest applicants, Turks, who filed a total of 882,903 applications. The peak for Chinese visa applications occurred in 2018, reaching 437,462, but the numbers gradually decreased in the subsequent years, reaching a low point in 2021 when only 4,973 applications were recorded.