Conflicting reports over Turkey's southeast, says HRW director

Conflicting reports from locals, rights groups, the media and the government make it almost impossible to find the truth of what is going on in curfew-stricken areas of southeast Turkey, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Director Kenneth Roth has told daily Hürriyet in an exclusive interview. 

"We were getting completely different stories from different people we spoke to about whether it was the government or the PKK that was not allowing in care. We don't know what's happening," Roth said during his recent visit to Turkey, referring to the situation in Cizre, a town where several injured civilians have been trapped in a basement without medical care for over one week.

There has been a great deal of criticism of the EU's position on refugees. How did we end up here? What kind of implications might this have on Turkey's position vis-à-vis refugees? 

In our view, any solution towards the refugee [issue] should be voluntary, not involuntary. The EU is proposing to give Turkey 3 billion euros, which is great. It can be spent on things like jobs, education, and health care to make it more possible for refugees to envision a life in Turkey until they can return to their home in Syria. That is a voluntary solution, because I think many refugees would like to stay close to Syria if there is a reasonable future for them. But Turkey should resist any coercive measures. It should not be closing the Syrian border, it should not be pushing people back to Syria and it should certainly be preventing people from getting on boats and heading to Greece. The aim should be encouraging people to stay in Turkey, not forcing them to do so. 

Is that the current trend now? We know that Turkey has been building walls in some parts of the border. 

We spoke...