Former Foreign Secretary Lammy Compares Treatment of Turkish Ankara Agreement Residents in UK to Windrush Scandal

David Lammy, Member of Parliament for Tottenham in London and former Foreign Secretary, has criticized the Home Office for rejecting permanent residence applications from Turkish business owners who established operations in the UK under the Ankara Agreement, calling the rejections "unacceptable." In a statement on social media, Lammy compared the situation to the Windrush Scandal, in which Caribbean migrants were unjustly treated as "illegal immigrants" in 2017.

According to The Guardian, between January and June last year, 3,378 Ankara Agreement permanent residence applications were approved, while in the same period this year, the number of approved applications fell to 745. Some applications were rejected based on rules that had not been previously stated. One striking example among the rejections involves a woman who learned she had cancer while in Turkey during the Covid-19 pandemic and was advised against traveling by England's National Health Service (NHS) due to travel risks; her application was rejected and she was ordered to leave the country with her three children. Another Turkish business owner's application was rejected on the grounds of "failing to provide a social media account despite it not being requested."

The Home Office rejected the allegations, stating that Ankara Agreement applications are being handled as they were in the past and that each application is evaluated on an individual basis.

The Ankara Agreement is a 1963 accord that granted Turkish business owners the right to establish operations in the UK; the visa category under this agreement expired in 2020.