A recent suspension of new travel visas between the United States and Turkey has left current Turkish Syracuse University students virtually unaffected. However, families of Turkish students, along with prospective students from Turkey, will have legal hoops to jump through in order to gain access to the university.

The U.S. embassy announced last Sunday that the processing of all nonimmigrant visas would be suspended indefinitely. Hours later, Turkish officials announced the exact same policy against U.S. visas, quoting the U.S. suspension word-for-word and switching the names of the two countries, per CNN.

While it is not impossible for families of Turkish students to visit the U.S., those hoping to renew visas or obtain them in the first place will have to do this by going to other countries, said Timur Hammond, an assistant professor of geography at SU.

Prospective students can do the same — but if the visa suspension is part of ongoing escalation in tensions between the U.S. and Turkey, universities across the country could start to feel the effects of it, said Uğur Altundal, a representative from the Turkish Students Association.

Altundal, a Ph.D. candidate studying political science at SU, said there is no indication on how the university administration will deal with this, as the visa restriction appears to be in an infancy stage.

“I think (the SU administration) hopes it will end. I don’t think people have thought about this so far,” Altundal said. “If it continues, people will have to think about other options. Probably students will not be able to come to Syracuse University. They will choose to go to Europe or some other countries.”

The potential for the freeze in visa processing to continue for a long period of time is unclear, however.

Hammond said the timetable for how long the travel restriction will last is unclear, due to the complexity of the relationship between the U.S. and its NATO ally, Turkey.

Altundal, on the other hand, is optimistic about the length of the travel restriction. He said his Turkish friends at SU think it is a temporary problem and hope it will be solved quickly.

The U.S. originally froze visa proceedings as a response to a U.S. consulate employee who was arrested in Turkey. The Turkish government accused the employee of having ties to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric that facilitated a failed military coup in Turkey last year.

“The argument that the Turkish government is making is that this is a normal, legal proceeding in keeping with the Turkish state’s legitimate goal of bringing to justice the organization that carried out the coup attempt,” Hammond said.

Hammond added the U.S. argued that Turkey is unable to guarantee the safety of U.S. foreign service nationals in its visa suspension.

Miriam Elman, an associate professor of political science at SU, said tensions between the U.S. and Turkey have been escalating since the early 2000s, especially since the U.S. has stepped up support of Kurds in their fight against the Islamic State group.

The Turkish government views Kurds as an opposition to the national security of Turkey, Elman said.

Since 2003, Elman has described the Turkish government as “increasingly antagonistic” to the national interests of the U.S., and has questioned their reliability as a NATO ally.

If questions of loyalty continue to linger between the two NATO members, Hammond said, the uncertainty of the longevity of the travel restriction will likely remain until further actions are taken.

This temporary visa block is most likely a smaller event in a larger scheme of relations between the two countries, he said.

Both the complexity and uncertainty of the current situation leaves only speculation on what the two countries will agree on, and what this will mean for future Turkish students in the U.S.

“We have both countries’ administrations who have made a point of working for what they see to be their national interest,” Hammond said. “It’s difficult to forecast how that will play out in the future.”

Published on October 17, 2017 at 10:49 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326