MERSIN — After spending two years in Turkey on a student residency permit, Wissam (a pseudonym) changed his status to tourist residency in 2021. It was “the only available option” after he had to abandon his studies at a university in Istanbul.
Over the following years, Wissam, a man in his 30s originally from Hama city, usually had no trouble renewing his one-year tourist residency. But the last time he tried to renew it, around a month ago, he received a six-month residency instead. He also had to sign “a pledge to change it to a work residency before it ended,” or deposit around $10,000 in his bank account to be able to renew the permit for a full year, he told Syria Direct.
In late April, Turkey’s Directorate of…