As of November 1st, RRT’s new Field Office in the Northwestern border town of Edirne has become operational. The Field Office is intended to help strengthen RRT’s legal assistance services for immigration detainees held in the two large scale removal centers in Edirne and neighboring Kirklareli provinces.
The Field Office will serve as an operational outpost to help extend RRT’s legal assistance services catering to persons reaching out to RRT’s Detention Helpdesk from the two large-scale removal centers in Edirne by the Greece land border and in Pehlivankoy district of neighboring Kirklareli province by the Bulgaria border. These two large-scale facilities, each holding up to 600 immigration detainees, are currently used to detain and process persons apprehended by Turkish authorities in the Greece and Bulgaria border regions as well as third country nationals returned from Greece in the framework of the bilateral readmission protocol between the two countries.
As the Edirne Field Office will serve as an outpost under the supervision of RRT’s main operational base in Istanbul, the office will not directly receive applications for legal assistance; instead it will be assigned cases from the RRT Detention Helpdesk and Hotline, which will continue to operate from Istanbul. RRT’S Detention Hotline can be reached at 0507 218 62 85 or via RRT’s General Counselling Desk at 0212 292 48 30.