"The law now grants full
refugee status to those coming to Turkey from Europe, and provides for the
establishment of a new civilian body to oversee refugee applications, a process
currently handled by the police, who are often untrained." "However, the new law
stops short of lifting a geographical limitation widely criticized by rights
groups. People arriving in Turkey "as a result of events from outside European
countries" will only be given "conditional refugee" status. While Turkey is one
of the original signatories to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status
of Refugees, it is one of only a small number of countries to maintain a
limitation on where it will accept them from."