Syrian beggars, a fixture in Turkey’s urban centers over the past year, have begun to disappear in recent weeks. These obviously desperate people — young women nursing babies at street corners, children stopping passersby and gesturing for money, others forcing open car doors at red lights — spawned both compassion and indignation among Turks. On several occasions, beggars have been rounded up by municipal police and put on buses to refugee camps in the border regions. But they soon escaped and returned to the big cities.

Syrians were considered temporary "guests" when they first began their disorderly and poorly documented flight in April 2011. But as the civil war in their country dragged on, it became obvious that they are here to stay and that the problem they pose cannot be resolved with occasional roundups.

On Oct. 22, Turkey issued a regulation that outlined the services the refugees would receive and how. The refugees, hitherto treated as “guests,” were declared to be under “temporary protection.” Procedures were outlined for issuing identity documents to the Syrians, many of whom had arrived without passports, and their accommodation in and outside refugee shelters, in addition to services in health care, vocational training and translation.

Following the issuance of the regulation, the authorities began the “biometric registration” of the Syrians, recording their personal details, palm-vein prints and fingerprints. Dogan Eskinat, the spokesman for the Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD), told Al-Monitor that records had been completed for 1.4 million people as of Dec. 17.