Refugee Duygu Baris is faced with an excruciating choice.

The Toronto mother, who is awaiting permanent residence status in Canada, must either turn her two young daughters over to authorities in Germany where the girls have been living temporarily, or send them back to Turkey, where their father is in jail over ties to a 2016 coup attempt.

Baris, 42, has just days to decide what to do when Zeynep, 16, and Hatice, 9, who have been staying with family friends in Cologne since they were spirited out of Turkey in June. As Turkish citizens, the girls are only permitted to stay in Germany for up to three months as visitors, but that comes to an end on Sept. 25.

In early 2017, with the help of smugglers, Baris, an ophthalmologist, fled to Canada alone via Greece and was granted asylum last September. She immediately applied for permanent residence, but until she gets her status, her husband and daughters can’t join her here.

So far, the immigration department has refused to expedite Baris’ permanent residence application or respond to the family’s request for a temporary permit to allow the girls to come to Canada while their permanent residence application is being processed. The family’s lawyer, Clifford McCarten, said it is just a matter of time before the girls are granted permanent residence status.

“There is no question they will become permanent residents,” he said. “Unless Canada acts, the family is facing permanent separation spread over three countries.”

Baris initially planned to seek asylum in Germany but border officials there refused to let her board her flight from Greece and she was redirected to Canada via London by smugglers. An accepted refugee in Canada, Baris, who suffers from a muscular degenerative condition that restricts her mobility, cannot seek asylum in Germany or spend too much time outside of Canada or she’ll jeopardize her residency here.

Meanwhile, her daughters have no other means to prolong their stay in Germany after Sept. 25 unless they seek asylum protection there to buy time while their Canadian permanent residence application is in process. However, to do that, they will be placed in state care as unaccompanied minors, which will further complicate their future status in Canada.

“If I could apply for asylum in Germany with my daughters (now), I would. The most important thing for me as a mother is to be together with my children,” said Baris, who flew to Berlin in June on a special refugee travel document to see the girls for the first time since she left them in January 2017.

Immigration department spokesperson Shannon Ker said the family’s permanent residence is still being processed and the average time of processing is about 33 months.

“Temporary Resident Permits (TRPs) can be issued to foreign nationals who are inadmissible or do not meet the requirements,” Ker explained. “The TRP is always issued at the discretion of the delegated authority. There are no published processing times for TRPs.”

According to Baris’ asylum claim in Canada, both she and her husband, an internal medicine doctor, are longtime followers of the teachings of the outlawed Fethullah Gulen or Hizmet Movement, which Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan has blamed for the failed 2016 coup. The couple worked at a Hizmet-affilated hospital and their children attended Hizmet schools.

Baris claimed that after the attempted coup, her husband was arrested and charged with participating in a terrorist group, and all the family’s assets and bank accounts were seized by the government. Her husband was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in jail.

Baris, who also had a warrant against her, sold her car for cash to pay smugglers to get her and her daughters out of the country but the money covered only the escape of one. She didn’t want to put the girls’ lives at risk and decided to go alone, first leaving them in the care of her mother-in-law in Izmir, a city on Turkey’s Aegean coast.

She said the smugglers bribed a Turkish border guard to let her through into Greece by car and from there she was put on a flight to London and Toronto.

Although she could have waited to reunite with her daughters after the family obtained permanent residence under her refugee claim, she was so worried for the girls’ safety that she arranged for their escape in June, just months after the UN released a report that found Turkish authorities were detaining women — some with children — because they were associates of suspects connected to outlawed organizations.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“Canada has already recognized that (Baris) is a survivor of this purge, and for that she has been granted Canada’s protection. All that she asks now is for our help to protect her children by offering temporary residence,” said McCarten.

“Otherwise they will be stranded in a third country, orphaned and separated while one parent is facing years in prison and the other safe but alone in Canada. We have built humanitarianism into our immigration laws, and this is precisely a circumstance that warrants flexibility.”

Read more about: