ISTANBUL — Last December, a Syrian refugee living in Turkey received a phone call his family had dreamed about for over three years: The United States had accepted their resettlement application. By May, he was later told, he would be in Chicago.

It was emotional news for Sameer, his wife and their three children, who felt they'd lost those years stranded in Istanbul as a web of bureaucratic institutions reviewed their case.

But when he requested an exit permit from Turkish authorities — the last document he needed to leave the country — he was turned away without explanation.

As a result, Sameer’s family missed their flight and heard no news about their case through Turkey’s tumultuous summer — which saw a coup attempt — followed by the start of the fourth consecutive academic year his children have been out of school.

“I feel so angry, sad and so hopeless. I could light myself on fire,” said Sameer, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for fear of repercussions in Turkey.

More than 1,000 Syrians slated to leave Turkey have been prevented from doing so because they have university degrees.

Sameer sunk further into despair when the agencies managing his case told him why he was prevented from leaving: For some of the very reasons the United States was willing to accept Sameer — his family’s unblemished background, his wife’s university degree and their potential contribution to society — Turkey wants to keep him for itself.

According to staff at agencies that handle resettlement cases, Turkey is preventing some Syrians from leaving the country on the basis of their educational credentials, as it works out plans to offer citizenship to Syrians.

A report last week said more than 1,000 Syrians slated to travel to the United States and other countries have been prevented from doing so because they have university degrees. As early as June, German media reported that at least 50 cases approved by Berlin were halted by Turkish authorities for similar reasons.

Selin Unal, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency in Ankara, wrote in an email that the agency is “aware that the Turkish government has, in some cases, applied education criteria when issuing exit permits to Syrian refugees selected for resettlement from Turkey.”

Meanwhile, staff at the U.N. refugee agency and the International Catholic Migration Commission, which handles U.S. resettlement cases, have told panicked Syrians trapped in Turkey that the reason they are being held is because of their degrees.

'Sheep from goats'

A senior Turkish official said it would be incorrect to characterize Turkey’s actions as “preventing some Syrians from leaving,” and instead pointed to the U.N.’s own resettlement criteria, which gives priority to the most vulnerable people, like torture survivors and those with special medical needs.

“You aren’t supposed to cherry-pick candidates but focus on helping people,” he said.

In an interview with CNN this week, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu made the same point: “We are against the selective approach to resettlement,” he said. “No one can say 'I want to get the Christian ones, I want to get the best educated ones, the [able-bodied] ones and not the disabled ones.' Selective approach is not humane. You cannot select people like you select the sheep and goats from the market.”

Turkey’s apparent interference with the resettlement process comes as the country recalibrates its laissez-faire approach to the nearly three million Syrians it hosts, weighing the economic benefits of integration — and the lost opportunities of brain drain.

Since last year’s mass exodus of migrants from Turkey, which saw thousands of Syrians cross illegally into Europe, Turkish officials have taken a more serious approach to integrating them into society and making their lives more livable.

Though Turkey has taken in more Syrians than any other country in the world, it has not offered them the same level of education and employment opportunities available to them in Europe and North America. Until 2014 — three years into Syria’s civil war — public education was not an option for all Syrians living in Turkey. Until January, they were ineligible for work permits and had to choose between living off charity in refugee camps or supporting themselves on low-wage, under-the-table work.

Belated integration reforms have been implemented slowly and unevenly with most Syrians still unable to tap the legal job market and find adequate education for their children. The dearth of job opportunities in Turkey and other countries hosting Syrians in the region has been the driving force behind their mass movement to Europe, according to a U.N. survey published in January.

The EU-Turkey deal struck earlier this year — in which Turkey agreed to help stanch the flow of migrants into Europe in exchange for financial help and accelerated talks on visa-free travel for Turks — did succeed in curbing the mass illegal exodus of Syrians. Yet it also appears that Turkey simultaneously slowed the legal exodus of Syrians as it considers the economic benefits of their integration.

“Turkey’s plans are clear: We continue to issue work permits and there is a plan to grant citizenship to Syrian refugees whose details are being worked out,” the senior Turkish official said.

Families stuck in limbo are now in precarious situations as they wait for details on their futures.

Yet what that means for Syrians like Sameer, who have neither received offers from Turkey nor updates about his still-pending U.S. resettlement case, remains unclear.

Precarious situation

Piril Ercoban, the director of Multeci-Der, a refugee rights organization in Turkey, said it would be “unacceptable” and raise legal questions if governments were only welcoming educated refugees. But she added that it would also be unacceptable and legally questionable for a government to force people already approved for travel to stay in the country without legal justification and without their consent.

“You cannot just tell people that because you are educated and skilled you will not be eligible for resettlement. It is ridiculous … You cannot just prevent their exit from the country, although they have all the documents ready to make regular and legal travel because ‘We need you in Turkey,’ or ‘We may use you in Turkey,'” she said.

“If the Turkish government is pursuing a policy to keep educated and skilled Syrians in Turkey for any reasons, then … it has to be based on mutual agreements,” Ercoban added. “The Turkish government, in that case, must offer them something concrete to convince them that it would be better for them to stay in Turkey rather than go somewhere else, something they could accept.”

In the meantime, the families stuck in limbo — some of whom ended their leases, quit their jobs and sold their furniture believing their departure was imminent — are now in precarious situations as they wait for details on their futures, yet again.

One Syrian family of five living off of a modest salary in Istanbul saw their rent increased by 50 percent when they told their landlord their flight to the U.S. was indefinitely delayed and they needed to stay in their apartment a little longer.

“The landlord called us liars,” the family’s eldest daughter explained.

Another family sold off all their winter clothes when they were told in March that they were heading, within a month, to southern California. Approaching October in Istanbul, they are contemplating buying winter clothes again.

“We are not cards in a game,” the family patriarch said, requesting anonymity out of fear of further jeopardizing his situation. “Will they force us to be Turkish citizens? We don’t want to be Turkish citizens, we want to leave. This has nothing to do with us.”

Emily Feldman is a freelance writer based in Istanbul. Previously she was a digital reporter and editor for NBC.