Turkey is an unusual refugee receiving country because it does not have any refugee camps. Over the years there have been several “guesthouses” (misafirhane) where refugees have been accommodated. An ad hoc camp was set up in 1990–1 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to accommodate the many Iraqi Kurds who poured across the common Turkish–northern Iraqi border.

The first guesthouse was set up in the 1950s in the Istanbul neighborhood of Acibadem. It was known simply as Acibadem Misafirhanesi and accommodated political refugees fr…