Eurasia Press & News
Türkiye has been providing financial support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) since its founding in 1949. The country is now preparing to host the agency’s fifth liaison office, in the capital of Ankara, in early 2026, a senior UNRWA official confirmed with PassBlue.
The agreement between the agency and Türkiye occurs as the entity is contending with more operating restrictions imposed by Israel and a $200 million deficit from decreased funding, particularly from major former donors like the United States and Sweden. This week, the Israeli Knesset approved a law stripping diplomatic immunity from UNRWA and imposing severe economic and infrastructure sanctions, such as cutting off electricity, water and gas services to UNRWA property in Israel.
The agency is required by a General Assembly resolution to provide education, health care and other services to some six million registered Palestinian refugees located in occupied Gaza and the West Bank as well as in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. It is funded by UN member states and private donors.
Financing, however, has grown increasingly politicized, especially after Israel accused some UNRWA staffers of participating in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, pushing the agency into a state of chronic financial crisis. Although the UN investigated Israeli allegations that 19 UNRWA personnel were involved in the rampage by Hamas and several UN staffers were terminated, other accusations have not been fully substantiated, according to Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA commissioner-general. The US is now calling UNRWA a “subsidiary” of Hamas.
The US, traditionally one of UNRWA’s largest contributors, giving around a total of $6 billion since 1950, began cutting funds to the agency in 2018, during President Trump’s first term in office. Amid the cuts, UNRWA began diversifying its financial sources, a senior agency official told PassBlue. The new office in Ankara was conceived as a result of those plans, he said.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official interviewed for this article said that the primary task of the UNRWA office would be to conduct diplomatic engagement with Türkiye and other Turkic countries in the region.
The office will carry out fund-raising, advocacy and financial resource diversification activities. “Türkiye’s increased visibility and its relations with regional countries in recent years may also have played a role in plans to establish this office,” the UNRWA official added.
After years of strained relations with many countries worldwide, the Turkish government has been adopting a policy of rapprochement to boost trade and attract investment in response to the country’s financial crisis in 2018. Despite its struggling economy, Türkiye contributed $41 million to the UN agency in 2024, nearly doubling its 2023 contribution.
Ankara has served as a regional hub for refugee responses through cooperation with UN agencies and the European Union, and its sensitivity toward the Palestinian issue may positively affect UNRWA’s work, Murat Erdogan, director of the Mülkiye Migration Research Centre at Ankara University, said.
While Türkiye has long been praised as one of the world’s largest host of migrants, especially Syrians during their civil war, Metin Corabatir, the president of the Research Center on Asylum and Migration (IGAM), part of the Refugee Council of Turkey, criticized Ankara for refusing to grant refugee status to migrants from the Mideast and for both Ankara and European governments “instrumentalizing” migration for political ends.
In late 2025, Türkiye’s permanent representative to the UN, Ahmet Yildiz, failed in his bid, along with about a dozen other candidates, to lead the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Barham Salih, a former president of Iraq and a Kurd, was elected in December 2025 by the General Assembly and starts on Jan. 1, 2026.
Will UNRWA last?
Responding to concerns that UNRWA could be shut down because of the continuing accusations from Israel and the Trump administration that the agency is linked to Hamas, an UNRWA official said that such a move was “not on the table.”
“On 5 December, a vote was held at the UN General Assembly on UNRWA’s mandate, and with 151 votes in favor, it was decided that UNRWA would continue its mission for a further three years,” the official said, although a lack of funding for the agency could be its death knell, some diplomats at the UN have suggested to PassBlue.
Technically, closing it would require a General Assembly decision, the official added, saying: “UNRWA has no alternative, and that’s why we do not expect such a decision from the General Assembly.”
