Turkish Kurds seeking asylum in Britain are usually fleeing political, cultural or physical persecution. An intensely violent, 15-year conflict between Turkish state forces and the Marxist Kurdistan Workers' Party, seeking independence for Kurds, ended in 1999 with the arrest of the Kurdish spiritual leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
The majority are fleeing continued suppression of Islam and persecution if they raise the Kurdish question. Although there is a declared ceasefire in Turkey, the human rights organisation, Amnesty International, says it receives reports every week about Kurds, particularly in the south-east, being rounded up and arrested by state forces for exercising their human right to self-expression.
The conflict has seen many thousands of Kurds, who want an independent Kurdish state, fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in Britain. In the late 1980s, the Kurdish population in Britain swelled, stabilised during the early 1990s, and steadily increased to about 40,000 by 1999.
On reports that the would-be refugees discovered in Wexford may have been trying to reach Britain, a spokesman for Amnesty said the situation provided further evidence that refugees were at the mercy of human traffickers.