Domestic and International Factors in Migrant and Asylum Policy Developments in Turkey (original) (raw)

Analysis of the Refugee Protection and Asylum Policy in Turkey

2020

In today's world, 'refuge' is an essential component of sociopolitical crises. However, because of the sensitive human component, such crises must be handled with caution to avoid further problems. Therefore, it is critical to constantly analyse, evaluate, and develop asylum and protection policies. Turkey has long been a country of entry or residence for immigrants; however, in recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of displaced people attempting to reside in Turkey or enter Western European countries. As a result, Turkey's asylum and protection policy was revised to reflect the new reality. This study examines the problem's historical context, analyses Turkey's current asylum and protection policy, assesses the barriers to a more practical application, and proposes alternative, long-term solutions.

National and International Policies Nexus: Turkey's Changing Refugee Regime

The Second Syrian Crisis: Contunity and Change

Much has changed about Turkey’s migration and refugee policy since the initial flows of displaced populations arrived in 2014, following the outbreak of war in Syria. The country’s refugee regime has evolved: from “open door” to the construction of a long wall on the border; from a “humanitarian approach” to being “no longer able to hold onto refugees.” This gradual yet drastic shift in Turkey’s migration and refugee policy should be understood against the backdrop of an international context. On the one hand, Turkey had to recalibrate its official welcoming policy, to be aligned with its foreign policy and socioeconomic challenges. The long summer of migration in 2015 signaled a new era for migration policy. On a foreign policy level, mass refugee crossings to Europe via Turkey brought about the EU-Turkey Joint Action Plan and the infamous EU-Turkey Deal through which Ankara assumed a role in in EU migrationexternalisation policy. On a domestic political level, refugee policy has become a focal point of Turkish political discourse, frequently raised by the opposition in its criticism of the government. Subsequently, there has been a surge in hate speech, attacks and lootings directed against refugees, as well as virally trending racist social media hashtags, steering the government towards a more nationalist and unwelcoming policy. Against this background, this paper sets out to evaluate Turkey’s asylum regime and its impact on refugees, taking into account a changing domestic and international context.

Turkey – Country Report: Legal and Policy Framework of Migration Governance

Respond Working Paper series, 2018

This country report focuses on developments that took place during the period of 2011-2017 in the field of migration in Turkey. Traditionally a country of emigration, starting from the early 1990s, it has also become an important country of immigration, asylum and transit. Most recently, the increasing pressure of the refugee challenge, particularly given the high number of arrivals from Syria, has put the country once again under international spotlights. This report provides relevant migration statistics that are available as open source data. It briefly reviews the socio-economic, political and cultural characteristic of the country as well as its brief migration history. The report also delves into a detailed analysis of the constitutional, legal and institutional framework of Turkey’s national migration management system, which has gone through significant transition in the last few years. The report points out that due to Turkey’s geographical limitation to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention), and its associated 1967 Protocol; Turkey does not grant refugee status to people fleeing from conflicts and persecution in non-European countries. But it does provide ‘conditional refugee status’ along with ‘refugee’ and ‘subsidiary’ protection. The report reveals a key duality regarding European and non-European asylum seekers to be an important characteristic of Turkey’s asylum system. The first group can obtain ‘refugee’ status’; while the second group can only obtain ‘conditional refugee status’. However, regardless of their nationality, due to the Syrian mass migration, Syrian refugees1 are given another international protection status, which is called ‘temporary protection’. The report concludes by highlighting that part of Turkey’s recent migration policy efforts are tied to encouragement coming from the EU for Turkey to improve conditions regarding access to the asylum process and status determination as well as enhancement of its facilities forasylum-seekers’ protection. Although these developments bring Turkey closer to satisfying the EU demands on migration and asylum policy, Turkey is still expected to abolish the geographical limitation of the 1951 Convention to create a full-fledged asylum system and to solve remaining implementation problems. Ensuring equal and fair access to asylum procedures and facilitating the full access of asylum-seekers to legal aid remain priorities still to be achieved.

"Migration Crises in Turkey", in The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises, Edited by Cecilia Menjívar, Marie Ruiz, and Immanuel Ness, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 427.

Turkey is the country that hosts highest number of refugees in the world. The paradigm of crisis nurtures and sustains legislation and policies in the field of migration and asylum in the country. Migration legislation of the Turkish state consists mainly of the subsequent codifications of its practice relating to different crises constructed around the mass influxes of migrants into its territory. This context of crisis determines not only the scope and content of the legislative and political measures but also shapes the structures of the institutions in the field of immigration. The second paradigm governing Turkish migration policies is ‘Europeanization.’ This paradigm materializes in the effort of the subsequent governments of Turkey to align national legislation with the two contradicting legal regimes governing migrants in Europe: the European Union’s migration regulations and the Council of Europe’s regime framed by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. This chapter aims to study the dynamics of migration policies in Turkey and the self-interest of Turkish state as a motivating factor to its legal responses to refugee ‘crises.’

Toward a New Asylum Regime in Turkey

Although Turkey is party to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, it extends its protection only to refugees with ›European countries of origin.‹ Under this regulation, Turkey grants only ›temporary asylum‹ to non-European refugees until the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) resettles them to a third country. In this fragmented configuration, refugees in Turkey occupy ambivalent spaces in-between national and international bodies of law, while navigating both the multiplicity of asylum authorities and the sophisticated techniques meant to evaluate their asylum claims. In line with Turkey's European Union accession, the Turkish government has recently attempted to restructure the country's migration/asylum regime, aiming to provide better protection to refugees in accordance with international human rights standards. This article critically examines the recent changes towards a) standardizing and systematizing the legal and administrative asylum procedures, and b) civilianizing the migration/asylum management that used to be coordinated largely by the police. We argue that, on the one hand, Turkey's asylum regime continues to give rise to uncertainty, unpredictability, and improvisation and, on the other hand, it presents a striking continuity with the previous regime in that it prioritizes securitizing migration/asylum management over ensuring the rights and protections of refugees. Vol. 3, Issue 2/2017 | www.movements-journal.org

Turkey's Migration Policy Revisited: (Dis)Continuities and Peculiarities

Rome, IAI, October 2018, 17 p. (IAI Papers ; 18|16), ISBN 978-88-9368-083-7, 2018

The 2000s witnessed the restructuring of Turkey's migration policy, mostly because of the EU accession process. In retrospect, Turkey's migration and asylum policy did not unfold along a linear path and revealed certain gaps as well as continuities with its institutional and administrative heritage. Through incremental steps and limited policy changes, Turkey made small-scale variations from past policies and avoided radical changes. However, given Turkey's particular position at the national, regional and international level, the government in Ankara should pursue policies sharply diverging from the past, and especially insofar as refugee policy, geographical limitation, state-centricity and the security–human rights balance are concerned.

Migration Policy of Turkey: Syrian Refugee Crisis

CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research - Zenodo, 2023

The civil war in Syria caused the appearance of the mass flow of refugees heading to neighbouring countries, such as Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey. Currently, according to the UN, their number reaches almost 6 million people. Considering the continuing unstable situation, it is clear that most of them will stay there for a long time, which makes it important to identify the degree of readiness of host countries to adapt such a huge number of newcomers. The largest number of them turned out to be in Turkey and, above all, in the borderline SouthEastern regions of the country with their diverse ethnic and religious composition of the population, which became a challenge for maintaining stability and sustainable development of the entire Turkish society. The article deals with historical aspects of Turkey's migration policy. As a methodological basis, we chose an analysis of normative texts that allows us to identify changes in approaches to migration policy interms of terminology and content. It is revealed that throughout history, the country has applied the geographical principle of ranking immigrants from European and non-European regions, which was associated with the processes of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the influx of Turkish and Muslim population to the interior of Anatolia from the Balkan provinces. The special terminology developed over time in Turkish legislation reflects the traditions of the migration policy of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. It is concluded that there is an urgent need for reviewing the migration policy framework, both at the conceptual and institutional levels.

Refugee Policy of the Turkish Republic

Milletleraras, 2002

Turkey is at the centre of refugee movements due to historical and geographical reasons. This article analyzes distinct Ottoman and Turkish policies regarding refiıges and asylum seekers. Turkey signed the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol with a geographical restriction. The implications of such a limitation, Turkish experience with a number of mass influxes of refugees, current refugee flows particularly from the Middle East, the 1994 Regulations and the UNHCR's role to conduct refugee status determination and resettlement will be evaluated.

Seeking Refuge in Turkey: How and Why? The Experiences of Turkey’s Asylum Seekers

IMIS Working Papers 08/2021, 2021

This paper is an updated version of the author's one of the PhD thesis chapters where she explains the asylum trajectories and the decision making processes of non-European applicants before the adoption of the first asylum law in Turkey. Although the field work data covers the period between 2008 and 2012, the papers' arguments remain valid to understand the present conditions of the Turkish asylum system. It shows that as long as the geographical limitation to the 1951 Refugee Convention is not lifted by Turkey, the asylum system will continue to create its own applicants. Without an integration option in law, the system will always be temporary and the applicants are destined to leave Turkey for another country. For this reason, the author discusses the early 2020 Edirne incident and its consequences alongside the legal changes that were made during the State of Emergency (2016-2018). She claims that these changes together with the EU policy effects of the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement has turned the country into a deportation regime rather than a safe destination as is contrarily claimed by the Turkish lawmakers.

Refugee Policy The Turkish Republic

DergiPark (Istanbul University), 2002

Turkey is at the centre of refugee movements due to historical and geographical reasons. This article analyzes distinct Ottoman and Turkish policies regarding refiıges and asylum seekers. Turkey signed the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol with a geographical restriction. The implications of such a limitation, Turkish experience with a number of mass influxes of refugees, current refugee flows particularly from the Middle East, the 1994 Regulations and the UNHCR's role to conduct refugee status determination and resettlement will be evaluated.