THE EU-TURKEY " REFUGEE DEAL " : A NEW WAY OF RESPONSIBILITY-SHARING OR THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM FOR THE PROTECTION OF REFUGEES (original) (raw)
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2021
According to many intellectuals and many institutions, the world is currently facing the most serious refugee/displacement crisis after the Second World War. There are currently 79.5 million forcibly displaced people, all around the globe, according to the 2019 UNHCR Commission Report. Due to this huge crisis, European Union has worked with Turkey by signing the bilateral agreement on preventing irregular migrations to European borders. Within the scope of the agreement, several criticisms concerning human rights violations are directed from the perspective of EU values and international norms. In this context, the study is aiming to explain the term of irregular migration in the scope of the EU-Turkey agreement signed in 2016 and to examine the agreement from the values of the European Union in accordance with international norms.
IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2016
One of the world's most chaotic and devastating civil war has been sustained since March 2011 in Syria. This Syrian Crisis has transformed much more complex, unpredictable and atrocity in this region than the guess of the states. Different conflicting actors, intervening states (and also their different interest/motivations) and also unprepared international society led to dead end or cul-de-sac for this sudden crisis. At the same time, Syrian refugee crisis appeared for neighbor and European states on the agenda. None of these states had prepared for this kind of migration and number of community. 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention is the main legal document that is relating to define refugee, their rights and obligations of states. Nonetheless, some of exceptional clauses (geographical exception clause of the Turkey), some of European states domestic policies and their domestic policy pressures and Civil War which became more desperate view in the time; these conditions force to the international society and the states to create new process and legal structure for this crisis. EU-Turkey refugee deal and agreement can be eventual consequence in this process. In fact, it is continuing process. As well as, is this process legalized enough yet? In other words, how much is it legalized or which is stage in this process? All of these questions are still waiting to be answered. Some summits, official and unofficial meetings and works for drafting have already been made since the beginning period of the crisis but these attempts and initiatives are seem to be questionable for the effectiveness. Could these developments be creating fragmentation in international law?
HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE POLICIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION TOWARDS SYRIAN REFUGEES IN TURKEY
2018
This research addresses to the significant gap between rhetoric and practice with regard to the implementation of rights-based humanitarianism in a response to Syrian refugee protection crisis. The research raises the question of why political actors place refugees in an asymmetrical relationship with duty-bearers. In this sense, it draws attention to the complicated three-cornered relationship among securitization policies, liberal economic agenda and needs-based humanitarianism within the borders of dominant governmental rationalities. In an attempt to offer a concrete discussion on the problematic characteristics of international humanitarian regime, the research examines the effectiveness of EU’s humanitarian assistance policies for Syrian urban refugees in Turkey. The main reason why the research chooses the case is that EU’s immigration and asylum policies well illustrate the biopolitical paradigm of modern politics. In this context, the research examines the impact of the EU-Turkey Statement on the possession of paradox of refugee rights in Turkey. It aims to analyze the role of EU funding in meeting the long-term needs of Syrian urban refugees in Turkey.
The Impacts of the EU-Turkey Statement on Syrian Refugees in Turkey.pdf
Turkey has taken a number of steps including regulations granting approximately three million Syrian refugees with the guarantee of nonrefoulement, access to basic humanitarian services, and the right to access education, health services and the labour market. The Turkish government’s policy position on the Syrian refugees has gradually begun evolving from ‘hospitality’ to ‘integration’. The Statement between the EU and Turkey has raised concerns about the assumption of Turkey as a “safe third country” to return refugees to, however, one aspect of the agreement, which focuses on the EU’s financial support to improve the situation of Syrian refugees in Turkey, is considered as an important positive step towards the integration of Syrians. This paper aims to address the question of whether Turkey can be considered as a “safe third country” for Syrian refugees. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in İstanbul, İzmir and Gaziantep, this paper focuses on the experiences of Syrian refugees in Turkey to explore whether Turkey can be recognized as a “safe third country” for refugees.
Blocked by Diplomatic Barriers: Syrian Refugees and the EU-Turkey Migration Cooperation
European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research
The recent EU-Turkey deal on irregular migration and refugees raised voices of humanitarian concerns with regards to the protection of the rights of Syrian refugees. Despite the positive efforts of Turkey to accommodate Syrian refugees, it still lacks a proper asylum system and measures that can guarantee their socio-economic integration and protect their rights. So instead of having a proper EU refugee resettlement system, they just offer money and mobility incentives to Turkey to keep the Syrian refugees on its land, while sidelining the deteriorating status of those refugees in Turkey. This paper argues that EU-Turkey cooperation on migration is security/interest-based, which counters the protection of the rights of Syrian refugees. On one hand, the EU hoped to guard itself from potential security threats, reflecting the dilemma of security vs. human rights. On the other hand, Turkey was hoping to accelerate visa waivers for its nationals and ease its accession to the EU membership.
This thesis looks at the legal framework concerning the status of refugees in the European Union and investigates how the practices of the member states involve human rights violations at the borders. By specifically examining the EU member states, notably, Greece and Bulgaria which hold the external borders of the Union with Turkey, the research aims to have a clear picture on the various claims of human rights violations at EU borders with respect to EU member states’ obligations to International and European legislation governing the status of refugees and respect to human rights. Ever since Turkey has opened its borders to Syria and accepted refugees into its territory without giving them international protection, Turkey has mainly served as a transit country for those who strive for a better life in the European Union. More than 90% of refugees and irregular migrants have used Greece as the main entrance point to the EU until 2010s. With the rising numbers of Syrian refugees trying to cross the Greek border, it has adopted various measures to keep the migrants out. Under these circumstances, Bulgaria has become another country to seek refuge, even though it is not part of the Schengen zone. The policies of Greece and Bulgaria to prevent the irregular border crossings have raised concerns from various organizations like Fundamental Rights Agency, UNHCR and Human Rights Watch. Several NGOs like Amnesty International and Pro Asyl have documented the violations of human rights in these countries via their reports. This study therefore looks at the International and European legislation concerning the human rights and the status of refugees: 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, European Convention on Human Rights, Charter of Fundamental Rights of European Union, and the Directives and Regulations which are incorporated into the Common European Asylum System. The reports of various organizations depict that the refugees were subject to inhuman and degrading treatment at the borders and were often illegally pushed back to Turkey. By understanding the allegations in these reports and the legal framework governing this issue, this study aims to understand the discrepancies in this policy area of the Union and its Member States.
EU-Turkey Refugee Deal: Buck-Passing and Bargaining on Human Lives at Risk?
Kaygı. Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi, 2020
Since the early stages, the EU-Turkey Refugee Deal has generated several controversies concerning its legal and moral standing. In the first section of this paper, for important informative purposes, I will briefly discuss several points related to how the legality of the deal could be contested. In the second section, I will turn my attention to a more detailed examination of whether the deal could be considered immoral with regard to two morally condemned practices, namely: buck-passing, or evasion of responsibility, and bargaining on human lives at risk. In the final section, I will attempt to outline guiding principles for a hypothetical deal that would be more responsive to the principles underpinning the Refugee Convention than the morally condemnable principles in the actual deal based on those two grounds discussed here.
The Syrian Refugee Crisis: New Negotiation Chapter In European Union-Turkey Relations
Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2016
Syria is one of the countries where a revolution wave named Arab Spring uprose in early 2011. The most radical discourse from Arab Spring into the still ongoing civil wars took place in Syria as early as the second half of 2011. At the beginning it was a civil protest against Assad’s government. Nobody could not estimate the future developments in Syria. The cost of the war in Syria increases every day. More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from Islamic State. Mixed featured developments and longer resistance of Assad’s regime than estimated escalated tension in Syria in last four and half years. As a result, many countries in the Middle East, such as Egypt, ...
This paper was written while I was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Migration Research Center Mirekoc and the Department of International Relations at Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey. I am grateful to the Director of the Center, Ahmed Icduygu, and the colleagues from the Center for their support. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 316796 The recent Syrian refugee crisis opened a debate on the under-theorized issue of migration law regarding the status and the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. According to UNHCR estimates, Turkey has, since the conflict in Syria begun, accommodated within its jurisdictional boundaries the most conspicuous number of refugees (around two million), but none of them have been recognized legally as refugees. Turkey, one of the signatory states of the 1951 Geneva Convention, still applies “geographical limitations”; that is, it does not grant refugee status to non-European to- be refugees, but rather extends to the latter a status of ‘temporary protection’. The paradox is that Turkey grants legal refugee status to European applicants (consider the very trivial number of applicants in need of refuge from Europe after 1951), whereas millions of non-European ‘proper’ refugees, including those currently in the country will not be granted refugee status. What can we learn philosophically from this law and practice? Most philosophers concur with granting refugees a fundamental human right, in line with the Kantian hospitality principle, to sojourn in other territories temporarily and also more permanently, including a lifetime. The principle is incorporated in the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, as the principle of “non-refoulement” (United Nations, 1951), obliging signatory states not to forcibly return refugees and asylum seekers to their countries of origin, if doing so would endanger their lives. Furthermore, asylum seekers’ and refugees’ claims to admission and more broadly to human rights protection are legally incorporated in the international human rights regime, and subsequently accepted by states (Benhabib, 2004). The fundamental human right to admission regards the admission of the asylee and refugee, and not that of immigrants whose admission remains “a privilege”, in the sense that it is up to the sovereign to grant such a “contract of beneficence” (Benhabib 2004). David Miller argues that when it comes to protecting human rights, states’ actions should reflect primarily the ‘terms’ of states, as they see fit: “your human right to food could at most impose on me an obligation to provide adequate food in the form that is most convenient to me (i.e. it costs me the least labour to produce), not an obligation to provide food in the form that you happen to prefer”; furthermore, states do not have a duty to automatically admit refugees, if for example, other similarly well off states can admit them, and the principle of non-refoulement is fulfilled (Miller, 2013). Miller rules out the theoretical possibility of human rights violations, in claiming that a state can deny entry to refugees, only if they are not returned to the country of origin and third countries where their human rights will be violated, and provided that some other state would take charge of them. Miller’s state-centrist view, assuming the point of view of states primarily, and second, wrongly assuming that the only theoretically salient feature is when refugees do not receive admission, as a result of which their human rights are violated, has pernicious implications. As an alternative, I argue that human rights are possible primarily when we view their defence as a primary moral concern, rather than instrumental and contingent upon what states see fit. I propose instead a philosophical view that genuinely assumes and acts upon the needs of refugees primarily, in both being admitted and rejected to sojourn in new territories. Very little effort has so far been expended by migration theorists to explain the character of a just distribution of refugees between states. Most studies instead have offered ample explanations regarding why refugees and migrants move to some states rather than others (Gibney, 2009). Since an adequate baseline from which to judge the justice of the distribution of refugees between states is still lacking, any new patterns of movement we might advocate creates possibilities for new unjust distribution patterns, a normative scrutiny that takes into consideration justice to refugees (besides justice between states) is of paramount importance. In this paper I analyse few of the main proposals of refugee distribution among states from a perspective of justice and argue in favour of the burden-sharing model that prioritizes justice to refugees. Specifically, I briefly analyse the “Syrian refugee crises” and I conceptualize it as an “engineered regionalism”, according to which the most conspicuous number of refugees end up seeking refuge in the region of their origin. In the second section, I explain why engineered regionalism is problematic from a justice perspective, and therefore explore alternatives we commonly think of in the literature as burden-sharing options. In the third section I argue that the respective alternatives are also morally unsatisfactory. They are all based on the presupposition that a right to free movement is what will entitle the refugee to (re)- settle to the country of one’s choosing, whereas this right is grounded on a philosophically informed principle of non-refoulement (as the ‘fire’ illustration proves). I attempt in the last section to propose a new model that is informed by the latter principle.