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

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.

Domestic and International Factors in Migrant and Asylum Policy Developments in Turkey

This paper looks at the refugee crisis, the development of migrant and asylum policies as a response to this crisis, and the different factors influencing these policies. It will particularly focus on Turkey, a country geographically positioned as the gateway of origin countries to Western Europe. Through a review of related bibliographies, as well as laws and policies, this paper traces the development of the Turkey’s laws and policies on migration and asylum issues. The interplay of the key factors is also demonstrated through the developments of Turkey’s policies.

Turkey's Evolving Response to Migration Management: Facts and Policy Steps

Rome, IAI, March 2019, 8 p. (MENARA Future Notes ; 17), 2010

Previously being more a transit country for migrants trying to get asylum in Europe, Turkey has now become a country of immigration and turned into a country of residence for not only Syrian people but also other people from the MENA region. As a result of the growing trend in the number of arrivals the issue has also become a public and political agenda item and has prompted significant changes in the practices associated with the hosting and integration of refugees into the local community. Nevertheless, a number of steps still need to be taken to improve the standards of living of the refugees and to increase the sustainability of the process for the hosting state and society.

Introduction: Turkish migration policy at a glance

Turkish Migration Policy, 2016

Due to the large-scale migration from Turkey to Europe in general and Germany in particular Turkey has primarily been regarded as a migrant-sending country until recently. This image of Turkey characterizes, however, just one aspect of the Turkish migration history. Only since 2011 with the large influxes of Syrians and, there is a shift in the perception of Turkey as a destination country. Throughout history though, Turkey has always been a host country for sizeable inward population movements. There were several waves of population movements in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire: According to Karpat, between 1860s and 1922, around 4 million people migrated to Ottoman territories while later, about 1.5 million Muslims “were forced to take refuge in the Ottoman domains” (more or less the territories of modern Turkey). According to the Ministry of Resettlement, then Turkey received a total of 870,000 migrants of whom 400,000 were from Greece, 225,000 from Bulgaria, 120,000 from Yugoslavia, 120,000 from Romania and 10,000 from other Balkan countries. Along with individually arranged movements, large portion of these migrations were organised as a result of the Lausanne Treaty’s compulsory population exchange which took place between 1923 and 1926. This population exchange had an important impact on the nation-building process, which involved transforming a multi-ethnic empire of diverse elements into a homogeneous state. Thus, parallel to the settlement of migrants of Muslim descent, there was the resettlement, displacement of Turkey’s non-Muslims who have been largely expelled in the first half century from the new Turkish Republic .

Contested B/Orders. Turkey's Changing Migration Regime An Introduction

Turkey is currently the biggest refugee hosting country in the world without granting refugee status to any of its asylum applicants (UNHCR 2017: 3). This is without a doubt a direct result of the ongoing Syrian conflict that started in 2011 and the Eu-ropean Union's attempts to contain the onward movements of migrants further west. In addition to being a country with a long history of immigration and emigration, Turkey is still an EU candidate and a crucial partner in the process of externalization of the current EU migration and refugee regime. It is also a country where authori-tarianism is escalating, featuring a new record of human rights violations of citizens and noncitizens alike gathered over the course of the last 15 years of uninterrupted single party rule of the AKP, turning Turkey again into a refugee producing country as well. Turkey's unpromising EU accession process, its NATO membership as well as its geopolitical position makes it a unique case of cooperation on migration and border ›management‹ that distinguishes it from other unstable political regimes in the Balkans, MENA, and Eastern Europe. So how and ›where‹ can we situate Turkey within the larger context of migration and border studies after the beginning of the Syrian conflict? What are the implications of the European border regime's formation and its dominant policy of ex-ternalization in the case of Turkey? And vice versa: What effects do the Turkish border regime and migration policies have? How do the global and regional migration policies and institutions affect migrant groups in Turkey, who in return challenge, contest, and negotiate the current migration and border regimes? What are the consequences of legal and institutional ambiguities with regard to refugee protection in Turkey? And how do the continuing anti-democratic and authoritarian developments affect the field of migration? As a collaborative work of migration scholars and ac-movements | Vol. 3, Issue 2/2017 | www.movements-journal.org

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.

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.