HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE POLICIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION TOWARDS SYRIAN REFUGEES IN TURKEY (original) (raw)
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Since the Syrian civil war began, millions of Syrians have had to leave their countries for Syria’s neighbours. In summer 2015, the Syrians and others mobilized to reach Europe for asylum. During the course of this mass movement, their legal position in Turkey, which hosts more than 2 million Syrian refugees, as well as their rights and settlement conditions raised global attention. Turkey has played an active role in the Syrian civil war to oust the Assad regime and has maintained an open-door policy for Syrian refugees since 2011. However, the Turkish government has insistently framed the Syrians as ‛temporary guests’ and has not instigated any policy or public debate around their integration and settlement. This article presents how the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government and Turkish civil servants at international, central and local levels discursively constructed Turkey’s role for Syrians, appealing to the collective memory of the Turkish public and state as a ‛charitable’ polity with close personal relations with the Syrian nation and reflecting on historical role of Turkey in the region. This discursive construction had two consequences. First, rather than institutionalized settlement policies, a pragmatic humanitarianism defined Turkey’s activities. Second, the charitable role was extended merely to the Syrians rather than other refugees in Turkey. In order to present a theoretical and comparative elaboration of Turkey’s response to the Syrian crisis from the beginning, the article refers to interviews with Turkish civil servants in Ankara, south-eastern Turkey and New York.
Forced Humanitarianism: Turkey’s Syrian Policy and the Refugee Issue
Caucasus International Journal, Vol. 5 (1), Spring 2015
The Middle East faces complex and overlapping turbulences. The Civil War in Syria and the emergence of Islamic State have radically changed the geo-strategic environment.In recent years, Turkish foreign policy has faced two major tests in relation to this new situation: a large wave of Syrian refugees and the threat of Islamic Statein southeast border areas. Since the start of the Syrian Civil War, Turkey has to dealwith an increasing volume of refugees, while the emergence of the Islamic Stateincreased the number of Syrian and Iraqi citizens seeking protection in Turkish territories,in addition to the deterioration of the regional security environment. Ankarahas tried to navigate the troubled waters of the Syrian crisis via a two-pronged approach,combining national security concerns with democratic internationalism. Oneof the highlights of Turkish Internationalism has been growing humanitarian assistancefor Syrian refugees, which brings Turkey to a prominent position in terms ofhumanitarian aid delivery. In this paper, I will discuss the concept of “forced humanitarianism ”to explain the intersection with the Syrian Crisis in Turkish foreign policy.
The Syrian displacement crisis is the most compelling humanitarian crisis of our times. The mass displacement of Syrians did not only cause challenges for Syria’s neighboring countries -including Turkey as the largest host of displaced Syrians- but also the European Union Member States. It has also call into question the principle of “responsibility-sharing” in the context of the international protection of refugees, Human Rights Law and Refugee Law. As a result of a long negotiation process between Turkey and EU over the protection, and care of displaced Syrians, the parties agreed upon a text that is called the EU-Turkey “Refugee Deal”. The deal was met with a chorus of objection by scholars, legal experts and international NGOs who criticized it for contradicting the general principles of the international Human Rights Law, Refugee Law and the EU Asylum Law. This paper studies the pathway that lead EU and Turkey to sign the “Refugee Deal”, its content and clauses, implications and potential risks that are likely to occur in practice, with an emphasis on the contribution and/or detriment that the deal would bring to the notion of responsibility-sharing in international humanitarian system.
Syrian refugees in Turkey: from “guests” to “enemies”?
Since the war erupted in Syria in 2011, Turkey has followed an “open door” policy toward Syrian refugees. The Turkish government has been promoting this liberal policy through a humanitarian discourse that leads one to expect that Syrian refugees have not been securitized in Turkey. This article, however, argues that a security framework that emphasizes control and containment has been essential to the governance of Syrian refugees in Turkey, despite the presence of such non-securitarian discourses. To develop this argument, the article first builds an analytical framework based on a critical engagement with the theory of securitization, which was originally developed by the Copenhagen School. Unlike the Copenhagen School’s theory emphasizing “speech acts” as the vector of securitization, this article applies a sociological approach to the analysis of the securitization process by focusing on both discursive and non-discursive practices. In carrying out this analysis, securitizing practices, both discursive and non-discursive, are defined as those that: (1) emphasize “control and containment,” especially in relation to societal/public security concerns (here, specifically, the labor market and employment); and (2) establish a security continuum about various other issues—including criminality, terrorism, socioeconomic problems, and cultural deprivation—and thereby treat migrants as “risky” outsiders. Subsequently, in line with this analytical framework, the article seeks to trace the securitization of non-camp Syrian refugees, especially in the labor market. Finally, the article demonstrates that this securitization process is likely to conceal structural and political problems, and to close off alternative public and political debate about the refugees.
Security and Defence Quarterly Special Issue: Non-military aspects of security in the changing international order, 2021
After the breakout and the escalation of the Syrian civil war and because of its humanitarian consequences, Turkey now hosts the largest refugee community worldwide. This paper attempts to investigate the role of the international community in assisting Syrian refugees in Turkey. Beyond looking at the main elements of the Turkish government policies, this study focuses on the Emergency Social Safety Net Programme of the European Union, the World Food Programme and the Turkish Red Crescent. It also reviews the Turkish aspects of the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan of the United Nations. The primary purpose of the study is to provide a comparative analysis of the two programmes alongside the main objectives, results and difficulties. Beyond reviewing the essential international literature, the examination of this issue is principally based on data analysis of the reports of relevant international organisations. The Turkish government plays an important role in this crisis and the actions of international organisations complement the country's domestic policies. Two international aid programmes are compared and a conclusion is reached that the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan tries to balance urgent humanitarian needs with durable solutions, while the Emergency Social Safety Net Programme is determined by humanitarian aspects. Nonetheless, both initiatives address the challenges to the Turkish host community which are posed by the protracted refugee issue. While acknowledging the remaining gaps, challenges and the obvious complexity of the refugee situation in Turkey, it can be concluded that the aid initiatives discussed have developed innovative solutions to address this protracted crisis.
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.
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.
Reading Agamben backwards: Syrian refugees, biopolitics and sovereignty in Turkey
Social Science Information, 2019
Despite the growing literature that adapts the Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben’s theory of sovereignty to the analysis of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) increasing authoritarian politics in Turkey, this article draws attention to the theoretical pitfalls of this tendency and argues that these studies mostly fall into the trap of mistaking the consolidation of populist power with the establishment of sovereignty. Utilising the AKP’s biopolitical agenda over Syrian refugees fleeing to Turkey as a case study, we attempt to realize a theoretical twist and offer to read Agamben backwards; that is to say, instead of starting with the assumption that the AKP has established sovereignty in the country, we question whether the party is indeed able to perform a consistent type of biopolitics over the Syrian refugees that would suggest the existence of such sovereignty in the first place. Consequently, our analysis reveals that it is not an Agambenian ‘state of exception’ est...
Legitimising settlement of refugees: unpacking humanitarianism from a comparative perspective
abstract Refugee protection and humanitarianism have evolved hand in hand in the post-World War 2 era despite shortcomings. Since the 1980s however, we have witnessed a weakening of the international protection regime and a restrictive and securitised approach to asylum. The current situation of Syrian refugees has revealed that the international protection system falls short of efficiently responding to protracted refugees situations. In the context of selective and declining humanitarianism, our analysis moves from the international context to the national context to demonstrate how government officials legitimise receiving mass numbers of refugee. This article scrutinises the political discourse of refugee reception in Turkey and Germany as two countries receiving a high number of refugees. Through analysis of political statements in both countries between 2011 and 2016, we explore how international humanitarianism has taken different shapes in the discourse of government officials. Our findings reveal the general trend that humanitarianism in the case of refugee reception manifests itself selectively, reflecting not only humanitarian obligations stemming from international law but also political, cultural and economic priorities of governments.