Refugee Encounters At The Turkish Syrian Border

The Turkish-Syrian borderlands host almost half of the Syrian refugees, with an estimated 1.5 million people arriving in the area following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. This book investigates the ongoing negotiations of ethnicity, religion and state at the border, as refugees struggle to settle and to navigate their encounters with the Turkish state and with different sectarian groups. In particular, the book explores the situation in Antakya, the site of the ancient city of Antioch, the "cradle of civilizations", and now populated by diverse populations of Arab Alawites, Christians and Sunni-Turks. The book demonstrates that urban refugee encounters at the margins of the state reveal larger concerns that encompass state practices and regional politics. Overall, the book shows how and why displacement in the Middle East is intertwined with negotiations of identity, politics and state. Faced with an environment of everyday oppression, refugees negotiate their own urban space and "refugee" status, challenging, resisting and sometimes confirming sectarian boundaries. This book’s detailed analysis will be of interest to anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, historians, and Middle Eastern studies scholars who are working on questions of displacement, cultural boundaries and the politics of civil war in border regions.

This is the story of ordinary people whose lives have intersected with the state of politics in the Middle East. Since the civil conflict erupted in Syria, the lives of both Turks and Syrians have changed drastically. By voicing individual stories of Syrians who sought shelter in Gaziantep, Turkey, and their encounters with the host community, this book contributes to the current literature on Syrian refugees. As such, rather than offering a dry scholarly account of the war and the crisis, it details the emotional odyssey of two academics who lived through such turbulent times alongside Syrians in the Turkey-Syria borderland. The book will appeal to readers who wish to know Syrian refugees as individuals, rather than as a totalistic category. Partly ethnographic and partly oral history, it presents a different side of the crisis in Syria.

Turkey’s Syrians: Today and Tomorrow Edited by Deniz Eroğlu UTKU, K. Onur UNUTULMAZ, Ibrahim SIRKECI Since the first arrival of Syrian refugees, the issue has sparked considerable national and international interest. Political discourses concentrated on state ‘generosities’ to provide protection to those coming from insecurities and possibilities to reduce ‘burden of refugees’ to receiving countries via international solidarity. While these concerns focus on the effects of hosting refugees, what happens to refugees themselves, how they are affected by government policies and how they are perceived by host country people are questions yet to be answered. This book brings together a multidisciplinary set of contributions scrutinising the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey. Contents About the AuthorsChapter One: Syrian Communities in Turkey: Conflict Induced Diaspora – K. Onur Unutulmaz, Ibrahim Sirkeci, Deniz Eroğlu UtkuChapter Two: Biopolitical Problematic: Syrian Refugees in Turkey – H. Yaprak CivelekChapter Three: Deserving Refugee or Undeserving Migrant? The Politics of the Refugee Category in Turkey – Funda Ustek SpildaPART 2 CASE STUDIESChapter Four: Civil Society and Syrian Refugees in Turkey: a Human Security Perspective – Helen Macreath, M. Utku Güngör, S. Gülfer SağnıçChapter Five: Contesting Refugees in Turkey: Political Parties and the Syrian Refugees – Aslı Ilgıt, Fulya MemişoğluChapter Six: Syrian Refugees in a Slum Neighbourhood Poor Turkish Residents Encountering the Other in Önder Neighbourhood, Altındağ, Ankara – Tahire ErmanChapter Seven: Comparative Analysis of Public Attitudes towards Syrian Refugees in Turkish Cities of Ankara and Hatay – Güneş Gökgöz, Alexa Arena, Cansu AydınChapter Eight: Temporary Education Centres as a Temporary Solution for Educational Problems of Syrian Refugee Children in Mersin – Bilge Deniz ÇatakChapter Nine: Social Identity Motives, Boundary Definitions, and Attitudes towards Syrian Refugees in Turkey – Nagihan TaşdemirPART 3 FUTURE PROSPECTSChapter Ten: Demographic Gaps between Syrian and the European Populations: What Do They suggest? – M. Murat Yüceşahin, Ibrahim SirkeciChapter Eleven: Integration of Syrians: Politics of Integration in Turkey in the Face of a Closing Window of Opportunity – K. Onur UnutulmazCONCLUSION – K. Onur Unutulmaz, Ibrahim Sirkeci, Deniz Eroğlu Utku

In this report, we provide an overview of the situation of refugees in Turkey and the difficulties that Turkey is facing in handling such a major crisis alongside of its Southern border.

On April 29, 2011, the first Syrian refugees crossed the border into Turkey. Two years later, the country hosts some 600,000 Syrian refugees—200,000 of them living in 21 refugee camps with an additional 400,000 living outside of the camps (see charts 1 and 2 below). These estimates, reported by both the Turkish government and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), are conservative. Indeed, officials working directly with refugees on the ground suggest that the number living outside of the camps may be as high as 800,000. These numbers are increasing: according to United Nations (UN) estimates, Turkey will be home to one million Syrians by the end of 2013. Syrians have fled to Turkey in search of safety from a horrific conflict, leaving behind loved ones, jobs and property. Syrians from all walks of life - doctors and housewives, civil servants and farmers, the very old and the very young - have poured across the Turkish border. The Turkish people and the government, mainly through the Prime Ministry’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), responded generously to the refugees, offering them sanctuary and hospitality. But as the conflict intensifies – with no end in sight – and as the resources of the Turkish government and society are stretched thin, questions arise about the limits of Turkey's hospitality. The continued deterioration of the situation inside Syria is putting enormous pressures on Turkey’s ability to manage the refugee situation within its borders as well as its capacity to ensure the continued flow of humanitarian assistance into Syria. This policy brief is based on a joint Brookings-USAK research trip to the border region by Elizabeth Ferris, Kemal Kirişci, Vittoria Federici, Osman Bahadır Dinçer, Sema Karaca and Elif Özmenek Çarmıklı and interviews conducted in Istanbul, Ankara, Gaziantep, Kilis and Hatay. It also draws from a joint Brookings-USAK seminar held in Ankara on 25 October 2013 which brought together some 45 participants from the Turkish government, civil society, national and international NGOs, international organizations and academic researchers. The authors hope that this policy brief will be helpful to both the Turkish government and civil society organizations and to international actors seeking to aid Syrian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). The impact of the Syrian refugee influx on Turkey is significant and deserves more attention from the international community. Most of all, the authors hope that political solutions are found that will bring an end to the massive displacement of the Syrian people.

Before long, the voice of the Tunisian youth was heard and found supporters not only in its own country but also in neighboring countries with similar characteristics. The riots spread in waves. The protests which began in Tunisia and later spread to Egypt, Libya, and other Arab countries were referred to as the “Arab Spring,” and the subsequent regime changes they caused in these countries were closely observed in the international community. This multivariable equation was viewed primarily as a political issue in the international arena. That is, until the riots in Syria transformed into clashes. The reverberations of the Arab Spring in Syria gradually manifested themselves as a huge humanitarian crisis due to the harsh crackdowns by the Assad regime. Eventually, a group of 252 Syrians broke through the wire fence on the border of Hatay’s Yayladağı district on the evening of Friday, 29 April 2011, to enter Turkey and request asylum, putting the question “do we have a refugee crisis on our hands?” on Turkey’s agenda. Turkey’s Syrian refugee issue, which began with 252 people in April 2011, has since acquired a new degree of magnitude with the more than 500,000 Syrians in Turkey today. The bigger picture including Syria’s neighbors is even more alarming: the number of Syrians who’ve fled their country due to the ongoing civil war in Syria since March 2011 is over one million. United Nations (UN) sources estimate that there are at least 4.6 million internally-displaced people within Syria, though according to some Syrian sources, the figure is closer to seven million. An estimated 7,000 people flee to neighboring countries daily. Moreover, the UN estimates that by the end of 2013, the number of Syrians in Turkey alone will reach one million.

This paper analyses the issue of how Turkey’s border security policy has been shaped since 2013.

This open access book provides a comprehensive analysis of Turkey’s response to Syrian mass migration from 2011 to 2020. It examines internal and external dimensions of the refugee issue in relation to Middle Eastern geopolitics as well as the salience of controlling irregular migration to the European Union. The book focuses on policies and discourses developed in the fields of border management, reception, asylum and protection, and integration of refugees with an emphasis on continuities, ruptures and changes. One of its main goals is to compare differences in policy practices across provinces in order to better capture ways in which Syrian refugees claim agency, develop belonging and experience integration in the context of cultural intimacy, precarity and temporariness. By providing rich empirical evidence, this book provides a valuable resource for students and scholars in migration studies, political science, anthropology, sociology and public administration disciplines as well as policy makers, stakeholders and the general public.