Turkey`s Migration Policy Toward Syrian Refugee Crisis

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Due to the Arab Spring uprising movement in Tunisia, anti-government protests rose starting from 2010. Then, the protest and armed rebellions were spread into the Middle-East countries, which were Libya, Yemen, Egypt, and Syria. The main goal of the movements was to overthrow regimes and authoritarian leaders. Among these, Syria was the most affected country and The Syrian Civil war began in 2011 and it is still an ongoing issue. Due to civil war, large numbers of Syrian people were displaced internally and were forced to flee. The Syrian people were persecuted and masses of people were killed. Consequently, the internally displaced Syrian people migrated in influx to other countries in order to save their lives. The Syrian People fled mostly to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt during the refugee crisis. On the one hand, Turkey is one of the largest host countries that accepted more than 3.5 million people by an open-border policy and became a host country for millions of Syrian Refugees. In this regard, Turkey`s management of this Syrian Refugee crisis has raised debates surrounding this issue. With an aim to give a contribution to these debates. The thesis will analyze the peculiarities of Turkey's Migration policies towards the Syrian Refugee Crisis., due to having an important geopolitical location, Turkey found itself an important actor for controlling the refugee crisis across the globe. The number of Syrian refugees coming to Turkey has increased as time passed. Therefore, Turkey's migration policies have changed dynamically thoroughly. In the same vein, increased numbers of Syrian Refugees became a burden issue of Turkey. Therefore, Turkey's Migration Policies under the ruling party toward the management of Syrian Refugees, became not responding to the needs of Syrian Refugees. Moreover, Turkey's migration policies toward Syrian refugees were soft in accepting refugees under the open-border policy at first glance. However, an increased number of Syrian refugees, economic fracture, and Turkish public backlash to Syrian refugees, led a transformation on Turkey's migration policies from open-border-policy to a Restriction phase as time passed. Therefore, Turkey found itself in a bog down position in which Turkey's migration policies became not responding to solve Refugees’ problems. In this regard, the living conditions of Syrian refugees came to worsening thoroughly. Humanitarian management to Syrian refugees became unable to encounter the livelihood of Syrian refugees who had been living in camps and they lacked access to education, employment, and food.