Pro-Migrant Right-Wing Populism? the Case of Syrian Refugee "Crisis" in Turkey

Mainstream scholarship and mediatic discourse associates the rise of right-wing populisms with migration. However, Turkey witnessed a rapid wave of migration from Syria in the years between 2012 and 2016, with a right-wing populist government already in power. Contrary to the expectations, this government proved to be generous to the Syrian refugees compared to its European counterparts until 2019, without losing its hold on state power. Despite popular dissent against the presence of migrants, other right-wing actors who attempted to politicize the issue failed to do so on a mass basis. In this paper, I develop a Gramscian approach to explain this puzzle. The AKP government's admission of mass migration was a desparate attempt to maintain a collapsing model of accumulation, which was linked to a hegemonic vision of the nation's future. Accordingly, the government attempted to create a model subaltern stratum out of the refugee population that would become a transnational agent of Turkish capital. However, the government did not engage in the civic work necessary to popularize the refugees' presence in the country among its own voting basis. Its rivals on the Right, in contrast, are engaged in this work, but lack the economic model or the ideological program to challenge AKP on this question.