Pragmatic Restrictions: Politics and Policy Limitations In Turkish Refugee Regime

This paper scrutinizes how the Syrian refugee crisis affect Turkey’s decades long geographical restriction policy on admitting asylum seekers. It presents how foreign policy goals provide a context for pragmatism in making immigration policies. It also debates how the reaction of societal actors to immigration affects the making of Turkish foreign policy vis-à-vis the Middle East. Thereby, looking at the Syrian refuges crisis, it presents a case of public philosophy clashing with policy.

Turkey is one of the last four countries in the world that remain to impose geographical restrictions on admitting asylum seekers. For decades, policy makers appealed to Turkey’s geographical region as a discourse for rejecting asylum applications of those that came outside Europe. While under the Cold War conditions this may have made some sense, in its aftermath this policy remains unintelligible. Given the recent hike in illegal entries to or residence of foreigners in Turkey, this policy serves to keep refugees in limbo and forces them to seek informal employment in Turkey. Yet, since the 1980s geographical restriction is pragmatically used when it comes to settling people of “Turkic” descent – serving the interests of Turkish foreign policy insomuch as its goals did not clash with the public opinion. The most recent Syrian refugee crisis, however, is the first instance whereby there is a clash between the two. AKP government seeks policy pragmatism with geographical restriction once again and provide refuge for Syrians whilst the public philosophy remains opposed to receiving any foreigners, including the Syrian refuges to Turkey.

Overall, this paper debates the Syrian refugee crisis as a case study to assess to how far Turkey’s immigration policy can appeal to pragmatic policy solutions rather than drastic changes in policy and public philosophy dealing with foreigners.