The Migrant Question: How Should Turkey’s Policy Be Assessed?

How should Turkey’s policy be assessed?

The consequences of migration policy in terms of security, the economy and the social fabric… Our authors assess how the government’s migration policy should be read when the political bargaining with the EU is also taken into account.

Orhan Turan, Lawyer:

A tough and dirty bargain based on mutual interests and money is being conducted between the EU and Erdoğan over preventing Syrian migrants from crossing into Europe.

As a result of dirty bargains in which the EU dodges responsibility and tries to stop migrants by paying money, while the Erdoğan government constantly resorts to blackmail and it is unknown how much of the funding is spent on migrants, 6 billion euros were paid between 2016 and 2021, and a further 3 billion euros were budgeted until 2024.

The EU’s nervousness about Syrian migrants works in the Erdoğan government’s favour. It thereby gains strong trump cards it can use on every issue: easing its squeezed economy, extracting visa liberalisation from the EU and finding material for domestic politics through fake heroics.

So much so that the EU’s demand that this money be given directly to institutions and monitored through boards is defeated every time by Erdoğan’s demand that it be given directly to the government with no interference in what follows.

Minutes of meetings with EU officials revealed that Erdoğan said: “If you are going to give 3 billion euros for two years, let’s not talk at all. We will open the borders, put the migrants on buses and send them”, and, moreover, that he scolded officials over a report, saying “That report did not help the AKP win the election”.

Clearly the winners of this bargain will be “the EU, which keeps migrants away with money” and “Erdoğan, who thinks only of his own interest”, and in any case the losers will be “Turkey, whose burdens will multiply” and “the migrants who are the object of the bargaining”!

Ali Çağlar:

Looking at migrant-related debates in Turkey, three main headings stand out. The first is security. It is often claimed that migrants living in Turkey pose a security threat to society. Accordingly, migrants are criminalised and linked in particular to organised crime and sexual assault. The lack of official police statistics on crimes involving migrants also prevents these debates from being conducted on a sound basis.

Second, on the economic front, come claims that the informal employment of migrants at low wages increases unemployment and that substantial budget resources are transferred to migrants. Economic crises fuelling hostility to migrants is not unique to Turkey. Blaming migrants for the mismanagement that comes with systemic corruption in the country is seen as doing opposition politics.

Third, it is claimed that migrants living in Turkey pose a threat to the social and cultural fabric of Turkish society and will cause distortions in the long run. Here the government’s lack of an integration policy, irregular, unplanned and unregistered settlement, and migrants concentrating in certain areas and forming their own ghettos lay the ground for cultural conflict.

While the rhetoric of some party leaders in Turkey is shaped by debates along these three axes, populist rhetoric aimed entirely at elections prevents a realistic projection for a solution. It should be borne in mind that populist rhetoric is likely to accelerate in domestic political debate in the run-up to the 2023 elections, and that anti-migrant sentiment in society could turn into violence.

Mehmet Kılıçparlar:

I do not think it is too bold to say that the most important right and responsibility of citizenship in a country is “voting”, because by voting one determines who governs the country’s regime. Especially in the one-man regime called the Presidential System, every vote is far more valuable for winning and governing.

Under normal conditions, different groups of voters and different voices are a gain for a country’s democracy. But looking at the profile of the refugees who have come to Turkey, almost all of them live on the poverty line and try to survive mainly on the aid they receive. In other words, the situation is exactly as Erdoğan wants it. In Erdoğan’s eyes, this is a group that can be won over with minimal material promises, or that cannot vote for another party under the threat of having its current aid cut off.

Sociologically, too, this is the case. A community in this situation votes out of fear of hunger; the democratic gains of the country they live in come second for them, and they see elections as a means of not going hungry. In the West, to become a citizen and then a voter, one must have an income that allows one to stand on one’s own feet, speak the language at least at an intermediate level and complete integration training. The expectations of refugee voters in Turkey and refugee voters in the West from elections will therefore be very different. 

In conclusion, we can say that Erdoğan wants to use migrants as voters in an unplanned way in order to win elections, even though this runs counter to the country’s interests.