The Daily Populous Sunday July 31st, 2022 night edition
Authored by tandfonline.com and submitted by dieyoufool3

Despite growing interest in the return of rejected asylum seekers, irregular migrants, and refugees, we do not know enough about how geopolitics affects returns governance. This article addresses this knowledge gap by analysing the case of Turkey, exploring how positions in the global migration regime and relations with countries of origin influence return policies. It first argues that Turkey’s geopolitical reasoning has led it to design an asylum regime, including repatriation and deportation procedures, centred on temporariness. Second, it contends that Turkey’s extraterritorial space-making strategies – namely, military intervention in Syria and humanitarian/development projects in Afghanistan – guide return policies. Examining the Turkish case contributes to our understanding of national returns governance in transit-turned-host countries, which increasingly emphasise repatriation over long-term protection. Finally, the paper contributes more generally to our understanding of the geopolitics of returns by focusing on specific mechanisms that link geopolitical concerns with policy instruments at the state level.

Introduction The return1 of rejected asylum seekers, ‘irregular’ migrants, and refugees from destination countries remains a vital component of national and international forced migration governance (UNHCR 2003; UN 2018; EU Pact 2020). Such returns occur in a complicated field of practices and power relations operating at local, national and regional levels (Sökefeld 2019). As existing empirical research shows, returns are ‘highly politically charged’ (Blitz et al. 2005; Black and Kosher 1999; Bradley 2013) because they require the domestic politics and geopolitical interests of both origin and destination countries to be accommodated. As Borrelli notes, ‘the movement of people across borders and the varied governmental response to that movement is of crucial importance to contemporary geopolitics’ (Borrelli et al. 2021, 1). In this article, geopolitics is understood in terms of the dynamic interactions between geographical settings and power (Cohen 2003) and includes spatialisation practices that reflect the discourses and strategies of political agents (Cemgil 2021). However, the topic is understudied from the perspective of geopolitics, by and large, because the diverse factors driving returns obscure the geopolitical dimension. In migration studies, geopolitics is mainly studied as a driver of migrant mobilities and strategies (Ashutosh and Mountz 2012), a product of policy instruments (Zardo 2020), or as part of a governance strategy (Collyer 2016) that incorporates boundary-drawing and space-making practices (Triandafyllidou 2020). The impact of geopolitics on returns is more likely to be observed when the destination and origin countries are part of the same region. Shared borders (including the existence of transboundary resource endowments) and historical animosities mean that neighbouring states’ political and security interests are inextricably bound together (Essuman-Johnson 2011; Fakhoury 2021). The destination countries are concerned about their geopolitical interests, intertwining foreign policy and migration/asylum policy (Abdelaaty 2021; Ahmad 2017). When there are actual power asymmetries between the origin and destination country, if there is the political will, the former may intervene in the latter’s affairs in space-making for returns (Sökefeld 2019; Sundaram 2020; Zardo 2020). We know that geopolitics affect returns governance, but the conditions and mechanisms through which this happens have not been well theorised. The present article seeks to address this lacuna. The article examines the prospective impacts of geopolitics on returns governance, emphasising the destination country’s geopolitical discourses and space-making strategies. It does so through a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the Turkish case. There are several reasons to focus on Turkey as a case study to analyse the geopolitics of returns. First, it is a major transit-turned-host country. Today, Turkey hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees and 581,614 non-Syrians – mostly Afghan, Pakistani, Iraqi and Iranian nationals (DGMM 2021; Gocgov 2020).2 For decades, Turkey has been one of the main transit routes for migrants seeking to reach Europe from the Middle East, including Afghanistan,3 and it became the world’s largest host country after 2014 with the mass arrival of Syrians fleeing the civil war. Second reason making Turkey an important case is its ambiguous relationship with the international refugee regime. Turkey was one of the original drafters and signatories of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees but has resisted the gradual extension of the scope of the Convention over time (Kirisci 1996). For example, the 1967 Protocol to the Convention lifted the pre-1951 limitation and extended the scope of protection to refugees ‘without any geographic limitation’. However, it allowed existing signatories to choose whether to lift the two limitations, and Turkey (alongside just three other state parties) lifted the temporal one while retaining the geographical one. Thus, Turkey only recognises refugees seeking asylum due to ‘events occurring in Europe’, although today, asylum seekers generally come from non-European countries. Turkey’s national asylum law, the Law on Foreigner and International Protection (LFIP), enacted in 2013, enshrines this geographical limitation by adding additional categories like ‘subsidiary protection’, ‘conditional refugee status’ and ‘temporary protection’ for those from outside Europe seeking protection (LFIP 2013). The decision to grant ‘temporary protection’ status to the millions of Syrians fleeing the war shows that limited and interim refuge is the primary building block of Turkey’s asylum regime. Third, Turkey is a critical case to examine repatriation issue because of the central role it plays in the country’s discursive and policy landscape. On the one hand, the Turkish government encourages ‘voluntary’ repatriation of Syrians and has created voluntary return programmes for non-Syrians (primarily targeting Afghans). However, on the other, certain administrative practices intentionally push Syrians and non-Syrians into legal informality and irregularity, followed by pre-removal detention and forced deportation. Overall, returns governance in Turkey has been routinely politicised and remains a highly politically charged issue in the public domain. Fourth, Turkey offers insights on return types, including the kind of mass repatriation of refugees common in the Global South and deportation of ‘irregular migrants’ as observed in the Global North as well as interactions between both. A comprehensive evaluation of the policy, politics and practices of national returns governance requires an in-depth case study analysis. In undertaking such an inquiry in the Turkish case, I have drawn on a wide range of sources, including the content of Turkish asylum law, strategy and policy documents and public speeches between 2016 and 2021, actual administrative practices observed in the field, and 32 semi-structured interviews conducted with stakeholders and returnees between 2020 and 2021. By drawing on this rich vein of data, the article advances two interrelated claims that build on three concepts: returns governance, geopolitical reasoning, and space-making. First, returns governance is exercised at the interstices between legal infrastructures (e.g. laws, regulations, procedures), operational infrastructures (agencies and organisations responsible for policymaking), and practices intended to implement return orders, such as pre-removal detention, forced deportation, mass repatriation, as well as assisted and voluntary return programmes (Mencutek 2022; Oomkens and Kalir 2020). Second, I define geopolitical reasoning as the discursive–argumentative perspective of a state concerning the relation between its political geography and domestic and foreign policymaking (Mamadouh and Dijkink 2006; Krischker 2019). Finally, I define space-making as a process that occurs when an external actor (typically a state or international organisation) intervenes in the politics or governance of another nation-state or community, intending to establish spatial hegemony and expand its realm of action in the targeted state or community (Turner and Kühn 2016). Building on this conceptual framework, I first argue that the Turkish state’s geopolitical reasoning revolves around its long-term self-identification as a provider of temporary protection in the global migration system. This vision influences the design of migration legislation and policies on returns. Temporality-centric reasoning is selectively put into practice when domestic or geopolitical (or both) dynamics are conducive. Second, I contend that Turkey adopts certain transgressive and space-making strategies to craft a place in origin countries to speed up implementation of returns. Turkey’s current space-making efforts include its military and administrative intervention in northern Syria and humanitarian/developmental projects in Afghanistan. The strategies differ due to differences in Turkey’s regional and bilateral foreign policy imperatives but still have some commonalities in how policymakers associate them with the objective of repatriation, at least at the discursive level. The remainder of the article proceeds as follows. The following section introduces key concepts and reviews the literature on the politics of repatriation. The article then details the methods of data collection and analysis. Subsequently, it briefly outlines the components of Turkey’s legal and institutional framework, its multiple returns practices, and mechanisms preceding returns, such as the criminalisation and detention of migrants. The fourth section lays out the core arguments, focusing on 1) how geopolitical reasoning around temporary protection is reflected in legislation and policies, and 2) space-making strategies beyond its national territory, mainly in Syria but also (partially) in Afghanistan. It concludes with a summary drawing together the paper’s empirical and conceptual contributions and identifying avenues for future research.

Conceptual Complexity, Returns Governance, and the Politics of Repatriation The existing scholarship provides essential insights into the relevance of politics in returns. However, in-depth analysis remains necessary to better understand the way specific components of geopolitics – such as reasoning and attempts at extraterritorial space-making – connect with returns policy. Many concepts speak to the return of migrants, including ‘voluntary repatriation’, ‘deportation’, ‘expulsion’, ‘readmission’, ‘removal’ and ‘assisted voluntary returns and reintegration’ (AVRR). Existing studies on deportation, readmission and AVRR mainly address Europe and North America (Collyer 2012; Gibney 2013; Goodman 2020). Repatriation terminology is often used to discuss massive return operations in the Global South as a durable solution for refugees (UNHCR 2003). AVRR is a policy category that offers migrants incentives to return voluntarily (Lietaert and Gorp 2019). Deportation is typically understood as the forcible removal of a non-national, usually a migrant, by state authorities, from a country where he or she lacks the legal right to remain (Walters et al. 2021). Destination counties perceive returns as a tool to manage migration, deter prospective attempts (Chimni 2002; Collyer 2012, 2016), and reassert territorial sovereignty (Sökefeld 2019). Beyond states, actors like the United Nations (UN) agencies and the EU (Koch 2014), national law enforcement (Collyer 2012), and civil society (Gerver 2018) also support repatriation efforts. However, regardless of the actors involved, considerable evidence demonstrates that the principles of voluntariness and assistance are conflated, and those of safety and dignity are often overlooked during returns (Crisp and Long 2016; Spathopoulou, Carastathis, and Tsilimpounidi 2020). As politics play a substantial role in shaping host states’ policymaking, the relevance of geopolitics in returns is unavoidable (Ashutosh and Mountz 2012; Chimni 1998). Host states tend to make several strategic calculations in their approaches to and negotiations over repatriation, involving geopolitical dynamics and alliance politics (Zeager and Bascom 1996). Despite evident power differences, host country governments are not passive actors in negotiations. Rather, they may actively lobby the international community, including the UNHCR and EU or allied forces or donors for immediate returns (Altıok and Tosun 2020; Zeager 1998). Historically, UNHCR has faced pressure from host countries to support repatriation, which is neither strictly voluntary nor particularly safe (UNHCR 1997). As discussed in this special issue, host country governments often insist on returns, as in the case of Afghans returning from Pakistan (Mielke 2022) or Syrians returning from Lebanon (Fakhoury and Stel 2022). Beyond refugees, transit and ‘irregular migrants’ are subjects of negotiations over returns. Transit countries may bargain for more concessions or development aid incentives to implement returns agreements with the EU, like Morocco and Turkey in the last decade (El Qadim 2014). Origin countries also have different interests vis-à-vis returns, driven by domestic and international politics. There are often underlying power differences or dependence that mean the origin country is compelled to accept returns from the host country, as observed in the deportation of Afghans from Germany (Martin 2012). Moreover, origin countries may entertain returns negotiations to bolster their international standing or in view of domestic electoral politics; Uganda and Burundi are cases in point (Schwartz 2021). Returns are sometimes also drawn into host countries’ domestic power struggles, as in Lebanon (Fakhoury 2021). Overall, migration scholars provide ample evidence of the political nature of repatriation (Long 2013; Gerver 2019), including migrants’ attempts to shape host country politics or negotiate with intermediates such as UNHCR (Bradley 2021) and the biopolitical dimension of geopolitics in returns (Hyndman 2012). Host states may adopt various discursive tools, policy schemes and practices to prepare the ground for returns in the origin country. Common examples include cross-border ‘cooperative’ actions supporting infrastructure and development projects, diplomatic support for particular political elites, and fundraising for return operations (Freier, Micinski, and Tsourapas 2021). These examples also fall under the concepts of externalisation and bordering, which critical migration scholars have identified in the discourses and space-making efforts of the EU as part of its broader ‘neighbourhood policy’ regime (Cobarrubias 2020; Kramsch 2011; Côté-Boucher et al. 2012; Isleyen 2018). These studies suggest that host states are inclined to policy settings that return migrants as soon as possible, including cross-border cooperation on repatriation and policy ‘carrots’ such as development aid. It should be noted that despite some host states’ willingness to instrumentalise mobility as a ‘weapon’ in foreign policy (Greenhill 2008) or ‘rent-seeking’ (Adamson and Tsourapas 2018), they rarely take unilateral military action to coerce repatriation or intervene in the origin country given the reputational and material costs involved. One historical exception was India’s repatriation of millions of Bengali refugees to newly established Bangladesh in 1971 by military intervention in eastern Pakistan (Sundaram 2020). Turkey’s interventions in northern Iraq from 1988 to 1991 (Altıok and Tosun 2020) and northern Syria since 2018 are another crucial exception, a point we take up in further detail below.

Data Collection and Analysis Methodologically, the research builds on an in-depth qualitative case study to describe practices and mechanisms and explore determinants in Turkey’s returns governance. To understand the determinants, I examine the content and framing of two sets of high-level policy documents covering the 2016–2021 period. The first set consists of National Security Council (NSC) press releases (2017–2020) that function as communiqués of the practical geopolitical reasoning of the Turkish government (Tetik 2019, 72). The second set is the strategy documents of the Migration Council (Strategy 2017–21; Strategy 2019–23), which works to coordinate and implement Turkey’s migration strategies. I also examined relevant public speeches by the Turkish president and interior minister, who are key actors in articulating the geopolitical reasoning of security interventions in and outside of Turkey. The article aims to move beyond discourses; hence it tries to describe practices and mechanisms. Practices can be defined as ‘ways of doing things known to practitioners’ and mechanisms as ‘the theoretical abstraction that social scientists coin [to] classify practices, usually across cases’ (Pouliot 2015, 238). I analysed the content of migration/asylum law to explore legislative practices. Here, I looked for evidence of how the law embodies principles of refugee protection and specifies regulations about temporary protection, ‘removals’ (deportation), ‘administrative detention’ (pre-deportation detention), and voluntary returns. Since there is always a gap between legal principles, discourse, and actual practices in repatriation (Bradley 2013; Gerver 2018), I specifically focus on administrative practices as suggested by deportation studies (De Genova 2016; Walters et al. 2021) To trace practices and mechanisms more comprehensively, it is crucial to explore the experiences of returnees. Therefore, out of 32 stakeholder interviews, 15 semi-structured interviews were with returnees. They were conducted between November 2020 and June 2021, with the help of a research assistant who has access to northern Syria. Interviewees were asked semi-structured questions about their pre-return experience, return decision-making, procedures, the journey to the origin country and reintegration experience. Additionally, the research assistant conducted two interviews with Syrian-led grassroots initiatives in Turkey and northern Syria to promote returns. Among the returnees interviewed, six had been forcibly returned to Syria only to re-enter Turkey in the last two years. Nine stated that they had ‘voluntarily returned’ and were living in a border town in northern Syria. One limitation of the research is that the only returnee population directly accessible for interview was Syrians. To overcome this, I interviewed five asylum lawyers and three national human rights advocacy organisations that observe deportation-related judicial processes of Afghans and other non-Syrian migrants. Ten additional interviews were conducted with international human rights groups, scholars, and experts from international and humanitarian organisations serving migrants of all nationalities. Many agreed that Afghans make up the largest share of deportees. Moreover, they pointed out that return practices targeting Afghan, Iraqi, Iranian, Pakistani and Uzbek irregular migrants are similar, as they are all subject to the same jurisdiction. Reports of human rights groups highlighting conditions in ‘removal’ centres and deportation practices provide additional insights into the deportation of non-Syrian migrants. While the present research sample’s internal heterogeneity limits generalisations across cases, it still invites us to consider the return practices, mechanisms, and drivers, such as geopolitical reasoning. Conceptual clarification is necessary here. I use the term ‘repatriation’ for Syrians and ‘deportation’ for non-Syrian displaced persons in line with actual administrative practices in Turkey. The difference is due to the national legal framework differentiating Syrian and non-Syrian displaced people and their rights, as explained in the following section. Turkish legislation and administrative and judicial bodies consistently adopt the terms ‘removal’ and ‘voluntary return’ in referring to the repatriation of asylum seekers or irregular migrants to their country of origin (or elsewhere). However, given the prevalence of coercion, local and international human rights groups and news reports often refer to the practices of the Turkish administration as ‘deportation’ (AI 2019; HRW 2019).

Governance of the Return of Forced Migrants in Turkey This section provides an overview of returns governance in Turkey, dividing it into three sub-categories: 1) the legal and institutional framework; 2) returns data and programmes, and; 3) criminalisation and pre-removal detention. In so doing, it covers a broad range of policies, legislation, procedures, and practices on different types of returns, including forced deportation, mass repatriation, and assisted and voluntary returns that mainly target Syrians and Afghans. Legal and Institutional Framework Turkey has a highly fragmented legal and institutional framework that lacks a ‘functional asylum architecture’ (UNHCR 2019, 3). The principal national legislation governing returns is the LFIP from 2013 and the Temporary Protection Regulation (TPR) from 2014. The LFIP regulates refugee status determination (RSD) on an individual level, while the TPR applies group-based status determination with time limits in cases of mass arrivals. As mentioned above, Syrians are given temporary protection status. However, non-Syrians are subject to RSD after registering with governorates or provincial migration offices as soon as they enter the country. Otherwise, they become irregular. The UNHCR Turkey handled RSDs until 2018, after which responsibility was fully transferred to Turkey’s national Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM). The LFIP lists 14 grounds for ‘removal’ (i.e., deportation) of foreigners (LFIP 2013, Article 54 (2)). Reasons include, among others, overstaying a visa or residence permit, breaching the terms and conditions for legal entry or exit, submitting incorrect information or false documents, and posing a threat to public order, security or health (LFIP 2013, Article 14). The profiling of foreigners, arrests, detention and deportation procedures lack transparency and clear guidelines, as they rely on ad hoc internal orders from the administration (Mencutek 2022). Moreover, there are barriers to seeking justice via appeals due to rapid deportations before courts can finalise decisions, and the options to challenge procedures are limited in practice (Ibid.). The LFIP’s article on voluntary returns states that material and financial support to applicants and international protection beneficiaries who wish to return voluntarily shall be provided (LFIP 2013, Article 87). The TPR, which is binding legislation for Syrians, refers back to the LFIP to regulate returns. Additionally, it gives full authority to the Turkish president to determine the duration of the temporary protection regime without specifying necessary conditions for returns (TPR 2014, Article 11). Against this backdrop, the institutional landscape of returns governance is fragmented. Various state agencies are involved, including the president and interior ministry, the DGMM and its provincial branches, provincial governors, law enforcement agencies (police, military, gendarmerie), and the judiciary. The DGMM is also responsible for voluntary repatriation activities in cooperation with international organisations, public institutions and agencies, and civil society. The bar associations get involved when apprehended migrants seek legal assistance, including circumstances of detention and deportation. The UNHCR is supposed to monitor ‘voluntary returns’, while the International Organization for Migration (IOM) funds charter flights and cash assistance for returnees. The EU supports capacity-building in Turkish state agencies, mainly via funding to ‘removal’ centres as it does in other transit countries within the externalisation framework (Isleyen 2018; Kaytaz 2021). Returns Data and Separate Programmes Targeting Syrians and Afghans Turkey’s Migration Council has set three strategic objectives regarding returns governance under distinct rubrics: ‘lawful and humanitarian deportation and administrative detention’, ‘signing readmission agreements with origin countries’ and ‘voluntary and secure returns’ (Strategy 2019–23, 57). The Council points out the increases in the number of readmission agreements, ‘voluntary returns’, and expanded capacity of ‘removal’ centres as performance criteria for these objectives (Strategy 2019–23, 58). While Syrians under temporary protection are encouraged to ‘voluntarily return’, Afghans and others face deportation because they are categorised as ‘irregular migrants’. However, there is a lack of reliable official data about all types of returns. The current numbers are based on estimates and only cover a few years. The DGMM reported that around 364,663 Syrians had voluntarily returned as of October 2019 (Gocgov 2019), and a year later, the interior minister noted 414,061 had returned (TRT Haber 2020). Figures for returned irregular migrants are also incomplete. According to the EU, Turkey returned 96,201 irregular migrants throughout 2019, of whom around 55,000 went to Afghanistan. In 2019, a government parliamentarian noted that an operation in Istanbul had netted 80,000 unregistered irregular migrants, with 75,000 returning to their country of origin (TBMM 2019). For the same year, the numbers of forcibly returned Syrians reported by human rights organisations ranged from a few hundred (AI 2019; HRW 2019) to 6,000 (SJAC 2020). Turkish media, relying on the data from Istanbul Governorate, reported that some 23,000 ‘irregular migrants’ were deported in 2021 and additional 39,525 were sent to the ‘removal centers’ in other provinces for proceeding prospective deportations (BBC 2022). It is possible to observe elements of coercion and voluntary discretion in returns. The 15 Syrian returnees interviewed offered several accounts of why they had chosen to return, including restored (albeit only partially) security in their hometowns, family in Syria, as well as deteriorating living conditions, difficulty finding work, and rising discrimination in Turkey. As the returns of most of them occurred without direct Turkish state coercion or assistance, they are captured in official discourses as ‘voluntary’. However, there are nuances. For returnees, the line between voluntary and forced is blurry (Mencutek 2022). As one interviewee summarised, ‘Our return is voluntary, and at the same time, out of necessity. It is voluntary because no one forced us, but we have to return due to the hardship of life in Turkey – not being able to make adequate income to live in peace’ (interview 7, January 2021). Besides Syrians, there is substantial pressure on Afghans to return. Afghan returnees report their experience of hardship in Turkey regarding poor local integration, loneliness, extremely precarious informal working conditions, as well as minimal chances of onward migration to Europe and resettlement (MMC 2019, 21–22). The Turkey branch of the IOM used to provide AVRR programmes to Afghans who requested ‘voluntary return’ after being apprehended trying to exit illegally to Greece. Some 2,344 Afghans benefited this programme in 2019 (EC 2020, 48). However, according to interviews with policymakers, the IOM programme was ‘smaller in scale than Turkey’s needs, slow and expensive considering the huge number of irregular migrants’. In response, the DGMM established a National Assisted Voluntary Return Mechanism (NAVR) (EC 2020, 47). Turkey’s foreign aid and development agency, TIKA, and the Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay) were also involved in the NAVR initiative, which gained momentum in 2021 when supporting regulations were enacted. The International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), a European intergovernmental organisation with observer status at the UN, also provides technical and funding support. With the help of the ICMPD, Turkey and Afghanistan prepared a readmission agreement (which they have yet to sign), while the NAVR scheme was tested with the ‘voluntary’ return of 41 Afghans in April 2021. Technical infrastructure replicating European models was established to process returns applications. The next planned step is to train return councillors, as in EU countries, serving the Kızılay and DGMM. Irregularisation, Criminalisation and Detention of Migrants at the Pre-Removal Stage Like other countries, the Turkish state deploys mechanisms like irregularisation and criminalisation to make migrants detainable and deportable subjects (De Genova 2016; Shuster 2011; Kaytaz 2021). Turkey’s detention and deportation procedures are complex, ambiguous and, at times, informal and manipulative, as highlighted in recent reports (ECRE 2021; Karadağ and Üstübici 2021). Because of the migration/asylum regime’s highly complicated protection categories, bureaucratic hurdles, and restrictions on internal mobility,4 many migrants end up with an irregular status (Isleyen 2018). Interviews with stakeholders illustrate that in everyday encounters with the state apparatus – such as updating their status and changing their residence address from one province to another – migrants face barriers, delays, and long waits. Once their protection status period has expired, migrants are often at risk of deportation orders and re-entry bans. Criminalisation, on flimsy grounds, appears to be the precondition of detainability and deportability, as observed in other country cases. The Turkish administration uses ambiguous, ad hoc regulations to criminalise migrants, such as the Emergency Decree of October 2016, which was extended several times. The decree allowed international protection applicants to be deported at any point in the application process for 1) leading, being a member of or supporting a terrorist organisation or a benefit-oriented criminal group, 2) threats to public order or public health, or 3) having links to terrorist organisations defined by international institutions or organisations. However, the decree did not specify what constitutes a threat to public order, security or public health. Referring to the decree, three interviewees in the sample were forcibly returned to Syria due to alleged involvement in public altercations, even though no one was harmed. Their encounters with the Turkish police were due to disagreements with ‘a bus driver over the ticket price’ in one instance, ‘an employer over wage theft’ in another, and ‘neighbours to protect a girlfriend’ in a third. The interviewees were arrested and then rapidly deported based on the supposed threat to public order. Even though one was acquitted, and another case remains under investigation, the deportation orders were not suspended. The justification of ‘threat to public order’ became particularly apparent in the summer of 2019 in Istanbul, when the governing party sheeted its loss in municipal elections to migrants and launched a vast crackdown operation in the city to expedite the apprehension, detention and deportation of thousands of irregular migrants (TBMM 2020), including Syrians registered in another province. Moreover, the Turkish state differentiates between threats to ‘public security’ and ‘terror links’ addressing geopolitical anxieties and external security risks. In 2020, 8,000 individuals were labelled ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ and deported (TBMM 2020). Interviews with stakeholders indicate a lack of transparency about the administration’s surveillance techniques. In my sample, three out of the 15 Syrian interviewees were assigned links to ‘terrorist’ and ‘radical’ organisations and were forcibly expelled, although they believe ‘there is no evidence, but only ungrounded suspicion’. They told me that they were confined somewhere they called a ‘camp’ where they were forced to sign the ‘forms’ given to them. According to regulations, Syrians can be only put into removal centres only when accused of being ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ with a unique security code assigned to them in a digital database. There were many reported cases of Syrian and non-Syrian apprehended migrants being coerced to sign voluntary return forms in 2020 (ECRE 2021). A released person may also be given a deportation decision. However, many migrants mistakenly understand this document as an identity document since it is in Turkish and signed and dated by a public officer (Aras and Mencutek 2019, 63). In addition, violations in the apprehension and detention process are common, putting further pressure on detainees to sign voluntary forms (HRW 2019). These include flagrant breaches of the law, officers’ xenophobic attitudes, ethical problems caused by interpreters, necessary paperwork being unavailable in the migrants’ language, and barriers in access to their families and lawyers for legal support (Aras and Mencutek 2019; Sunata and Erduran 2021). Many migrants are left with the false choice of voluntary departure under duress on the one hand and deportation on the other. An important question is what guides the components of returns governance and the mechanisms underlying it. It is undeniable that multi-causality is present. Geopolitics, domestic politics and political economy play a role. Domestically, the topic of returns has become highly politically salient, particularly in the heightened social tensions and has, since 2018, fuelled political parties’ populist anti-Syrian discourses (Icduygu and Nimer 2020). Moreover, the electoral cost of not returning Syrians and other irregular migrants has been rising for the government party, as reflected in the aforementioned 2019 crackdown (Erdoğan 2020). Finally, there is the problem of limited institutional capacity, such that Turkish agencies rely on external resources, mainly from the EU, to detain and deport a large number of irregular migrants (Kaytaz 2021). Given this multi-causality of drivers, this article mainly focuses on the links between returns governance and geopolitical concerns, particularly the self-identification of Turkey in the migration system and its space-making efforts in migrants’ countries of origin.

Self-Identification as a Provider of ‘Temporary Protection’ Turkey constructs itself discursively as a transit country and a provider of temporary protection for displaced people. This construction reflects geopolitical reasoning that highlights ‘Turkey’s liminality and [justifies] some of its foreign policy actions [in] Eurasia and … the Middle East’ (Yanık 2009, 531). The Migration Council’s strategy documents reiterate that ‘being at the intersection of Asia, Europe and Africa, our country has long been a transit crossing route for irregular migrants’ (Strategy 2017–21, 70; Strategy 2019–23, 65). Turkey’s geopolitical reasoning has led it to design an asylum regime, including repatriation and deportation procedures, centred on time-limited protection. The most salient implication of this reasoning is Turkey’s complicated relationship with the 1951 Refugee Convention, as mentioned earlier. Turkey signed it but retains a geographical limitation to its ratification, meaning it does not grant refugee status to non-European asylum seekers. From its foundation in 1923 until around 2000, Turkey’s migration and asylum policy reflected the country’s geopolitical orientation. This entailed a general suspicion of Middle Eastern countries, on the one hand, and the goal of improving relations with Western countries on the other. As a result, nationalist, conservative, and statist approaches predominated in Turkey’s immigration policy rather than migrant centric or liberal ones (Elitok 2013; Icduygu 2004). Between 2000 and 2013, however, changes in Turkey’s migration profile, the impact of the new ruling party’s foreign policy objectives, and the EU accession process saw a wholesale restructuring of migration policy, including asylum and visa policy. Diverging from the previous security-centric policies on mobility from neighbouring regions, the ruling party signed visa liberalisation agreements with several neighbours in the Caucasus and the Middle East, including Syria, in 2009. In addition, the government pursued a pragmatic and selective approach to its forced migration governance during this period, even though it simultaneously focused on humanitarianism, moral responsibility, and international standards (Korkut 2016). Turkey’s first comprehensive legislation on migration, the LFIP, was enacted at the tail end of this period of change but retained Turkey’s geographical reservation vis-à-vis refugee status. Turkey’s insistence on a complicated system of forced migration governance is based on geopolitical considerations in two specific senses. First, the constant instability in neighbouring regions is an observable fact, leading to mass displacement that often spills across Turkey’s borders. For example, the 2017–2021 strategy document lists seven risks posed by migration. Two of them refer to geopolitics: 1) ‘instability in nearby countries could trigger mass migration towards our country’, and 2) ‘our country is under pressure from the transit and irregular migration due to its geographic location’ (NSC 2019a). Second, as Pınar Bilgin notes, there is a ‘historical centrality of geopolitical assumptions and security imaginary, co-constituting a “geopolitical dogma” in Turkish politics’ (Bilgin 2012). Turkey’s nation-building process at the expense of its non-Turkish and non-Muslim minorities – which has given rise to the long-standing Kurdish issue – entrenches a mindset among Turkish political elites that mass migration from the Middle East threatens Turkish national security interests (Kirisci 2012). Turkey does not want to be a permanent place of asylum; accordingly, it maintains the power to decide how to treat certain migrant groups based on which part of the world they have come from and Turkey’s relations with that region (Abdelaaty 2021). Geopolitical reasoning prioritises temporary protection and returns as the desired solution. In the case of Syrians’ arrival, Turkey had expected – or at least hoped – that the Syrian conflict would be resolved quickly, enabling refugees to return home safely, but that did not happen, and the crisis has dragged on. Turkey’s National Security Council describes Syrians as ‘hosted in Turkey’ only until ‘they can return’ (NSC 2019a). Designing the forced migration regime over such a temporary status and defining return as the primary objective emphasises the provisional aspect of the refugees’ stay in the country while minimising the efforts to ensure long-term rights and promote integration. Observing that available resettlement schemes have not been promising and onward migration is restricted by the EU border management, insisting on temporary protection seems to be the only geopolitically strategic option for Turkish policymakers to handle massive flows. This reasoning has been selectively used when geopolitical considerations have risen to the fore, such as when Kurdish Iraqis were quickly repatriated in 1991. It is now on the table for Syrians and Afghans. Moreover, not only migration governance in general, but also returns is not independent of Turkey’s relations with the Europe, which sees Turkey primarily as a transit country. As Esra Kaytaz (2021) has discussed, transit migration as a policy discourse justifies the support provided by the EU for increasing the capacity and number of detention centres in Turkey. Since the 2016 Turkey–EU Statement, this has been more explicitly centred on a mutually pragmatic approach and geopolitical discourses about transit migration (Kaytaz 2021). They do so by focusing on the origin region of migrants who are the same groups addressed in the 2016 Statement – Syrians and Afghans, Iraqis and others. This discourse designates geopolitics as the main criterion for denying permanent protection, categorising forced migrants as either temporary or irregular. In what follows, I contend that while relying on the EU’s expertise and funds to detain migrants, Turkey develops home-grown practices to deport these detained migrants or convince them to return voluntarily. Thus, beyond Turkey’s relations with the EU, its relations with countries of origin need to be considered to understand the governance of returns. Turkey’s approach hues close to general patterns in the Global South and EU-transit country relations, but somehow peculiarly so because Turkey adopts extraterritorial space-making strategies that intersects with return policies.

Space-Making Strategies in Origin Countries Among the various groups of forced migrants, the Turkish state focuses most closely on the repatriation of Afghans and Syrians. First, these two groups comprise the largest asylum population and the most visible migrant groups in Turkey, meaning they – more than any other groups – are targeted for border and internal controls, apprehension, and detention. Also, the Turkish government’s current geopolitical interests in Syria and Afghanistan differ markedly from the next most salient countries of origin, Iraq and Iran. Nevertheless, Turkey’s relations with origin countries – and the return policies targeting specific migrant groups – change over time. For example, Turkey’s historical anxieties about the Kurdish issue were central to the mass repatriations of thousands of Kurds to Iraq in 1991, after the Gulf War. The Turkish government of the time legitimised and justified this decision with concerns about domestic and regional security. As a result, Turkey implemented forcible returns to the ‘safe haven’ created in northern Iraq (Abdelaaty 2021, 101), similar to the current space-making efforts in northern Syria. Today, both Syria and Afghanistan have experienced decades of war, internal power struggles and instability, giving the Turkish government a relatively free hand to pursue an interventionist foreign policy in planning return operations to these countries. In both cases, the Turkish state undertakes space-making by intervening in the target state’s politics and governance. Those space-making process(es) take various forms ranging from direct military intervention (Syria) to implementing development projects in line with broader geopolitical interests (Afghanistan and Syria). They reflect the complex reorientation in Turkey’s geopolitical outlook since 2002, including a newfound self-identification as a regional and emerging global power and leader in the Muslim world (Mencutek 2021). Negotiating spaces to enable returns with origin countries is not the principal preoccupation in Turkish foreign policy, but it is an increasingly important theme. The Turkish state has gradually rolled out a repatriation strategy for Syria that, while somewhat small-scale for now, is expected to become comprehensive in future, conditional upon the success of Ankara’s military and administrative intervention in northern Syria. The Turkish state has also been using Afghanistan as a test case for instruments for deporting or assisting the returns of irregular migrants. In the meantime, it has sought to boost ties with Afghanistan through humanitarian and development assistance. It is worth highlighting that the Turkish state’s Syrian refugee policy has been an integral part of its geopolitical imagination vis-à-vis the Arab Middle East after the Arab Spring. The interventions in the Syrian war have been framed as part of Turkey’s historical mission to restore its leading role in the Muslim world (Polat 2018). Nevertheless, this broad vision has required a nimble policy on the ground. Since 2016–2017, the Turkish government’s priorities have shifted to establishing and maintaining demilitarised zones inside Syria to alleviate the refugee crisis, maintain a safer border regime in the southeast and prioritise counter-terrorism, the protection of sponsored opposition groups on the ground and efforts to counter Kurdish forces to restrain their territorial gains (Dinçer and Hecan 2021). Three massive military operations in northern Syria – Euphrates Shield (2016–2017), Olive Branch (2018), and Peace Spring (2019-present) – have been driven by these concerns. A wide range of reconstruction and development efforts inside northern Syria (Adar 2020) have been bolstered by Turkey’s cross-border administrative measures and local initiatives. Turkish reconstruction efforts mainly target the development infrastructure in Syria’s Al Bab, Jarablus, Afrin, and Idlib provinces (Aslan 2019, 22). Turkey commissioned its border governorates to coordinate infrastructure projects such as sewage systems, setting up electric and water supply systems, education-health services, and accommodation (temporary and permanent), as in Idlib province. As noted by NGO reports, ‘the engineering elements of [Turkish] military units are engaged in these activities … carried out by civil formations or private firms’, creating economic activity and livelihood opportunities for locals (Aslan 2019, 26). Besides Turkish state institutions like AFAD (Turkey’s disaster and emergency management agency) and TIKA, Kızılay and other Syrian and Turkish NGOs are developing infrastructure and humanitarian assistance. Meanwhile, The Turkish state has also sought to build ‘an alternative local elite loyal to Ankara’, hampering Kurdish self-administration areas close to Turkey’s border (Asseburg 2020, 13). Even though repatriation is not the sole objective of these activities, it remains an important empirical factor. Space-making in Syria has implications for return practices, at least at the discursive level. Several NSC press releases in 2018–2020 underscored the military operations’ role in ‘cleansing’ and ‘emancipating’ Turkey’s southern borders from ‘the terror threat’ and ‘preparing the region for returns of displaced Syrians’ (NSC 2019b, 2020). They also called on the international community to ‘support Turkey’s attempts to achieve safe and voluntary returns and a dignified return of our Syrian sisters and brothers’ (NSC 2020). The most sophisticated geopolitical reordering of Syria relating to returns was voiced in the UN General Assembly in September 2019 by President Erdoğan, with plans ‘to establish a Peace Corridor … to enable the resettlement of two million Syrians there with the support of the international community’ (AA 2019). In my interviews with Syrian refugees, it was apparent how those space-making efforts in northern Syria impact return decisions and their timing, at least for some. For example, one of the Syrians I interviewed said, ‘After the Turkish army and alliance forces took control here, I decided to return’. Another returnee stated, ‘when Turkey cleaned our area of terrorists, our region became safe and secure, and I decided to return’. It is reasonable to conclude that these Syrians might not have returned had there been no Turkish military intervention in the north of Syria. Furthermore, several Syrian grassroots initiatives encourage and assist returns to northern Syria. One Syrian representative of such an initiative related their activities to the government’s space-making and explained their promotion activities as follows: We always encourage asylum seekers to return to ‘emancipated regions’. There are various ways of encouraging them. We organise small panels and seminars to raise awareness and disseminate the message that return is necessary and an obligation. We also give a positive image of the situation in the emancipated regions through media to enlighten our community (interview 1, 22 November 2020). We created a commission of tribal leaders and wise men about returns. When refugees want to return, they apply to us. We assist mainly families from the ‘Peace Spring’ region. If refugees’ properties have been confiscated, we negotiate on their behalf in partnership with the local enforcement agencies. We also try to encourage returns (interview 2, 23 November 2020). Another Syrian community leader living in northern Syria spoke of similar efforts: These statements echo the Turkish government’s discourse regarding northern Syria, referring to their local spaces as ‘emancipated’ regions. Such initiatives work as part of Turkey’s local alliance-building efforts. Turkish vice governorates operating in northern Syria provide funding, oversight, and training to these councils and associated security forces. Besides military and administrative control, the return of Syrians is among the agenda items for those seeking more power and easier access to resources provided by the Turkish institutions in the field. Nevertheless, such interview statements only provide partial insights on returns. The interviewee sample is relatively small; they are primarily of Arab origin, and they have returned to parts of Syria controlled by Turkish forces. I was not surprised, therefore, that their narrative follows a more pro-Turkish slant than those of other Syrian refugees, like Kurdish Syrians. Although space-making processes are more prominent in Syria, they are also traceable in Afghanistan. Objectives and negotiations about the returns of Afghan irregular migrants are strategically built on the Turkish ’officials’ close ties with their Afghan counterparts. Turkey participated in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and led the force in some years (2002–2003 and 2005). It also contributes to equipping and training Afghan police and military, mainly by supporting non-combat security missions and logistical operations. Furthermore, TIKA has sponsored several reconstruction projects, creating a positive image among Afghan government leaders, the public and the Taliban. In 2019, Afghanistan received the fifth-largest allocation of Turkish development aid channelled by TIKA (worth US$32.94 million), following Syria, Bosnia Herzegovina, Palestine and Iraq (TİKA 2019, 31). In the last decade, TIKA has sponsored 1,300 projects in Afghanistan, mostly in education, health, emergency aid support, and infrastructure restoration (TİKA 2019). Moreover, it invested in expanding livelihood opportunities (e.g. in agriculture and raising livestock) as well as technical and vocational training to benefit Afghans, including displaced persons and returnees, according to media reports and an expert interviewed in March 2022. Turkish and Afghan diplomats contend that aforementioned agencies indirectly support readmission negotiations and possible coordination for return operations and mutual reintegration efforts at the state level (Webinar notes, May 2021). In this regard, high-level bilateral visits occur in an ad hoc manner, including visits by Afghan officials to Turkey’s eastern cities (e.g., Erzurum, Van) close to the border with Iran, from where many Afghans were deported. For example, in 2018, Turkish and Afghan officials agreed to provide travel documents to 670 Afghans detained in Erzurum’s removal centres and send back more via charter flights, according to local Turkish media (Erzurum 2018; Karar 2018). According to experts working for the Afghan state at that time, flights brought thousands of Afghans back to Kabul in 2018, creating a deterrence impact on Afghans planning to migrate via the Turkey route (interview 28 March 2021). Also, the Afghan government of the time appointed an attaché to Ankara to handle the travel documentation for prospective Afghan deportees. Meanwhile, Afghan officials denied Amnesty International reports mentioning forced returns from Turkey to Afghanistan (Pajhwok 2018), confirming the power asymmetry between the two countries. Like many European countries that rejected Afghan asylum claims and issued deportation orders (Sökefeld 2019), Turkey evaluated some parts of Afghanistan as safe for returns until the summer of 2021. Since then, it has stopped deporting Afghans for humanitarian and logistical reasons, although Afghan refugees make up the bulk of detainees in Turkey’s 25 deportation centres (Voanews 2021). In addition, the Turkish government has offered to operate Kabul airport on behalf of the Taliban authorities currently running the country (Daily Sabah 2021), raising concerns among experts interviewed for this research about the looming resumption of Afghan deportations. In the April 2022, Turkish media reported about the return flights which carried 908 ‘irregular migrants’ from Malatya to Afghanistan (Haberturk 2022) In addition to Afghanistan, Turkey has intensified arrangements with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Somaliland to facilitate readmission agreements and secure returns after the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement (Strategy 2019–23, 58; Geri; Kabul 2021). As of 2022, intense high-level negotiations with Pakistan for readmissions are underway. Furthermore, according to my interviewees, Turkey has continued its collaboration with the IOM on assisted returns, mainly of migrants in overcrowded removal centres. Space-making enables the Turkish government to claim it is underpinning ‘security’ in the country of origin and supporting the necessary infrastructure (like schools and hospitals) for refugee returns. It can make such claims in the absence of agreed international conditions for safe return. It can be assumed that, without these space-making efforts, Turkey would not confidently push its return instruments as it could not justify them against international standards or the humanitarian discourse it purports to champion.

dieyoufool3 on July 30th, 2022 at 15:13 UTC »

Day 3 of "MrGQA" (really rolls off the tongue).

Türkiye and Refugees/Migrants

Geopolitics at its most basic examines the relationship between geography and statecraft. But understanding how states control the flow of people in order to pressure or support neighboring countries helps us understand how certain groups of people are used as tools of statecraft to achieve local/regional/international strategic goals.

The author also explores the self-influential cycles of external statecraft affecting internal domestic discourse, which in turn creates & reinforces said statecraft.

At its highest level, the paper argues that

> Turkey’s geopolitical reasoning has led it to design an asylum regime, including repatriation and deportation procedures, centered on temporariness.

What I found really enlightening about this paper is that it gets a bit more in the weeds of how different mechanics of statecraft are used to weaponize. The concepts the author explores that captures each of the mechanism are:

returns governance, geopolitical reasoning, and space-making

(Open the article and Ctrl+F any of the terms to get progressively longer descriptions of each the further down into the article you go.)

Preemptively addressing criticism that refugee/migrant policy is not geopolitics; look no further than the - 2015 European migrant crisis, - the US/Mexico tension under the Trump administration of where refugees should be lodged, or how - Australia's "no boat people" policy is an ever present source of tension between it and its northern neighbors

…to name a few very real geopolitical ramifications stemming from refugees/migrants.

If this topic is of interest, an adjacent article you may enjoy is "Debating diaspora: Securitization framework and the Turkish state's making of dissent abroad".