Abstract
This introduction presents Turkey’s migration and refugee landscape, including contextual factors that form a backdrop to the current situation. Orientalist ways of seeing Turkey and its connection with the externalisation strategy of the EU are introduced. Migration management is discussed as a matter of diffuse power that is particularly vested in intergovernmental organisations (IGOs). The terms ‘bordercrats’ and ‘bordercracies’ are advanced to support understandings of the workings of this diffused power, of their expert positioning and role in bordering. The intermingling of managerial, humanitarian and orientalist rationalities of mobility government are linked to the generation of a filtering logic based on the selection of desirable and undesirable migrants.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2014, I spent six months at the Vienna-based intergovernmental organisation (IGO), the ICMPD, as a participant observer of two Regional Consultative Processes. The second site of fieldwork concerns the Christian evangelical, Istanbul Christian Action (ICA). As well as being able to observe migrants, this experience facilitated my contact with other NGOs and associations working in the migration and asylum field in Turkey. I was invited to the monthly inter-NGO meetings as well as the UNHCR NGO consultation meetings. This experience also facilitated access to the Farsi-speaking Christian community in Turkey. Church groups were run by missionaries, mostly from the US and Canada, and attendees were mostly Iranian or Afghan. Many interviews carried out with migrants at the ICA would often be spontaneous and take place over an instant coffee as migrants were awaiting their turn, or at the end of their day. While some welcomed the opportunity to talk about their situation, others were more reticent and it was sometimes hard to get informants to elaborate. Finally, I carried out 51 interviews with high- and mid-level-ranking Turkish and European civil servants, representatives of various IGOs involved in the field of migration in Turkey as well as representatives from several foreign offices and NGOs, migrants associations and missionaries. I also carried out interviews with almost 30 migrants and refugees in Turkey.
- 2.
Interestingly, the term is rarely used by EU member states to refer to EU member states’ national migration policies and institutions.
- 3.
The key bordercracies involved in migration management in Turkey include the IOM, the ICMPD and the UNHCR. They belong to a transnational field of migration and border experts that share a common logic.
- 4.
For a discussion of this perspective, see David Newman (2006), ‘Borders and bordering: towards an interdisciplinary dialogue,’ European Journal of Social Theory 9 pp. 171–186.
- 5.
European Commission, Turkey: 2000 Accession Partnership (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32001D0235) (accessed 6 March 2017); National Programme for the Adoption of the Acquis http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/turkey/npaa_full_en.pdf (accessed 6 March 2017).
- 6.
This issue will be explored in detail in Chapter 4.
- 7.
Interview—representative from the Bureau for Integrated Border Management, Ankara, January 2013.
- 8.
For an elaboration of the reforms which took place during this period, please refer to Bill Park (2012), Modern Turkey: People, State and Foreign Policy in a Globalising World, Oxon: Routledge, p. 48; or K. Dervis et al (eds) The European Transformation of Modern Turkey (CEPs) Brussels 2004.
- 9.
Barriers to EU accession were due to a number of factors, notably France and Cyprus, who were strongly against Turkey’s accession; The Armenian question, notably in 2012 France introduced legislation which would criminalise denial of the 1915 Armenian genocide leading to the suspension of bilateral cooperation between Paris and Ankara; rising Islamophobia across Europe over the course of the last decade and fears of a country of almost 80 million Muslims; the Cyprus issue—Greece–Turkey relations have remained in tension since the Turkish military invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the Turkish occupation of the north of the island. In 2004, the accession to the EU of Greek Cyprus further tarnished hopes. Turkey’s domestic policies have been heavily criticised regarding human rights issues, its treatment of minorities, the Kurdish issue, Alevis, women’s rights, freedom of speech and liberty of the press.
- 10.
Today’s Zaman, ‘Bağışsays Turkey rejects “privileged partnership”’ 12 August 2010, http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_bagis-says-turkey-rejects-privileged-partnership_218783.html (accessed 21 September 2016).
- 11.
The Irish Times, Bush Praises Democratic Muslim Turkey, 9 February 2013 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/bush-praises-democratic-muslim-turkey-1.983283 (accessed 1 July 2015).
- 12.
Daily News, Seven World Capitals Now without Turkish ambassadors, 17 September 2015, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/seven-world-capitals-now-without-turkish-ambassadors.aspx?PageID=238&NID=81488&NewsCatID=510 (accessed 16 September 2016).
- 13.
EU–Turkey statement, 18 March 2016, Press Release, 114/16, Foreign Affairs and International Relations http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/03/18-eu-turkey-statement/
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Fine, S. (2018). Introduction. In: Borders and Mobility in Turkey. Mobility & Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70120-2_1
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