Making EU-Turkey Cooperation on Migration Sustainable

Perceptions of Turkish Citizens

Meanwhile, the perspective of the host soci­ety on the Syrian refugees differs in various regards. More than 82 per cent of Turks want the Syrian refugees to be repatriated, 71 per cent regard them as a security threat, and around two-thirds are generally discon­tent with their presence. A primary reason for this is that the refugees’ predominant employment in the informal sector – par­ticularly in the husbandry, textile, and agricultural sectors – significantly drives down wages in a country where one-third of the host population itself works infor­mally. Moreover, many Turkish citizens have the feeling that Syrian refugees are more privileged than themselves because they receive social and financial assistance in addition to not having to pay taxes on their work.

Furthermore, 80 per cent of Turkish nationals see Syrian refugees as a cultural threat: 70 per cent think that “Syrians will deform the identity of the Turkish society” and two-thirds believe that the Syrian refu­gees threaten Turkey’s “moral values and tra­ditions”. Complaints about refugees liv­ing in “parallel societies” are not uncommon. Between 2017 and 2019, the percentage of Turkish citizens interacting with Syr­ians in a social or business context declined.

Syrian refugees have surely become a new component of Turkey’s long-lasting identity struggles, leading recently to con­tentious anti-immigration politics similar to those across Europe but which were un­precedented in Turkey, particularly con­cerning their scale. For instance, a group of university students who call themselves Angry Young Turks (Öfkeli Genç Türkler) think that Turkish identity and the foun­dational values of the Turkish Republic are in danger as a result of weakened institutions, widespread corruption, worsening economic woes, and a misguided foreign policy that paved the way for a high num­ber of refugees under the Justice and Devel­opment Party (AKP) government. For them, “border is honour”.

In the same vein, politics professor Ümit Özdağ recently founded the marginal far-right Victory Party (Zafer Partisi) exclusively upon the opposition to refugees and the promise to defend Turkish identity.

The mounting anti-immigrant senti­ments have partly unleashed themselves in the shape of violent attacks on refugees, as was the case in Ankara last August and in Istanbul in January of this year.

Migration: A New Driver of Political Competition

Amidst these negative popular anti-immi­gration attitudes, which are coupled with an increasing anger at the incumbent government, the ruling AKP has begun to move away from its earlier hospitable policies.

What began with rhetoric about Turk­ish hospitality, portraying Syrian irregular migrants as “guests”, and finding widespread approval across different segments of society, quickly developed into a heated field of contention.

The government earlier overwhelmingly focussed on the notions of shared Ottoman ancestry and Islamic brotherhood as the foundation of its officially refugee-friendly position – paralleling nativist European narratives, as they both build upon the idea of shared religious identity as a crucial determinant of social harmony.

Mainstream secular opposition parties, on the other hand, depicted Syrians as a tool of the AKP government in further Islamicising society and consolidating its power by yielding the perspective of giving Syrian refugees Turkish citizenship. What is important to note here is that their elec­torates’ anti-immigration sentiments are strongly coupled with anger at the AKP and a general fear of Turkey turning more con­servative. Their opposition to the refugees staying in Turkey is thus also an expression of their opposition to the government.

In fact, the mainstream opposition par­ties, such as the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Good Party (IYI), have recently reoriented their focus to governmental policy, and they strongly push against Tur­key’s hosting of a growing number of refu­gees and irregular migrants. In the face of fierce criticism by the opposition, the gov­ern­ment has also more pronouncedly acknowl­edged the public’s burdens by levelling up its criticism of the EU for show­ing insufficient support, ramping up the discourse on repatriating Syrian refugees to Northern Syria, and objecting to taking in any Afghan refugees.

Today, the divergence between the in­cumbent AKP and Turkey’s opposition parties on migration is smaller against the backdrop of increased political competition as Turkey moves towards parliamentary and presidential elections, which are planned to take place in 2023. In the face of Turkey’s ever-faster-growing economic crisis, weaken­ing institutional capacity, and worsening elite incoherence, both the vote shares of the ruling AKP and its primary supporter – the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – and the approval ratings for President Tayyip Erdoğan are in steep decline. It is hard to predict the timing and form of the political change; yet its occurrence is likely.

Towards More Sustainable EU-Turkey Migration Cooperation

This does not mean, however, that a differ­ent Turkish government would make EU-Turkey cooperation on migration any easier for the EU. On the contrary, the AKP gov­ernment’s Islamic humanitarian discourse and its aspiration to maintain good rela­tions with the EU around the signing of the EU-Turkey Statement have played into the hands of European politicians aiming to keep refugees away from Europe, either in Turkey or in Syria.

A new Turkish government, in contrast, is likely to challenge the EU’s externalisa­tion policies and might be keen on instigat­ing the repatriation of refugees into Syria by liaising with President Bashar al-Assad in a new manner. Under the heading of a peace plan for the Middle East, both the CHP and the IYI want to “resolve” the Syrian crisis and enable the return of as many Syrians as possible. The mounting economic, social, and cultural concerns within Turkish society pose a considerable challenge to the longevity of Turkey’s refu­gee reception. All in all, these put at risk both the advancement of the rights of refugees in Turkey and reliable migration cooperation. Neither can be resolved solely with financial aid from the EU.