University of Essex

Graduate Student, Department of Sociology

Other Affiliations: Ankara University, Political science and public administration

Thesis Title: Seeking Refuge: An Evaluation of the Turkish Asylum System through the Stories of Migrants

About

Turkey has been receiving growing numbers of irregular migrants from different parts of the world since the beginning of the 2000s. Due to being a neighbouring country to the EU, it has been taught that most of these migrants are in transit to Western Europe. However, there has also been a steady increase in the number of asylum applications in the country within the past five years. Without ever having an asylum law in its history (except the new draft law which came out in January 2011), Turkey had to cope with these flows with regulations and governmental circulars until very recent times. This refusal of the problem is also connected to the historical stance of the state about preserving the geographical limitation to the 1951 Geneva Convention which allowed the state to accept only European asylum seekers as refugees.

Compared to the situation of the 1990s when Turkey faced thousands of asylum seekers from Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo, today’s situation is a concern of the EU more than the Turkish state itself. Growing numbers of people are attempting to reach the frontiers of the EU every year by using Turkey as a transit country. Some of these migrants, even though they are in need of protection in the sense that they meet the 1951 Geneva Convention’s criteria as a refugee, prefer to continue their journey to an EU member state to seek asylum. They either intentionally take the route of Turkey by themselves or they are dropped off at the ports of Turkey by human smugglers. While the first option is mostly the case for Afghans, the second is the case for Africans who usually think that they are taken to Italy when they start their journey from Libya.

As migrants/asylum seekers travel through Turkey, their transit trajectories vary as well as their experiences with the Turkish asylum system. While some of them aim to make an asylum application as soon as they arrive in the country such as Iraqis, the others feel that they have to claim asylum in Turkey as a survival strategy as in the case of Africans. While some of them make an asylum application to get protection against deportation, the others plan well ahead to come to Turkey for the UNHCR procedure in their country of origin. Irregular migrants sometimes seek asylum as a last resort when their hope is gone for a chance to take a boat to Greece en route to Europe. The experience with the formal system varies according to the stories of asylum seekers. Therefore the distinction between an asylum seeker and a migrant sometimes gets blurred during the migration/asylum process in Turkey.

My research focuses on the asylum system of Turkey in the sense of how it works and how asylum seekers experience it. Its aim is threefold: At the macro-level, the research aims to situate Turkey in the current migration trends and routes in the world, which has been under change due to international policies. At the meso-level, by looking at the recent changes in Turkish national law with respect to the fight against irregular migration, it intends to reflect upon the interaction of policy and practice in the Turkish case. Finally at the micro-level, through the stories of registered asylum seekers mainly from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, the study aims to explore the people’s asylum trajectories and the lived experiences of law in Turkey.