Turkish Migration Policy Throughout Time
With the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing environmental disasters and destabilization of key regions in the Middle East, it is almost inevitable that we will face another humanitarian event like the 2015 refugee crisis. Yet, do we understand how to solve this issue? From day one of the crisis, the religious and cultural dimensions of asylum were missing amidst the wider political fight that broke out over resources, dog-whistle messaging, and strategic positioning. By examining this overlooked topic, we can broaden our understanding of how states should deal with refugees and increase the chances of providing durable solutions for this humanitarian crisis.
Turkey, which has the highest refugee population in the world, is an interesting example to look at when it comes to immigration. Whilst Turkey does operate under international and domestic asylum laws, the cultural and historical side is a lot more revealing than the mere letter of the law. Just as the renowned historian Kemal Karpat used religion and culture to explain population movements in Ottoman times, so we must follow in his footsteps.
REFUGEES DURING OTTOMAN TIMES
Dawn Chatty, in her book Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State, described the historical refugee waves in the Ottoman lands and current modern Turkish state from the end of the 18th century up to the present day. She wrote about the principles that guided the first Ottoman modern responses to these refugee flows, which were based on generosity and encouraged refugees to settle and become self-sufficient. The Ottoman migrant aid system considered the forced displaced persons not only as a resource to be used for the benefit of the state but also as brothers in need. This historical approach of receiving and resettling refugees in the Ottoman Empire is relevant today in order to understand the logic behind the Turkish state’s decision to host such a large number of Syrian refugees. Moreover, such a comparison helps us understand how Turkey developed its own methods of integrating refugees over time.
Another interesting theory was advanced by Arafat Madi Shoukri. This idea looks at the ways in which Islamic tradition dealt with refugees over time and compares its principles with those of international humanitarian law. Thus, Shoukri established a relationship between the concept of refugee protection in Islam and the international humanitarian law which regulates the status of refugees (notably the Geneva Convention 1951) by comparing certain articles of the Convention with the attitude of the Islamic tradition towards refugees.
By comparing the Geneva Convention to the hadiths which specify the rights and duties of the musta’min (in this case the ‘refugee’, a Non-Muslim who seeks protection in the Islamic state) Shoukri found that Islamic tradition and the Convention share much common ground.
Islamic tradition dealt with Muslim refugees differently from non-Muslim refugees. They obtained permanent residence and integrated into Islamic society in a much easier way. This could well be a direct result of the importance given to religious ties in the Islamic state. Findings such as this should be brought to today’s refugee crisis in Turkey in order to better understand how the idea of religious ties influenced Turkey’s decision to host so many Syrian Muslim refugees.
However, a few studies aren’t enough to conclude that religion or culture were the main factors behind Turkish hospitality towards Syrian refugees. Instead, we can look to Turkish history, exploring the different changes in the state’s attitude towards refugees and migrants over time and find whether we can draw lessons from the past and apply them today. Moreover, we can see whether culture and religion make us more likely as a country to host these ‘strangers’ in our midst.
TURKISH POPULATION MOVEMENTS HISTORICALLY
To begin with, we may look to one of the first significant population movements in Turkey's history, that of Circassians. Driven out by conquering Russian armies, these predominantly Sunni Muslims settled in the Ottoman empire in the mid-19th century. Karpat, writing in his influential book Ottoman Population: 1830-1914, charted the rise of this movement from its beginnings in the 1850s and to the peak during the 1860s and 1870s. The Ottoman Sultan, in his role as Caliph of all Muslims, felt it was his duty to protect loyal subjects even after they had been displaced, radically changing the ethnic and religious composition of the Empire by allowing them to resettle.
We can wonder if a similar duty was the reason behind Turkey’s decision to host such a large number of Syrian Muslim refugees. Turkey may have considered its duty to protect the Muslim people of what constituted once-Ottoman territories. Most of the Syrian refugees are Sunni Muslims, just as are most Turkish citizens. The current government may have felt the same hospitality duty in line with this historical and religious connection that links the two Muslim communities and so extended its hospitality and protection when their brothers-in-religion found their security threatened by a bloody civil war.
Turning back to history, the discussion about the Turkish Republic's migration policy during the 20th century is also relevant. Contrary to the Ottoman migration practices, which were mainly inspired by practical reasons and even religious principles, in the first years of the Turkish Republic authorities used migration as an instrument to ethnically homogenize the newly formed state.
However, it is interesting to observe that even after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Nationalism as a mainly ethnic centered ideology, religion still kept a significant role in the early Republic’s immigration policies. As the reputed professor, Başak Kale wrote in her doctoral thesis, the Law of Settlement from 1926 and a similar one from 1934, favored the migration to Turkey only of persons with "Turkish descent and culture." In the implementation process of these laws, ethnic groups from the Balkans, such as Bosnians, Pomaks, and Albanians were included. These ethnic groups were not necessarily Turkish but were mainly Muslims. Moreover, the Treaty of Laussane 1923, which regulated the population exchange between Turkey and Greece, stated that Turkish citizens of Greek Orthodox faith from Turkish soil must be "exchanged" with Greek citizens of Muslim faith who inhabited Greece. A great deal of importance was given to religion in the formulation of migration policies in an otherwise avowedly secular state.
REFUGEES DURING AND AFTER THE COLD WAR
During the following decades of the 20th century, the development of Turkey's migration and asylum policy was influenced by the Cold War. The Refugee Convention 1951 was signed during this period. However, according to Kale, until 1994, Turkey did not have any legislation dealing with asylum matters. It merely relied on the Convention and received refugees with the geographical limitations that permitted refugee status granting just for persons who came from Europe, i.e. countries that were part of the Communist bloc. Thus, during the Cold War, Turkey received many refugees fleeing Communist states.
At the end of the 1980s and most of the 1990s, the political developments from both the country’s western and eastern borders required wholesale reform of Turkish asylum policy. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union along with the turbulent events to the East meant Turkey needed to receive millions of Kurds from Iraq in 1988 and 1991, one million and a half Iranians between 1980 and 1991, and vast numbers of people from Western Balkans (including Bosnian Muslims in 1992 and Albanians and Kosovars in 1998 and 1999). During this period, Turkey developed the temporary protection scheme to accommodate all the groups who were not covered by provisions of the Refugee Convention 1951.
In this turbulent period, it is again interesting to observe that people from the Western Balkans were accepted by virtue of their historical ties with Turkey and their religious affinities with the Turks. Asylum seekers from other areas were not as warmly welcomed amidst security fears. However, Turkey was flexible and successfully cooperated with international NGOs like UNHCR to grant protection to all these groups, or when necessary, resettle them in a third country. Of course, sometimes the complexity of the issue required deferring to state security, but Turkey generally showed flexibility in the migration and refugee issues.
From all of these events in Turkey’s history, we can identify a general attitude of solidarity with migrants. At some points, this solidarity was driven by feelings of cultural and religious similarities. Why may this hypothesis be relevant in the case of Syrian refugees? Because, apart from political relations between Turkey and Syria, the state showed a general concern over the Syrians’ situation that may have its roots in religious and cultural ties between the two peoples. When looking at asylum issues, we are too quick to look at security concerns and social expectations rather than culture. By looking to history, we can find that the apparent boundaries between states and people were transcended, and refugees were perceived as they actually are: people in need of help.
Author: Ana-Lavinia Popa