International organisations’ influences on Turkish asylum policy, 1997-2016: unpacking the transnational mechanisms from the outside-in and back

Abstract

Turkey has recently developed a comprehensive legislation and domestic institutions with a view to aligning its asylum policies with international norms of the refugee regime. This incipient development represents the outcome of a complex process of policy-making that consists of a transformation from a traditional security-oriented approach towards refugees to a human rights-oriented policy while Turkey is becoming a host country to the largest number of refugees in the world.

The aim of this study is to determine an explanation for the emergence of this new asylum policy in Turkey. Existing studies tended to explain the external driving power of the EU to explore this process by focusing on conditionality and socialisation mechanisms. Arguing that the new policy is a result of the interplay between international and domestic actors, this thesis questions the role of existing actors and mechanisms and seeks to explore alternative explanations of UNHCR, IOM, CoE and domestic actors. To this end, this research investigates the implications of the interactions between these international and domestic actors on the evolution of asylum policies in Turkey. In this context, the main focus is on the transnational influencing mechanisms of these actors. Seeking to find evidence to explain the asylum policy-making process, this thesis employed a systematic and comprehensive analytical framework and conducted a process-tracing analysis by drawing on the qualitative interview data and document research.

The findings showed that initial reform- and strategy-building processes of the early 2000s were strongly induced by the EU’s coercive bargaining mechanism, while the reform-implementing process of 2009-2013 was shaped by a lesson-drawing mechanism spearheaded by domestic bureaucrats. A combination of state-level factors such as institutional settings and individual-level factors such as strategic entrepreneurship of the bureaucrats significantly affected the degree and the way in which domestic outcomes in asylum policy have been shaped by international sources. External organisations’ influence in the asylum area can be mobilised by domestic factors through vertical-policy making, which in turn can empower domestic actors’ position in policy-making. The interaction dynamics between these two levels allow the creation of a transnational advocacy network that would exert influence in both the outside-in and inside-out directions.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ana Margheritis: orcid.org/0000-0001-8126-4478

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