Turkey – Legal and Policy Framework of Migration Governance
| Main Authors: | Çetin, Elif, Öztürk, Neva Ö., Gökalp Aras, N. Ela, Şahin Mencütek, Zeynep |
|---|---|
| Format: | Report Journal |
| Bahasa: | eng |
| Terbitan: |
, 2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
https://zenodo.org/record/1418591 |
Daftar Isi:
- This country report focuses on developments that took place during the period of 2011-2017 in the field of migration in Turkey. Traditionally a country of emigration, starting from the early 1990s, it has also become an important country of immigration, asylum and transit. Most recently, the increasing pressure of the refugee challenge, particularly given the high number of arrivals from Syria, has put the country once again under international spotlights. This report provides relevant migration statistics that are available as open source data. It briefly reviews the socio-economic, political and cultural characteristic of the country as well as its brief migration history. The report also delves into a detailed analysis of the constitutional, legal and institutional framework of Turkey’s national migration management system, which has gone through significant transition in the last few years. The report points out that due to Turkey’s geographical limitation to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention), and its associated 1967 Protocol; Turkey does not grant refugee status to people fleeing from conflicts and persecution in non-European countries. But it does provide ‘conditional refugee status’ along with ‘refugee’ and ‘subsidiary’ protection. The report reveals a key duality regarding European and non-European asylum seekers to be an important characteristic of Turkey’s asylum system. The first group can obtain ‘refugee’ status’; while the second group can only obtain ‘conditional refugee status’. However, regardless of their nationality, due to the Syrian mass migration, Syrian refugees1 are given another international protection status, which is called ‘temporary protection’. The report concludes by highlighting that part of Turkey’s recent migration policy efforts are tied to encouragement coming from the EU for Turkey to improve conditions regarding access to the asylum process and status determination as well as enhancement of its facilities forasylum-seekers’ protection. Although these developments bring Turkey closer to satisfying the EU demands on migration and asylum policy, Turkey is still expected to abolish the geographical limitation of the 1951 Convention to create a full-fledged asylum system and to solve remaining implementation problems. Ensuring equal and fair access to asylum procedures and facilitating the full access of asylum-seekers to legal aid remain priorities still to be achieved.