Cash Transfer and Humanitarian Assistance

Abstract

In this chapter, we turn our attention to cash transfer (CT) as an instrument of humanitarian assistance for forced migrants in Turkey. We first consider the emergence of CT as a priority instrument for humanitarian assistance in the twenty-first century. We then sketch the political background of humanitarian assistance in Turkey for persons displaced by internal conflicts in Syria focusing in particular on the EU–Turkey agreements that led to the establishment of the Facility for Refugees in Turkey (FRiT) in 2016. In a final section we focus on the establishment as part of FRiT of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN), the largest humanitarian CT program ever established by the European Union. We discuss in particular the program’s institutional complexity and the resulting risk of ambiguous consensus and conflicts of interest among the agencies involved in its design and implementation.

Understanding both the accomplishments and the limits of CT programs for forced migrants in Turkey requires a double exercise in contextualization. In this chapter, we look first to the rise of CT as an instrument of humanitarian assistance and then to the circumstances that led to the establishment of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) for forced migrants in Turkey.

1 Humanitarian Action, Cash-Transfer Instruments, and Citizenship

Turkish and international efforts to aid persons displaced by conflicts in Syria and elsewhere in southwest Asia were initially carried out in the logic of humanitarian assistance. To say this, however, opens a vast topic; the nature and meaning of “humanitarianism” and “humanitarian assistance” have changed significantly in recent decades. Before looking to the specific circumstances that eventually led to the establishment of the CT instrument at the core of this and the next chapter, the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN), we turn briefly to the evolution of humanitarian policy and instruments more generally. We begin by noting the emergence of initiatives blurring the boundaries between humanitarian intervention, social support, and development aid. In a second section, we consider the growing importance of CT as an instrument this new type of humanitarian assistance.

1.1 Humanitarianism, Social Protection, and Development

Humanitarianism has its origins in altruistic efforts to “alleviate the suffering of distant strangers” (Barnett 2011). Its purpose was to “save life, alleviate suffering, and enable those suffering to maintain their human dignity during or after natural disasters and man-made crises” (Riddell 2007: 311). The principles of independence, impartiality, and neutrality pioneered by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the nineteenth century are still cited by states and international organizations (IOs) as well as NGOs to justify short-term material distribution to meet basic needs as well as actions affording immediate legal and physical protection (Hoffman and Weiss 2018). Defined in this way, humanitarian assistance is distinct both from national social protection policies and the programs of development assistance pioneered by states and IOs after 1945. Social protection became, over the course of the twentieth century, one of the central components of citizenship and, as such, the province of national states and domestic politics. As for development aid, its potential to encourage the adoption of certain social and economic models rather than others, and its frequent use as a tool of international political influence, go against the disinterested ethic of humanitarianism. Both social assistance and development aid, moreover, focus on action over periods, rather than in moments of emergency. Clear in principle, however, these distinctions are increasingly blurred; recent decades have witnessed the increased use in humanitarian settings of instruments that embody commitments to both social transformation and local involvement.

Short-term policy instruments for meeting acute needs have increasingly been found to be inadequate when humanitarian emergencies become protracted crises (Harvey et al. 2007). More generally, the move to a longer-term vision can be seen as part of the shift noted by Barnett (2011) from an “emergency” to an “alchemical” approach to humanitarianism. Emergency humanitarianism adheres to the ICRC’s principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Practitioners largely focus on immediate efforts to keep people alive and do not seek to transform the societies in which they act. Their priority is protecting a humanitarian space insulated from politics. Alchemical humanitarianism focuses on “addressing the root causes of suffering,” which necessarily implies a longer time horizon. It “operates with a less binding set of principles and treats politics as a necessary and at times even a welcome feature of humanitarian action” (Barnett 2014: 3). Humanitarian assistance, understood in this way, looks increasingly like aid for development.

Further eroding the distinctiveness of humanitarian assistance is an increasing move to “localize” humanitarian aid (Kraft and Smith 2019). This emerged from a diagnosis that sidelining local governments and NGOs by the internationally led structure typical of major humanitarian aid efforts was frequently a liability in coping with complex crises (Gingerich and Cohen 2015: 8). Reasons for this included the inherent limitation of humanitarian logistics (Coyne 2013) as well as the perceived need to take better account of local needs and priorities. Other, more political factors played a role as well. Writing two decades ago, Barnett (2001: 246) noted that UNHCR was encouraged to engage with potential refugee producing countries because recipient states “had tired of their obligations under refugee laws.” More recently, Üstübici (2019) has labeled this strategy the “externalization of migration governance.” In such context, the policy environment of recipient states clearly matters, as these can be called on to act as policy makers, policy implementers, and service providers.

Whatever the underlying motives, the blurring of lines between humanitarianism, development, and social assistance has become the norm. This approach was formalized in a series of commitments and documents produced by the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. Among the “core responsibilities” put forward by summit participants was to move from “delivering aid” to “ending need”—which sounds very much like the UN sustainable development goal of “eradicating poverty.” To this end, an important role was given to the injunction; “reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems” ( World Humanitarian Summit 2016: 21, 22). The “New Way of Working” strategies put forward at the 2016 summit sought to transform principles into guidelines for action.

The New Way of Working can be described, in short, as working over multiple years, based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors, including those outside the UN system, towards collective outcomes. Wherever possible, those efforts should reinforce and strengthen the capacities that already exist at national and local levels. (UN-OCHA 2017: 6)

Through the “Grand Bargain” document, signed at the Summit’s conclusion, major governmental and humanitarian NGOs, committed to transfer 25% of aid to local actors by 2020, linking this explicitly to an effort to reduce people’s needs, risks, and vulnerabilities and to increase their resilience at the end of 3–5 years (UN-OCHA 2017: 6–7).

Recent policy documents by the European Commission (2019) and UNHCR (2019) confirm the convergence of humanitarian assistance and social protection. This is particularly clear in cases involving internationally displaced persons. In short-term crisis situations, “alleviation of suffering” (European Commission 2019: 12) can involve various forms of assistance or support ranging from physical protection to psychological support in cases of trauma. Once these are delivered, however, the problem is not over. In a protracted crisis, when refugees are not able to return home, addressing the “root causes” or their situation increasingly focuses on the host country. In such cases, a shift from short-run to more sustainable approaches is unavoidable. Increasing reliance on host-country social protection systems is often seen as the best option for providing it.

This has direct consequences for the question that has been our central focus throughout this book: social and economic citizenship. Yılmaz (2019) argues that in cases of protracted humanitarian assistance for forced migrants there may be convergence of the rights of immigrants and host-country citizens. The dynamic of incorporation noted by Nuhoğlu Soysal (1994) in the case of guest workers, may thus be of relevance here. For Yılmaz, however, this is not necessarily a cause for rejoicing; like Turner (2019) whose argument about the convergence of citizen and denizen rights we saw in Chap. 2, he worries that the rights of migrants and citizens may converge toward a point that represents a weakened version of citizenship. It is important, thus, to better understand the content and context of policies aimed at forced migrants.

Critically, both the EU and UNHCR documents cited above stress that assistance should be provided in “a dignified way from the very beginning of a refugee crisis” (UNHCR 2019: 6). Along with the “convergence of rights” noted by Yılmaz, this emphasis on dignity brings us back to this book’s central notion: the potential for promoting social citizenship through market-enhancing instruments. There is no question here of material equality; the programs in question seek at best to alleviate “extreme poverty.” Even—perhaps especially—in the face of material inequality, however, being treated in a dignified manner, living the life of a “civilized human being” is at the core of Marshallian “social citizenship.” The question is how, in practice, this can be accomplished. For humanitarian assistance just as for domestic social policy, the answer increasingly is through cash-based programming.

1.2 The Rise of CT as a Humanitarian Instrument

An increased emphasis on CT programs is part of the “new way of working” in the humanitarian arena. The summary document of the 2016 summit makes this point explicitly:

Another major trend was the important acknowledgement, by Member States and other stakeholders, of the potentially transformative power of cash-based programming, particularly in empowering affected people.¹

Signatories to the 2016 Grand Bargain pledged that 20% of assistance by 2020 would be channeled through local and national responders, with cash as an important instrument for doing so (Gentilini et al. 2018: 8). This was part of a broader trend. The High-Level Panel on Humanitarian CT published the report Doing cash differently: How cash transfers can transform humanitarian aid² in 2015. The following year, the United Nation’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) commissioned the World Bank to write a Strategic note on Cash Transfers in Humanitarian Contexts.³ The European Union has moved in a similar direction. In March 2015, the Council of the European Union adopted “10 Common Principles for Multi-Purpose Cash-Based Assistance to Respond to Humanitarian Needs”⁴ receiving political endorsement in the resulting Council Conclusions⁵ adopted in June 2015. These principles were translated into concrete policy directives through the Guidance Note on the delivery of CT, first issued in January 2017 and updated in November 2017.⁶ Further consolidating this trend, the Common Donor Approach and the Joint Donor Statement on Humanitarian Cash Transfers were published in 2019, and several interagency collaborations were established (CaLP 2020: 36). As of 2019, the total value of humanitarian CT programs was estimated at US $5.6 billion, up from US $2 billion in 2015, accounting for 17.9% of total humanitarian assistance (CaLP 2020: 12).

Programs aimed explicitly at international displaced persons have followed this pattern, using debit cards, mobile vouchers, and mobile money to biometric technologies for identification purposes (Ford 2017). Looking specifically to programs aimed at Syrian refugees, examples include “Lebanon one-unified interorganizational system for E-cards” (LOUISE) launched in 2016⁷ as a multipurpose platform allowing Syrian refugees and vulnerable Lebanese to access food, winter, or education assistance. Other programs aimed at displaced persons include SCOPE, a debit card for displaced Iraqi families and Syrians refugees in Iraq; the UNHCR CT program in Jordan; an E-voucher scheme for supermarket shopping in Turkey put in place by the Danish Refugee Council for Syrian Refugees for the year 2014–2015, and the program that will be the focus of the following section: the Red Crescent Card for displaced persons in Turkey.

Justifying these decisions was a growing body of research on the impact of CT in humanitarian settings. From the donor perspective, provision of in-kind aid—shelter, seeds, and especially food—has drawn criticism. If in-kind distribution is prolonged, there is increasing evidence that harm may outweigh benefit as the capacity of local producers declines (Dreze and Sen 1991). CT instruments, in contrast, help to strengthen local markets and encourage local production. Where there is an acute local scarcity of food, there may be no alternative to providing it from outside. Even in these cases, however, problems may persist, such as delays in the aid arriving and inappropriate food being provided (Clay and Barry 2005). Mitigating these problems provided an initial incentive to shift to CT in cases of natural disasters as far back as the 1980s (Peppiatt et al. 2001) with larger-scale use made after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. It does not follow that CT is always appropriate. In a report prepared for the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Cash Transfers, Bailey and Harvey (2015: 3) note that:

For cash, markets need to be functioning or able to recover quickly enough that an injection of cash will prompt traders and shopkeepers to make goods available.

When it can be used, however, CT is seen by donors as reducing staffing and delivery expenses (Venton et al. 2015). The turn to CT as a domestic instrument of poverty reduction by low- and middle-income countries (Barrientos 2015; Hanlon et al. 2010; Honorati et al. 2015; ILO 2014) further facilitates its use by humanitarian actors. National programs can provide a readymade financial and IT infrastructure available to humanitarian agencies.

For recipients of aid, the conclusions of studies of humanitarian CT are similar to those of domestic programs cited in Chap. 2. Proponents of CT point to collective outcomes that sustainably reduce risks and vulnerabilities while improving resilience (Ford 2017; OCHA 2017). Various studies have shown reduction of negative coping strategies such as excessive debt, child labor, or systematic under-consumption (Lehmann and Masterson 2014); increased quantity and diversity of food (Bailey and Hedlund 2012); increased social capital (Slater and Mphale 2008); or decreased stress and anxiety (Hagen-Zanker et al. 2018). On a larger scale, however, Bailey and Harvey (2015) argue that there are few examples showing positive consequences for local markets, with the exception of studies finding a positive multiplier effect of cash on local economy for Malawi (Davies 2007) and studies for refugees in Lebanon and Jordan (World Food Program 2014).

When CT is unrestricted, there remains the eternal question of whether beneficiaries will spend it appropriately. While little evidence has been found of inappropriate use of benefits, Bailey and Harvey (2015: 3) acknowledge that “the fungibility of cash means that grants may free up other income to be spent anti-socially and people are unlikely to tell survey enumerators about antisocial spending.” They go on to note, however, that “[d]oubts that recipients would use assistance wisely suggest some troubling biases within the international humanitarian community about how they view the people that they assist.” More to the point, in the context of this study, the same authors note that access to cash can have noneconomic benefits.

There is also an aspect of dignity—both in the choices it provides and in how it can be provided. Using an ATM or getting cash on a mobile phone is more dignified than queuing for a sack of maize. People experience devastating repercussions from disasters and their options on how to deal with these are constrained. While it would be a stretch to say that assistance is empowering in those circumstances, recipients commonly report that cash provides a sense of normality.

A similar view was echoed in the European Commission’s report cited above:

Those directly affected by conflict, disaster and displacement are often best placed to decide what they need. People can derive a sense of dignity and control over their situation through the provision of support through established, systematised (often cash-based) channels. (European Commission 2019: 31)

As we have noted repeatedly, dignity matters. So does normality. The dignity that comes from paying one’s own way and being seen to do so—even if the money comes from humanitarian assistance—draws the link between the short-term focus on “alleviation of suffering” and the more general principles of market citizenship that have been at the heart of our analysis. Even if their presence is to be temporary, social and economic elements of market citizenship are increasingly what are proposed to the recipients of humanitarian aid. In the context of this ephemeral social contract, assisted subjects are to be brought one small step closer to the ideal of self-reliant citizens by use of market instruments. Rather than being protected from the market by in-kind distribution and the provision of services, internationally displaced persons and other victims of humanitarian crises are to be empowered within it.

Desiring such outcomes is one thing: bringing them about quite another. As we noted in the case of the local programs analyzed in Chap. 4, the design and implementation of CT largely determines how they are perceived and whether they make any contribution to the empowerment of individuals as market citizens. We turn back now to these questions in the case of CT for forced migrants in Turkey.

2 Cash Transfer for Refugees in Turkey

It is in light of these changing approaches to humanitarian assistance that we can situate the response to the forced migration of several million Syrians into Turkey. The proximate cause of action, however, was the political crisis triggered in the EU in 2015 and 2016 by the possibility of onward movement into the EU of these migrants. The design and implementation of the CT program, which provides the focus of Chap. 6, were clearly marked by these circumstances.

2.1 Turkey, the European Union, and the Syrian Migration Crisis

The Syrian civil war led to forced migration, with refugees arriving in the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey starting in 2011 and accelerating quickly in the following years (See Table 5.1).

Table 5.1 Registered Syrian refugees in Turkey

The initial reaction of the Turkish government was to decline international assistance, preferring to cope with the situation on its own (Memisoglu and Ilgit 2016; Gökalp Aras and Şahin-Mencütek 2016). This changed as the number of displaced persons mounted quickly over the course of 2012. The Turkish government realized that the cost of hosting refugees would be higher than projected. Public discontent linked to the presence and expense of refugees also increased (Kale et al. 2018). Turkey requested aid from United Nations, and was included in the UN’s regional response plan. The Turkish government did not initially allow international agencies access to refugees camps; donors in turn declined to provide assistance in the absence of oversight, preferring to work through NGOs rather than governmental agencies (Memisoglu and Ilgit 2016). As refugees began to move out of camps, Turkish and international NGOs offered different types of ad hoc assistance. Some of these were quite extensive: according to research carried out by Yılmaz (2019: 728): “the Human Relief Foundation, a faith-based humanitarian NGO based in Turkey, distributed food on religious holidays reaching more than 80,000 households during the Muslim feast of sacrifice in 2015.” Even so, the impression left by this early period was largely one of incoherence. In the words of an official of DG-ECHO:

Aid in response of the Syrian emergency was initially uncoordinated. Different agencies offered different types of ad hoc assistance such as food, clothing or even in one case distributing washing machines.⁸

This situation was altered radically by the direct involvement of the European Union starting in 2015. The initial context of EU-Turkey negotiations on immigration questions, as discussed in Chap. 3, was Turkey’s long-standing candidacy for EU membership, which had contributed to the 2013 Law on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP). A turning point for EU member states came when the Syrian conflict triggered large-scale secondary migration toward Europe (see Table 5.2). In response to this new development, various member states put in place radically different policies with respect to migrants and asylum seekers ranging from Germany’s decision to accept several hundred thousand Syrians to the declaration by others that none could be taken at all (Batalla Adam 2017). Attempts to close the EU’s external border led to a surge in irregular crossing attempts concentrated on the Greek islands in the Aegean sea.

Table 5.2 Total arrivals of migrants to Greece (all nationalities; all statuses; all routes)

The refugee crisis on the Greek Islands in 2015 was the proximate cause of urgent negotiation between EU member states and the government of Turkey.⁹ Media attention to this situation reached a symbolic peak with the widespread diffusion in September 2015 of the picture taken on a Greek beach of the body of a child who had drowned while attempting to cross with his family from Turkey. Pressure on European governments from public opinion made action necessary, but it was evident that this same public opinion ruled out any significant reopening of European borders. The only remaining options required increased cooperation from Turkey.

The starting point for negotiation was the Readmission Agreement between Turkey and the EU signed on 16 December 2013 and ratified by all parties in November 2014.¹⁰ It committed Turkey to readmit any person who “illegally and directly entered the territory of the member state after having stayed on or transited through the territory of Turkey” (Art. 4.1.c), and imposed reciprocal obligations on the EU (Art. 6.1.c). Originally, the Agreement was due to come into effect in November 2017.

Renewed talks resulted initially in the EU-Turkey “Joint Action Plan” (JAP) of October 2015, through which the parties agreed to “supporting Syrians under temporary protection and their host communities in Turkey” and to “strengthening cooperation to prevent irregular migration flows to the EU.”¹¹ Acknowledging that Turkey had, to that point, spent over €7 billion of its own resources in dealing with the crisis, the JAP proclaimed the “intention” of the EU to mobilize “substantial and concrete new funds” (European Commission 2015a: 1). This was confirmed the following month with the commitment of up to €6 billion through the Facility for Refugees in Turkey (FRiT).¹² This was followed by the decision taken at the EU-Turkey summit of November 2015 and ratified by the European Council in March 2016 to move up implementation of the readmission agreement to 1 June 2016.¹³ The JAP also committed Turkey to “pursue the progressive alignment of Turkish visa policy, legislation and administrative capacities notably vis-à-vis the countries representing an important source of illegal migration for Turkey and the EU” (3). In practice, this meant closing Turkey’s land border with Syria, and imposing visa requirements for all Syrian citizens seeking to enter Turkey by sea or air, which was done over the course of 2016. A final step was taken with the Joint Statement of 16 March 2016, which announced that: “All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands as from 20 March 2016 will be returned to Turkey” and that “For every Syrian being returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU”¹⁴ (European Council 2016: 1).

Analysis of these negotiations and agreements, even in academic publications, has often taken a distinctly polemic tone highlighting—depending on the authors’ point of view—the failure of EU member states to honor their obligation under international law to accept asylum seekers (Aka and Özkural 2015) or the inadvisability of cooperation with the illiberal Turkish government (Martin 2019). For our purposes, however, what was done and how it was publicly justified matter more than what the underlying motives might have been. We propose, accordingly, to take seriously the stated reasons given for the policy instruments that followed from the JAP and the subsequent FRiT. Whether or not these reflected the true motives of governments, the reasons for action given in public statements and official documents that established the FRiT provided the standard by which the programs it funds would later be evaluated.¹⁵ Of particular importance in this context, is the JAP’s statement that:

Priority will be given to actions providing immediate humanitarian assistance; provision of legal, administrative and psychological support; support for community centers; the enhancement of self-sufficiency and participation in economy and their social inclusion during their stay in Turkey; improved access to education at all levels; but also actions supporting host communities in areas such as infrastructures and services. (European Commission 2015a: 1)

“Enhancement of self-sufficiency, participation in the economy, social inclusion:” these are goals familiar from our discussion of CT programs and humanitarian assistance. They are also, we might add, at the philosophical core of the market citizenship model, which is explicitly being applied here to forced migrants. Notwithstanding the all-important qualifier “during their stay in Turkey,” with its reminder of the persisting uncertainty with respect to status, these are the public commitments according to which we propose to analyze and assess the Emergency Social Safety Net. Other possible motives such as the desire to keep refugees out of Europe are relevant only to the extent that they had an impact on program design or implementation.

A direct consequence of the negotiations and agreements discussed above was an order-of-magnitude increase in EU financial assistance to Turkey, formalized by the establishment of the FRiT with an initial budget of €3 billion—€1 billion from the EU’s general budget and €2 billion in contributions from member states (European Commission 2015b; European Court of Auditors 2018)—committed in 2016. Projects focused on six priority areas: humanitarian assistance, migration management, education, health, municipal infrastructure, and socioeconomic support. On 28 June 2018, the European Council agreed to launch a second €3 billion tranche of the Facility, using exclusively resources from the EU’s own budget.¹⁶ This second tranche funds projects running through mid-2025. As of early 2020, all operational funds from both tranches had been committed, €4.7 billion contracted, and €3.2 billion disbursed.¹⁷

As a trust fund to which both the European Union and its member states pledged contributions, the FRiT was governed by a steering committee containing a representative from each member state and two from the European Commission.¹⁸ As we will see below, however, all spending from the FRiT was channeled through agencies of the European Commission and subject to their diverse rules and practices. Humanitarian aid was managed by the European Commission’s Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG-ECHO), while other types of assistance (for health and education programs, for example) was provided through the preexisting Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) administered by the Directorate General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG-NEAR). It is in the first category that we find the cash-transfer program that is at the heart of our empirical analysis, the Emergency Social Safety Net, or ESSN.

2.2 ESSN: A Multiagency Effort

Like all EU humanitarian aid, the ESSN was placed under the overall responsibility of the Directorate General for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG-ECHO), which acted as the program’s funding agency. It was not possible, however, for funds to be transferred directly to Turkish government agencies.¹⁹ On-site implementation, accordingly, was delegated to the UN’s World food Program (WFP) working in partnership with the Turkish Red Crescent (TRC). Various agencies of the Turkish government played key roles in administering the program.

These actors came together in a steering committee cochaired by representatives of DG-ECHO and the Turkish government—the latter role filled initially by Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) and subsequently by the directorate for International labor of the Ministry of Family, Labor, and Social Services (MoFLSS). Day-to-day coordination was provided by a Joint Management Cell bringing together representatives of the TRC and the WFP country team. While participants underlined the importance of these fora, a representative of DG-ECHO²⁰ noted that coordination remained limited, and that, unlike assistance efforts for Syrian refugees in Jordan or Lebanon, no “humanitarian country team” covered all ongoing projects. From all participants interviewed came the clear impression that ESSN was unprecedented in its scope and duration, as well as in the number and diversity of participating agencies. Its dual origin as both response to a humanitarian emergency and political agreement to prevent onward migration were also recognized by European officials interviewed. For all of these reasons a closer look at the points of view, but also the prior experience, of key participants is of central importance if we are to understand how the program was designed and implemented in practice.

2.2.1 The European Union

A first critical observation is that the EU cannot be seen as a unitary actor. Initial negotiations and decisions that led to the establishment of the FRiT, from which funding for the ESSN was drawn, were the exclusive province of the Union’s political leaders (Smeets and Beach 2020). Only after the JAP was finalized did the European Commission formally enter into the process. The Commission, however, remains a “multi-organization” (Cram 1994) whose component agencies vary in procedures and internal culture.

With respect to the ESSN, the primary European interlocutor from its inception in 2016 through 2020 was DG-ECHO. Its role within the Commission, dating back to before its promotion to a Directorate General in 2014, was strongly focused on short-term crisis response and emergency assistance.²¹ As a distinct unit within the Commission since 1996, ECHO consistently sought to define its role in terms of the prevailing norms of humanitarian action. In terms of the debate alluded to in the first section of this chapter between an “emergency” and an “alchemical” vision, ECHO has clearly privileged the former since the early 2000s (Versluys 2008: 216). DG-ECHO was a party to the 2016 “grand bargain” and has internalized the imperatives of localization and sustainability.²² Even so, its perspective was self-consciously “humanitarian” and short term. DG-ECHO officials and staff interviewed in both Brussels and Ankara insisted on the unusual nature of its involvement in a multiyear project. With regard both to CT and to localization, DG-ECHO positioned itself very much in the spirit of the times. Written into the Request for Proposals to potential implementing agencies was a requirement that the instrument retained for the ESSN should be multipurpose and unconditional, that requirements should be based on need, and that cash rather than food or vouchers should be distributed.²³ In keeping with its short-term perspective, however, DG-ECHO’s embrace of localization increasingly took the form of a search for “exit strategies” that would hand over responsibility to Turkish actors—an approach that put it at odds with some of the agencies in question.

Programs focused on health, education, and other “nonhumanitarian” initiatives were added to the activities of the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) administered by DG-NEAR, whose internal rules and culture differed significantly from those of DG-ECHO. Established as the vehicle for assistance to the states on the EU’s periphery, DG-NEAR focuses on development and capacity building programs carried out over years and decades. Its natural interlocutor is the national governments of partner states.

2.2.2 The United Nations’ World Food Program

The lead implementing agency selected by DG-ECHO through a competitive bid process was the UN’s World Food Program (WFP). Conceived in the 1960s as a vehicle for using US agricultural surpluses as an instrument of public diplomacy under the auspices of the Food and Agricultural Organization, the WFP has evolved into a full-fledged agency of the United Nations and has been characterized as “the world’s largest humanitarian agency” (Shaw 2011). While its focus remains on emergency food assistance, it—unlike DG-ECHO—also participates in longer-term development projects such as school nutrition programs. In the context of the ESSN, the WFP acted as a service provider, establishing and managing the system through which the resources made available by the EU could be distributed. It was also responsible for observing and evaluating program operations, and ensuring accountability to DG-ECHO in the latter’s role as funding agency. As of April 2020, the WFP’s role in the ESSN program ended, and the task of lead implementing agency was taken over by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

2.2.3 The Turkish Red Crescent

The Turkish Red Crescent (TRC) is an organization with over a century of experience in dealing with both natural and man-made disasters.²⁴ It has 574 branches spread across the country with 1,500 registered volunteers.²⁵ Like many national Red Cross/Red Crescent organizations, the TRC has close and legally defined links with its national government.²⁶ While the TRC retains a partly independent status, it has been commissioned by the national disaster response plan (Türkiye Afet Müdahale Planı), through which it has a legal duty to provide humanitarian aid; it receives a portion of its financing directly from the state.²⁷ Organizations such as this are accordingly sometimes classed as para-governmental or “quasi-NGOs.”

Critically, in the context of the ESSN, its close relationship with the Turkish government allowed it limited access to information maintained by Turkish authorities but denied because of national privacy legislation to the WFP or the EU.²⁸ As explained by local TRC officials,²⁹ the organization had partial and closely controlled access to the Integrated Social Assistance System, into which had been put data on Syrians registered under temporary protection; it was possible for designated individuals to obtain the passwords allowing them to access telephone numbers of approved ESSN beneficiaries, but not detailed personal information or registered address.

2.2.4 Turkish Public Authorities

Central to the implementation of the ESSN was the Ministry of Family, Labor, and Social Services (MoFLSS), established in 2018 by merging the ministries of Labor and Social Security, and Family and Social Policies. Its core mission is to be an umbrella institution gathering the existing social assistance programs and social services as well as all the labor activities and social security related issues. Two of the ministry’s Directorates General—in charge of social assistance and international labor force policies, respectively—are particularly important for ESSN. Originally created in different ministries before the 2018 fusion, these Directorates General are seen by outside observers as maintaining distinct cultures and policy focus.³⁰

The directorate General of International Labor Force was established in 2016 within the Ministry of Labor and Social Security after international labor force law numbered 6735. Its institutional history goes back to 2003. With the creation of Work Permit for Foreigners Law no 4817 dated 2003, it was established under General Directorate of Labor as Department of Work Permits for Foreigners. In the context of our case, it plays two critical roles. A representative of the Directorate cochairs the ESSN steering committee. It also manages procedures for the granting of work permits.

The Directorate General of Social Assistance (Sosyal Yardımlar Genel Müdürlüğü) develops and coordinates poverty reduction and social assistance policies. In the context of ESSN, this unit maintains the database of participants. It is also coordinates the activities of the 1,003 local SASFs. These, in turn, play a key role as frontline agencies in contact with ESSN beneficiaries, processing approximately 65% of applications—the remainder being handled by the TRC. As noted in previous chapters, SASFs are locally governed bodies. Their autonomy creates the potential for different local implementation strategies, a point stressed by grassroots workers of the WFP and TRC.³¹ From the point of view of national officials, this arm’s length approach allowed the government to benefit from the local information held by the district foundations, as well as from their sensitivity to local social conditions.³²

With respect to the evolution of social support for refugees, we will see in Chap. 6 that while the DG for Social Assistance has emphasized integrating the most vulnerable refugees into the Turkish social assistance system, the DG for International Labor Force has looked more to labor force participation as a medium-term solution.

Other Turkish public actors involved in the ESSN include the Disaster and Emergency Management of Presidency (Afet ve Acil Durum Yönetimi Başkanlığı—AFAD), whose role was particularly important at the outset of the crisis, both in managing camps and, as cochair of the ESSN governing board, provided “oversight and strategic direction” for ESSN. The Directorate General for Migration Management (DGMM) has sole responsibility registration of forced migrants and certifies temporary or international protection status. As of 10 September 2018, UNHCR stopped registering and making referrals of foreigners wishing to apply for international protection in Turkey.³³ As of the end of 2019, DGMM was also responsible for centralizing the required address registration for persons under temporary or international protection.

2.3 ESSN: Product of Ambiguous Consensus

The variety of actors involved in the ESSN and the prominent role played by DG-ECHO and the WFP might lead us to conclude that we have here a near-perfect example of what Sassen (1999) has described as “de facto transnationalising of migration policy.” To the extent that ESSN goes beyond the control of migration to address the basic needs of the refugees settled in Turkey, we might go farther to characterize it as “transnational social protection” (Levitt et al. 2017). A more critical framing of this policy focuses on the EU’s decision to externalize migration management and border control (Üstübici 2019; Çetinoğlu and Yılmaz 2020). A political bargain, in this view, allowed European states to avoid their obligations under international law to admit refugees, empowering the Turkish government in the process (Martin 2019). Assessing such assertions is not the purpose of this book. It is important, however, to consider the consequences of the observation that, in the case of ESSN, a group of actors came together to design and manage a policy instrument, all the while differing in their definition of the problem to be solved, and on the policy’s ultimate goals. This dynamic is well captured by the concept of ambiguous consensus put forward by Palier (2004) to analyze situations in which broad support for the creation of an instrument does not coincide with clear consensus on its justification or ultimate ends.

As set out earlier, a number of distinct sets of reasons can be ascribed to the various organizations involved in conceiving, funding, and implementing ESSN, among them:

• Distributing humanitarian aid as a source of international prestige (for both Turkey and the EU)

• Preventing onward movement of migrants into the EU

• Distributing emergency humanitarian aid to ensure short-term survival of a large population of displaced people

• Ensuring the medium-term integration of forced migrants into their host society

• Facilitating the registration and control of migrants on Turkish territory

• Preparing and encouraging the return of migrants to their home country

We must be careful from the outset to avoid simplistic assumptions regarding how these reasons were distributed and how they interacted. Most obviously, there is no monolithic “Turkish” or “European” point of view. Close observers of the ESSN note important differences of position within both Turkish and EU agencies.³⁴ Nor is there an absolute divide between public agencies and nongovernmental organizations. The interaction of policy goals also proves complex. Some, such as imposing registration and preventing onward migration, may be complementary. In other cases, there are clear contradictions: medium-term integration into the host country’s economy and society versus return to the country of origin. Just as significant are differences in emphasis that, while not outright contradictions, nonetheless pose problems for coherence: the distinction between a short-term approach to humanitarian assistance and a longer-term view that blurs the lines between humanitarianism, domestic social policy, and economic and social integration.

We will ask in Chap. 6, as we have throughout, whether and to what extent CT schemes can contribute to economic and social citizenship, understood not as a legal status but as the practical experience of integration into the society and economy of the place where one is residing. Our discussion of local cases in Chap. 4 strongly suggests that program design and implementation play a key role in determining the answer. A central question for the final chapter will be to determine to what extent the contradictions and ambiguities highlighted above matter in this context.