Abstract
This article is about Turkey’s policy towards the Syrian migrants. Based on Michael Mann’s concept of ‘state capacity’, it situates Turkey’s response to Syrian migration crisis in the broader debate about the state strength and security in the European periphery, in particular, the Eastern Mediterranean. This humanitarian crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean caused by the civil war in Syria requires Turkey and the EU to build a long-term strategy for migration management to respond to a common security problem. This study argues that the current way of dealing with the Syrian migration crisis is a temporary response to a humanitarian crisis that requires a longer-term perspective, which includes strengthening Turkey’s state capacity. The Turkish case could be an example for similar, probably larger kinds of situations in other parts of the Mediterranean as the migration routes deviate towards the Central and the Western Mediterranean and the crisis worsen with the latest arrival of Afghans after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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Ulusoy, K., Uzelakçil, Ö. (2022). Syrians in Turkey: A Case for Human Security and State Capacity. In: Panebianco, S. (eds) Border Crises and Human Mobility in the Mediterranean Global South. Critical Security Studies in the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90295-7_8
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