Paper details
| Paper authors | Metin Çorabatır |
| In panel on | Refugee Leadership in Responses and Policies in Türkiye: a Syrian RLOs and Turkish CSOs Roundtable (Roundtable) |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Fourteen years is quite a long time both in communities’ history and the life span in personal life. Türkiye is in align with its international commitments generously and hosts millions of Syrian refugees since April 2011. At its peak, the number of Syrian refugees reached 3,6 million individuals during 2020s, which made Türkiye as the largest refugee hosting country in the world according to UNHCR. Since the fall of the Assad regime, the official figure of Syrian refugees is now 2,6 million.
With its success and failures, good and bad practices, Türkiye’s recent experience with such a large number of refugees offers valuable lessons to be learned for both Türkiye and the international community. This paper tries to highlight the lessons to be learned for the future refugee protection policies. What has been the strengths and weaknesses of Türkiye's ayslum legislation after it has been tested since it has entered into force in 2014? Did the protection system work to provide enough safety of Syrian refugees? Can we talk about a real and strong "refugee status" for those under temporary protection regime? How much were Türkiye's asylum policies successful in telling the Turkish public about the realities of the refugees? Where do we stand on integration and social inclusiveness? These are some questions we would like to raise at the panel. On the other hand, Türkiye faces new challenges; a possibility and a reality. The possibility is that there will be an influx of refugees coming from the Iranian border; and the reality is that Türkiye is now dealing with probably one of the largest mass voluntary repatriation. We will also try to touch upon these issues.
