"Securitization from Society" and "Social Acceptance": Political Party-Based Approaches in Turkey to Syrian Refugees/"Toplumdan Guvenliklestirme" ve "Toplumsal Kabul": Turkiye'deki Suriyeli Multecilere Yonelik Siyasi Parti Temelli Yaklasimlar.

• Author: Erdogan, M. Murat

Introduction

Movements of people that cross national borders are considered to be political issues, as well as security matters, rather than sociological issues, irrespective of their rationales, their voluntary or forced nature, or whether they take place between similar or different cultures. (1) Undoubtedly, the quality of the human mobility, and the issues such as the cultural characteristics of the newcomers, their qualifications, numbers, and to which extent that they are controlled constitute the framework of the security aspect. Especially, since the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) almost "sanctified" borders of the modern nation states, the "imaginary communities" (2) as B. Anderson puts it, inarguably grant the right to protect the borders to these states. (3) As a result, borders can only be crossed by the citizens of the affected states or those permitted by the authorities of the very country, whereas any other entrance is described as the "violation of the private zone" or "illegal" and naturally taken up as a matter of security. However, the issue of migration is not only limited to the borders. As frequently observed in the recent years, even if the borders have been crossed respecting the rules and even based on invitation, the existence of particular socio-cultural immigrant populations in a country can be taken up as a security issue per se. This process also comes up as "ghettoization" and "diaspora" (4) processes.

First of all, this article studies to what extent migration is a matter of security within the framework of "securitization" that the Schools of Copenhagen and Paris also suggest with a critical view. However, the study also suggests the reasons why the critical security and securitization approach "fall short" in explaining the concerns and fears among the communities against the newcomers in the countries that are exposed to the considerable, massive and instantaneous refugee influx. That is to say, the limitations of the critical approach that considers the issue to be a "construct" of the politicians or bureaucrats when it comes to refugees and talks about "securitization" for this reason are questioned based on the sample of Turkey, and it is claimed that the security concerns may arise from the community itself, i.e. the grassroots, especially during large influx of asylum movements whereby shaping the politics. The concept of "securitization from below" (5) that A. Hammerstad used in his study on Zimbabwe has been combined with "securitization from society" and evaluated in this study.

This article also claims that the approaches that endeavor to explain the issue based on security or securitization tend to overlook two critical aspects. Firstly, large-scale asylum movements are not differentiated from regular migration and resident immigrants in terms of the processes, actions and reactions. Secondly, the numeric size of the massive movements of people are neglected. This is regarded as the main reason why the theoretical approaches to describe the relationship between security and cohesion in terms of refugees are rather limited. More than 270 million international immigrants in the world are in the Western countries, however, only 15% of 30 million refugees, i.e. 4.5 million are present in these countries, which creates a significant difference.

Turkey has been described by the UNHCR as the country hosting the largest number of "refugees" (6) since 2014. The process started with the civil war in Syria and continued with the "open door policy" pursued by the Turkish Government, however, both the numbers and the periods of stay quickly exceeded the initial assumptions. However, the total number of refugees was 58,000 when Syrians first came to Turkey on 29 April 2011. The number of refugees which exceeded 1.5 million by the end of 2014, 2.5 million by the end of 2015, 3 million in 2016, and 4 million by late 2017, also included newcomers from countries other than Syria. (7) As of December 2020, there are 3,638,000 Syrians under "Temporary Protection" and 330,000 people in general from other countries who are granted, or applied for, "international protection" in Turkey which has been in the position to accept millions of refugees in a very brief period of time. Also, it is estimated that the number of irregular migrants coming into Turkey during the last 5 years through the Iranian border, most of whom were Afghans, reached at least 1 million. (8) The indefinite nature of the process and the large numbers create insecurity and concerns among Turkish society that the borders cannot be protected, the process cannot be managed and there will be consequences.

The issue of Syrian refugees in Turkey has been intertwined with accepting those who flee from war as part of the "open door policy" and the foreign policy resolutions concerning Syria and the region. The Turkish government has adopted a "protective" approach to Syrian refugees since 2011, avoiding the discourse that refugees pose a "problem", as well as criticizing those who use the same discourse. The government presented the refugees as the elements of "religious or cultural solidarity", (ensar or muhajir) (9), as "regional actors" and the actors of "strength" (10), as well as "humanitarian foreign policy". (11) The opposition also pursued a cautious policy in this respect and posed criticism to the policy pursued by the government on Syrians rather than the Syrians themselves. Therefore, it can be argued that the securitization of the refugee issue has not been much reciprocated by society in Turkey. Still, it has been observed that Turkish society seems to be concerned at increasing levels. (12)

Therefore, the second theme of this paper focuses on the extent to which "integration" or "social cohesion," that are frequently mentioned along with migration, takes place in Turkey with a view to the refugees. As known, the concept of "cohesion" applies to immigrants in general, not refugees. As a matter of fact, many countries that are not typically countries of migration, especially those in Europe, tend to avoid initiating cohesion activities unless they are obliged to, for fear that these activities may encourage permanency. Cohesion activities for the large number of refugees who are not very welcome and whose status is indefinite were perhaps experienced in such a systematic manner for the first time in Turkey. The claims that the implementation of the cohesion processes on behalf of the public (state) would be inefficient, society would become a more influential actor in the social cohesion process; therefore the "social acceptance" of the newcomers that would play a determining role has been studied in this article. The broad and complicated nature of the "social acceptance" concept (13) that was introduced in the literature in 2014 by the author for the first time in the field of migration and also includes security manifests the necessity to firstly distinguish between regular migration and asylum movements. It is also evident that there is a significant relationship between the securitization process that stems from the society/grassroots and the "social acceptance".

The evaluation of the data from the comprehensive public opinion survey carried out is based on a representative sampling of 2247 participants in 26 provinces of Turkey, with a reliability rate over 95%. The analysis of these data is the most original part of the paper where the hypotheses addressed have actually been tested. The comparative analysis of the ideas and opinions of the voters of the political parties, as well as the political bloc parties in Turkey on Syrians, especially within the context of the power and opposition, provide a significant contribution to portraying the structure of securitization and the social acceptance. This data, shared with the public for the first time with this study, have been reinforced with the comparisons to the studies of the author from 2014 and 2017. This article argues that the issue has still not been included in the elements that determine politics in Turkey, despite more than 4 million refugees in Turkey, the majority of whom are Syrians. However, the security concerns are quite high among society, and these concerns will eventually influence politics. That is to say, securitization is a bottom-up process in Turkey arising from "society/grassroots", and despite all the efforts from the state and the bureaucracy, it gets stronger day by day. This will create a substantial impact on politics in the upcoming period, and it may even result in the development of political formations to be directly based on anti-refugee perspectives. This part is also complemented by the evaluation of the concepts of migration, asylum, security and social cohesion, and the political party-based findings from the field within the context of social acceptance.

The Framework of Co-Existence: Social Acceptance and Social Cohesion

Massive movements of people necessitate the co-existence of different social groups. The nature of the co-existence framework is discussed under the concepts such as "cohesion", "social cohesion", "integration" etc. (14) However, it can be argued that what is meant by cohesion is an "internalized security approach". Making one of the well-known definitions of integration, Hynie suggests, in general terms:

"integration, in its broadest sense, refers to inclusion and participation both socially and economically, and that it is a process whereby both the receiving communities and the newcomers change, and change each other". (15) The "securitization" concept that the "Copenhagen School" led by B. Buzan, O. Wæver and J. de Wilde particularly emphasize manifests the idea that decision-makers take some political matters and issues out of the political context, and "securitize" these matters by placing them within a rhetoric-oriented security framework. (16) The Copenhagen School describes the...