Turkey's Response to Syrian Mass Migration: A Neoclassical Realist Analysis/Turkiye'nin Suriye Kaynakli Kitlesel Goce Yaniti: Neoklasik Realist Bir Analiz.

• Author: Sahin Menc

Introduction

Debates over mass migration have intensified markedly since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, causing the international displacement of 6.6 million Syrians. (1) The conflict has triggered a diverse range of policy responses to the emerging challenges of human security and refugee protection in Syria's neighbouring countries, including Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Turkey has hosted the largest number of refugees (2) in the world since 2014, and the number of Syrians exceeded 3.5 million in 2019. (3)

To date, however, little research exists that sheds light on how the migration policies of hosting states connect to their foreign and domestic policies. Existing studies are mostly descriptive, with limited theoretical engagement with either the forced migration literature or international relations (IR) theory. We contend that the contemporary refugee issue provides fertile ground for enhanced dialogue between IR theories and migration studies. Such a dialogue, we argue, offers theorists and policy-makers alike the opportunity to better understand the politics of migration (4) by directly addressing the question of how foreign and domestic politics intersect to shape migration policy and how migration policy has shaped politics. (5) With its emphasis on the core elements of the international system and domestic politics, neoclassical realism offers a comprehensive framework to analyse the complex and dynamic migration policy process.

This article rests on the proposition that Turkish policy towards Syrian mass migration from 2011 to the present has reflected a complex interplay between external and domestic political factors. It systematically questions the underlying drivers of the dependent variable--Turkey's changing responses to mass migration from Syria--through the lens of neoclassical realism. Turkey's response, which is our dynamic dependent variable, has evolved through at least four temporal stages that will be explained later in the article. The independent variables we isolate are: (1) Turkey's relative power in the anarchic international system and (2) Turkey's foreign policy objective to counteract the security threat from armed conflict in Syria. Ideational drivers and domestic politics are treated as intervening variables. We identify the two ideational drivers as the ambition of state elites to enhance Turkey's normative power at the systemic level through an emphasis on humanitarianism and elite perceptions regarding the Syrian issue. The impact of these drivers changes in relation with the context; thus, they are quite dynamic. Interactions among these variables form the outlines of the arguments we propose in the following paragraph.

The scope and ambition of Turkey's foreign policy has generally reflected its status as a middle power in the international system. However, in the last decade, there has been a change in the perceptions of foreign policy-makers about the degree of systemic pressures on the country and Turkey's capability to challenge the status quo based on its middle power status. This will be elaborated upon below in the analysis section of this article. The ambition of the Turkish leadership to enhance its normative power in line with its increasing material power widened its menu of foreign policy choices. Turkish leadership read the relative ambiguity at the onset of the instability in Syria as an opportunity to consolidate its normative power and shape its immediate external environment. This was first adopted through emphasizing a humanitarian approach to the influx of Syrian refugees. However, the accumulation of external security threats over time and the misperceptions about the extent to which the militarized armed conflict touched domestic sensibilities required the policy-makers to put forth gradually less accommodating and more restrictive policies to address mass migration from Syria. Elite consensus over ideational drivers enabled the extraction of the necessary resources from society needed to host millions of Syrian refugees, as well as the limiting of potential tensions and backlash in the domestic political arena until 2018.

The research is designed as a single case study for theory testing that relies on the method of within-case process tracing. The article proceeds as follows. It first presents theoretical IR perspectives about migration policies. It then points out the main presumptions of neoclassical realism. The following section provides a detailed narrative of Turkey's policy responses to Syrian mass migration from 2011 to 2020. It then analyses Turkey's response to Syrian mass migration through the lens of neoclassical realist theory. In this framework, the role and capacity of neoclassical realism helps explain Turkey's responses regarding the Syrian mass migration. Our analysis reflects the fact that the Syrian conflict remains a dynamic phenomenon. In order to provide empirical evidence, we draw mostly on secondary sources, including newspaper reports of policy-makers' public speeches; official and informal reports from national and international organizations addressing Turkey's migration policies; official statements on Turkish foreign and migration policy; and existing academic studies.

Theoretical IR Perspectives about Migration Policies

While IR theories attempt to explain why international events occur, they often speculate about relations between sovereign states. (6) With their emphasis on the primacy of states as the main actors of the international system, the realist approach does not see international migration as a problem at the system level. (7) Mainstream rationalist theories have some limitations in understanding politics of migration. Migration is given a minimal role in the crafting of foreign policies or is only treated as a demographic element of military power. (8) Classical realism also underestimates the agency of refugees and their impact of international system. Neorealism's exclusive emphasis on anarchy and self-interest makes it difficult to explain attempts by states to cooperate on migration affairs. (9) Thus, international migration remains either invisible or trivial to rationalist IR theories. (10)

On the other hand, liberalism may provide insights to understand cooperation attempts in dealing with migration, as it is seen as a common issue/problem that affects all states due to the highly connected word system. (11) Particularly, it helps to understand the role of multilateral institutions, especially the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHRC) in responding to refugee emergencies and protecting them. However, the UNHCR is not the sole actor in shaping nation-states' refugee policies. State authorities, to be sure, have a higher authority over its operations. Thus, liberalism only helps understand state-level responses to a limited extent.

Besides mainstream theories of international relations, reflexivism or relativist theory provides a promising framework for understanding migration issues with an emphasis on a wider range of actors, including non-governmental actors, individuals, international organizations, and multinational corporations. Post-structuralism, as a part of reflexivist thought, focuses on topics that are often underestimated by mainstream IR theory, such as famine, health, and development, as well as migration. (12) Moreover, its emphasis on gender, language, and knowledge-power relations helps address migration, but they may only partly explain the domestic and foreign policy interests of states in shaping their migration policies. (13)

Constructivism's arguments about norms (14) are highly relevant to how states, particularly European states, tend to cooperate in responding to refugee crises. In this approach, refugee rights are considered part of human rights, and multilateral organizations play a significant role in advocating for refugee rights. The 1951 Refugee Convention became the legal backbone of international refugee regime. (15) In 2018, the introduction of the Global Compact on Refugees reflected the ongoing cooperation efforts for maintaining norms about refugee protection. (16) Despite attempts for norm creation and internationalization, states are hesitant to respect these norms due to pressing concerns such as competition for labour markets and social welfare. The migrants--particularly irregular migrants and refugees--are often seen as a burden for receiving states.

Also, the constructivist perspective paves the way for the analysis of migration not only as a demographic movement of individuals but also as a transnational socio-political phenomenon. (17) Migration creates transnational spaces and the networks among the source as well as destination and transit countries. States have become more permeable and fragile with transnational movements. (18) This has produced global debates on migration governance that conceives of migration as a challenge similar to those of managing the environment, natural resources, or energy. Moreover, the constructivist approach directs focus to discourses, such as about securitization and politicization, as the Copenhagen School has famously studied through its emphasis on the very idea of threat. (19) Despite the promising insights of constructivism, the currently poor state of mass migration responses cannot be solely explained by constructivist sensibility or in relation to norms and other intersubjective factors.

Middle range theories that fall between mainstream theories do, however, offer potential insights, as they narrow down the research field to a more specific aspect of politics. There has been a rich but fragmented scholarship on the international relations of migration and the politics of migration, which draws from the broader realist and constructivist schools. (20) One of the first studies was that of Michael Teitelbaum (1984), which illustrates how sending and receiving...