Turkey's Security: New Threats, Indigenous Solutions, and Overseas Stretch.

• Author: Tezcan, Neslihan

Edited by Ibrahim Karatas

Nobel, 2021, 194 pages, 55.20 TL, ISBN: 9786254069703

Turkey's Security: New Threats, Indigenous Solutions, and Overseas Stretch, handles Turkiye's security issues comprehensively from several decades ago to today. The book explains how and when various terrorist groups, including the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), People's Defense Units (YPG), Democratic Union Party (PYD), The Fetullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO), and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) originated and how they have threatened Turkiye's security from past to present. It also describes how Turkiye has attempted to cope with these terrorist threats and how it handles them today. The book also underlines how and why Turkiye changed its security policies over time and how it has securitized Syrian migrants. Foreign terrorist fighters and the PKK's effects on Turkiye's Middle East policies are also addressed in the book.

Turkey's Security consists of six articles by different authors. The first article, written by Ibrahim Karatas, addresses Syrian refugees in Turkiye from a security perspective. It briefly explains how Syrian migrants came to Turkiye to escape from war and that Turkiye dealt with the influx by securitizing their migration (p. 25). Since these migrants are still in Turkiye and may remain there indefinitely, their securitization will continue (p. 26). Also, since Turkiye has had to combat ISIS, PYD, YPG, and the Assad regime simultaneously, migration truly was a matter of security; due to the refugee influx, terrorism came to Turkish cities and hundreds of people were killed in suicide attacks. Turkiye undertook operations to prevent new waves of migration, as the already vast number of Syrian refugees living in Turkiye resulted in numerous social, political, economic, and security challenges. Karatas recounts how Turkiye established a directorate and constructed walls on its borders with Iran, Iraq, and Syria to tackle the problem (p. 26).

Karatas shares his recommendations on how Turkiye could have handled the issue when Syrians began to migrate and clarifies the kinds of precautions that Turkiye could have taken to prevent Syrian migrants from targeting Turkiye's security. Although Karatas notes that Turkiye's policy toward the migration of Syrians lost the government a portion of its supporters, he also argues that "its efforts for migrants are admirable" (pp. 25-26). Karatas's thesis will strike a chord among the many...