EUROPE AT A CROSSROADS : MANAGED INHOSPITALITY On Governing the Syrian Refugee Crisis Collectively: The View from Turkey BASAK YAVCAN According to UNHCR, of the 235 million displaced people in the world today, 60 million are forced to leave their countries to escape war, persecution, or nat- ural disaster. About 80% of this forced migration is destined to arrive in other developing countries, which, in addition to their own social and economic chal- lenges, struggle to develop policies and services to host these vulnerable pop- ulations. The Syrian refugee crisis is no exception in that, while we started to hear about the so called “European Refugee Crisis” only in the Summer of 2015, over four million refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria have been hosted by the neighboring countries of Syria since the beginning of the war in 2011. Currently more than half of these 4 million displaced Syrians live in Turkey while the other half is dispersed mainly throughout Lebanon and Jordan. Even though the number of Syrians arriving in Europe and seeking protec- tion continues to increase, it still remains low as compared to the frontier coun- tries, with a little over 10% of refugees seeking safety in Europe. The number of Syrians in Europe is estimated to be about nine hundred thousand, most of which have arrived in 2015 predominantly through Greece. The map below illustrates the distribution of the Syrian displaced population comparatively and emphasizes the disproportionate burden on the frontier states of the conflict. Syrians in neighboring countries and Europe (Source: BBC graphic/UNHCR data) BASAK YAVCAN is the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University and a professor of political science at TOBB Univer- sity of Economics and Technology in Ankara. She received her Ph.D. from University of Pittsburgh with a focus on comparative politics and interna- tional relations and worked as a visiting researcher at New York University. She specializes in compara- tive political behavior, specifically intergroup rela- tions and public opinion toward immigration and the European Union, as well as comparative immi- grant acculturation attitudes. Her current research focuses on the intergroup dynamics resulting from the mass influx of Syrian refugees in Turkey, with an emphasis on the societal and political attitudes of Syrian displaced people.
On Governing the Syrian Refugee Crisis Collectively: The View from Turkey
Jul 10, 2023
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