De jure integration of foreigners and refugees

In Turkey, all legally resident foreign nationals are assigned a Foreigner Identification Number (FIN; Yabancı Kimlik Numarası), with biometric and other details stored on the DGMM’s intranet site “Göc.Net”. In 2014–2015, persons under temporary protection, notably Syrians, were registered by the DGMM as per Article 22 of the temporary provision of the Temporary Protection Regulation of October 22, 2014. In the course of this process, such persons were issued a Temporary Protection Identification Card displaying the FIN, which then serves to facilitate access to all government services and is thus the key measure facilitating de jure integration.

Under Turkish law, all children, including foreign nationals, have the right to free language and vocational courses offered by public education centers administered by the Provincial Directorates of Education (İl Millî Eğitim Müdürlükleri); to basic education for 12 years; and to higher education opportunities. One alternative to these are the private Syrian schools that have been categorized as “temporary education centers.” There, however, education is usually subject to a fee. All of these matters were first clarified by AFAD Circular No. 2014/4 on the Administration of Services to Foreigners under the Temporary Protection Regime, and by the Ministry of Education Circular No. 2014/21 on Education Services for Foreign Nationals, dating to September 23, 2014.Footnote ¹⁷

Foreigners staying in the country regularly for more than 90 days, and thus in possession of a residence permit, are required to obtain private health insurance. Persons under temporary protection, as clarified by Article 27 of AFAD Circular No. 2014/4 and the Ministry of Health’s directive on Healthcare Services to Be Provided to Temporary Protection Beneficiaries (November 4, 2015), have free access to health care.Footnote ¹⁸ However, apart from emergency medical conditions, this access is limited to the province in which persons under temporary protection are registered. Hence, this represents yet another type of geographic limitation, this time one that impinges on integration.

The 2003 Law (No. 4817) on the Work Permit for Foreigners (LWPF) requires all foreigners seeking employment to obtain a work permit, with the system being administered by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. Initially, Syrians—in other words, the majority of foreigners in Turkey—had almost no access to the formal labor market, which meant that formal economic integration was legally barred. But in the meantime there came into force the Regulation on the Work Permit of Refugees under Temporary Protection of January 2016, which provided employers with the opportunity to apply for permission to employ refugees, though refugees can also apply for an independent work permit. However, employment rights are restricted to the province of registration in this field as well, thereby imposing yet another geographical limitation. Foreigners, including persons under temporary protection, in principle have the same rights as nationals to set up a business in Turkey and to open bank accounts, which are crucial issues for regular employment and for running a business.Footnote ¹⁹

While persons under temporary protection are free to settle anywhere in the country, refugees are dispersed to so-called satellite cities on a no-choice basis. With regards to accommodation, neither the LFIP nor the Temporary Protection Regulation provide for accommodation, with Article 8.3 only vaguely stating that persons “may […] be accommodated in a special section of a current temporary accommodation centers [sic] or in a separate temporary accommodation center or in places to be determined by the governorates for humanitarian reasons.”Footnote ²⁰ Such centers are semi-closed, as according to Article 8.5 “temporary accommodation center management may grant permission to [persons under temporary protection] for leaving [sic] the temporary accommodation centers for a short period of time in case of emergencies or upon the request of a public institution and organization.”Footnote ²¹ Such centers are set up and run by AFAD in cooperation with Turkish Red Crescent (Türk Kızılayı). In addition, unaccompanied minors are taken into state or foster care.Footnote ²²

Prior to the large-scale influx of displaced persons to Turkey, the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX)—an assessment of migrant integration policies in terms of the labor market, education, family reunification, political participation, long-term residence, access to nationality, and anti-discrimination—found “that Turkey’s legal framework is slightly unfavorable for integration and ranks below the other MIPEX countries, scoring only 24-out-of-100 points.”Footnote ²³ Whether these countries and their policies are actually comparable, however, is quite another matter.

De facto integration of foreigners and refugees

As of December 2016, of the registered 872,536 school-age Syrian children, only 491,896 were actually attending school, with 367,330, or 42 percent, not in school.Footnote ²⁴ This illustrates how large a proportion of these children had still not been integrated into the educational system. There are also temporary education centers teaching a modified Syrian curriculum in the Arabic language; such centers, however, do not facilitate integration but rather offer a parallel structure, as mentioned in the following paragraph as well, and in any case these are expected to be gradually phased out over the next few years. At universities, the number of Syrian students amounted to 14,750. The government—notably the Ministry of National Education (Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, MEB)—has, however, set up and since “strengthened the status and capacity of the Education in Emergencies and Migration Unit”Footnote ²⁵ to address shortcomings regarding access to education.

In terms of health care, it has been reported that, since 2011, 967,000 Syrians have received in-patient treatment.Footnote ²⁶ However, various actors are more critical of such treatment than what this figure may initially suggest. Language has been identified as a key barrier in the delivery of health services,Footnote ²⁷ and in addition, many Syrians have moved to cities other than the ones where they are officially registered, which actually excludes them from receiving most health care.Footnote ²⁸ By 2016, the Ministry of Health (Sağlık Bakanlığı) had established 64 migrant health centers, and plans to establish another 250 as well.Footnote ²⁹ Nevertheless, strictly speaking, such measures do not in fact integrate foreigners into Turkey’s mainstream social systems, but instead segregate them into specialized systems. Hence, while the intention may be good, the implementation does not actually facilitate integration.

As for labor, prior to the large-scale influx of displaced persons, the OSCE found that the employment rate of immigrants in Turkey was well below the national average, which was considered “particularly worrying,” as unemployment was significantly higher, suggesting that they were particularly “badly affected.”Footnote ³⁰ Of the approximately 5.3 million foreigners and refugees in 2015,Footnote ³¹ only 73,500 were granted work permits, and of these, only 13,300 were Syrians.Footnote ³² As a result, just 2.4 percent of all foreigners and refugees have access to and are integrated into the regular labor market. That is to say, nearly 97 percent are excluded from the regular labor market, and as a consequence, migrants’ and refugees’ labor rights have come to be evaluated in a rather critical manner.Footnote ³³ People, then, get pushed into the informal economy.

Another possible path to economic integration is the establishment of businesses. In 2015, “the number of new Syrian companies surpassed 1,600, reaching 2.4 percent of the total new established firms in Turkey,” with the number being 13.1 percent in Gaziantep and a staggering 35 percent in Kilis.Footnote ³⁴ It is also, however, claimed that in Gaziantep “the majority of these Syrian-owned businesses are informal and lack the finance and procedural knowledge to formalize.”Footnote ³⁵ This, in turn, implies that much of this variety of economic integration is in fact informal. Although such a pattern is not dissimilar from Turkish practices overall—31 to 35 percent of the Turkish economy is said to be informalFootnote ³⁶ —it nonetheless upsets Turkish competitors, thereby undermining peaceful cohabitation.Footnote ³⁷

In terms of accommodation, of all persons under temporary protection, only 246,000 are offered accommodation in a camp. Instead, of all persons under international or temporary protection, over 3 million people must find and pay for their own accommodation, often in cities, but also in some rural areas as well.

Clearly, the challenges to integrating foreigners, and refugees in particular, are also shaped by their particular demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Over 1.8 million Syrians are minors, around half are women, and approximately 60,000 are over the age of 65.Footnote ³⁸ Research has shown that there is a substantial correlation between age at the time of migration and social integration: the older people are when they arrive, the lower their later rates of employment, wages, and interaction with the indigenous people.Footnote ³⁹ On the other hand, the amount of segregation increases in tandem with age at the time of migration. What is more, the integration has been found to be gendered,Footnote ⁴⁰ meaning that migrant women are more likely to be left behind, which creates a negative effect in the long term with regards to the integration chances of their children. Because Turkey ranks well below the EU average in terms of gender equality,Footnote ⁴¹ there seems to be little hope that the government will take measures to prevent such negative integration outcomes. Social integration is also impacted by the level of education and skills at the time of arrival. A somewhat older survey by AFADFootnote ⁴² suggests that around half of those involved in the survey were of low skills, with 15 percent being illiterate. This is quite different from certain EU countries (Germany, Austria, the Netherlands), where Syrians in particular were found to be more likely to be highly educated.Footnote ⁴³ As a result, the integration challenges are higher in Turkey than in some EU countries. This situation also means that refugees are more likely to be integrated into the lower strata of society, and accordingly exposed to all the potential social problems that this entails, such as poverty, illiteracy, poor housing, and health problems.

Perception of integration by the Turkish people

In 2010, a survey by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development revealed that 30.9 percent of Turkish respondents did not want to have immigrants as neighbors—this was the second highest rate of all 34 countries surveyed.Footnote ⁴⁴ Another study by Balkır and Südaş found that, of the Turkish respondents in the country’s southern coastal area, 61.6 percent preferred not to live in districts populated with foreigners, 63 percent did not want foreigners to buy property, and 61.2 percent did not like the granting of political rights to foreigners.Footnote ⁴⁵ Many also expressed a belief that settlement by foreigners caused a “degeneration of values” (46.9 percent) and a “degeneration of the native culture” (45.9 percent). In 2014, a Turkish Foreign Policy study stated that “86 percent of the participants argue that no further Syrian refugees should be allowed in the country,” whilst 29.7 percent wanted them to be returned.Footnote ⁴⁶ Meanwhile, the Turkish Perceptions Survey 2015, conducted by the German Marshall Fund, found that 41 percent of respondents believed there were too many immigrants in Turkey, 84 percent were worried about Syrians and 64 percent about Africans, while 81 percent believed that foreigners do not integrate well.Footnote ⁴⁷ Such results suggest a largely negative perception of foreigners and refugees in Turkey, and imply that the majority does not appreciate longer-term residence or integration. Speaking rather pointedly about this matter, Güneş A. Aşık has said that “xenophobia is on the rise in Turkey. Everyday rhetoric has shifted from ‘Syrians are our guests’ to vitriol and suspicion.”Footnote ⁴⁸

This phenomenon points to a clear divide between policy and people. Whereas the central government is positive toward immigration, the people appear to harbor a good deal of concern. Such concerns, however, have so far remained silent, or at least have not yet been either politicized or led to the emergence of xenophobic political parties—not to mention racial violence—as has been the case in many EU countries. Nevertheless, there is a need for this divide to be bridged, or the situation may well explode.

Guests or refugees?

In 2013, Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay insisted “even though their [Syrians’] status is temporary protection, we perceive them as our guests and treat them this way.”Footnote ⁵⁰ It was further explained that “we hope and the expectation is that the domestic conflict in Syria will cease at once […] and people […] will return to their homes.”Footnote ⁵¹ Fuat Oktay, the president of AFAD, added that “we considered standing by the people of neighboring Syria […] as an obligation. Our country has historic, cultural, and neighborly ties with Syria,” and he also went on to mention “help[ing] our neighbors in need” and “our Syrian brothers.”Footnote ⁵² President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, moreover, has addressed Syrians in explicitly Islamic terms by saying, “you are Muhajirun (i.e., the early converts to Islam who emigrated from Mecca to Medina) for us. We, as Ansar (i.e., the helpers and hosts of the Muslim emigrants to Medina), try to take care of our Muhajir brothers with love.”Footnote ⁵³ Thus, the key concepts driving Turkey’s policy response were the notions of “guests,” “brothers,” “brothers and sisters,” “friends,” “Muhajirun,” “neighbors,” and “historic, cultural ties.” This is a fairly eclectic mix of concepts. In 2016, Erdoğan took this approach one step further, announcing that “we are going to help our Syrian friends in offering them the chance, if they want it, to acquire Turkish nationality,” thereby adding to the mix the idea of Syrians being future “citizens.”Footnote ⁵⁴

Despite this, the reference to the concept of “guests” resembles an earlier tradition in which immigration detention centers were almost cynically referred to as “foreigners’ guesthouses.”Footnote ⁵⁵ The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) criticized the fact that “as ‘guests’ of the Turkish [s]tate, the Syrian refugees may enjoy de facto protection but their status is open to interpretation and to revocation.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Şenay Özden argues that “not being granted refugee status is an important factor that increases the vulnerability of Syrians,”Footnote ⁵⁷ while Ulusoy emphasizes how “‘guests’ [is] a term which has no legal definition or meaning in international asylum law.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Instead, who is and is not a guest is something determined solely by religious or political leaders. Therefore, lawyers, academics, and civil society reject the notion of “guests,” as it is a concept that can circumvent the codification of rights, accountability, and thus overall the rule of law. Indeed, one might wonder whether this kind of hospitality is as universal as the UNHCR claims, and whether it would, for instance, also be offered were there an influx of large numbers of Christian refugees from, for example, Ukraine. What is more, then, I would add that, inasmuch as the reference to “brothers and sisters” is de facto a reference to the Islamic umma—an imagined transnational community of Muslims that by definition is not universal—it may very well exclude non-Muslims. However, other scholars have argued that the relevant sections of the Qur’an dealing with refugees were meant to include non-Muslims as well as Muslims, and thus may potentially be universal, too.Footnote ⁵⁹ The same has been found for the Old Testament, notably the Book of Deuteronomy, which, as suggested by Fisch, was to some extent the first refugee convention, as it introduces the ideas of humanity as a collective (family), solidarity, dignity, and inclusion, thereby representing a kind of soft law similar to international law that has right up to the present inspired European policy responses and even hard laws.Footnote ⁶⁰

However, even though both the de jure and de facto integration of forced migrants in Turkey remains much less than ideal, it is not quite as grim a situation as some commentators would have it. There are, for instance, primary and secondary legislations that provide some legal framework. Basic social services are provided, although as yet these cannot be utilized by all. However, it seems that the issue here is at least partly high demand, resulting in a degree of scarcity of resources and staff. And whilst critics argue that international law, and thus the recognition of Syrians as refugees, would per se entail more rights, less vulnerability, and greater security, numerous reports on the treatment and conditions of refugees in countries that apply such international standards demonstrate quite the opposite. For instance, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights has noticed that “there are alarming trends in the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, as well as of irregular migrants in all parts of Europe.”Footnote ⁶¹ This indicates that the application of international refugee law does not guarantee that displaced persons are treated humanely. Instead, the reception and treatment of refugees often seems to be subject to political considerations on a national level, and thus also to the views of political leaders, rather than to any commitment to universal human rights law.

Therefore, adding (and I consciously say adding) to this discourse a moral dimension—whether informed by religious or philosophical thinking as derived from the Qur’an, the Bible, or Immanuel Kant does not matter—rather resembles a process of ethical reasoning. It thus adds to the debate a principled approach that carries the potential of harnessing politics and power. However, the ultimate test case is not whether or not reference is made to moral or religious as opposed to legal frameworks, but instead whether or not these frameworks are applied in a universal and inclusionary or a politicized—and thus discriminatory and exclusionary—fashion.

Harmonization or integration?

Article 96 of the 2014 LFIP explains that “harmonization” (uyum) means “mutual harmonization between foreigners, applicants and international protection beneficiaries and the society [sic].”Footnote ⁶² Ali Zafer Sağıroğlu explains that “the term ‘integration’ is deliberately not used to avoid its partly negative associations stemming from the experiences of Turkish immigrants in the EU.”Footnote ⁶³ In the LFIP, “harmonization” nowhere receives further clarification, and thus remains rather nebulous. However, the DGMM’s website states that harmonization is “neither assimilation nor integration. Immigration is the harmonization of society as a result of mutual understanding,” and goes on to say that “an immigrant-focused approach” will be taken so as “to equip [immigrants] with the knowledge and skills to be independently active in all areas of social life.”Footnote ⁶⁴ The key concepts involved here are “understanding,” “mutuality,” “mutual adaptation,” ideas of empowerment, and “reciprocity.” However, this amounts more to a preamble or philosophical underpinning than to any sort of policy. Thus far, this has been only vaguely translated into policy, such as “attend[ing] courses where the basics of political structure, language, legal system, culture and history of Turkey as well as their rights and obligations are explained [and] […] courses related to access to public and private goods and services, access to education and economic activities [and so on].”Footnote ⁶⁵ Moreover, the 1989 Law (No. 3294) on the Promotion of Social Assistance and Solidarity has had its provisions and assistance extended to foreigners as well, which is relevant inasmuch as it extends the principle of solidarity to immigrants. Solidarity is commonly understood as unity, particularly among individuals sharing a common interest or interests, and it further implies mutual support among the members of a group as well as collective responsibility.Footnote ⁶⁶ Hence, the application of the concept of solidarity to this law suggests that the law rests on the notion of a collective of the people in Turkey that would literally include foreigners—or at least, such is the promise.

However, thus far, scholars have remained skeptical of the concept of harmonization. For instance, Ahmet İçduygu has responded to the concept with reservation, while Rebecca Kilberg and Kılıç Kanat and Kadir Üstün, among others, simply translate the concept as integration.Footnote ⁶⁷ Meral Açıkgöz and Hakkı Onur Arıner suggest that harmonization has “a more innocuous meaning in Turkish and therefore better reflects the aim of the Turkish approach which is to understand the indigenous-migrant interaction as a dynamic two-way relationship in which migrants are not confined to a passive role regarding issues which relate to them.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Some more critical commentators have even suggested that the “harmonization” approach is not an altruistic one but rather a “tactical boon” in a political game.Footnote ⁶⁹ In any case, within the context of immigration, the concept of harmonization differs from conventional concepts such as integration, acculturation, or assimilation, and thus provides an opportunity for fresh thinking. I will take this opportunity to reflect on the concept of harmony and then to investigate where it sits within the wider debate.

From ancient times to the modern era in Europe and Asia, the concept of harmony can be found in the works of thinkers as diverse as Confucius, Aristotle, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Mohandas Gandhi. This implies that it is a relatively universal concept. In philosophy it refers to the opposite of conflict and chaos and suggests coherence and order. For Plato, harmony rests on individuals’ “set of duties [and] obligations to the community” that, if fulfilled, “result in a harmonious whole.”Footnote ⁷⁰ This is thought to be based on a “symmetric relationship” that subsequently results in “unity within diversity.”Footnote ⁷¹ This theme can also be found in Chinese philosophy, which stipulates that conflict, through a dialectic process of harmonization, ultimately leads to a higher level of harmony.Footnote ⁷² Thus, within this framework, harmony means “mutual complementation and mutual support between the two [conflicting elements], so that each depends on the other for strength, actuality, productivity, and value.”Footnote ⁷³ In other words, two elements depend on one another—which resonates with the metaphor of “brothers and sisters” used to describe the relationship between Turks and Syrians—in order to create a harmonious whole. To return to the issue of migration and integration, social harmony might thus also be understood as the social cohesion of different elements that nevertheless depend on one another.Footnote ⁷⁴ This initial sketch is sufficient to argue that the application of the concept of harmony to social responses to the arrival of immigrants has the potential to fuel a fruitful debate, and so should not be discarded too swiftly.

The concept of “harmonization” also diverges from the key concepts used in the international debate on host/migrant interaction. These concepts are integration, multiculturalism, and assimilation, and they differ from one another in terms of their varying degrees of mutuality within the adaptation process, and thus also in terms of how they envisage power relations.Footnote ⁷⁵ All three of these models or concepts, it should be noted, are frequently considered imperfect, both in principle and with regards to their actual implementation. In many receiving countries, immigrants are legally or structurally treated unequally and hence discriminated against, and as a result they suffer from unemployment, underachieving in education, poor housing, and political underrepresentation, as well as, in the worst cases, from overpolicing, racism, and racial violence. All of these lead on to alienation, segregation, exclusion, and self-exclusion, which in turn undermines solidarity and social cohesion. Therefore, all three models have been somewhat discredited, and indeed Ted Cantle even argues that “we need to be able to talk about race and diversity in a new way.”Footnote ⁷⁶ One more recent response in this vein is the idea of interculturalism. Unlike multiculturalism—which builds on the preservation of culture, a static notion of identity, the centrality of culture for relationships, and the co-existence of different cultures—interculturalism rests on the idea of multifaceted identities, multifaceted relationships, and the interaction between or among cultures, while simultaneously recognizing social cohesion and common humanity.Footnote ⁷⁷ Some of this seems to resemble the idea of “harmonization,” notably the principles of “mutuality” and “reciprocity,” which resonate with the principles contained in the inter- prefix in interculturalism. Moreover, the emphasis on commonality that is prevalent in the current Turkish discourse’s use of ideas such as “neighbors” and “brothers and sisters” echoes interculturalism’s call to emphasize commonality as opposed to difference.Footnote ⁷⁸

As a final point, acquiring citizenship is considered the highest level of legal integration, one that leads to better social integration and thus on to “full integration.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Turkey has gradually moved on from the principle of ius sanguinis (citizenship by descent from a citizen parent) to the principle of ius soli (citizenship by birth or residence in the territory of the country as granted by the authorities), as was regulated in 2009’s Turkish Citizenship Law (No. 5901). İçduygu believes that “with a trembling debate on the acquisition of citizenship for Syrians, it seems that Turkish policy makers mainly, and the Turkish public partially, have passed a threshold. After a long engagement on the immediate humanitarian needs of refugees under the temporary protection scheme, the incorporation of refugees into Turkish society has become seen as crucial.”Footnote ⁸⁰ In line with these changes, in May 2017 some of the first Syrians were granted citizenship.Footnote ⁸¹