In Refugee Encounters at the Turkish-Syrian Border, Sule Can questions the relationship between foreign and migration policy and the shaping and reshaping of cultural and political boundaries. This book, based on the dissertation thesis of the author, consists of an introduction, four main chapters, and a conclusion.
The manuscript aims to go beyond common assumptions by placing refugee lives, and encounters at the border between two nations (Turkey and Syria), within their complex relation with the larger political and international context (state migration policies, border policies, cultural boundaries, and labor). The author does so through a precise and detailed ethnographic account of interactions between refugees and local residents and their everyday activities within the border province of Antakya, Hatay. She looks more specifically at how these encounters at the border reveal particular forms of negotiation of identities and of labor relations.
Two main arguments constitute the arch of Can’s study. She first argues that the Turkish state’s migration policies contribute to the creation of a “temporary” labor force which makes refugees vulnerable to oppression. Labor is also key in understanding the negotiations of refugees to gain trust, in particular through political affiliation, in their search for employment and ability to be mobile in the city. As the author examines the interaction with migration policy in Turkey, it would have been beneficial to place the refugees’ arrival in the context of the changes within the migration regime to explain their positioning as disposable labor to serve market needs. Theorizing refugee labor would have allowed an interrogation into the ways in which refugees are constituted as labor through the migration regime. In other words, the stimulating presentation of the theoretical framework on encounters and borders in the Introduction could have benefited from further theorization of refugee labor, especially as this topic is a key aspect of the larger framework in which encounters will be studied. Such a theorization of refugee labor could also have benefited Chapters 3 and 4, which deal in major part with refugee labor and labor relations.
Second, the author argues that the government’s sectarian approach leads to reinforcing and politicizing ethnic boundaries from the side of local groups such as Alawites, and relatedly argues that ethno-religious identities then become the only viable markers in the absence of state support. In doing so, the study uniquely puts displacement into the context of ethno-religious boundaries within local groups and breaks down the ways in which migration policies intertwine with border policies. This argument is based on the study of one of the most relevant geographical areas for this type of study, Hatay, a province in Turkey located at the Syrian border, which represents a place of ethno-religious commonalities and a shared albeit disputed history between the two countries.
These arguments are developed over four chapters, as follows. Chapter 2, entitled “Fragile Diversities: Antakya (Hatay) as a Border City,” sets the context for this study by going back to the history and events of the late nineteenth century preceding and following the referendum and subsequent annexation in 1939, which made Hatay a Turkish province. By introducing this broad context, the particular forms of production of ethno-religious boundaries in this border territory are highlighted. Can thus critically engages with the notions of diversity, tolerance, and coexistence in the region by tying its emergence to the preemptive obstruction of political opposition by the state. Retracing the history of the city of Antakya and that of the Alawites of Turkey and Syria, this chapter reveals the tensions that emerged in this region and for its residents through Turkey’s modernization, homogenization, and secularism processes and the resulting ethnic and sectarian divisions. Once the historical and contextual background is set, the author goes into the micro-level encounters with the arrival of refugees.
Chapter 3, “Refugee Encounters: Border Regime and Syrianness,” thus turns its attention to the negotiations of Syrians as they struggle to make their way in this new context, in light of their ambiguous status. In this chapter, Can highlights what Syrianness means in the context of Antakya. She richly illustrates the struggle of “living as refugees” through the cases of Emmi Muhammad and his family members and the cases of other refugees. She covers their political subjectivities, mobility, laboring experiences, and encounters with the state in Turkey, highlighting their legal precarity, which leads to their exploitation. In this chapter, she also goes into the gendered experiences of Syrianness, of men perceived to have betrayed Syria and women associated with sexual commodification and victimization.
Chapter 4, “Urban Encounters: Negotiating State, Identity and Labor,” examines the way in which locals respond to the arrival of refugees through reactivating ethnic and sectarian divisions in light of the failure of the state to govern border cities. Can examines the souq (or “marketplace”) as a unique place for these encounters to examine how relationships and solidarities form, how sectarian identities are revived, and how the Turkish and Syrian states are understood. Through vividly described discussions in the souq, Can demonstrates how perceptions of politics in Syria and Turkey inform relations between locals and refugees through hiring practices among the locals, as well as consumer decisions and housing practices, which reflect political and sectarian allegiances and insecurities caused by the initial open-door policy. By bringing forward the vernacular expression of Minnina (or “one of us”), locals redefine and differentiate insiders from outsiders, putting sectarian solidarity and political ideologies above everything. This chapter ends with a vignette that illustrates the complexities of these processes through the employer–employee relation between Kerem and Abu Mahmoud as they achieve a space for safe encounters despite clashing political and religious views.
Lastly, Chapter 5, “Encounters of the Political: Cultural Revival after 2011,” highlights the subversive practices that emerge through the revival of political struggles in confrontation with the state. This chapter starts by outlining the increasing political engagement that is at least partly driven by the situation in Syria and subsequent identity revival (including the Day of Peace in Turkey protests in 2012 and Gezi protests in 2013). In doing so, it briefly shifts the focus away from studying the encounters between locals and newly arrived refugees in interaction with state policies (and the war in Syria) and investigates instead the extent to which confrontations with the state link to ethno-religious identity or demands for cultural rights on the part of the local minorities. Yet, the chapter goes back to describing the “living together” experiences toward the end, and focuses on how Syrians were affected by Syria-oriented politics and a cultural revival among the local population in Antakya.
Studying a border zone allows Can to expand on the concept of “cultural encounters,” which is usually examined between two marginalized groups, namely the Alawite population of Turkey and Syrian migrants. Indeed, studying cultural encounters in the border region involves encounters between groups with a shared history across a relatively recently drawn national border, bringing a unique perspective to this concept. The author describes the border space as a space that allows an examination of how changes in states’ relations link to shifts in local, regional, and religious identities. Furthermore, research in the border region allows refugees to be highlighted as actors to show the way in which they actively negotiate these borders and the socio-cultural boundaries.
This book’s uniqueness stems from the fact that, unlike most works in the literature on Turkey, which focus on either hosts or refugees, this research is situated right at the intersection of both, closely examining the encounters between locals and newly arrived refugees in dialogue with the national and regional political context. This is facilitated by the author’s particular position in relation to the field. Indeed, her own background, being from the border Hatay region, a native Arabic and Turkish speaker herself, gives her intimacy into the ethnographic research and situates her as part of the negotiations that she is studying. As she lays out in the Introduction, the fieldwork itself offers moments of transformation for herself as an anthropologist, particularly in the way in which she engages with refugee lives, displacement, and oppression. It allows her to go beyond the dichotomy between capturing reality and making assumptions by showing the complexities in peoples relations and their evolving nature through interviews and observations in different spaces. Furthermore, her and her family’s history of political engagement simultaneously allows for a deeper understanding of the struggles in the region and those of the newcomers in that context.
The result is a stimulating, well-structured book, illustrated by rich ethnographic vignettes and accompanying photos and maps, which immerse the reader into the contemporary situation in the Hatay region while situating its particular history. It is a book that will be of interest to scholars of migration in general and scholars in the Middle East in particular. The book emphasizes the negotiations of these encounter processes and the value of potential “peace and transformation” in different urban encounters, which might be of interest to urban scholars as well. It further sits at the intersection between international relations, historiography, and border studies, while at the same time contributing to literature on boundary making and identity politics, and decolonial anthropological geopolitics.
