The Great Wall of Turkey: From „The Open-Door Policy” to Building Fortress?

Abstract

Following outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey recorded an unprecedented inflow of migrants from its southern neighbourhood. The policy of opened borders in the initial years of war contrasted to securitization, the search for international support and other similar policies, which countries usually adopt in cases of migration crises. However, rising numbers of Syrian migrants, the deterioration of Turkish relations with the Assad government and the engagement of the Kurds as another important party in the Syrian conflict resulted in the switch of the Turkish border policy. In 2014, President Erdoğan initiated the construction of over 800 km long barrier on the border with Syria with an aim to build similar fenced walls on the Iraqi and Iranian border in 2017. Main aim of this paper is to analyze the development of the Turkish border policy (particularly concerning the border with Syria) in the aftermath of the 2011 events in the Middle East and identify factors, which led up to the shift from the policy of welcoming to the policy of building „Fortress Turkey”. The first part of the paper will briefly summarize Turkish migration policy and focus on presenting the change of the initial ‘open’ approach to migration from Syria into the current state of building fences in the borderland. Subsequently, the paper will deal with selected factors, which might have caused this phenomenon. These include spread of terrorism and inflow of the Daesh fighters, who were using soft border regime to diffuse their activities to the Turkish territory; increase in smuggling and cross-border illegal trade; fears from the conflict spillover; but also territorial integrity concerns with regard to revival of the Kurdish activities in the region .