Borders and Mobility in Turkey by Shoshana Fine

Author:Shoshana Fine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

By setting such normative standards, benchmarking enacts new forms of global inclusion and exclusion by ‘redefining the core and periphery by linking those organisations and people to those who have “value” and discarding the rest’ (Larner and Le Haron 2004, 219). This technique subtly closes off alternative ways of reading ‘good governance’ of refugees and encourages Turkey to take responsibility and ownership for the problem as defined by others (Hindess 2004, 35). While the UNHCR may strive to promote a ‘normalising discourse’ , this does not mean that such a discourse is accepted and assimilated in straightforward ways.

The UNHCR published very few communications and news briefs in the early 2000s on Turkey’s refugee situation. However, this changed by 2007 and 2008 when the UNHCR published a successive number of condemning communications and briefing notes criticising the Turkish government for the disrespect of the refoulement principle as outlined in the 1951 Geneva Convention. To offer some examples, in March 2007, the UNHCR condemned the Turkish government over the refoulement of an Iraqi individual, recognised as a refugee by the UNHCR6; in July 2007, the UNHCR criticised Turkey for the forced return of 135 Iraqis, some of whom had made an asylum claim; in August 2007, the UNHCR publically criticised the Turkish government over the expulsion of five Iranian refugees to Northern Iraq7; in April 2008, the UNHCR published a communication heavily criticising the Turkish government for the disrespect of non-refoulement and the deaths of four foreign nationals.8 Four men, including an Iranian recognised as a refugee by the UNHCR, drowned after the Turkish police forced a group of 18 people to cross a fast-flowing river separating Turkey from Iraq.

Following the publication of critical press releases, Turkish officials from the Ministry of Interior called a meeting with the UNHCR representative. At the beginning of the meeting, a high-ranking official from the Turkish Ministry of Interior stood in front of Michel Gaudé, the then UNHCR Head of Office, and ceremoniously snapped a pencil in two. This pencil-breaking drama was meant to symbolise the threat of a broken relationship between the two parties. The UNHCR was told that if the organisation were to commit the same mistake in publically shaming Turkey, UNHCR–Turkey relations would suffer. This incident would mark another essential turning point in UNHCR–Turkey relations; thereafter, the UNHCR refrained from all further criticism of Turkish governmental practices. This example adds to the complexity of Joseph’s (2009) ‘complex mechanisms of compliance’ which are clearly not unidirectional; the UNHCR is only given space to assess and measure Turkey in relation to other countries, so long as it does not offend Turkey. If UNHCR aspired to be the inspector of Turkey’s refugee problem, it had to tread careful ground. One organisational strategy to facilitate this ground was to change UNHCR Turkey’s leadership.

The UNHCR Turkey’s leadership was changed in 2011. Michel Gaudé, the then Head of Office, was replaced by Karim Atassi as Representative of UNHCR Turkey. While Gaudé was known to have pushed for a human

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.