The fight against irregular migration and migration management

As the debates on refugees gain new momentum with the new images of Afghan irregular migration, it also becomes clear, as a country, how unprepared we have been caught on this subject, even though the time reality allowed us was long enough, in fact more than long enough. Our irregular migration and refugee policies depend, as it were, on the time frame or vision that the arriving migrants set for themselves.

Those who seek refuge because of conflicts or unrest in their countries come assuming they will return home very shortly, or some come to Türkiye as an intermediate stop on the way to Europe. Yet the unrest in question never ends in the time foreseen. Neither in Afghanistan, nor Syria, nor Iraq, nor the other Central Asian Turkic Republics is there an improvement that would naturally open the way for those who came to return. For that reason the length of stay of those who came inevitably grows, and as their stay lengthens they integrate with society. In return, our view of migrants, our expectations, our policies are built on their temporariness.

Of course, it is necessary to contribute at the international level to the conditions under which they could go. Indeed, Türkiye has both stopped more migrants in place, without abandoning them to death or hunger, with the safe zones it has established in Syria, and one aim of its diplomacy that it is now trying to make active in Afghanistan is likewise to stop Afghan migration in place. The most effective way of stopping it in place is through improving the conditions in Afghanistan that push its own people outward. For this, Türkiye is working, in good relations with the Taliban as well as with the parties that are participants in the government.

Nevertheless, returning to our subject, a migrant policy is not built on the assumption that the migrant will go back. A country like Türkiye, which has continually received migration throughout its history, needs to develop a far more well-founded, institutional and serious migrant policy with the contributions of sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and many other scholars. In this regard the migration administration needs to be restructured with a logic beyond merely granting residence and chasing irregular migration as a security problem.

Although we have experienced this a great deal in our history, indeed although Anatolia is almost entirely a society of migrants, we are now facing a serious "problem of old arrivals not accepting the latest arrivals."

In fact, this is a normal reaction in all migrant societies. Non-acceptance, hostility to migrants or foreigners, is a serious problem in every society that receives migration. The humanitarian dimensions of the policies followed especially by Europe and the USA to cope with this problem have always been debated. The left in these countries voices its strongest criticism of anti-migrant policies as follows: The cause of migrations is the unrest and unlivable conditions that these countries themselves, that is, Europe and the USA, have brought about in the sending countries through imperialist interventions. For that reason the capitalist countries should shoulder the responsibility and not close their doors to migration. The peoples whom the capitalist countries exploit in their levels of prosperity have a right, and these peoples will come to claim their right; closing the doors on them is a separate humanitarian irresponsibility.

Indeed, as US interventions in Latin America make those countries unlivable, flights from those countries become inevitable too, yet within the USA there has always been a political tendency ready to meet this migration with understanding. On the other hand, the migrations coming to the USA from these countries or from all over the world were seen as an opportunity for the country's development and for ensuring cultural plurality and diversity, and for many years this problem was thus handled with a logic of successful integration and brain import.

The migrations to European countries too, especially to Britain, the Netherlands and France from their colonies, were in a sense a result of these countries' own policies in the source countries. But these migrations were largely both foreseen and treated as a channel for maintaining ties with the source countries more effectively. The direct or indirect contributions of these migrations to the national economy are a separate subject. Today the diasporas in Britain belonging to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other African countries make up a serious population. Let us just say that a Muslim has won the Mayoralty of London, and you can work out the rest. Yet in Britain, recently, there is no trace of an anti-migrant sentiment similar to what we see in Türkiye.

Of course there is an anti-migrant mass there too, but even they do not express their views or reactions at a level hitting rock bottom in humanity as ours do, and even if they did, they would not find this many supporters.

There is no doubt that what the Mayor of Bolu did is plainly ignorant racism. This level of ignorance can recur at a certain level in every society. But for it to find this much courage and to be able to gather supporters means it has become a serious problem of that society.

Unfortunately, when racist ignorance is not suppressed where it is seen, when it is emboldened, it leads to inhuman practices whose stopping point is unknown. When the Mayor began his racist hostility by leaving migrants without water, an apartment management, unable to restrain its momentum, continued it by having all the residents of the apartment building expel the neighbors with whom they had lived together for years. Although they had no legal right to do so, in an environment where incited racism will gradually spread, we can expect such behaviors or even more extreme ones.

The Turkish people are not a racist people, but racism is a contagious crime that can spread like a virus. It is a degeneration that collapses a country, eats it away from within, and whose stopping point is unknown. There could be no more effective assassination against Türkiye, which for years was the darling of the world in humanitarian politics.

The measures to be taken against this situation developing over migrants are also part of a migration administration of the scope we have pointed out.