The Contradictory Syrian Presence in Turkey’s Southern Borderlands

Abstract

The displacement of Syrians into Turkey is approaching its twelfth year, but the conditions of Syrian presence in the country are still fraught with ambivalence. The dramatic changes in migration and border dynamics and the instrumentalization of Syrian migrants in Turkish politics have intensified racially motivated animosity. Yet in border provinces where Syrians are densely concentrated, popular attitudes toward them operate on other axes, which reveal complex entanglements of border politics, migration policies, and citizenship ideologies. This essay describes how these entanglements unfold in the country’s southernmost border province, Hatay, which was controversially annexed from French Mandate Syria in 1939.