Refugee community organisations: capabilities, interactions and limitations

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on ways in which refugee-led community organisations (RCOs) carve out a space of influence through civic activism in the migration architectures of receiving countries. Building on scholarship addressing migration governance and grassroots refugee organisations, it argues that RCOs have become vital in the refugees’ search for means to alleviate the sufferings of their fellows, to empower their community and claim rights for an improvement of their conditions. The notions of invented and invited spaces are convenient to describe opportunities, limitations and the ways of interactions encountered by emerging formal and informal RCOs. Drawing on qualitative data obtained from Syrian RCOs and governance actors in Turkey, the article demonstrates how increasing numbers of RCOs operate in the invited spaces opened by the state agencies and international donors. Only rarely, however, are RCOs able to invent spaces to change existing power relations, as Turkey’s political context categorically opposes rights-based advocacy of any marginalised group, and the national refugee governance is based on temporary protection. The findings can serve to analyse the dynamics of new refugee groups’ collective actions as well as their interactions with governance actors at transnational, national and local levels.

KEYWORDS:

• refugee-led community organisations
• grassroots organising
• refugee agency
• migration governance
• Syrian refugees
• Turkey

Introduction

I met Mr Ahmad ¹ in Sanlıurfa, a Turkish city close to the country’s border with Syria. Inside his community centre, some Syrian women were taking a painting class while Syrian staff was helping a few other women with scheduling online appointments to renew their registration for the Turkish temporary protection system. The centre organises programmes, seminars and workshops about child protection, early marriage, violence against women and refugee rights; other activities have been put in place to meet the daily needs of Syrians (Interview, 18 July 2018). A day later, I also met Mr Hassan, who runs a company and serves as the director of a branch of the Syrian Businessmen Association. The association has 350 members and five branches across Turkey to develop solidarity among refugee investors. The association was welcomed by the hosting provincial authorities, as it had made broad investments in industrial and agricultural sectors (Interview, 19 July 2018).

These are only a few examples of the hundreds of formal and informal establishments formed by Syrians in Turkey. Although Syrians label them as forums, cultural centres, cultural houses, community centres, associations, courses or gatherings, for the sake of clarity, I refer to them as refugee-led community organisations (RCOs) regardless of their formal or informal (non-registered) status. While some provide humanitarian aid to their home country, others assist the Syrian refugee community within Turkey. A few RCOs also collaborate with transnational organisations of the Syrian diaspora abroad and seek to represent Syrians in international platforms.

The growth of RCOs and their activities in Turkey is thought-provoking for a number of reasons. First, the RCOs are quite new within the Turkish migration governance architecture, as the country had not received such large numbers of refugees before the mass international displacement of Syrians started in 2011. Second, the country traditionally has a centralised, administrative structure and limited space for active citizenship and civil society (Sunata and Tosun 2019). Third, the Turkish government, which has exhibited authoritarian tendencies over the last decade, is suspicious of both foreigners and civil society organisations (CSOs) in general (Baser and Özturk 2017). Although CSOs have captured a space in the national migration governance for providing assistance to refugees, they are increasingly bound by the rulemaking and monitoring of the central state. Fourth, refugees are often narrated as temporary, passive aid recipients who are not fully able to exercise collective agency. In this picture, the situation of RCOs is quite puzzling, raising questions about their capabilities, limitations and relations.

The objective of the study is to understand the context in which RCOs have developed, the nature of their work and their interactions with the local and national refugee governance actors. As a result, valid and pressing questions arise: Are RCOs able and/or being allowed to meaningfully act in the architectures of migration governance in the receiving countries? How and under what conditions do RCOs navigate civic participation mechanisms, develop collective actions and build agency? To answer these questions, Turkey can serve as a revelatory case study to shed light on the Global South, where the majority of refugees live in protracted situations with high levels of legal precarity. The country hosts the highest number of refugees in the world, with almost four million refugees − 3.6 million of them Syrians – making up 5% of the country’s total population (Gocgov 2019). The emphasis on Syrian refugees’ collective actions in Turkey provides insights for the migration governance literature by discussing the forms, practices and relations of RCOs as emerging actors at national and local levels.

Research on Turkey’s asylum regime and its governance of Syrian refugees underlines that precarity and temporariness mark refugees’ settlement experiences (Baban et al. 2017; Carpi and Şenoğuz 2019; Crul et al. 2019; İşleyen 2018; Soykan 2017). Studies of the humanitarian sector and migrant solidarity in Turkey show a rich and diverse landscape of networks and international and national non-governmental organisations (I-NGOs) serving Syrian and non-Syrian refugees. These networks and I-NGOs vary in size, outreach and trajectories, shaped by structural, contingent and socio-political dynamics (Aras and Duman 2019; Genç 2017). While these studies emphasise institutional, legal and discursive aspects of Turkey’s migration regime and its consequences, the roles of formal and informal RCOs have been underestimated except for a few descriptive articles and reports (Kaya 2015; Mannix and Antara 2018; Ozden and Ramadan 2019). No theoretically informed empirical research has been conducted to unravel their capabilities, limitations and relations. The topic of RCOs remains under-researched and under-theorised. This article aims to fill this gap.

The article builds on studies addressing refugee agency, with an emphasis on the participation of refugees in I-NGOs, self-help grassroots initiatives and refugees’ political activism (Baban et al. 2017; Hanafi and Long 2010; Jacobsen 2019; Pascucci 2017). As elaborated by critical border and citizenship studies, refugees – individually or collectively – negotiate with several actors to circumvent migration controls and to claim social and political rights during border crossing and settlement (Ataç et al. 2016; Mainwaring 2016; Rygiel 2016; Üstübici 2016). This article also relates to the research on national migration architecture(s) to explain how new actors partake in the governance and to what ends (Panizzon and van Riemsdijk 2019; Sahin Mencutek 2018; Triandafyllidou 2017). I expand upon this research by highlighting ways in which RCOs connect with mainstream governance actors and how collective refugee agency through RCOs is formed, negotiated and contested in relation to migration governance. Furthermore, to discuss the experiences of newly established RCOs and their relations, the article adopts the notions of ‘invited spaces’ and ‘invented spaces’ (Miraftab 2004). The novelty of notions adopted here lies in their explanation of how marginalised groups are involved in spaces through grassroots initiatives and how they interact with other actors and power dynamics. Invited spaces refer to ‘the ones occupied by those grassroots and their allied non-governmental organizations that are legitimized by donors and government interventions’, while the invented spaces are defined as ‘spaces occupied by the grassroots and claimed by their collective action, but [which] directly challenge the status quo in the hope of larger societal change and resistance to the dominant power relations’ (2004, 1). The article imports these feminist notions to comprehend at least three diverging characteristics of refugees’ grassroots civic activism: First, as refugees are new actors in the civic space of the receiving country, their involvement shows characteristics that may resemble the experiences of other marginalised groups such as women, the poor, minorities or migrants. As they are perceived as temporal and are subject to precarity, they experience more marginalisation, putting them in a disadvantageous position concerning rights claims. Second, the formation of CSOs and their relations are overwhelmingly driven by the commands of the receiving country’s migration, citizenship and civil society dynamics. Third, refugees use both formal and informal pathways. An emphasis on these dimensions will advance our understanding of RCOs from an institutional and relational perspective. The notions of invited and invented spaces are valuable starting points for conducting an analysis from these perspectives.

Methodologically, this study adopts a qualitative approach, drawing on desk research, collecting information from the websites of organisations and semi-structured interviews conducted with 21 representatives of formal and informal RCOs as well as 20 local and national governance actors interacting with them. A comprehensive web-based desk search about Syrian organisations was conducted for mapping the RCOs and their types, directions and main activities. The field research was carried out in the three provinces with the largest refugee populations, namely Istanbul, Sanliurfa and Gaziantep. Around 1,420,460 Syrians are settled in these three provinces as of July 2019, amounting to 39% of the entire refugee population in Turkey (Gocgov 2019). These provinces are important sites because they host the largest number of Syrian RCOs, too. According to estimates, 232 associations/organisations have been established by Syrians in Gaziantep, 170 in Istanbul and 150 in Sanliurfa (Adıgüzel 2019). The participants from formal RCOs were recruited with the help of the I-NGOs and researchers. For informal RCOs, cultural insiders and a native Arabic–Turkish translator provided guidance and referrals. One translator in Sanlıurfa, a religiously conservative city, was also trained to conduct six interviews with informal organisations as access was easier for him than for the female author of this research. Local and national governance actors were purposefully selected to reflect diverse experiences of state migration agencies, local directorates, municipalities, national and local humanitarian NGOs and service providers. Ethical approval was obtained for the research. The interviews were conducted in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish and English. The collected information has been triangulated to the greatest extent possible by combining data from different observers and sources.

The data has been analysed by adopting thematic analysis techniques outlined by Ryan and Bernard (2003). This involved scrutinising for both ‘broad and sweeping’ and ‘more focused’ themes. Eventually, main themes were identified, including organisation types, the nature of their activities, their perspectives on refugee empowerment and their relations with local, national and international actors. To understand implicit power relations and the status of RCOs in the broader governance scheme, the data collected from RCOs and national governance actors was critically analysed. In order to capture a broader range of informal initiatives, additional interviews were conducted. Desk research to collect data on possible rights claims of RCOs has continued throughout the writing process.

The arguments in this article unfold in several steps. First, the article demonstrates that Syrian refugees in Turkey exercise agency by forming both deliberate and spontaneous collective action, therefore going against the characterisation of them as passive actors and recipients of aid only. Syrian refugees navigate the conditions they are subjected to by creating solutions for their problems. Second, one of the means is to establish RCOs which carry out complementary roles in assisting refugees, alleviating their suffering and enhancing their coping mechanisms. Similarly, a few RCOs seek to invent a space for further empowering refugees through claiming rights or aiming to change the status quo in the host country. Third, the actions in invented and invited spaces are bound by the Turkish national refugee governance that exerts power over and control through rulemaking, implementation, monitoring, moderating or imposing repressive measures. The same governance mode tolerates the non-political actions of RCOs such as providing humanitarian assistance to refugee community members, offering socio-religious services, supporting social cohesion and creating employment opportunities. These contribute to shouldering the ‘burden’ of public services. However, the same state is reluctant to open space for any type of rights-based advocacy organisation and give it a chance to inform changes to policies in relation to its general restrictive political context, suspicion about I-NGOs and temporal approach to refugee affairs. Fourth, the RCOs also interact with the I-NGOs and local actors that seek an insider’s perspective on the refugee community. Where the former provides funding, the latter includes RCOs in consultation bodies in a tokenistic manner. Therefore, the treatment of RCOs by state and I-NGO actors in Turkey seems to be valuable and inclusionary on the one hand, and selective, subordinating and tokenistic on the other, confirming the findings of recent studies on RCOs elsewhere (Ålund and Schierup 2018; Jones 2019; Pries 2018).

The article takes the following structure. It first provides a general overview of the role of RCOs within migration governance. Then it reviews the existing literature, points out research gaps, and introduces the notions of invited and invented spaces and the categorisation of the actions of refugees (Jacobsen 2019; Miraftab 2014). The subsequent section provides a context of the host country with an emphasis on migration policies. Following this, the article addresses the characteristics and activities of RCOs. It then elaborates on the relations between the RCOs and dominant actors in migration governance. The article concludes with a review of the findings as well as the theoretical lessons that may be drawn from the case.

Theoretical framework: means and spaces of influence for refugees’ formal and informal organisations

As noted in the introduction to this special issue, ‘in the absence of a unified governance architecture, various private and voluntary actors have carved out a space of influence in migration governance. The actors include, among others, I-NGOs, local governments and local organisations’ (van Riemsdijk et al. this issue). They have long advocated for the participation of migrants in governance, because the experiences and voices of migrants are crucial not only to check implications but also to shape governance from the bottom up (Johnson 2016; Nyers 2006). I-NGOs demand the inclusion of refugee initiatives when the former encounter difficulties in fully embracing the characteristics of refugee communities due to language barriers, cultural differences and fractured sources of information (Clarke 2014; Griffiths et al. 2005). National and local governance bodies expect refugees to be organised through CSOs or to participate in consultative bodies in fields such as education, employment, health, housing and social cohesion. The growing global interest in the management of the ‘migration/refugee crisis’ after 2015 in Europe has urged global actors towards embracing more participatory approaches which are reiterated in the Global Compact on Refugees and materialised through the Global Refugee Forums introduced by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The history of migrant and refugee activism shows multiple kinds of experiences, organising styles and spaces of action across the globe, with diverging outcomes (Nyers and Rygiel 2012). Particularly, the studies on humanitarianism, refugees hosting refugees, volunteering for refugees, the protest movements of migrants, and community-based programmes display the various experiences in the Global North (Ålund and Schierup 2018; Ataç et al. 2016; Collyer et al. 2017; Pries 2018). Similar issues have received less attention in the countries that host mass refugee movements in the Global South, although much emphasis has been put on refugee militarisation and the protests in refugee camps as examples of refugees’ collective actions (Lebson 2013; Loescher and Milner 2005). Few theoretically informed studies show how refugees and irregular migrants create community-based shelters and political activism in the urban spaces of the Global South (Hanafi and Long 2010; Pascucci 2017; Üstübici 2016). These studies expanded the existing discussion on the usage of civic space by refugees with the travelling of notions of community and self-reliance from the Global North to the South. Moreover, they highlight the importance of informal organisings for refugee activism due to the characteristics of civil society in host contexts. Drawing from the case of refugee shelters in Cairo, Pascussi illustrates how ‘refugees’ social relations are mobilized as substitutes for direct, material humanitarian assistance in a global condition of shrinking aid by using informal infrastructures’ (2017, 332). Based on the experiences of sub-Saharan transit migrants in Morocco, Üstübici (2016) shows ways in which they established informal associations and built alliances with emerging local and transnational civil society actors. Expanding upon these studies, I empirically map RCOs in Turkey with an emphasis on governance. This delves into the range of collective refugee activism in urban spaces of the Global South but also captures interactions with local and national actors and their implications.

As the RCOs are highly diverse entities, there is a need to systematically comprehend their range of activities, spaces and means in the context of Turkey. Two recent, useful classifications, specific to refugees, are Jacobsen’s (2019) typology on political actions of refugees and Bekaj and Antara’s (2018) categorisation on means of refugees’ civic participation. The three levels in Jacobsen’s classification are refugees’ activities to address issues in the home country (eg ending the war, actions about repatriation, rights claims, changing the government or government policies), activities to improve their situation in the host country (eg access to services and rights, local integration, resistance to being relocated or repatriated, pursuing political membership) and activities aiming at self-governance (eg managing refugee affairs and practising to be a state) (Jacobsen 2019, 29). The three participation means used by refugees include consultative bodies, civil society organisations, and protests and grassroots initiatives (Bekaj and Antara 2018).

Despite a wide range of participation levels and means, existing studies illustrate that both refugees and RCOs’ relations with the overall migration governance are rarely a smooth process. First, legal impediments, such as the absence of a legal status, may limit the direction and the content of activities of refugees. They may be subjected to surveillance, control mechanisms, xenophobia and harassment, which all restrict their capabilities for creating RCOs (Jacobsen 2019). They may have difficulties accessing financial resources, organisational skills, volunteers and experience (Griffiths et al. 2005). Second, the fragmentation among refugee communities causes the emergence of less powerful RCOs that are often atomised into ethnic/linguistic/religious/ideological groupings and the geographical origins of refugees. This situation may hamper their abilities to fully represent refugee voices and capacity-building to develop collective action. Third, when considering actor hierarchies, the RCOs may take a subordinate position vis-à-vis receiving and sending states’ authorities, donors, intermediary agencies and I-NGOs. Thus, refugee activism does not necessarily lead to meaningful inclusion in governance (Jones 2019).

All these challenges, developed in relation to the socio-political-legal context, may direct refugees to use informal pathways in their activism. Indeed, informality is among the more common patterns of refugee engagement being observed in informal support networks, settlements and participation in the labour market (Bastia 2015; Darling 2017). Such informalities may not be sanctioned by receiving countries initially seeking to address refugees’ needs (Zelano 2018). An emphasis on various forms of informalities seems to be an important dimension to understanding migration governance in the Global South because informalities are a substantive part and parcel of the responses to refugee flows and irregular migration.

The notions of invited and invented spaces enable us to cover both formal and informal pathways of refugees with regards to grassroots civic activism in the receiving country. Miraftab argues that community-based activism is significant as ‘an informal area of politics and citizenship construction … one in which women and disadvantaged groups are most active and effective’ (2004, 1). The actions in the invited spaces are geared mostly towards providing the poor with coping mechanisms and propositions to support survival of their informal membership. Differently, the invented spaces are used for collective action aiming to change dominant power relations. Nevertheless, ‘those spaces of practicing citizenship are not mutually exclusive. Grassroots collective actions move between them, and at different points in their struggles, use different sets of tools, and spaces of mobilization’ (Miraftab 2004, 3). Grass roots mobilise within a wide range of spaces of citizenship, making use of whatever specific time and place is effective in presenting demands and gaining results. Such informal practices ‘follow no blueprint, but are situated in their specific contexts’ (Miraftab 2004, 4).

To incorporate this approach into the context of refugees, Miraftah’s conceptualisation can be put in dialogue with the arguments on space, put forward by critical citizenship studies and transnationalism literature. While the former provides insights about the engagement with civic space inside the borders of a host country, the latter scholarship focuses on the linkages among multiple social and geographical spaces that refugee groups relate to. Critical citizenship studies argues that space is a diverse, active and generative phenomenon which is created through relations, social processes and movements of citizens, non-citizens and CSOs (Isin 2002; Nyers and Rygiel 2012). In these spaces, formal notions of citizenship may be challenged ‘as social, economic, political rights associated with formal citizenship have been substantially demanded, acquired and enacted by non-citizen actors’ (McDonald 2012, 129). There is a need for ‘thinking about citizenship from the margins’, as observed in political struggles carried out by migrants, refugees and solidarity activists to expand boundaries of citizenship (Rygiel 2016, 546–47). The transnationalism literature provides further insights into refugees’ dynamic engagement with space beyond their actual place of residence. It shows ways in which migrants carve out space for transnational exchanges, linking together not only their societies of origin and settlement but also other host countries they located (Grace 2019; Vertovec 2009). Their economic, political, cultural, social and online exchanges generate a multistranded transnational space, consisting of a combination of ties, networks and organisations (Faist et al. 2013). In this transnational space, refugees build a new vision of community and belonging, innovative means of solidarity, and ways to challenge existing power relations (Grace 2019; Huizinga and van Hoven 2018; Pascucci 2016).

RCOs descriptively reflect the features of the invited spaces, as they are initiated by refugees who are non-citizens in need of coping mechanisms and support to ensure the survival of their informal membership in the receiving state. The notion of invented spaces is also relevant as some organisations may hope for greater change in favour of refugee rights. Invitation to and invention of spaces are conditional upon the characteristics of local and national context, as will be discussed below.

The context: Turkey as a receiving country of Syrian refugees

In terms of refugee governance, the Turkish government, under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (JDP), first showed an open-door and highly fragmented response (2011–2014), which later became more regulatory and restrictive (2015–present) (Sahin Mencutek 2018). Legally, Turkey does not grant refugee status to asylum seekers coming from non-European countries, referring to its geographical limitation clause in the Geneva Convention (1951) and its Additional Protocol (1967). The rights and protection of Syrians are, therefore, regulated by the Temporary Protection Law (2014), granting them right to registration, free access to Turkish public education, basic health and accommodation. Additionally, in 2016, they were given the right to work. As of late 2019, most of the Syrians in Turkey, around 3.6 million, hold a temporary protection status and live in urban areas (Gocgov 2019). Besides them, some 99,643 Syrians, mainly investors, hold a residence permit making them regular migrants with permanent status and freedom of mobility in and outside of Turkey. Around 92,280 Syrians, mainly university graduates and investors, have been granted Turkish citizenship (Residency 2019; T24 2018). Taken together, these groups constitute a large Syrian community in Turkey.

The recent political context of Turkey has been restrictive in parallel to moving from a delegative democracy ‘attributing extensive power to the political leadership’ to the rise of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (Esen and Gumuscu 2016, 1581; Tas 2015, 776). The implementation of the emergency law after the defeated coup attempt of 15 July 2016 and the transition to the presidential system in 2018 reinforced the power of the president. Meanwhile, the government further infringed on the content of citizenship rights and justified it with confronting security challenges due to the turmoil in domestic and regional affairs (Rubin 2017). The government has become more suspicious about I-NGOs and CSOs. It criminalised and securitised some of them by accusing them of being ‘terrorists’ ‘traitors’ or a ‘threat against national unity’, as they engage with opposition political groups or are funded by foreign countries (Aras and Duman 2019, 481). The government mobilised several mechanisms for enforcing legal restrictions concerning civil society, revoking service permits, limiting access to the field and leading to closures.

As a country with a highly centralised public policy and security concerns entrenched in the long-lasting armed conflict in Syria since 2011, the question of which national/international institutions and actors will be part of the governance architecture is of utmost importance. Centralist governmental authorities took the predominant role in governance, and preferred working with like-minded local authorities and government-supported NGOs. On the other hand, I-NGOs have to comply with the regulations enforced by the Turkish government, including the non-formal requirement to establish an official partnership with national organisations to be able to run their projects (Carpi and Şenoğuz 2019). They encounter problems in building partnerships, and in obtaining permits and resources (Aras and Duman 2019, 489). Nevertheless, the I-NGOs play a substantial role in the refugees’ settlement and their access to public services, empowering refugees and creating social cohesion, mainly partnering with local CSOs. To do so, some I-NGOs build communities involving both refugees and local populations. In this context, refugees sought ways to participate in the civic space of the host country, as discussed below.

Characteristics, capabilities and limitations of Syrian RCOs

The most common ways for Syrians to participate in Turkey include CSOs and grassroots initiatives, echoing the categorisation of Bekaj and Antara (2018) of means of refugees’ civic participation. Syrians’ participation in consultative bodies is limited to the local level. The protests addressing Turkey’s policies are rarely observed due to the legal precarity of refugees and restrictions on all protests after 2016. Unlike the Afghan asylum seekers’ and refugees’ protest against the UNHCR for its suspension of new registrations in 2014, Syrians have not staged a demonstration against the UNHCR or any other international organisation in Turkey (Ikizoglu Erensu 2016). Randomly, Syrians organise small-scale protests to condemn the attacks of the Syrian government or Russian forces targeting civilians inside Syria, which does not contradict the Turkish stance on the Syrian war.

RCOs, particularly those in the form of associations, have been mainly initiated by Syrians who have a residence permit or those who gained Turkish citizenship. Those having a temporary protection status – refugees – are not allowed to establish them, because it is very difficult for Syrian initiatives to meet the criteria for associations and follow the complex bureaucratic procedures (Mannix and Antara 2018, 11). This implies that Syrians who have adequate social and economic capital are first invited into civic activism. Other activists are thus naturally directed to establish informal grassroots initiatives.

Jacobsen’s classification referred to above is also helpful for a systematic mapping of Syrian RCOs in Turkey with reference to the direction of activities. In addition to the home and host countries, transnational direction should be added to Jacobsen’s model for comprehensive coverage. A mapping of the Syrians’ RCOs shows the diverse sets of aims in each direction. Those RCOs directed at the host country aim to provide relief services, support to vulnerable groups, access to rights, public services, the creation of socio-religious services, support for social cohesion and local integration, rights-based advocacy, and to serve as a consultancy and to maintain Syrian identity. RCOs with home country emphasis mobilise their resources for advancing the political opposition targeting the Syrian government, self-governance in diaspora and reconstructing Syria after the war. Some transnational Syrian organisations created umbrella forums with the goal of empowerment and right-based advocacy.

Besides the identification of means, a discussion on evolving RCOs is necessary to understand the dynamics of participation in invited and invented spaces by following on Jacobsen’s model. With regards to home country emphasis, Syrians’ initiatives first formed in 2012 in the border cities, mainly in Gaziantep and Kilis. Many mobilised to facilitate cross-border transfers of aid and goods for humanitarian purposes and/or to support opposition forces in terms of military logistics (Şenoğuz 2018). ² They easily went back and forth between Turkey and Syria due to Turkey’s open-door policy, building a dynamic social space between the country of origin and the country of refugees as assumed in the transnationalism literature (Field notes). They gradually sought more institutional coordination with the support of donors in 2013 (Interview, 5 November 2019). However, since 2016 most of them had to reduce their activities targeting Syria because the opposition forces lost power. Thus, a few Syrian RCOs have maintained an emphasis on Syria. They organise panels, seminars, celebrations, conferences, documentary screenings and theatre productions, publish magazines and create social media platforms. These activities are organised to maintain ‘Syrian identity’, which is in fact non-homogeneous due to the variations within the Syrian refugee community in terms of ethnicity, religion/sect, class, gender and political affiliation (Mannix and Antara 2018, 22; Kaya 2015, 269). They are sometimes joined by Turkish citizens and communities of intellectuals, artists and students who seek to raise their voices about civilian killings in Syria (Mannix and Antara 2018, 22). They collectively organise protests, condemnation activities and press releases in response to developments in Syria. However, only a small number of Syrians, perhaps a few dozen, attend these events at local levels (Interview, 10 March 2019).

Regarding the receiving country emphasis, first, informal networks mainly formed to deliver aid to refugees, resembling charities. When Syrians’ stay in Turkey was prolonged, these RCOs started to carry out complementary services – in education, socio-psychological support, and the protection of orphans and disabled individuals – to close the gaps left by the Turkish government’s service provision. Some private schools, health centres and courses were established by RCOs with the funding of donors mainly in Gaziantep, Istanbul and Sanlıurfa (Crul et al. 2019, 273).

Some of the common and well-attended Syrian RCOs in Turkey are faith-based initiatives. The displaced faith leaders established informal RCOs to provide social services and to work as intermediaries to ensure aid reaches Syrian refugees, particularly aid coming from the Arab Gulf. Some continued their socio-spiritual roles such as preaching, teaching religious courses and providing guidance to the community. They also play a role in informally registering marriages, divorces and inheritance as well as mediating individual conflicts. Their service provision is believed to be necessary due to the lack of legal refugee status in Turkey, legislative differences and language barriers that all impede Syrians’ access to Turkish civil courts. Syrian religious leaders have neither official permission to serve as imams and preachers, nor permission to establish Qur’anic courses in Turkey. However, they are invited by local actors who have an affinity with religious organisations and act on religious solidarity. The central state agency, the Directorate of Religious Affairs, has a flexible approach, seeking to respond to the demands of Syrian religious leaders on Arabic preaching in mosques, granting Turkish citizenship to them and Turkish families taking care of Syrian orphans (Interview, 12 July 2018). In overall terms, informal initiatives of Syrians, such as religious courses, are often tolerated by local actors who consider them safety nets and means of access to refugee communities.

The forms of RCOs’ assistance have evolved in line with the needs of Syrians and they are gaining experience in the humanitarian sector, aiming ‘to promote self-sufficiency among Syrians and reducing reliance on humanitarian aid through job creation’ (Interview, 17 July 2018; Interview, 5 November 2019). Some RCOs prefer more institutionalisation and to build connections with other NGOs in the humanitarian sector. They hire Turkish citizens and non-refugee humanitarian employees who have Arabic and English language skills to carry out bureaucratic tasks and write project applications for the international organisations. They also work with local Turkish–Arabic translators and lawyers to enhance relations with local actors.

Overall, Syrian RCOs found a relatively flexible political context to flourish in until mid-2016, in both national and transnational spaces, in line with the government’s welcoming policies towards Syrians. But then, as a response to the failed coup d’état in July 2016, the Turkish government introduced new laws and regulations to limit individual and collective freedom initiatives for citizens and non-citizens alike. All I-NGOs became subject to strict monitoring and ambiguous bureaucratic processes (Ozden and Ramadan 2019, 6). The closure of many Turkish NGOs, revoking of permits of I-NGOs and detention of some employees on loose grounds created an insecure environment. Syrian RCOs, like other I-NGOs in the country, felt the repression. The director of an RCO that works on child protection in Gaziantep explained the situation as follows:

The Turkish state mainly imposes rules, regulates and monitors the activities of all civil society organisations. Although state migration agencies are invited to coordination meetings, they do not attend, but they harshly intervene after our activities start. Meanwhile, the state usually changes its own legal and institutional regulations, creating ambiguities. Since 2016, they have not had any positive perspective about civil society. They are suspicious of us. (Interview, 20 July 2019)

Similar to the restrictions concerning civil society and grassroots organisations in other (semi)authoritarian contexts such as in Iran, Syria and Hungary, many RCOs in Turkey prefer staying below the radar, as they are afraid of being intensely scrutinised, stigmatised as ‘traitors’ for having foreign interests or being further subjected to criminal prosecution (Aarts and Cavatorta, 2013; Bernát et al. 2016; Buyse 2018). Larger and visible RCOs emphasise their apolitical nature, although many organisations, including Turkish NGOs, are distinctly located on the political spectrum. It is observable that the majority of RCOs, particularly those that are active in cities, are close to the Turkish government’s conservative ideology. They refrain from criticising refugee policies and developing a powerful rights-based discourse. Among the interviewees, only one person, a director of an RCO, criticised Turkey’s policy, pointing out temporary protection and legal precarity. He said:

The main problem is that Syrians in Turkey are not under refugee status; this does not comply with international law and refugee law. Syrians have only guest status, it is a moral and humanitarian status, but not a legal status. It is an empty status. Turkish NGOs have not made activities to raise awareness about refugee rights in Turkey; only foreign humanitarian organisations organise activities related to the refugee rights. (Interview, 18 July 2018)

Despite a lack of explicit criticisms about legal precarity and temporariness, it is known that these create a sense of uncertainty due to obscure information about rights, obligations and access to services. In challenging situations, such as discrimination or arbitrary practices, Syrians refrain from speaking up. Similarly, almost all RCOs avoid confrontation with state authorities. Thus, the number of rights-based organisations and activities so far remains low. Existing organisations rarely unite for rights-based community-level advocacy or to protest new policies negatively affecting them, such as increasing internal controls and forced returns. A few exceptions include small social media campaigns such as ‘Zero Tolerance for Anti-Immigrant Policies’ (Hamisch 2018).

Thus, Syrian refugees find very limited opportunity for creating invented spaces to mobilise rights claims. Many of the Syrian RCOs with a large capacity and freedom to operate inside Turkey hardly focus on long-term refugee rights, such as employment rights or civic and political participation (Mannix and Antara 2018, 17). They strategically act upon the host state’s humanitarian logic of ‘hospitality’ and ‘temporariness’ due to their dependency on both bureaucratic and social welfare systems, generating partial, selective and precarious engagement opportunities with dimensions of citizenship – rights, status and identity. While authoritarian measures targeting CSOs worsen the situation, similar dynamics of these dependencies’ negative impact on rights claims are also observable among Syrian refugees settled in European countries or those crossing the borders (Ben-Porat and Ghanem, 2017; Rygiel 2016; Vandevoordt and Verschraegen 2019).

Interactions and alliances

As illustrated above, Syrian RCOs are mostly invited to provide coping mechanisms and ways to support refugees’ survival as well as information on the policies of the receiving country. Their inclusion in the civic sphere creates a learning space for partnerships, community empowerment and the accumulation of experiences in the long run. However, many RCOs lack financial resources, organisational structures and staff. One way to overcome this challenge is to enhance cooperation at the transnational level, which requires adding a new category to Jacobsen’s typology (Mannix and Antara 2018, 15–16). The cooperation at the transnational level is selective and conditional. Western I-NGOs support RCOs via short-term projects addressing gender equality, child protection, refugee rights and local integration, while Arab Gulf countries will finance RCOs if the emphasis is on material assistance, education and labour-market integration. As argued in the transnationalism scholarship for other locations, Syrians in Turkey engage in transnational space to maintain solidarity (Grace 2019; Pascucci 2016). They build economic, social and political exchanges with Syrians living elsewhere, mainly in Europe, Gulf countries and the US, to create networks and organisations. In 2015, a decisive international top-down mechanism speeded up the transnationalisation of some Syrian RCOs. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria invited Syrian RCOs and networks to create an umbrella body for Syrian civil society that is dispersed in and outside of Syria. The RCOs would participate in peace talks to represent the Syrians’ voice. To be eligible to join the OCHA body and receive support, many RCOs in Turkey grouped around eight different networks based in Gaziantep (Interview, 5 November 2019). This UN-invited transnationalisation led to RCOs gaining professional networking and advocacy skills. Nevertheless, transferring these skills to the national and local level depends on the invitation of host-country authorities.

Besides the transnational level, cooperation at the local level is vital for RCOs. Inclusion in consultative bodies such as those embedded in local municipalities is of utmost importance for accessing refugee rights and services in practice. In some cases, municipalities or local NGOs invite Syrian-led RCOs to work together, leading to interactions and semi-structured alliances. This kind of invitation is often driven by local Turkish authorities’ growing concerns about balancing needs and increasing animosity towards Syrian refugees through devising means for social cohesion.

An incident from Sanlıurfa provides insights into the dynamics and consequences of interactions between local authorities and RCOs. In July 2017, the local host communities organised anti-Syrian protests, including hate speech campaigns on social media. As a response, the local Turkish Humanitarian Aid Platform started an initiative. This platform cooperates closely with the governorate and the metropolitan municipality in securing logistical support for providing humanitarian assistance internally and externally. In its initiative, the same platform invited Syrian immigrant religious scholars, opinion leaders, and organisations to hold a workshop called the Civic Prevention Mechanisms Workshop for the People’s Peace. All participants widely reverted to religious themes, Islamic brotherhood and the unity of Turkey in discussing what could be done to prevent tensions (Gobeklitepehaber 2017). The final public statement warned Syrians not to disrupt the public order, norms, and unwritten lifestyle rules of the local Turkish people. Although the initiative was promising as a potential collaboration between Syrian faith-based actors and local governance actors, its outcome puts the latter in an inferior position. The example signals that consultative bodies serve as a means of reinforcing existing power relations, which tends to favour local and national authorities within these invited spaces.

Also, the incident reflects the implications of changes in socio-political dynamics. Earlier social acceptance and solidarity of Turkish communities towards Syrians have rapidly deteriorated since 2016 and turned into anti-Syrian attitudes of locals (Aydın 2019). In parallel to negative public attitudes and concerns about electoral losses, the government has shifted its previous narratives based on humanitarianism towards the new policy narratives highlighting the return of refugees (Içduygu and Nimer 2020; Sahin Mencutek 2019). This situation further put the Syrian organisations in an awkward position as the Turkish government invited them to support Turkey’s changing refugee policies, such as supporting early returns of Syrians from Turkey to the proposed safe zones in Northern Syria controlled by the Turkish army. Participating in this space implies reconstructing the hegemonic interventionist discourse of Turkey and more polarisation of Syrians in Turkey along ethnic and political lines. Some RCOs aligned with the Turkish government, carried out demonstrations and released statements to support Turkish military incursions (AA 2019). They disseminated the message that Turkey’s presence in the region would be a guarantee of Syrians’ well-being (Interview, 10 March 2019).

Interactions between grassroots RCOs and other actors in refugee governance are not strictly limited to the boundaries of invited spaces. As Miraftab proposes, ‘grassroots collective actions move between invited and invented spaces, and at different points in their struggles, marginalized groups use different sets of tools, and spaces of mobilization’ (2014, 3). I argue that, in the case of refugee activism, the movement between the two spaces is also observable, but mediated by the socio-economic resources and legal status of refugees. Socio-economic resources give refugees the ability to serve the host country’s neo-liberal economic interests and mobilise others. It transfers displaced Syrians from individuals receiving aid to investors in the host country. Second, the legal status serves as a prerequisite for obtaining permission to invent a space with more confidence. The success is conditional not only on the nature of the demands of refugees, but on whether they serve the priorities of local and national authorities of the receiving country or not.

The example of the Syrian Businessmen and Entrepreneurs Association (Suriyeli İş Adamları ve Girişimciler Derneği, SIAD) is revealing for explaining how the mechanisms of invented spaces by Syrians work in practice. SIAD, with 350 members and branches in five Turkish provinces, was established in 2015. It aims to build solidarity among Syrian businesspeople, facilitating larger investments in the targeted sectors. It has been visible in Turkish media and built strong relations with provincial authorities with the slogan of ‘taking bigger steps and contributing to Turkey’s economy’ (Interview, 16 July 2018). RCOs such as SIAD cooperate with the local state agencies through investments, in turn easing bureaucratic hurdles for their own projects. Such business-orientated RCOs are more easily involved in transnational diaspora networks, which are usually made up of Syrian NGOs allied around similar goals or ideological views. The networks enable the transfer of transnational capital and expertise and help organisations to secure funds and expand their activities (Interview, 5 November 2019).

Besides successful examples of inventing space for business-related activism, less fruitful examples of inventing spaces for rights advocacy have also been found. One of the interviewees was a teacher working part-time and running three Quran courses. He was trying to establish a union for Syrian teachers in Turkey with two other activists to raise the voice of Syrian teachers and awareness of the problems surrounding the high levels of unemployment, low salaries, and temporary job contracts. As they have built unsatisfying relations with a Turkish teachers’ union via protocols, they approached the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to act as the legal representative of Syrian teachers (Interview, 15 July 2018). UNICEF is a deliberate target for this grassroots initiative as it paid minimum wages to teachers working for temporary education centres (TECs) that were designed for Syrian refugee children. The interviewed teacher was able to attempt to invent a space as he had recently obtained Turkish citizenship and possessed strong social networks. However, as he failed to receive the attention of local authorities and international donors to initiate new networks, he was not able to push further to expand this space. Unlike business investments, teachers’ rights are not something that he could easily find partnerships for. Being aware of this, he aimed at international support. But he failed to succeed as UNICEF gradually decreased its support because the Turkish state integrated all Syrian students into public schools by closing TECs in 2019. Regardless of its result, the entire experience also exemplifies refugees’ attempts to expand boundaries of citizenship from below by making claims for access to collective citizenship rights through negotiation and contestation (Baban et al. 2017; Rygiel 2016).

As seen above, interactions among RCOs and governance actors show differences at local, national and international scales. At the local level, RCOs find more opportunities to get involved in governance structures than at the national level. In particular, they engage more easily with local actors, particularly those linked to the government, on the basis of religious affinity and business interests. They are invited when it is believed that that they might contribute to social cohesion, economic investments and job creation in the respective city in line with the government’s neoliberal economic policies. Syrians are also able to create spaces for small-scale, informal organising, particularly faith-related activities at the local level as they are believed to contribute to social cohesion. At the national level, interactions of RCOs with national players are more limited, as the state agencies such as directorates and ministries are selective and RCOs have limited experience with lobbying. Much of the interaction happens in the border cities, while provincial state agencies and government-supported NGOs work with Syrian organisations to have better access inside Syria. There seem to be some new developments. In fall 2019, I was told that the Ministry of Interior was building a consultation mechanism with a few RCOs. It seems that these RCOs are like-minded as their main emphases are on human rights violations by the Syrian government and Syrians’ rights to return, rather than the pitfalls of refugee policies in Turkey. Political context – both domestic and regional – and its reflections on local Turkish communities and actors shape the actions and interventions of RCOs in invented and invited spaces.

Another scale for examining interactions is the meso level where I-NGOs and RCOs build relations. Some prominent national refugee-focused NGOs invited a few Syrian RCOs to their consultation meetings, or sought collaborations to get insider perspectives and create solutions to sensitive cases such as unaccompanied children (Interview, 13 July 2018). However, such meetings have rarely expanded or led to concrete outcomes. The political affiliations or leanings of Syrian RCOs, specifically the risk of being accused to have a link with any political group, worry mainstream Turkish NGOs too much for them to advance collaborations. Also, RCOs do not seem to be interested in cooperating with Turkish NGOs; instead, they approach I-NGOs for funding and state agencies for permission. To access an insider perspective and overcome language barriers, Turkish NGOs prefer hiring a few well-educated and highly skilled individual Syrian refugees, while resourceful formal Syrian RCOs work with a few experienced Turkish experts and translators. The picture on RCOs’ relations at the international level has diverging characteristics too. Country branches of UN agencies work with a limited number of RCOs to facilitate cross-border humanitarian assistance to Syria from Turkey as well as to selectively include them in international platforms. Western I-NGOs support RCOs via short-term projects and funding from a top-down perspective. Gulf donors prefer to work with RCOs to deliver humanitarian aid.

There is limited coordination and cooperation between governance actors and RCOs at almost all scales. Local, national-level and international state agencies consider themselves at the top of the actor hierarchy, while RCOs stand at lower levels. Interactions take place under the pressure of power relations and ideological considerations, while meaningful cooperation for refugee empowerment has rarely occurred.

Conclusion

An emphasis on RCOs shows that capabilities and contextual limitations are crucial to understand how they navigate possibilities for participating in the spaces pertinent to refugee affairs, and the outcomes of their interactions. Although RCOs show strong similarities to migrant organisations in their engagement with receiving country spaces, they also show some differences due to legal precarity and the perceptions of refugees as temporal subjects.

Evidence from three provinces of Turkey shows that RCOs operate mainly in invited spaces, and to a limited degree in invented spaces. The invited spaces enable them to deliver humanitarian assistance and fill the gaps in public service provision. The invented spaces are for advocating rights claims. Both spaces are dominated by the national migration governance that is made up of multiple actors. Theoretically, as new actors of this architecture, RCOs may expand their resources and find more opportunities when they are able to build alliances with local organisations, partnering with state agencies and securing funds from I-NGOs. In practice, the alliances emerge in relation to the project conditionalities and/or issues, bringing about not only mutual gains but also tensions due to the constraints and power asymmetries. Alliances and cooperation do not last long because of the assimilationist perspectives of Turkish government-related local and national actors that want RCOs to passively embrace the discourses and policy measures of the former. In a way, Turkish actors do not look for a meaningful participation of RCOs, but rather seek to tokenise them in ways such as inviting them into a meeting or event or publishing a press release. In another way, they favour them as ‘useful refugees’ who serve their host country, appropriate their stance or repeat host-state discourses about refugee affairs. In this context, the central state agencies, local actors, and I-NGOs develop asymmetrical relations with the RCOs which are included in refugee governance in limited ways if they discipline their actions in line with the dominant power relations and policy direction.

At least three theoretical lessons can be learned from the case under scrutiny for understanding refugees’ collective agency and civil society engagements in the receiving countries. First, the political and legal context of the receiving country plays a detrimental role in the extent to which RCOs emerge. This context also makes refugees selective about the levels and means of grassroots actions they carry out. Receiving countries invite the initiatives for social service provisions that may improve the material conditions of refugees. As far as the initiatives comply with the policy approaches of the host state, they are ‘welcomed’ or ‘tolerated’ despite a high level of informality. On the other hand, advocacy for refugee rights is more likely to encounter backlash or be sanctioned by the receiving country’s traditional actors. Second, having socio-economic capital makes refugees likely to invest in RCOs, with some limitations depending on the sector of activities. Refugee business investors are able to create and sustain their RCOs. The transnational networks may further enable the expansion of their activism by bringing more resources. Due to the legal precarity and temporariness, most refugees rarely take risks to be involved in activities that may confront the receiving state authorities. Third, refugees are able to cooperate with the local actors or I-NGOs, but they are rarely included in the decisions that affect them. The cooperation acts are often shaped by power and domination patterns.

This analysis is by no means exhaustive, but was intended to explore RCOs in the main receiving countries, which is important not only for refugee theory but also for understanding new architectures of migration governance. There is a dire need for empirical analysis to advance our understanding of features of RCOs that may lead to the possibility of improving their overall effectiveness. While detailed case studies are promising, comparative analyses – across refugee groups and cross-country – could flesh out how refugees in different receiving countries and from different home countries engage in collective civic actions. Future research on RCOs could complement the extensive research on refugee agency.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the special issue editors and the four anonymous reviewers of the journal for their valuable comments and input. Special thanks go to Maria Koinova for her constructive feedback on an earlier version of this article. I particularly wish to thank the individuals and organisations who generously shared their time and experiences as well as İmran Altıntop and Ali Akbaba for their assistance in interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Field research for this manuscript was funded by the Horizon2020 project of the European Commission titled RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond (#770564). The article was written by the author during her research fellowship at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany (03/2019-02/2020).

Notes on contributors

Zeynep Sahin Mencutek

Dr Zeynep Şahin Mencütek is a Senior Research Associate at Ryerson University, and a Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration. She currently holds a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers to conduct comparative research on the governance of refugee returns, after completing her fellowship at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She has been a researcher for the Horizon2020 project titled RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Southern California and an Associate Professor status in International Relations in Turkey. She is the author of Refugee Governance, State and Politics in the Middle East (2018), in the Routledge Global Cooperation series. Her research focuses on comparative migration policies, Syrian refugees, international politics of the Middle East and diaspora politics.

Notes

1 The identity and affiliations of interviewees are kept anonymous for safety reasons. The name is changed for anonymity.

2 Roughly 12–15% (around 100 of a total number of 802) of all organisations serving inside Syria about relief, health, education, research, development housing and politics have their offices/branches and/or headquarters in Turkey. See https://citizensforsyria.org/OrgLiterature/CfS-mapping-phase1-EN.pdf