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Turkish Studies Volume 22, 2021 - Issue 5
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Articles

Do border walls work?: security, insecurity and everyday economy in the Turkish-Syrian borderlands

Zerrin Arslana Department of Sociology, Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, Hatay, TurkeyCorrespondence[email protected] [email protected]
View further author information
,
Şule Canb Department of Social Work & Sociology, Nişantaşı University, İstanbul, TurkeyView further author information
&
Thomas M. Wilsonc Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York, New York, NY, USAView further author information
Pages 744-772 | Received 01 Jan 2020, Accepted 26 Sep 2020, Published online: 17 Nov 2020
 
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ABSTRACT

Border walls are often seen as preferable options to improve security by providing strong barriers against the movement of people. Although these barriers are never absolute and remain porous, they are still appealing, which raises the question about who benefits when border walls are introduced. This article questions whether and for whom border walls work by focusing on the new Turkish-Syrian border wall in Hatay. Through an ethnographic investigation of border politics and the effects of increasing surveillance on residents of the border, it examines the socio-economic and political impact of the wall on local life. Second, it shows how the wall has led to a significant increase in migrant smuggling, which indicates improvements in security in one policy area may lead to a worsening situation in others. It concludes that the wall reinforces the state’s claim of sovereignty but fails to be an effective security measure for border residents or refugees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Accessed March 22, 2020. https://www.goc.gov.tr/gecici-koruma5638

3 Bigo, Security and Immigration, 84.

4 Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, 19, 55, and Chalfin, Border Scans, 398.

5 Salter, “Places Everyone!,” 66.

6 Agier, “Border Dwellers Borderlands,” 58, and McGuire and McAtackney, “Introduction,” 2.

7 Arıboğan, Duvar 7.

8 Such as Cole and Wolf, The Hidden Frontier.

9 Donnan and Wilson, Borders, 4; Vila, “Introduction,” 8; and Wilson and Donnan, “Borders and Border Studies,” 21.

10 Walling refers to the area, which is walled, serving as an artificial womb or matrix including the ingrained ideas of borders, nation states and other entities but it offers a heightened and false sense of security by internally destabilizing individuals. Horvath et al., Walling, Boundaries and Liminality, 8–9.

11 De Genova, The Borders of ‘Europe’, 5.

12 Vallet and David, “Introduction,” 117.

14 Becker, “Speaking to The Wall,” 2; Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work, 37; and Heyman, “The Mexican Border,” 270.

15 Donnan and Wilson, “Ethnography, Security,” 17.

16 Blake, “Geographers and International Boundaries,” 55; Newman, “Border and Bordering,” 175.

17 Donnan and Wilson, “Ethnography, Security,” 13–4, and Donnan and Wilson, Borderlands.

18 Aras, Mayın ve Kaçakçı, 36, and Özgen, “Sınır Kasabaları Sosyolojisi Projesi,” 99.

19 Can, Refugee Encounters, 10.

20 Danış and Aksel, “Sınır Yönetiminde Devlet,” 74.

21 Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik, 143.

22 Cheterian, “The Last Closed Border,” 76.

23 Akyüz, “Ethnicity and Gender Dynamics of Living in Borderlands,” 70, and Hann and Bellér-Hann, “Markets, Morality and Modernity,” 249.

24 Şenoğuz, “Kilis as ‘Little Beirut’,” 113, and Tekin, Sınırın Sosyolojisi, 45.

25 Genç, “An Analysis of Turkey’s Bordering Processes,” 545; Kayhan Pusane, “The Role of Context in Desecuritization,” 7; and Ofra, “The “Kurdish Spring” in Turkey,” 620–2. The rise of Kurdish movement in Turkey has been the most important issue since the establishment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK, Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan) in 1977. After the 1980 coup, the Kurdish struggle in Turkey was envisioned in three stages by the PKK: strategic defense until 1995, strategic balance from 1995 to 2000 and strategic attack after 2000. The Kurdish quasi-state in Iraq affected the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey after 1991. Either the Kurds in the North Iraq and Syria have trans-border effects to determine the border security politics and military measurements in addition to the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey and the Kurdish guarillas’ crossing borders. We should express that the Kurdish question in the Middle East constitutes the main part of border security and military politics of Turkey. After the border wall was constructed, Turkey launched the Operation of Olive Branch and the Operation Peace Spring in 2019 against the YPG (People Protection Units) to avoid the establishment of a Kurdish state in the Northern Syria. Although we acknowledge the significance and the centrality of the Kurdish issue in Turkey and in the region, our main focus in this article is on the efficacy of the border wall and its ramifications in terms of border residents and Syrian refugees.

26 Kaşlı, “Kimine Duvar Kimine Komşu Kapısı,” 63, and Yıldız, “Kaçak Pazarlar, Tutuk(lu) Hareketlilikler,” 192.

27 Bozçalı, “Hukuki-Maddi Bir Kategori Olarak Sınır,” 142.

28 Ofra, “The “Kurdish Spring” in Turkey,” 625.

30 Altunışık and Martin, “Making Sense of Turkish Foreign Policy,” 584.

31 Antonopoulos, “Turkey’s interests in the Syrian War,” 410; Kaya, “The AKP’s Neo-Ottomanism,” 58; Taşpınar, “Turkey’s Strategic Vision and Syria,” 130; Wastnidge, “Imperial Grandeur and Selective Memory,” 20; and Yavuz, “Social and Intellectual Origins of Neo-Ottomanism,” 439. In fact, Neo-Ottomanism has begun to be used the ideals of the governments and the state elites, especially ex-president Turgut Özal about about the annexation of the old Ottoman territories in the early 1990s. In the 2000s, although it was ramped down for Syria because Syria withdrawn the support for the PKK in the late 1990s. The political discourse of neo-Ottomanism has been animated for the Middle East and North Africa, especially in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the AKP has used Neo-Ottomanism to embrace and appropriate as a rhetorical and legitimating framework for its domestic and foreign policies and against for the rise of the Kurdish YPG, the Syrian branch of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

32 Demirtas-Bagdonas, “Reading Turkey’s Foreign Policy on Syria,” 142.

33 Dursunoğlu and Eren, Suriye'de Vekalet Savaşı.

34 Taştekin, Suriye: Yıkıl Git, Diren, Kal!

36 Okyay, “Turkey’s Post-2011 Approach,” 829.

37 The security of the EU external borders has been controlled by the Frontex, led to the establishment of the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Frontex) since 2004. Accessed April 4, 2020. https://frontex.europa.eu/. Both Frontex border security management and The EU member states’ border security policies have been entreated, criticized and also discussed various dimensions from human rights and population controls to governance, Turkey’s refugee deal with EU is also seen as part of the debates on EU border and bordering practices as a continuum of Frontex politics. See Gaibazzi et al., Eurafrican Borders; Johnson, et.al., “Interventions on Rethinking ‘The Border’,” 65; Jones, et al., “Interventions on the State of Sovereignty,” 8; Pallister-Wilkins, “How Walls Do Work,” 155; and Rumford, Cosmopolitan Borders.

38 Okyay, “Turkey’s Post-2011 Approach,” 830.

39 Genç et al., “The Multilayered Migration Regime in Turkey,” 495; Schofield, “International Boundaries and Borderlands,” 620; and Skleparis, “A Europe without Walls,” 990.

41 The EU-Turkey deal re-emerged since Turkey’s Peace Shield Operation against regime aggressions in Syria in February, 2020. Accessed March 22, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/turkce/haberler-dunya-51724776; https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/turkey-launches-operation-spring-shield-in-syrias-idlib/news

42 Şimşek, “Turkey as a ‘Safe Third Country’?,” 177.

44 Horvath et al., Walling, Boundaries and Liminality, 7.

55 Dunn, “The Border Wall Campaign,” 220.

56 Rosière and Jones, “Teichopolitics,” 227; Staudt, Border Politics in a Global Era, 72; and Vallet and David, “Walls of Money,” 144.

57 TOKI, with the models it has developed, functions as an umbrella rather than a competing body in the housing sector of Turkey, with its responsibility as a guiding and supervising organization. Accessed August 26, 2018. http://www.toki.gov.tr/en/

58 The winner contractor company(ies) and their sub-contractor firms were not announced publicly. In our attempt to find out the companies which were involved with the construction, we faced an immense amount of red-tape. Our application to learn the names of the company(ies)/sub-contractors was rejected on the ground of security. Therefore, we do not have information about the firms but we were able to find the cost of the wall through news outlets.

61 The wall was financed by the national general budget and its estimated cost was announced as 4 billion 283 thousand Turkish Liras ($1,574,632,350) at the end of July 2015. Accessed August 06, 2018. https://www.sabah.com.tr/gundem/2018/02/10/toki-baskani-suriye-sinir-duvari-bitiyor-iran-tarafi-da-baharda-tamam

62 This information was updated by the local people and also by TOKI in March 2020.

63 Andreas, Border Games, 148.

67 Arslan, “Suriye Sınırı Hatay’da Gündelik Hayat,” 327.

68 For 2017, the means of distribution of annual equivalized household disposable income was announced as TL 21577 according to TURKSTAT, Income and Living Condition Survey by TURKSTAT. ($5708 at $ 1= TL 3.78 in 29 December 2017). Accessed February 27, 2019. http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreTablo.do?alt_id=1011, http://www.tcmb.gov.tr/kurlar/kurlar_tr.html

70 After our field research was completed, Turkey implemented three rebeary operations, the Olive Branch Operation in January 2018, the Peace Spring Operation in October 2019 and the Spring Shield Operation in February 2020 in Northern Syria region to prevent the autonomous Kurdish state (Rojava). These operations and their impacts on the border towns have not been evaluated in this paper as operations began after our fieldwork was completed.

71 PYD: Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat), a Kurdish Syrian political party.

72 Can, “The Syrian Civil War,” 180.

73 Local demonstrations protesting AKP’s border politics in the Syrian Civil War can be read on the following websites of the local and national presses that belong to the opposition in Turkey. Accessed August 30, 2018. http://intizar.web.tr/roportaj/haber/788/antakyali-arap-alevi-gencler-konustu#.XHJu2C3BJ0s; https://www.demokrathaber.org/guncel/hatay-da-binlerce-kisi-egit-donat-projesi-ne-karsi-alanlara-cikti-h49438.html, https://www.evrensel.net/haber/111224/egit-donat-ile-yeni-katliamlar-planlaniyor

74 Achilli, “The “Good” Smuggler,” 82.

77 Haller, “Why Empires Build Walls,” 106.

78 Donnan and Wilson, “Ethnography, Security,” 16.

79 Maguire et al., “Introduction, The Anthropology of Security,” 19.

80 Bigo, Security and Immigration, 86.

81 Agier, Borderlands, 55.

82 Gasparini, “Introduction. Walls,” 25.

83 This situation is similar to that documented by Andreas in his assessment of the impact of stricter security at the US-Mexico border, which turned the relatively simple acts of crossing the border for work and family ties into elaborated illegal practices, aided and abetted by complex networks of smugglers. See Andreas, Border Games.

84 Bräuchler and Naucke, “Peacebuilding and Conceptualizations of the Local,” 424–6.

85 Salter, “Places Everyone!,” 66–7.

86 Donnan and Wilson, Borders, 4.

87 Hecht, “Introduction,” 9.

88 Green, “A Sense of Border,” 380.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Hatay Mustafa Kemal University Research Foundation: [Project Number16776].

Notes on contributors

Zerrin Arslan

Zerrin Arslan is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology of Hatay Mustafa Kemal University. She received her Ph.D degree in Sociology from the Middle East Technical University in 2011. She completed her BA at the Department of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations and her master’s degree in Political Science in Ankara University. Her main research fields are everyday life, consumption, taste, ethnicity, sociology of migration and borders and borderlands, class and labor processes.

Şule Can

Şule Can is an anthropologist who received her doctoral degree in 2018 from Binghamton University, State University of New York. She is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Nisantasi University, and a Research Associate at Binghamton University. She is the author of Refugee Encounters at the Turkish-Syrian Border (Routledge, 2019).

Thomas M. Wilson

Thomas M. Wilson is Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University, State University of New York. In 2018–2020 he was a Visiting Research Professor (Politics) at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, and in 2019 was Visiting Professor (Social Sciences) in the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, and Visiting Professor (Ethnology) in Lund University, Sweden. He has conducted ethnographic research in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Canada and the United States in matters related to European integration and international borders. A past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe of the American Anthropological Association, he is currently researching the impact of Brexit in the Northern Ireland borderlands.

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