Unpacking postcolonial and masculine anxieties: Hungary and Turkey’s responses to the EU’s handling of the 2015–2016 refugee “crisis”

ABSTRACT

In this article, we examine the Hungarian and Turkish responses to the EU’s handling of the 2015 refugee “crisis” through a postcolonial feminist IR framework. Drawing on hypermasculinity, we argue that both countries utilise migration to overcome their postcolonial and masculine anxieties by confronting their positions within the international hierarchies. Our examination of policy statements and speeches by Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan between 2015 and 2016 reveals three masculinised responses. First, both leaders portray themselves as acting out of paternal authority, while painting the EU as weak or inhumane. Second, they depict the EU as incompetent and their countries as competent providers of security. Third, they present themselves as protectors of European values, and the EU as in need of protection. These rhetorics suggest that both leaders used the “crisis” to challenge the current international hierarchy. Despite this, we argue that they are only concerned with their countries’ rankings within the hierarchy, not the system itself. Our postcolonial feminist reading of the “crisis” reveals that these masculinised framings are in fact counterproductive and only serve to confirm both Hungary and Turkey’s positions at the bottom of the international hierarchies, and their subordination to the EU as the EU’s others.

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonial feminist theory
• hierarchies
• hypermasculinity
• migration
• Hungary
• Turkey

Introduction

Images of a wee boy’s body found face down in a Turkish holiday resort of Bodrum on 2 September 2015 sent shockwaves through Europe. Alan Kurdi, a two-year-old Syrian child, drowned while fleeing with his family from the Syrian town of Kobani. They were aiming to reach Germany by travelling through Turkey, Greece and Hungary. He was one of 12 people who died when their boat capsized. His small body became the symbol of the human tragedy unfolding on the shores of Europe. Meanwhile, those who managed to reach the Serbian-Hungarian border on their way to Germany or Sweden were forced by local authorities to remain in Hungary. Images of the clashes between the people on the move and locals reached the international media, along with footage of those who decided to walk through the Hungarian countryside and were forced to camp at a train station in Budapest. Through this, Hungary and Turkey became embroiled in the tragedies of people trying to move across Europe.

Existing scholarly work on what came to be known as the “European refugee crisis” has examined how the crisis rhetoric produced policy changes.¹ Firstly, it allowed the Hungarian government, led by Viktor Orbán, to justify building a barbed wire fence along the border with Serbia. The aim of this was to securitise migration and the border in the name of providing security for Hungarians and Europe, and to maintain political power through fear (Futak-Campbell 2021). Secondly, it enabled Hungary to close borders and remove the little infrastructure it had to process asylum applications (Feischmidt 2020). These measures also turned local communities against the people migrating through these borders (Futak-Campbell forthcoming). Thirdly, it enabled deals to be made between the EU and transit route countries like Turkey. Turkey since 1995 has been framed by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) as a transit country, facilitating mobility flows between Africa, Asia and Europe (IOM 1995, p. 4).² Despite significant numbers of migrants passing through Poland, Austria, Italy and France in this same period, none of these countries have been labelled as transit countries (Düvell 2012, p. 418). This reveals how political migration is.

The existing literature on the refugee “crisis” has paid limited attention to gender and postcolonial examinations of it. Our aim is to redress this. We do this by examining the role gendered and (post)colonial dynamics played in framing and shaping migration policies in reaction to the refugee “crisis”; and looking at what role Europe's colonial past and postcolonial present still play in European security. This is done by tracing how colonial and gendered logics are reversed and weaponised against the EU by two of its others: Hungary and Turkey. Doing so, this article directly links to the themes explored in this Special Issue that EU security can only exist through the relations and histories the EU have with others (Hoijtink et al. 2023, p. 4). We examine Hungary and Turkey’s leaders’ responses to the EU’s handling of the “crisis” in order to raise questions about how these countries determine domestic and foreign policy through migration, and how these actors, along with the EU, co-constitute the current international hierarchy. While postcolonial feminist scholars in IR have written about different aspects of migration, such as migrant sex workers and domestic workers (Chang and Ling 2000, Agathangelou 2002), states and international organisations’ (like the EU) influence on refugee and migrant policies (see, among others, Kapur 2007, Freedman 2016, Bilgiç 2018, Welfens 2020), our specific aim is to unpack how migration impacts interstate relations. In doing so, we answer the question: what role do masculinist and postcolonial logics play in shaping states and regional refugee policy responses? We utilise the notions of masculinist and postcolonial anxieties, more precisely the concept of hypermasculinity, by tapping into the relationality between different actors in order to answer this question. By taking Turkey and Hungary as our case studies, we also engage with the burgeoning literature on hierarchies in world politics (Hobson and Sharman 2005, Donnelly 2006, Hobson 2014, Mattern and Zarakol 2016, Bilgin 2017, Zarakol 2017a) and specifically with the question on “how existing hierarchies shape actors or actor behaviour” (Zarakol 2017b, p. 10). We are contributing to the discussion on the ways in which hierarchical relations between core and peripheral states are (re)constructed through gendered discourses and practices (Ling 2002a, 2002b, Agathangelou and Ling 2004, Bilgiç 2016). In the following section, we weigh up how the two countries’ responses to the refugee “crisis” relate to their position at the lower strata of the current international hierarchical order and their desire to challenge and change it (Futak-Campbell and De Sauvage Nolting 2022; Hisarlıoğlu 2022). We show that these postcolonial dynamics are informed by a gendered understanding of world politics, as masculinisation and feminisation play significant roles in it.

As both countries played a central role in 2015 and 2016 when people were fleeing towards particular EU member states, migration was an important policy concern for Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We argue that their reliance on gendered rhetorics in responding to the EU’s policy towards refugees shows the anxieties and insecurities these leaders possess. Instead of challenging and changing the hierarchical structure of international relations, as they claim to be doing, we contend that they only seek a higher status for themselves in world politics. They in effect reproduce the dominant colonial and gendered understandings of the current hierarchical system, that in turn subordinates Hungary and Turkey vis-à-vis Europe and confirms their places as the EU’s others.

We proceed in three sections. First, we consider what a postcolonial feminist framework can offer to better understand the 2015–2016 migration “crisis”. We argue that the concept of “hypermasculinity” which arises from the intersection of masculinist and postcolonial anxieties provides significant insights. Second, we discuss our data and research method. Third, we focus on our two case studies: Hungary and Turkey. We identify three main responses, namely paternalism, (in)competency and protectorship. In this section, we discuss the ways in which these themes manifest themselves in Orbán’s and Erdoğan’s speeches. We argue that both leaders used the migration “crisis” to assert themselves and use their roles to gain domestic and international recognition for their leadership and through highlighting the EU’s failure to respond to the “crisis”.

A postcolonial-feminist framework to examine the refugee “crisis”

Postcolonial approaches in IR are interested in revealing the persistence of colonial relations of power. From this theoretical perspective, such relations (re)produce various material and ideational hierarchies which, in turn, “create the actors of world politics and/or their repertoires for action” and “produce the boundaries that define who and what belongs where in world politics” (Zarakol 2017b, p. 7). Particularly important for this article are ideational hierarchies. According to Pinar Bilgin, ideational hierarchies deny some actors the power to shape “their own portrayal in world politics” (Bilgin 2017, p. 1). This denial stems from these actors being represented as below a particular “civilisational” level (Blaney and Inayatullah 2008). In addition, ideational hierarchies revolve around drawing a distinction between the “West” and “non-West”, where the latter is associated with traits such as being irrational, barbaric, subjective, weak, emotional or in need of protection. According to feminist scholars, hierarchies are highly gendered. Positions and powers within the hierarchical system are distributed on the basis of masculine and feminine associations. For example, the feminisation of a state can be a strategy “to subordinate enemies, firm up hierarchies, and communicate messages of dominance and superiority” (Sjoberg 2017, p. 104). Spike Peterson argues that feminisation of the other also absorbs the established hierarchies in world politics, as “invoking the “natural” inferiority of the feminine plays a powerful, though not exhaustive, role in legitimating these hierarchies” (Peterson 2010, p. 19). This is made possible through “the denigration of feminised qualities attributed to those who are subordinated (lacking reason, agency, control, etc.)” (Peterson 2010, p. 19). That being said, the politics of masculinity always remain “a contested field of power moves and resistances, rather than being construed as a fixed set of power relations” (Hooper 2001, p. 39, Connell 2005). Various masculinities coexist and interact with one another in world politics. During their interaction, some become dominant, while others are relegated to the margins. Such interactions, as we will see in the context of Hungary and Turkey, enable actors at different places within the hierarchies to mobilise masculinity and femininity to (re)negotiate their positions in world politics.

Postcolonial feminist IR focuses on the constitutive role femininity and masculinity play in shaping colonial power relations and the postcolonial present. Scholars using this approach reveal how the feminisation of the (formerly) colonised states and societies, through rendering them as weak or in need of help, has worked to establish and maintain (post)colonial hierarchies. Given this, postcolonial feminist approaches in IR “work to expose narratives of “civilization”, “domestication” and “growth” as forms of oppression” (Agathangelou and Turcotte 2016, p. 41). From this perspective, gendering and racialising the other, “that is, to sexualize the relationship between a masculinized, dominant West and its feminised, subordinated Other” (Han and Ling 1998, p. 59) has been constitutive of colonial relations and domination. As Ling (1999, p. 285) put it:

biological males (the “native man”), masculinized conventions (“Third World state”), and even socioeconomic systems (“developing economies”) can be feminized if they are viewed and treated as backward, weak, or poor – traits conventionally associated with femininity. Conversely, biological females (“corporate executive”), as well as feminine configurations (“family”) and socioeconomic systems (“developed economy”), may be masculinized through a similar conceptual process in which they are characterized as progressive, powerful, or rich.

Hypermasculinity can thus help us study the behaviours of both the “coloniser” and “colonised”, the impact their behaviour has on the hierarchical world order and in our case, on the relationship between Hungary, Turkey and the EU. Following Nandy (1983),³ Ling expanded the concept of hypermasculinity to analyse topics such as the international political economy (Ling 2002a, 2002b), globalisation (Ling 1999) and security (Agathangelou and Ling 2004). In these studies, hypermasculinity is defined as “a reactionary stance” that “arises when agents of hegemonic masculinity feel threatened or undermined, thereby needing to inflate, exaggerate, or otherwise distort their traditional masculinity” (Agathangelou and Ling 2004, p. 519). Hypermasculinity is therefore different from hegemonic masculinity (Connell 2005). The latter refers to “a tradition of masculinity that society has perpetuated historically and culturally, the former takes form in reaction to challenges to hegemonic masculinity” (Ling 2002b, p. 139). In other words, “where hegemonic masculinity serves as an ideal, hypermasculinity arises when that ideal is threatened or jeopardized” (Ling 2001, p. 1089). In the Hungarian and Turkish contexts, both Orbán and Erdoğan represent hegemonic masculinity, which they have turned into hypermasculinity: both leaders have made it their life’s work to undo what they consider to be historical wrongs imposed on their countries by global actors.

Hypermasculinity thus emerges at an intersection of postcolonial and masculinist anxieties among those who feel historically emaciated. Following Krishna (1999, p. xix), postcolonial anxieties refer to “mimetic constructions”, anxious efforts by elites in the global peripheries to fashion their nations “in the image of what are considered successful nation-states” by the West. Their aim is to prove that their states are “as good as” the West, motivated by an “ever-present desire to emulate but also resist the Western other” (Vieira 2018, p. 142). Resulting from their colonial past, this anxiety continues to inform contemporary foreign policy practices and is central to the construction of the postcolonial hierarchical order. Furthermore, postcolonial anxieties also exist in countries that were never formally colonised but which were “nevertheless caught up in hierarchies that were built and sustained during the age of colonialism and beyond” (Bilgin 2017, pp. 7–8). This is true of our two case studies: while neither Hungary nor Turkey were formally colonised, they both act within the postcolonial hierarchical order.

Masculine anxieties emerge when actors feel they are failing to perform masculine roles and losing their ability to dominate. For Meghana Nayak, migration is one policy area where such masculinist anxieties manifest themselves. States manage these anxieties “through gendered categorizations of migrants” such as classifying them as “threats” or “being in need of masculinized protection” (Nayak 2019, pp. 194–196). As such, there is always a gendered dynamic at play in order to demonstrate power. A powerful state has to both protect and provide, to be “manly” and “strong enough to defend borders against threats from ‘bad’ migrants’ […], yet valiant enough to extend protection to vulnerable migrants in need of defence from persecution” (Nayak 2019, p. 197). Only through doing both can a state be perceived as masculine and civilised, and exercise control over its own sovereignty.

Postcolonial and masculine anxieties of states arise relationally, through states’ “interactions with each other” (Go and Lawson 2017, p. 23). Following Go and Lawson (2017, pp. 23–24), we use relationalism as opposed to substantialism. The latter takes actors (nations, cultures or states) in world politics as static entities and having unchanging substances or essences. Whereas relationalism is based on the argument that what is taken as essential characteristics of actors are in fact constructed through their interactions with others. The centrality of relationality for postcolonial feminist scholarship, as Geeta Chowdhry and L.H. M. Ling (2018, p. 12) argue, is the way “opposites never remain separate and distinct … but always engage each other in dynamic interaction” and the kind of power relations emerge as a result of these dynamics. Hypermasculinity is therefore a relational concept that emerges as a state reacts to the actions of another state. Consider, for instance, Turkey. The roots of its anxieties can be traced back to the Ottomans’ encounters with European powers (Bilgin 2012). Europeans depicted the Ottoman Empire as the “Sick Man of Europe” (Zarakol 2011), who failed to comply with the civilisational standards expected from non-Western actors hoping to join international society (Bilgin 2012, p. 65). The internalisation of these standards led to the emergence of postcolonial anxieties (Bilgin 2012). Keeping up with Europe became vital for the Ottomans, and later for Turkey. In the early days of the Republic, the country was “driven by the overwhelming aim of joining the community of civilized nations” and “of escaping the stigmatization of backwardness, barbarity, and Easternness” (Zarakol 2011, pp. 114–115). Through this, the newly established Republic aimed to eliminate any justification for future interventions by European states and to achieve sovereignty (Bilgin and Bilgiç 2012, p. 112). These hierarchical relations still shape Turkey’s foreign and domestic politics today (Çapan and Zarakol 2019) and Europe remains both “a source of inspiration” as well as “anxiety” for Turkey (Bilgin and Bilgiç 2012). In addition to postcolonial anxieties, gendered dynamics also play a significant role in shaping Turkey’s policies, as well as its relations with the West (Bilgiç 2016).

Hungary is equally caught up in these hierarchies, albeit differently. Fighting off Ottoman domination, as well as being subjected in turn to Habsburg and Soviet rule, is a big part of Hungary's history. It is comparable to the internal colonialism experienced by the four nations of the British island (Hechter 1975), by the Soviet Union after the forced collectivisation of its peasantry by Stalin (Gouldner 1977, p. 25) or by the exclusion of the Balkans from Europe by European powers (Baker 2018). During the dual monarchy period (1867–1918), Hungary felt relegated to a permanent second-rate status. Hungary now applies this second-rate status to ethnic Hungarians living in neighbouring states such as Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania and Serbia. This is in similar vein what Boatcă (2012) calls multiple Europes. She claims that there are temporal, spatial and ontological hierarchical divisions within what is an assumed European unity. For her however, there are three Europes: decadent (Spain, Portugal), heroic (Britain, France) and epigonal (the Balkans). For our analysis, the two latter are most relevant. Heroic Europe is deemed the producer of modernity’s and of Europe’s main achievements, whereas epigonal Europe lacks these achievements and is positioned as a mere re-producer of and aspiring to be like heroic Europe. Central and Eastern Europe in general, and Hungary in particular, fits the epigonal Europe label by being positioned on the periphery of Europe and striving to be like it. These labels have also been applied by Capan and dos Reis (2023, p. 3) in their attempt to break “Europe” down to different hierarchies and colonial images within Europe. Their focus on West/East or modern/traditional Europe considers German expansion to Prussia and Poland as justified within Europe. In turn, they claim Europe not being a unified space but rather a space of colonial hierarchies. This hierarchy has historically been exerted onto, but also by, Hungary. Now it feels dominated by the EU.⁴ This changing positionality between being the subject and the hegemon, being part of the West, but neither being fully accepted nor fully othered by it, demonstrates the relevance of relationality in explaining Hungary’s behaviour. It also makes a case to examine countries like Hungary through a postcolonial lens. Through its behaviour, Hungary actively participates in upholding pre-existing colonial power structures.⁵ Given these discussions, combining postcolonial and feminist approaches to unpack Hungary and Turkey’s responses to the refugee “crisis” allows us to better understand their postcolonial and masculine anxieties and their positionality vis-à-vis the EU.

Research approach

Our data includes speeches by Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on migration and the refugee “crisis”, and policy documents of their respective governments. We collected these texts from the website dedicated to Prime Minister Orbán⁶ and from his YouTube channel⁷; as well as from the President of the Republic of Turkey’s website.⁸ Our time frame is between August 2015 and October 2016, or the period between the beginning of the “crisis” and the Hungarian referendum on the introduction of EU refugee quotas on 2 October 2016. We collected around 250 speeches from each premier which focused specifically on migration and border security. Owing to the large data set and the limits on the journal's word count, the list of speeches featured in this article is available as a supplementary document.

We apply critical discourse analysis (CDA) as our analytical framework. CDA enables us to focus on the context in which discursive practices take place and on the relationship between discursive practices and power (Wodak 2001, pp. 1–2). It allows us to examine discursive strategies employed in narratives and to trace key patterns in our data (Aydın-Düzgit 2013). CDA also allows us to identify the binaries outlined in the texts, helping us locate the characteristics attributed to the EU in direct opposition to the way the Hungarian and Turkish leaders characterise themselves. These binaries “remain widely circulated and accepted as legitimate ways to categorise regions and peoples of the world”, while also warranting and justifying certain practices and policies (Doty 1996, p. 3). Identifying these binaries thus enables us to unpack the actors’ responses.

Paternalism, (in)competency and protectorship

“We are defending Europe”, is the phrase that greets anyone visiting Viktor Orbán’s “personal” website.⁹ Orbán’s relationship with Europe is complicated. Describing himself as a freedom fighter as a young politician, who campaigned to bring communism and Soviet military occupation to an end, Orbán was previously pro-EU. Since his 2010 re-election, however, he has chosen to build a patriotic government to defend the Hungarian nation, Christian freedom, and Europe: “We want a Hungarian Hungary and a European Europe. This is only possible if we also affirm that we want a Christian Hungary in Christian Europe” (Doty 1996, p. 3). This saviour mentality explains Orbán’s handling of the refugee “crisis”. It also informed his disapproval of the EU’s response.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had a similar stance. Starting from a pro-EU position when he took office in 2002, he gradually became “Euro-sceptic”, then “anti-European” (Güney 2022). In the process, Erdoğan built up Turkey’s image as a key regional actor (Kinacioğlu 2021) within the Islamic world (Küçük 2018, Futak-Campbell and De Sauvage Nolting 2022); in the Global South (Küçük and Dikmen-Alsancak 2022) and arguably even as a great power (Demirtas-Bagdonas 2014). This image shaped Erdoğan’s handling of the refugee “crisis”.

We identified three main patterns in Orban’s and Erdoğan’s responses to the “crisis”. These are paternalism, (in)competency and protectorship. As we examine below, each leader put forward different claims utilising these themes. It is also important to note that even though we examine each pattern separately, there are crucial overlaps and connections between them.

Paternalism

Michael Barnett argues that paternalism is a form of international hierarchy that builds on principles of care and power. It is having “the authority to improve the lives of those who they judge to be unable to act in their own best interests” (Barnett 2017, p. 66). Portraying their states in a paternal light has been a recurring theme for both Orbán and Erdoğan during the refugee “crisis”, while depicting the EU as weak (Orbán) or inhumane (Erdoğan). Orbán’s paternal authority comes from positioning Hungary as the defender of the Hungarian and European ways of life, the guardian against the threats refugees and Islam supposedly pose, which the EU fails to protect Hungary and Europe from. Erdoğan’s paternal authority manifests itself in Turkey acting as “the elder brother” of oppressed (predominantly Muslim) nations because, Erdoğan argues, the EU clearly lacks the humanity to help refugees.

Paternalism, both as a concept and as a practice, is informed by particular gendered logics. It derives from the word pater (father) and how “fatherhood is seen as an aloof, guiding-by-example, no-room-for-error sort of leadership that comes with the assumptions that masculinity is independent, strong, and regimented” (Sjoberg 2017, p. 110). In this vein, the analysis below provides a gendered understanding of the EU’s handling of the refugee “crisis” by Orbán and Erdoğan. In constructing their paternal authority, both leaders resort to binary oppositions between their countries and the EU. They depict the EU as lacking paternal traits, and therefore lacking masculinity. Given the hierarchical relations between these actors where the EU is positioned at the top, this first response represents an example of Hungarian and Turkish hypermasculinity.

Hungary

Orbán (2016d) reiterated that the Hungarian government was “ready to ensure the protection of political refugees”, but that “we must also protect Europe’s borders from immigrants” insisting on the paternalistic vision of protecting the weak from a barbarous other. He called for the EU not to allow member states to pick and choose migrants while asking others to redistribute the rest. To him, this approach reflected the inadequacy of the weak, leftish, politically correct EU migration policy, which obliged all member states to accept a given number of migrants through a quota system. Hungary, he asserted, was ready to step up and protect a Hungarian, and European, way of life.

Orbán (2015a) warned that migrants “could occupy Hungary – something not unprecedented in our history – or they could introduce communism”. He went as far as claiming that Muslims could make Hungarians a minority in their own country (Orbán 2015b). Through this othering of Muslims, he projected himself as the saviour of Hungarian and European civilisation. He also reflected on the strain and fear migrants allegedly put on local communities:

We must serve the people, and the people are worried – they are filled with fears. They see the situation around Keleti Railway Station. You can imagine what the people who live in that area must be thinking when they send their children off to school in the morning. There are risks of infectious disease, and of masses of migrants who are unwilling to cooperate and are increasingly aggressive. (Orbán 2015b)

On 15 March 2016, he criticised the EU’s weakness in not offering Hungary protection during the “crisis”. He asserted: “Europe is not free. Freedom starts with stating the truth. And the truth cannot be spoken in Europe. It is forbidden to say that not refugees, but economic migrants are threatening Europe” (Orbán 2016b). It is also forbidden, he claimed, to challenge the EU’s humanitarian migration policy.

We will not be forced to allow the EU’s cosmopolitan migration policy, we will not import anti-Semites who burn our synagogues, criminals, terrorists, homophobes. There will be no lawless neighbourhoods, no migrant riots, no bedlam, and there will be no migrant gangs hunting for our wives and daughters. (Orbán 2016b)

This very traditional demonstration of paternal authority points to a gendered dynamic of having to protect “our” white women from savage brown men who would hunt them down like animals. This of course also portrays Hungarian women as helpless damsels in need of saving. Orbán stated that he had finally woken Europeans “who are dozing in prosperity” up to the realisation that Europeans are “in imminent danger” (Orbán 2016b).

While Orbán saw the EU-Turkey Statement as an important step towards solving the refugee “crisis”, he used the period leading up to the agreement to accuse the EU of weakness and of “begging Erdoğan submissively for security on our borders, in exchange for money and promises, because we can’t protect ourselves” (Orbán 2016e). Once the negotiations were over and the agreement signed, he turned his attention to the European Commission’s plan to introduce migrant quotas. He employed the language of war in his Brussels press statement and reaffirmed that Hungary was ready to fight with “political, intellectual and legal armoury” against the EU’s humanitarian migration policy and quotas (Orbán 2016c). Although Orbán believed that Hungarians were set to vote no in record numbers on 2 October, the referendum was ultimately declared invalid due to low voter turnout. Not enough voters were mobilised by Orbán’s relentless claims that Hungary alone stood up against migrants and against the EU’s weak migration policy, and that he alone possessed the required paternal authority to manage this “crisis”.

Turkey

Claiming that the EU lacked a humane response towards refugees and that it focused only on its own interests is one of the ways Erdoğan constructed his paternal authority during the refugee “crisis”. He insisted that the EU remained indifferent to “the plight of refugees” who “suffer all kinds of ill-treatment” (Erdoğan 2016a). He claimed that the EU actively contributed to refugees’ misery by leaving them to “die in the Mediterranean”, by allowing them to be persecuted at the border (2015a), and by “confiscating their property, money, and even their children’s jewellery” (2016b).¹⁰ In contrast, Turkey prioritised the “safety, peace, and the future” of Syrians (2015b). For Erdoğan, the EU’s failure to accept refugees while Turkey applied a long-held open-door policy made Turkey “the voice of global conscience” and the saviour of “the dignity of humanity” (Erdoğan 2016c). This, he argued, showed that while countries with fewer resources face up to the “problem of migration and refugees”, the EU and its affluent member states are hypocrites. They are not prepared to compromise their own “comfort”, nor provide help for refugees (Erdoğan 2016d).

There are normative implications to this false virtue. According to Erdoğan (2016e), the EU became an actor “in conflict with” its own values and principles. “Those who penned the declaration of human rights failed the test of humanity”, Erdoğan said, (2016f) and “have turned their backs on the same values today” (Erdoğan 2015c). He also declared that “the right to life, democracy, and freedoms, which are accepted as the most basic rights for the citizens of Western countries, are seen as a luxury for the Syrian people” (Erdoğan 2015d). Selectiveness was also a major concern. Only admitting Christian refugees while excluding those of other religions (Erdoğan 2015e) and claiming to advocate for women’s rights while remaining “silent as hundreds of thousands of women lost their lives with their children in Syria” (Erdoğan 2016g) were listed as examples of the EU’s insincerity. Such hypocrisies demonstrate a lack of masculinity through not being a “man of his word” and not meeting “manly” expectations.

Erdoğan thereby positioned Turkey as the diametrical opposite of the EU: a caring, paternalistic state with a humane refugee policy. This, Erdoğan claimed, was part and parcel of Turkey’s civilisation, based on Islamic values. Here, the Arabic concept of Ansar (helper) was a frequently utilised religious reference. Ansar refers to the people of Medina, who supported the Prophet Mohammad and Muslims (muhajirun or migrants) who migrated there from Mecca, a city that at the time was under pagan control (Kaya 2016, p. 7, also see Korkut 2016). Turkey, through treating refugees like an Ansar opening its doors to those in trouble (Erdoğan 2015f), could describe itself as a “member of the civilization of compassion” (Erdoğan 2015g).

These deeds enabled Turkey to act as a moral authority and save refugees who have been victimised by Europeans. Turkey became “a guide” and a “source of hope” for the “oppressed nations”, “victims” and “Muslims” (Erdoğan, 2016h) from “Palestine to Syria, from Libya to Yemen, from Africa to South Asia” (Erdoğan, 2016i), particularly in the face of rising “Islamophobia” and “racism” in Europe (Erdoğan, 2015h). What we see here is the notion of brotherhood, which constitutes one of the defining characteristics of masculinity in Turkey (Keskin 2018), being introduced to the international sphere.

In short, both in the case of Hungary and Turkey, exercising moral authority has been linked to theological and humanist desires to help (Barnett 2017, p. 77). These paternalistic acts (towards Europeans, or towards refugees), however, also cast doubt on the competence of those being helped.

(In)Competence

Both Orbán and Erdoğan questioned the EU’s competency in handling the refugee “crisis” by calling the EU incapable and cowardly, while simultaneously praising their own respective countries for their bravery. What we see here is a two-dimensional gendered logic. On the one hand, the depictions of Hungary and Turkey link them to “strength, power, autonomy, independence, and rationality, all typically associated with men and masculinity” (Tickner 1992, p. 3). Orbán and Erdoğan feminise the EU by arguing that they lack these traits. These attributes can be seen as the reaction of subordinate actors (Hungary and Turkey) against a dominant actor (the EU) treating them as a “zone of lack”, or as being “in need of aid and tutelage” (Krishna 2018, p. 24). The logic of “I lead, you follow” (Ling 2002b, pp. 119–121) that shapes the discourses and actions of hegemonic actors towards subordinates was here reversed by Orbán and Erdoğan, and consequently exemplifies a hypermasculine response.

Hungary

Orbán (2015c) reaffirming his authority over borders and portraying himself as the only person able to provide security enabled him to be framed as a competent leader. “Hungarians are protecting the borders of the European Union over hundreds of kilometres without any major contribution from the EU, but only hostility” (Orbán 2015c). He repeatedly stated his doubts regarding the EU’s ability to “defend itself, to provide for its own security and overcome the migrant crisis” (Orbán 2016f). Furthermore, Orbán (2016a) argued that the EU’s lack of competence in managing the “crisis” had an impact on its role as a global actor. Since its “worst possible response to the migration crisis by the European Commission”, he posited that the EU’s role would be “downgraded to a regional player” (Orbán 2016f). For Orbán, one way for the EU to regain its leading position in global politics would be to openly link migration to terrorism. Clarifying this position and clearly defining the EU’s objectives is what would, according to Orbán (2016g), elevate the EU’s international standing.

Hungary's position was clear. Illegal migration should be halted, and refugee camps and asylum centres should be set up beyond Europe’s borders. Orbán promoted externalising EU asylum policy (2016e) as the only way to manage migration to Europe. In his view, this would alleviate the pressure on member states and discourage migrants from continuing their journey (despite this violating their human rights). Orbán was vindicated through the EU-Turkey agreement, as well as through agreements made with Libya (European Commission 2017) and Morocco (European Union 2017). As previously stated, Orbán believed that the EU’s focus on “forced settlement” and “mandatory quotas” demonstrated incompetence and an inability to handle the “crisis” (Orbán 2016e). In contrast, Hungary took control by putting forward its own proposals to protect its borders (Orbán 2017) and by being “one of the first and most outspoken proponents of working with Turkey to better manage the migration crisis” (Orbán 2016b).

Turkey

According to Erdoğan, the EU simply could not handle the mobility of Syrians effectively. For him, “it is a fact that European politics is stuck” in realising a coherent policy for migrants and refugees (Erdoğan 2016j). Despite their “assertive economies”, European countries found themselves “in dire straits” (Erdoğan 2015h). Mobilising feminised and masculinised character traits, he deemed the EU “irrational”, i.e. feminine, as it neither “listened to” nor “followed” Turkey’s policy recommendations. It was “cowardly”, thus not “manly enough” as it failed to take action on the refugees, in contrast with Turkey’s “manly behaviour”.

Turkey has been heavily involved in the Syrian civil war from the start. Its contribution was initially diplomatic, focused on denouncing Assad’s regime and its brutal reactions to the protestors. Later, it launched a military response. Erdoğan was critical of the EU’s reluctance to follow Turkey’s lead in taking a resolute stance against Bashar Al-Assad (Erdoğan 2016k, 2016l). According to him, the EU failed to stay “moderate” and “cold-blooded” in the face of problems, unlike Turkey (Erdoğan 2016m). If the West had only “listened to Turkey”, migration toward the EU could have been stopped, he insisted (Erdoğan 2016n, 2016o). Erdoğan later used similar arguments to justify its military operations in Syria, the first of which (operation “Euphrates Shield”) took place in 2016–2017.

The gendered notion of “cowardice” was extended to the EU for failing to take action, in stark contrast with Turkey’s “bravery”. While Turkey had been hosting millions of refugees for years, European countries started “panicking when a few hundred thousand refugees reached their borders” (Erdoğan, 2015a); when the EU was “discussing how to distribute 20,000 […] among 28 countries”, Turkey was “setting up camps for 20 thousand people in a week” (Erdoğan, 2015c).¹¹

Erdoğan further implied that even though Europe had a responsibility in the Syrian conflict, particularly considering its history of colonialism, it was not brave enough to deal with consequences. He claimed that Europe’s behaviour in Syria was an example of “the remnant mentality of slavery and the colonial period” (Erdoğan 2016p). “Those who drown this region in blood and fire cannot show the same endurance when this fire touches them”, he taunted (Erdoğan, 2016q). As a result, “the whole of Europe trembles, they are all afraid” – unlike Turkey, which “successfully” dealt with “the threats plaguing the world” (Erdoğan 2016r).

For both Orbán and Erdoğan, emphasising the EU’s incompetency was a significant example of a hypermasculine response. Through it, they reversed the criticisms they were receiving from the EU about their inability to comply with the Union’s standards (Ozcurumez and Şenses 2011, p. 243, Batory 2016). Yet the question remains as to why these leaders decided to act. This brings us to the last binary we identified in their speeches: the protector vs. the one in need of protection.

Protectorship

Orbán and Erdoğan’s responses to the EU’s handling of the refugee “crisis” highlighted their vision of Hungary and Turkey as being protection providers and the EU as being in need of protection. Through this, both leaders were reacting to the EU’s disapproval of their leaderships and of the direction they had been taking their countries in. Since this disapproval threatens their masculinity, utilising the protector/in need of protection binary in the context of migration gave them an opportunity to reverse these dynamics, thus constituting an instance of hypermasculinity.

Hungary

For Orbán, had it not been for Hungary fulfilling its obligations concerning illegal migration, “Europe would have fallen by now” (Orbán 2016d). During a press conference, Orbán (2016h) also claimed that Hungary implementing strict border protection measures was not “reinventing the wheel” but simply doing “what is done in more sober parts of the world from the US to Israel: we protected Hungary and with it the European Union’s borders”.

Providing protection for Hungary and for Europe fits well with the saviour narrative Orbán has constructed for himself both publicly¹² and privately.¹³ As a leader, Orbán claims that “[f]ailing in one’s mission may be heroic, but there is no joy in it. Fulfilling a mission, while guiding one’s country to success, freedom and prosperity is no less heroic; and it is also a source of joy”.¹⁴ Having “heroic” and “manly” qualities also means standing up to Europe to protect it. In his 2016 national address on the Memorial Day of the 1848 Revolution, Orbán declared:

We will not allow others to tell us who to let into our house and our country, with whom we should live with, with whom we share our country. We know how that goes. (Orbán 2016b)

His last phrase was a reference to the events that led to the 1848 Revolution. This reference had two purposes. First, it aimed to reignite old fears of losing independence, which are deeply ingrained into the country’s memory. The celebration of the National Memorial Day usually includes a commemoration of the “thirteen martyrs of Arad”, the Hungarian generals who turned against the Austrian army and were executed for fighting for Hungary’s independence. The annual reminder of losing sovereignty despite armed resistance reinforces and legitimates Orbán’s continual call to not give in to the EU, this new imperial state that is robbing Hungarians of their sovereignty. Second, it aimed to frame Orbán as the only person that could prevent such a thing from happening again. The speech further promised not to give into EU blackmail:

First we allow them to tell us who to accept, then we are forced to be servants of strangers in our own country, up until these outsiders will tell us to leave. (Orbán 2016b)

Orbán continued to inspire fear by evoking hypothetical outcomes of EU migration quotas and the impact they would have on Hungarians. It is important to take note of Orbán’s positioning of Hungary vis-à-vis the EU. Through this insider-outsider outlook Orbán situated Hungary as the EU’s other, a completely unacceptable position that only he, as a responsible leader, could resolve. Throughout and following the “crisis”, Orbán continued to make references to “responsible leaders” who would not ignore the issues surrounding migrants:

We know for a fact that terrorist organizations have exploited Europe’s porous borders to move in and out of the EU. The Hungarian example shows that “if there is a will, there is a way” to control illegal immigration. (Orbán 2017)

He also claimed “we are seeing a growing number of EU member states coming around to that common-sense view” that “Europe is full”, he concluded (Orbán 2016g).

Turkey

Erdoğan’s strategy was to portray the EU as in need of protection, with Turkey in the role of its protector. Without Turkey’s help, the EU would have failed to manage its security during the “crisis”. What mainly informs such reactions are the arguments revolving around the EU-Turkey Statement. Signed in March 2016, this agreement aimed to stop irregular migrants reaching Greece and to return such individuals to Turkey.¹⁵ In return, the EU was supposed to transfer six billion euros to them for the improvement of refugee conditions, and to grant Turkish nationals visa-free travel to the EU.

In Erdoğan’s eyes, Turkey became the cornerstone of protection provision for the EU (Erdoğan 2016s). In an interview for France 24, Erdoğan declared that in spite of EU member states’ biases against Turkey, it “became a shield to Europe” (Erdoğan 2016t) by hosting millions of refugees in its territory. Despite this, the EU and Erdoğan continually criticised each other on the implementation of the agreement. While the EU complained about implementation delays (Antypas and Yildiz 2018) and Erdoğan’s threats of re-opening Turkey’s borders (Kirişçi 2021), Turkey lambasted the EU for not having delivered the agreed-upon funds to Turkey. “They are not sincere”, Erdoğan accused (2016u):

Whatever we promised regarding refugees, we stand by our word. But now I'm asking Europe, did you stand by your word? (Erdoğan 2016v)

This allowed Erdoğan to make a case for Turkey’s autarky and ability to protect both refugees and the EU through its own means. Erdoğan argued that despite the EU’s lack of assistance, Turkey remained in control of the refugees by relying on its “local and national resources” (Erdoğan, 2016w), on its own “might” and “strength” (Erdoğan 2016x). These claims, in turn, gave way to two gendered depictions based on an idealised “manhood”: the EU is not “a man of its word”, while Turkey, an “independent” and “powerful” state, was.

The EU’s failure to grant visa-free travel for Turks only gave Erdoğan more ammunition. The EU used Turkey’s anti-terrorism laws to justify not complying with its pledge. Asserting that anti-terrorism measures, which are Turkish domestic politics, should not be instrumentalised in this way, Erdoğan used the EU’s vulnerability to migration crises as a threat. Nothing would change in the lives of Turkish citizens if the EU does not grant them visa-free travels, Erdoğan (2016y) argued, “but I don't know if European countries can face up the condition that would emerge if millions of disappointed refugees who put their hopes on the agreement” arrived on Europe’s doorstep.

Threatening the EU with a potential migration crisis cemented Erdoğan’s perception of his protectoral authority over Turkey, refugees and Europe. For Orbán, his protectoral authority came from refusing to accept EU refugee quotas. Standing up against these proposals epitomised his vision of his heroic leadership and ability to protect Hungary as well as Europe. We argue that what these leaders truly demonstrated was their masculine and postcolonial anxieties, entangled in insecurities discussed in the previous section.

We argued that while feminist IR scholarship has long stressed the role “the myth of protection” plays in justifying and legitimising aggressive domestic and foreign policies by states (Tickner 2001), there has been little use of this theoretical position to explain state and regional responses to migration. The myth of protection is based on “the belief that men can and should protect women and children” and on associating “safety and control with masculinity and vulnerability and dependency with femininity” (Åse 2019, p. 273). The protector/protected binary has also been evoked in the context of postcolonial relations. To be an authority of any kind involves the right, or even the duty, to interfere for the good of others (Barnett 2017, p. 80). The assumed possession of such authority also comes with implied superiority. As such, claiming this authority offers a chance to those who have been relegated to subordinate positions to challenge their place within a given hierarchy.

Conclusion

Postcolonial feminist scholars have long stressed the role masculinist and postcolonial logics played in world politics. They have also emphasised the importance of relationality, the necessity of unpacking actors’ actions through their interactions with one another. In this article, we focused on the role masculine and postcolonial anxieties played in shaping Hungary’s and Turkey’s responses to the EU’s handling of the 2015–2016 refugee “crisis”. Our contribution is twofold. First, we argued that in an attempt to challenge their countries’ lower position within the international hierarchies, the leaders of Hungary and Turkey entangled their responses to the “crisis” in hypermasculine and postcolonial logics. By claiming paternal authority, questioning EU (in)competency, and insisting they were the only ones protecting Europe and the EU, they simply reproduced the dominant gendered and colonial understandings of these hierarchies, instead of challenging them. Second, we posit that because of this, they remained subordinate to the EU and reinforced their position as Europe/EU’s others. Furthermore, they have continued to co-constitute the hierarchical structure and re-confirmed their low status within it. Through our analysis of these two leaders’ speeches, we demonstrated that a relational understanding of the postcolonial and gendered dynamics and how they inform actors’ actions are at the core of the way they are shaping world politics. This is significant for three reasons. First, our analysis contributes to the burgeoning literature on hierarchies in world politics by pointing to the intersection of two non-material hierarchies: (post)colonial and gendered. Second, we demonstrate the importance of others and their responses to issues in world politics. In doing so, our aim was to go beyond a prevalent Eurocentric understanding that treats others as inconsequential for international relations. Finally, focusing on these responses helps us to understand the reproduction of existing hierarchies. In short, we drew attention to how those who claim to act in the name of rooting out hierarchies from world politics, shape, and are shaped by ideas that placed them in the bottom strata of the very hierarchies they claim to want to abolish.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Marie Curie Individual Fellowship [grant number 891768].

Notes

1 Scholars have questioned referring to it as a “crisis” see for example van Reekum (2016), Pallister-Wilkins (2016, 2022) and Futak-Campbell (2021).

2 Turkey has also become a destination country from the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

3 Nandy coined the term hypermasculinity with reference to the dynamics embedded in British colonialism in India.

4 Thesis #1 “We [Hungary] say no to a European Empire” https://primeminister.hu.

5 Hungary is not the only country in Central and Eastern Europe that had similar experiences of domination and dependency. Kušić (2021, p. 914) also observed similar patterns in the case of Southeast Eastern Europe (SEE).

6 https://2015-2019.kormany.hu/hu.

7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrwK5U5XlJ4.

8 https://www.tccb.gov.tr/en/.

9 https://primeminister.hu.

10 Erdoğan referred here to the controversial law introduced in Denmark requiring refugees to hand over their valuables to the Danish authorities in order to stay in the country. For an overview see: Bilefsky (2016).

11 In the year of 2015, the total number of refugees in Europe was 1.3 million (https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/08/02/number-of-refugees-to-europe-surges-to-record-1-3-million-in-2015/). In the same year, this number was 2.5 million for Turkey (https://en.goc.gov.tr/international-protection17; https://en.goc.gov.tr/temporary-protection27).

12 https://primeminister.hu/public-life.

13 https://primeminister.hu/personal-life.

14 https://primeminister.hu/public-life.

15 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/.

16 Full references to the cited speeches by Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can be found in the supplementary file.