Discourse analysis on Turkey's migration policy and securitization approach during the Justice and Development Party period (2002-2022)

Since 2011, the Syrian civil war has forced many Syrian migrants to seek refuge in Turkey. In the first years of the war, Turkey accepted Syrian migrants as guests and until 2016, the government adopted an open door policy and accepted Syrian migrants. However, with this policy, migration has become a serious security threat in Turkey, which has the largest mass of asylum seekers and migrants in the world. Therefore, the increasing number of asylum seekers and migrants in the country started to constitute a problem in the society and the government had to give up the open door policy due to the social, economic and security problems that emerged. This study examines the discourses of political leaders who were influential in Turkey's migration policy during the Justice and Development Party period on the securitization of migration within the framework of the relationship between migration and security. In the study, four political leaders who were influential in determining the migration policies of the period are selected as securitizing actors and their speeches are discussed. Document analysis is used as the data collection method. The speeches were obtained from the speech sections of the official websites of public institutions, online news websites and newspapers. The speeches are categorized into certain codes and analyzed with discourse analysis management