An analysis of the debates on migration mobility in the German Parliament and TBMM in 2015 and 2016

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the nature of the debates on migration mobility in the German Parliament and the Turkish Grand National Assembly in the specified months of 2015 and 2016 within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. For this purpose, the parliamentary minutes of both countries are used as a data source. The attitudes of political parties and MPs in the Turkish Grand National Assembly and the German Parliament and their views on refugee mobility, the arguments used by political parties while expressing their views have been examined from a critical perspective within the framework of the possibilities offered by the Critical Discourse Analysis method. This study examines the continuities and ruptures between 2015, when the bar of social acceptance towards refugees was raised with arguments such as 'humanitarian values', 'EU values', 'solidarity', and 2016, when arguments such as 'refugees' involvement in crime rates', 'emerging security problems', 'cultural differences' were used more to limit refugee mobility, while placing the Memorandum of Understanding dated 18 March 2016, which was accepted by Turkey and the EU, at the centre of the study. The main subject of this study is how the issue was handled in the parliaments of both countries in 2015 when the migration mobility took place, one month before and one month after the agreement of 18 March 2016, which was accepted by the EU and Turkey to prevent the mentioned migration mobility. The main data source of this study are the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly and the German Parliament. The minutes of the parliamentary debates of both countries are available online. Analysing the course of migration mobility through parliamentary minutes offers researchers the opportunity to obtain information beyond the data available through print and visual media as an issue that shapes the relations between states, between EU countries, between the EU and non-EU countries and even the domestic politics of individual countries. Parliamentary minutes constitute the primary and fundamental sources for researchers who want to gain insight into the developments in the law-making process, political party positions and the arguments of MPs. On the other hand, when developments in the legislative body are considered together with social developments, it becomes easier to analyse the links and parallels between the two. The availability of all the minutes of parliamentary debates enables the periodical analysis of the continuities and changes in the policies pursued by political parties. In this study, parliamentary minutes have been analysed, coded and grouped under various headings using MAXQDA, a qualitative data research programme. Although there are studies that focus on the legislative body-centred developments on migration mobility by examining parliamentary minutes, there is a lack of comparative research on how the issue is handled in the parliaments of Turkey and Germany, which are the countries from which migration mobility originates and to which it is largely directed. Studies focusing on migration mobility in Turkey have traditionally focused on labour migration from Turkey to Germany and how Turkey-EU relations are affected by migration mobility. The study titled "Political Party Representation of Anti-Immigrant Attitudes: The Case of Turkey" (Balta, Elçi , & Deniz S., 2022) and "The Syrian refugee crisis through the lenses of Turkish political discourses: An analysis of deliberations in the Turkish Parliament" (Apaydın & Müftüler-Baç, 2022) can be given as examples of recent studies that monitor migration mobility through parliamentary debates. The original contribution of this thesis will be a comparative analysis of the debates on migration mobility in the Turkish Parliament and the German Parliament. In the summer of 2015, the migration of Syrian asylum seekers across the Aegean Sea to Greece constituted the largest migration movement of recent years. This march, which started in Turkey, largely ended in Germany. While Turkey was the country hosting the largest number of Syrian asylum seekers, Germany became the European country with the largest number of Syrian asylum seekers as a result of the migration movement in 2015. This event, which affected both countries intensely, has become one of the most frequently emphasised topics of political debates in German and Turkish public opinion. It has come to the forefront as an issue that has been widely covered in the written and visual media as well as in academia, protest marches and parliamentary debates. This mobility originating from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries has directly affected Turkey as a transit country as well as the Balkan, Central and Western European countries to which migration is directed. This impact not only played a role in shaping bilateral and unilateral relations, but also affected a wider area with the involvement of supranational actors such as the EU, the UN and NATO. In fact, this migration mobility even caused the erosion of the given positions of actors in national and international relations. In this process, cooperation and conflicts of interest between supranational actors and states have been witnessed. Migration mobility, which affects the domestic politics of countries as well as international balances, has made international issues the subject of local politics, while domestic-local political issues related to migration have also become the subject of international politics. In fact, the agreement signed between Turkey and the EU on 18 March 2016 stood out as an example of the intertwined demands of local and supranational political actors and the granting of concessions based on conditionality and dependency. EU member states, on the other hand, had difficulty in adopting a common position during this period, even though they had been working towards developing a common migration policy. As a result, individual countries took the initiative to implement their own policies within their own borders. In this period, Germany and Austria implemented an open door policy for a while and accepted refugees following the Balkan route. Border controls were tightened from time to time and a controlled border policy was followed in the form of tightening and loosening periodically. In 2015, the debates on refugee mobility in the German parliament were overwhelmingly in favor of refugees. All parties represented in the Bundestag generally supported the open-door policy of the German government. Compared to the German Parliament, the debates on refugee mobility in the Turkish Grand National Assembly in the summer of 2015 were weak in terms of both quantity and content due to the turbulent period Turkey was going through at the time. During the period between 7 June 2015 and 1 November 2015, when elections were held in Turkey, chaos prevailed. In the first general election held in 2015, no single party came to power and no coalition government was formed. Between the first general election in 2015 and the second general election on 1 November 2015, hundreds of people lost their lives in bombings. During this period, the Parliament met only nine times. In 2015, while in Germany, the destination country of the refugee movement, the issue was discussed in parliament in various aspects, it was discussed less in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, which is also due to the chaos in the country. In the German Parliament, Bundestag, while the government partners CDU/CSU and SPD put forward parallel arguments for accepting refugees in 2015, they started to produce restrictive arguments with the dominant discourse created in parallel with the changed migration policy in 2016. In 2015, the dominant discourse supported the acceptance of refugees to Germany with arguments such as 'we can succeed', 'EU values', 'right to protection', while in 2016, it is seen that the dominant discourse was determined by the topics such as 'economic migrants', 'crime rates', 'Germany's bearing the burden of refugees alone', 'security problems', 'Islamist terrorism'. As a result of this study, it is revealed that the arguments in favor of accepting refugees and the arguments in favor of reducing refugee mobility have existed independently of each other in every time period, but that these arguments have been brought forward or withdrawn from time to time in line with the periodic policy pursued. Moreover, it has been observed that the aforementioned contradictory policies are intertwined and the party policies are differentiated accordingly. For example, in 2016, securitization policies were emphasized in order to politically justify the changes in attitudes. In 2016, the human rights-based migration policy, which was emphasized in 2015, was replaced by a policy of strengthening the state authority as a center of legitimate violence by highlighting security problems. While the dominant discourse on refugee mobility in Germany was shaped in this manner, Turkey has experienced a different process, which can be compared with the dominant discourse in Germany in some aspects, but which also has its own unique characteristics stemming from its own dynamics. In 2015, refugee mobility, which did not find a place in the parliamentary debates in the chaotic environment mentioned above, remained on the agenda more intensely in 2016. As in Germany, migration mobility was placed in a new context in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Similar to the debates in the German Parliament, security-centered and crime-focused debates were also observed. While opposition MPs criticized the agreement signed with the EU, the debates on the refugee movement in the Turkish Grand National Assembly were overshadowed by the political events in and around the country. The opposition criticized the government's relationship with the EU over asylum seekers, claiming that Turkey's international reputation was being bargained in exchange for the funds to be provided by the EU. Critical discourse analysis method was used to analyse the parliamentary debates, which is the main subject of this research. The method developed by Teun van Dijk, one of the theorists of critical discourse analysis, offers various tools to analyse the attitudes of politicians, differences in political views and policy changes. ESA analyses the practices that marginalised groups such as blacks, foreigners, immigrants and refugees are exposed to, the formation of the dominant discourse, its impact on the practices of exclusion, the construction of authoritarian discourse and the role discourse plays in the construction and maintenance of social order. One of the most important findings of this study is the conclusion that the attitude towards migrant mobility is shaped periodically, and that periodic needs and the dominant discourse are decisive in the formation of the policies followed. In addition to this, it is revealed that in times of 'crisis' the given dominant discourse is invalidated and a new dominant discourse is constructed in accordance with the extraordinary conditions in order to shape the policy of the new period. It is observed that even supranational structures can abandon the values they used to construct their own identities. It is revealed to what extent it is possible to suspend the legal process, to disable the legislative bodies, and thus to eliminate democratic processes and functioning. In this thesis, firstly, the general framework of the study is drawn in order to enable the reader to get a general idea about the study under the introduction section. Firstly, in order to make the subject of the study more understandable, the general framework of the study is presented by giving introductory information about migration mobility. After briefly mentioning the causes and consequences of migration mobility and the general situation in the time period that is the subject of the research, the methodology is emphasised. In the second part, the migration regimes of Turkey and the EU are discussed and the developments in this regard are mentioned. After mentioning the process leading to the agreement signed between Turkey and the EU, the securitisation policies pursued by the EU to stop migration mobility are discussed. In the third section, political parties in Turkey and Germany and their approaches to migration policies are mentioned, and in the following sub-section, the nature of the debates on migration mobility in the German Parliament and the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 2015 are discussed under various headings. In the fourth section, the debates on the agreement in the parliaments of both countries in the period between one month before and one month after the agreement adopted on 18 March 2016 are also analysed under various subheadings. In the conclusion, the findings are presented and the debates in the parliaments of the two countries are evaluated comparatively.