Study of migration policies and practices in Türkiye: Reflecting on membership and sovereignty through law

Migration is a complex phenomenon necessitating the integration of various perspectives, assumptions, and levels of analysis. This dissertation explores the functioning, complexities, and repercussions of migration and the asylum domain by merging law and politics at the intersection of a country case. It takes the Turkish state, a massively targeted country by migratory flows throughout its history, as its center of analysis. It focuses first on the stated goals behind the Turkish legal framework with a historical legal analysis, second on their implementation by the state officials in charge equipped with the use of discretion, and third, on the repercussions of these laws and their implementation on the lives of the undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, resulting in legal violence. To this end, I analyze parliamentary minutes, in-depth interviews with police officers and migrants, newspaper articles, and secondary resources. By studying Turkish migration and asylum policies and practices until 2013, I contend that neither the state objectives of protecting national security, social cohesion, and economic efficiency are fulfilled nor the protection of individual rights of the migrants and asylum seekers. The unchanging result of the Turkish migration and asylum system is the perpetuation of a soft-on-the-outside, hard-on-the-inside approach reproducing a malaise of migration non-management, creating endlessly shadow individuals enduring legal violence.