Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi gündeminde sınırlar: Bulgaristan (1989), Irak (1991) ve Suriye (2011-2013) kitlesel sığınma hareketleri üzerine tartışmaların incelemesi

This research examines the Turkish Parliament's border conceptualizations during the mass refugee flows. Analysing the states' border conceptualizations is significant to evaluate on their policies on migration, refugees, asylum-seekers and citizenship. The research aims to contribute to the theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented discussions on reception of refugees at the borders with the following main research question: How does and in which levels the Turkish state contextualize national borders during mass refugee flows? It provides a comparison between three mass refugee flows to Turkey, namely from Bulgaria in 1989, from Iraq in 1991 and from Syria in 2011-2013. Using the data from parliamentary minutes and in-depth interviews with key-bureaucrats, it makes a qualitative content analysis and creates a conceptual schema which reveals in which levels the state officials discuss borders. Most research analysing state policies in border and migration studies focus on secondary data based on laws and regulations. The novelty of the research is based on focusing on the policy-making processes and discussions on policy-making through analysing the parliamentary minutes.