As the world commemorates the 70th anniversary of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees this week, the global refugee picture continues to deteriorate. According to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2020 an additional 1.4 million individuals “sought protection outside their country of origin” despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel. The conflict in the Tigray province of Ethiopia, growing instability in Afghanistan, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cuba, as well as political repression in Myanmar and Hong Kong suggest that the trend will continue. This is at a time when commitment from the international community to supporting the terms of the convention is eroding. The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), adopted in December 2018, offers some innovative ideas that might help improve the picture, especially through responsibility sharing with countries hosting large numbers of refugees — but there is a need for a concerted multilateral effort to give those ideas impact. The United States under the Biden administration ought to lead this effort.

Globally, the number of refugees under the UNHCR’s mandate has doubled to 20.7 million from 10.4 a decade ago. This figure does not include the 5.7 million Palestinians cared for by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and 3.9 million Venezuelans displaced abroad. An estimated 76% of refugees find themselves in a protracted situation with little prospects of arriving at a durable solution in the form of voluntary return, resettlement, or local integration, as advocated by the convention.

Unresolved and persistent conflicts have long kept them from returning home. According to the UNHCR, only 3.9 million refugees were able to return to their homes between 2010 and 2019, compared to almost 10 million between 2000 and 2009 and 15.3 million in the 1990s. In 2020 this figure was only 250,951. Formal local integration in the form of citizenship has been a rarity —  there were only 33,746 refugee naturalizations in 2020. Resettlement, a pillar of the 1951 convention and of burden-sharing with countries hosting refugees, has not fared well either. In recent years, resettlement quotas have fallen significantly, leaving the UNHCR unable to meet its traditional goal of finding resettlement spots for at least 1% of the world’s refugee population. In 2019, 107,800 refugees were resettled in third countries; in 2020 only 34,400 were, with U.S. resettlements falling from 27,000 to 9,600.

The European migration crisis of 2015-16, when more than a million refugees of Syrian and other origins poured into the European Union via Turkey and other routes, jolted the international community to address the brokenness of the refugee protection system. Coverage of the humanitarian catastrophe and individual tragedies generated demand for action. Realization in Europe that the crisis risked threatening the very pillars of the EU and that this massive movement of refugees was at least partly due to the failure of burden-sharing “at an appropriate scale and in a timely fashion” contributed to motivating action.

It is against this background that the U.N. Summit for Refugees and Migrants was urgently organized in September 2016, paving the way to the eventual adoption of the GCR. The compact reiterates the importance of traditional durable solutions for achieving permanent protection for refugees by calling for the expansion of “access to third country solutions,” and “support conditions in countries of origin for return in safety and dignity.” But, in recognition of the protracted nature of most refugee situations around the world, it goes beyond the 1951 convention and calls for the international community to work together to improve the self-reliance of refugees and the resilience of their host communities by transforming refugees from a humanitarian burden to a development and economic opportunity. In particular, the GCR proposes that such a transformation be achieved by exploring the possibility of extending preferential trade arrangements “for goods and sectors with a high level of refugee participation in the labor force” to countries hosting large number of refugees.

However, the compact, unlike the convention, is not legally binding for states that have endorsed it. This has resulted in considerable criticism, leading experts raising the issue that the compact amounted to a “cop-out” from state responsibilities under the terms of the convention. Others criticized the emphasis on self-reliance that risks perpetuating economic exploitation and precarious lives close to the edge of poverty. Concerns have also been expressed that the emphasis put on economically empowering refugees risks their “commodification.” Finally, the GCR has also been criticized as designed to protect rich countries from unwanted refugees and leave the burden of their protection to the developing world.

These concerns are not unwarranted considering that far-right politics, populism, xenophobia, and growing “unwelcoming attitudes” towards migrants will likely prevent full compliance with the terms of the 1951 convention and its accompanying 1967 protocol for years to come. The U.S. and other Western countries who had once supported the implementation of the convention today are closing their borders and externalizing the protection of refugees. Under the Trump administration resettlement quotas were slashed significantly, and the COVID-19 pandemic was conveniently used to make asylum seekers from Central American countries apply from Mexico, causing the formation of makeshift camps on the southern side of the border marked by insecurity and squalor. President Joe Biden’s promise to reform U.S. refugee policy has only been partially realized so far. For instance, after signaling a significant increase in resettlement quota, the administration said it would keep the Trump-era limit of 15,000 in place before settling on half of the initial promise of 125,000 places after protests from political allies.

The picture on the EU side is even less promising. This is reflected in the European Commission’s “New Pact on Migration and Asylum,” launched in September 2020. While emphasizing the principle of non-refoulement (not forcing refugees or asylum seekers to return to a country in which they are liable to be subjected to persecution), another pillar of the Refugee Convention, the pact proposes measures that risk further complicating the possibility of individuals fleeing persecution to seek and access protection in the EU. The goal, some observers say, is seemingly to “harden and formalize the ‘Fortress Europe’” and keep migrants and refugees “out of Europe at all costs.” Denmark adopted legislation in June 2021 to move asylum processing out of the country to third countries, while its government in April refused to renew residency permits for some Syrians, claiming that parts of Syria under regime control were safe enough to send back refugees. The fact this comes from a country known as progressive and run by a Social Democratic government — one that was among the first to sign the 1951 convention — demonstrates the extent to which far-right politics have changed the scope of refugee protection in Europe. This picture is further aggravated by accusations that the EU’s border agency, FRONTEX, and some member countries have been implicated in pushing refugees back into the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, an immoral act that risks killing them.

At 70, the Refugee Convention should remain a pillar in defense of the rights of refugees and the post-World War II rules-based international order. Yet, there is also a painful reality that the convention has been undermined by the very countries that were central to its creation and implementation over decades. The protracted situation of most refugees remains unaddressed. In the meantime, the COVID-19 pandemic has undermined the capacity of developing countries hosting these refugees. Already fragile health infrastructures are stretched in helping local populations, not to mention refugees. The pandemic has also eroded crucial income from trade, tourism, and remittances and set back gains made against poverty in these countries.

Despite a hostile political environment, the Refugee Convention needs to be complemented by a robust implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees, which emerged from a broadly supported multilateral process and offers a rich array of innovative policy tools. Trade facilitation for countries hosting a large number of refugees that give them sustainable and formal employment would help spur economic growth in countries hard hit by the pandemic and enable greater self-reliance for refugees and resilience for local communities. However, the extension of such trade concessions will need to be made compatible with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.

The wealthy industrialized countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development host only a small portion of the world’s refugees; they ought to make a concerted effort to give life to the GCR and the WTO ministerial conference in November 2021 could be a good place to start. President Biden, after having promised in February 2021 to revive U.S. “moral leadership” in defense of refugees and a rules-based international order, would be well placed to lead this effort. And while some EU member state governments opposed the GCR, most are signatories and have a moral obligation to support its implementation.

      

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A conflict and tension dominated 2020 in Greek-Turkish and EU-Turkish relations appears to be subsiding and the European Council statement of March 25 offers a possible framework for a return to dialogue and diplomacy. This framework, primarily focused on the Eastern Mediterranean, also provides room for revisiting the EU-Turkey statement of March 2016, a statement that had many opponents and whose implementation faced multiple grievances and recriminations from both sides.

In the interim, however, the emerging positive climate offers the possibility to expand cooperation in a relatively successful but inadequately appreciated part of the EU-Turkey statement known as the Facility for Refugees in Turkey (FRIT). Expanded cooperation must consider that, with no prospects of resettlement and significant return to Syria, the presence of 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey has become a protracted one. This calls for FRIT to shift from a humanitarian assistance to a developmental focus and help create livelihood opportunities for refugees to improve their self-reliance and social inclusion into their host communities.

The external dimension of the European Commission’s “New Pact on Migration and Asylum” proposal falls short of offering constructive policy ideas able to transcend the EU’s long-standing policy of externalizing the cost and responsibility of managing its external borders to countries outside the EU. The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) adopted in December 2018 and endorsed by all EU members, except Hungary, advocates, inter alia, for the promotion of “economic opportunities, decent work, job creation and entrepreneurship programs for host community members and refugees” in countries hosting them. A carefully crafted arrangement between the EU and Turkey granting concessions that would enable Turkey to expand its agricultural exports, not covered by the customs union, to the EU can help spur sustainable employment both for refugees and locals.

Other policy suggestions, ranging from revamped resettlement to exploring avenues of safe return to Syria for those interested, as well as funding for humanitarian assistance for the IDPs amassed on the Turkish border will need to be incorporated into an EU-Turkey package deal to help address the dilemma of relative gains and achieve a true partnership and a “win-win” outcome.

There is an important role for Greece to play, especially if Greece, as a frontline country in migration management, would like to play a role that is not limited to being just “Europe’s ‘shield’”: a role that has not been particularly benevolent for Greece’s image in terms of human and refugee rights. Greece, as a country with an important stake in the EU’s migration policy, could pursue these policy ideas through the decision-making channels of the EU.

      

It has been 10 years since the conflict in Syria began to displace Syrians from their homes into neighboring countries. Since then, their numbers in Turkey have reached 3.7 million. In the absence of any traditional durable solutions — in the form of voluntary return, resettlement, or local integration — the presence of Syrian refugees in Turkey has become protracted, with no end in sight.

This “enduring reality” calls for rethinking the agreement between the European Union (EU) and Turkey that was adopted five years ago this week. Leaders should explore ways of moving it forward, focusing on development in addition to humanitarian assistance. One way to do this is to adopt policy ideas from the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR)  to improve the prospects of formal employment for refugees and members of their host communities.

What did the agreement do?

The 2016 deal was adopted against the background of more than one million refugees, mostly Syrian, streaming into the EU via Turkey.

This massive secondary movement strained the very fabric of the European Union, fueling a panic that the union would be weakened “permanently and radically.” This engendered a need to urgently find an arrangement with Turkey to stop or slow down the flow of migrants. This panic coincided with growing recognition in Turkey that the prospects for refugees to return to Syria were dim, and that the cost of hosting refugees was becoming politically and economically difficult to sustain. By the end of 2015, over 2.5 million Syrian refugees were living in Turkey, and Turkey had spent close to $8 billion to aid them, with limited international support. Independently from the refugee issue, for domestic political reasons, there was also an urge on the Turkish side to use the crisis to revive the sagging EU accession process and resolve the long-standing visa liberalization issue.

In this context, both sides were compelled to negotiate first the EU-Turkey Joint Action Plan in October 2015, and then the 2016 agreement. Accordingly, Turkey would increase border security, and Greece was promised the possibility to return “all new irregular migrants” to Turkey. For each irregular migrant returned from Greece, the resettlement of one registered asylum seeker from Turkey to the EU was envisaged. Most significantly, Turkey would receive two tranches of 3 billion euros in grants to support the refugees. Finally, Turkey’s EU accession process was also to be re-energized through the opening of a new chapter, and a visa liberalization program for Turkish nationals would be pursued.

The transactional nature of the deal was met with sharp criticisms. Some called it a “dirty deal” and a cynical one, comparing it to “horse trading” at the price of “the rights and dignity of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.” Both sides complained about its implementation, as well. EU leaders were frustrated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s periodic threats to “open the borders” and let refugees stream towards Europe. Turkish officials found the funds sorely inadequate, and complained about their slow disbursement. The Turkish side also did not miss an opportunity to bitterly criticize the EU for its failure to liberalize visas for Turkish nationals and re-energize Turkey’s accession process.

Taking stock of the deal

Possibly foremost, the 2016 arrangement enabled the EU — as one prominent professor of international refugee law argued — to acquire for itself an “asylum space” outside the EU. Illegal crossings across the Aegean Sea dropped dramatically, from 885,000 in 2015 to about 42,000 in 2017. Turkey remained a “good fence” until, in February 2020, Erdoğan triggered a major humanitarian crisis at the border with Greece, finally enacting his longstanding threat of sending millions of refugees the EU’s way. However, once Greece suspended asylum procedures and forcefully prevented migrants from crossing into Greece, the crisis came to an abrupt end, just as the COVID-19 pandemic compelled the Turkish government to close its borders. During the brief period when the window was open, relatively few Syrians actually took the opportunity to attempt to leave Turkey. As precarious as their lives might be there, many refugees feel integrated: A 2019 survey showed that almost 89% of Syrians feel that they are “completely/almost completely” and “partially” integrated with their host community.

The part of the deal that directly concerns the refugees and their well-being on the ground is the Facility for Refugees in Turkey (FRIT). As of December 2020, all of the 6 billion euros in that fund have been committed and contracted, and 3.9 billion euros disbursed. Though this falls significantly short of the $40 billion that Erdoğan claimed — in a speech before the Global Forum on Refugees in December 2019 — that Turkey had spent, it supports a rich array of programs and projects. They range from cash assistance for the most vulnerable refugees to help them meet their basic needs, to those aiming to improve refugee access to public health services and integrate refugee children into the Turkish national educational system. These have increasingly been accompanied by programs aiming to improve social cohesion between refugees and their host communities, as well as expand access to livelihood opportunities. The implementation of FRIT has also created a poorly acknowledged but impressively constructive public space of cooperation between European entities (member states, the European Commission, European nongovernmental organizations) and international agencies on the one hand, and Turkish stakeholders (government agencies, municipalities, and local civil society) on the other. Although parts of the deal are deservedly criticized, FRIT has been a success and the EU should build on this success.

Although parts of the deal are deservedly criticized, FRIT has been a success and the EU should build on this success.

What next?

Moving forward, the prospects of refugees returning to their homes in Syria in large numbers and in line with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) principles looks remote. The picture for resettlement of Syrian refugees do not look very promising either. The UNHCR has projected that there will be more than 420,000 places of resettlement needed for Turkey in 2021. As of the end of November 2020, the UNHCR reported that there were only 3,867 refugee departures from Turkey, compared to 10,286 the previous November. Local integration, in the form of granting Syrian refugees a path for eventual citizenship in Turkey, has not happened either. Granting citizenship to the refugees is a very sensitive issue, with 87% of the Turkish public believing Syrians “should not be given any political rights” and 76.5% against granting citizenship. Not surprisingly, according to the only publicly available figure, there were only 110,000 Turkish citizenships granted to Syrians by the end of 2019.

Against this backdrop, access to decent and sustainable livelihood becomes paramount for refugees, and it is the missing piece today. Two structural problems stand in the way. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), a very large proportion of the approximately one million Syrian refugees at working age are employed in the informal sector. This picture not only leaves Syrians in very precarious work and social conditions, but also exacerbates public resentment driven by falling wages and rising unemployment. Secondly, the Turkish economy is much weaker than it was when refugees began to arrive. According to the World Bank, Turkish GDP per capita dropped from its peak in 2013 ($12,614) to $9,126 in 2019, the latest available year.

The persistent problem of unemployment has now been further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is also impacting the lives of refugees in diverse and profound ways, including their access to income and their prospects of livelihood opportunities. The Turkish Red Crescent, together with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, found that 69% of refugees surveyed have lost their jobs during the pandemic.

What to do?

The funds allocated to FRIT have all been committed. In July 2020, the European Parliament authorized almost an additional half a billion euros, and in December the European Council promised “to continue providing financial assistance to Syrian refugees and host communities in Turkey.” However, this promise must still be negotiated internally in the EU and with Turkey. In the meantime, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — after her meeting with Erdoğan to end the border crisis last March — expressed a readiness to explore the “missing elements” from the EU-Turkey deal from 2016 and improve on them. Employment creation would be one such missing element.

One way to achieve this would be to create demand for refugee labor. The GCR suggests exploring “preferential trade arrangements … especially for goods and sectors with high refugee participation” to spur employment both for refugees and locals to help social cohesion. This suggestion is fully in line with trade liberalization through the reduction of tariffs, the expansion or even full elimination of quotas, and the resolution of regulatory obstacles, all of which are key drivers of economic growth and employment. Such economic growth would also help create demand for the skills and labor of refugees and compliment ongoing efforts focused on increasing their employability. In the specific case of Turkey, the European Commission had indeed flagged gaining access to “export markets … and providing preferential export and trading status to specific products” as a “priority action” for improving Syrian refugees’ self-reliance in Turkey. One specific way to put such a policy idea into action would be for the EU to grant concessions that would enable Turkey to expand its agricultural exports to the EU. Such concessions would be tied to the formal employment of Syrian refugees in a manner that meets ILO and EU labor standards.

Win-win for all

Using trade facilitation to add a job creation element to the EU-Turkey arrangement would be win-win for all. For Turkey, it would enable refugees to stand on their own feet, become productive members of Turkish society, defuse growing public resentment, and reduce the likelihood of crime out of economic desperation, while at the same time sparking some economic growth. Employment is regarded as an effective tool of refugee integration, and integration would reduce the likelihood that refugees would move to the EU, in turn benefitting it. Most importantly, refugees would benefit by being able to replace the precarity of informal employment with the dignity that would come with self-reliance based on sustainable employment. Finally, this would be a concrete manifestation that burden-sharing — in line with the letter and spirit of the GCR and the 1951 Geneva Convention, as it approaches its 70th anniversary — is still alive.

      

The U.S.-Turkey relationship has a long history of complexities, with no golden era to point to. However, even by these standards, recent years have been exceptionally bad. An accumulated series of crises, a dysfunctional framework for the relationship, and diverging threat perceptions have plagued ties.

In particular, five crises that have tested U.S.-Turkey relations in recent years are likely to be on the Biden administration’s agenda: Turkey’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems and the ensuing U.S. sanctions on Turkey, the Syrian Kurds, the Eastern Mediterranean crisis, the court case against Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank related to U.S. sanctions on Iran, and Biden’s views on Turkey’s democratic regression.

Despite this long list of disputes, former President Trump shielded Turkey from many possible punitive actions. In this regard, his departure bodes ill for Ankara. In his confirmation hearing on January 19, Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to Turkey as our “so-called strategic partner” in response to a question on Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 systems; this is indicative of the new administration’s mood toward Turkey. In the same vein, in almost all public opinion polls in Turkey, the United States tops the list of countries that people perceive to threaten Turkey’s national security.

Zooming out, in spite of recent positive messaging from Ankara, the crisis in Turkey’s relations with the broader West are set to worsen. This will be evident in divergent readings of international affairs, Turkey’s quest to reduce dependency on the West, and different ideas of what a “reset” would look like.

Conflicting worldviews on international affairs

Unlike Turkey’s relations with Europe, U.S.-Turkey relations are essentially a single-file issue: a security partnership that was established within the Cold War context. However, at present, geopolitical decoupling and a divergence in threat perceptions have become the dominant feature of U.S.-Turkey relations, and as the long-running friction between Turkey and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) on the Syrian crisis illustrates, the military-to-military ties are becoming increasingly acrimonious.

One of the key issues is Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems, which, according to many in the West, illustrates Turkey’s realignment away from NATO and the U.S. in defense procurement and geopolitical orientation. For Turkey, the S-400s are not solely — arguably not primarily — motivated by defense considerations; rather this purchase has a geopolitical motivation as well. It has underpinned and strengthened Turkey-Russia relations, particularly in Syria, following their 2016 rapprochement after Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015. Even though Russia has refrained from technology-sharing with Turkey regarding the S-400 systems, Turkey has gone ahead with the purchase. The development is deeply concerning to Washington, which worries that Turkey’s purchase could also pave the way for other partners, such as India, to do the same.

More broadly, the way Washington and Ankara read international affairs is diverging. At a time when the U.S. regards China as a systemic rival and relations with Russia are set to become more tumultuous, the governing coalition in Turkey — which is made up of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and Eurasianist groups and figures (who argue that Turkey should align more closely with Russia and China) — appears to believe that today’s international system is not as Western-centric as it used to be (if not post-Western), and hence Turkey should pursue its interest via a more varied geopolitical balancing act. Turkey’s such reading of international affairs might be seen as abnormal in Washington, but for the governing coalition in Ankara, it is seen as adjusting to the new normal in global politics. And the Turkish government’s reading of international affairs as such is unlikely to change during the Biden administration.

Reducing dependency on the West

Strategic autonomy has been a fashionable concept in Turkey. Many analysts and policymakers see the independence that this concept insinuates as forming the overarching goal of contemporary Turkish foreign policy.

However, in its application, this nebulous concept effectively means reducing Turkey’s dependency on the West rather than making Turkey an autonomous or independent actor altogether in international affairs. For instance, Turkey is less vocal and less keen in asserting its “strategic autonomy” vis-à-vis China or Russia. The Erdoğan government has been nearly silent on the Chinese persecution of the Uyghur Muslims in order to not antagonize China, as one example. Turkey displays similar extreme caution towards Russia’s sensitivities and redlines. Today, this quest and concept represents Turkey’s paradox in its foreign policy: Seeking to reduce dependency on the West has culminated in Turkey’s increased dependency on and vulnerability regarding China and Russia.

Different ideas of a reset

Another key manifestation of fundamental differences are seen in the different U.S. and Turkish ideas of what a “reset” in the relationship should look like.

For the new Biden administration — which emphasizes strengthening alliances, institutions, and the liberal international order — a reset would appear to mean that Turkey should reverse the course in its relations with Russia and China, particularly by giving up the S-400 systems, and come back to the NATO and Western fold.

In contrast, for the Erdoğan government, a reset means that the U.S. would come to terms with the new geopolitical reality in Turkey’s neighborhood, including Turkey’s role in it, and the broader changes in international affairs. It would mean that Ankara would not reverse course vis-à-vis Russia and China in any significant way. In other words, as great power competition continues to heat up, the U.S. would expect more cohesion and solidarity within the Western bloc, whereas Turkey believes that its best bet lies in engaging a form of balancing act between different powers.

The current government’s idea of a reset is in accordance with its changing idea of the West. In general, one can speak of three different meanings of “the West” in Turkish context — the idea of the West (which has historically served a reference point for Turkish domestic political and economic character), the indispensability of the West (with historically Turkey seeing its ties to the West as indispensable, and filtering its relations with non-Western powers through the lens of its own Western geopolitical identity), and the institutions of the West — we see that, at present, Turkey has largely given up on the first two but still appears attached to the third. It still values its place in NATO and its customs union with the European Union. But attempts to decouple membership in Western institutions from their political, normative, and geopolitical underpinnings is what forms a great source of friction in Turkish-Western relations.

Reset, rupture, and the middle ground

While there is a glaring gap between each side’s idea of a reset, there needn’t be a rupture either. Finding a middle ground is possible.

This new middle ground should discard the previous conceptual toolkits — such as strategic alliance or model partnership — to define the bilateral relationship. Such conceptual framings are creating a gap between expectations and reality, which in return creates more frustration in the relationship. The two sides’ security and geopolitical priorities significantly diverge, and therefore should lower their expectations of each other. The new shape of the relationship should be more transactional, with clearly defined objectives and boundaries.

At this stage, there is limited room for progress on the above-mentioned five main areas of contention in relations. A mutually acceptable formula on the S-400 systems is unlikely to be found anytime soon, and this issue is set to become a long-lasting irritant in the relationship. On the Eastern Mediterranean, at best, the crisis can be refrozen, which means launching bilateral talks between Turkey and Greece and both sides refraining from sending ships into contested waters for exploration. Plus, on the Eastern Mediterranean, we are likely to see more policy coordination between the U.S. and Europe. The future of Turkey’s policy towards the Syrian Kurds is intimately linked with the future of the ruling coalition in Turkey, and political developments inside Turkey. As long as Erdoğan’s coalition with the far-right MHP remains in place, the prospect for a policy recalibration is limited. And the Biden administration will likely be more vocal on high-profile, politically-motivated cases such as against the former co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş, philanthropist Osman Kavala, and novelist Ahmet Altan. Similarly, the Halkbank case will continue to cast a shadow over bilateral ties. All these feuds will make crisis a permanent fixture of U.S.-Turkey relations.

Yet the two can still cooperate on areas of common interest and concern, such as in the Black Sea region, where both sides’ interests overlap. So, they should compartmentalize their relations. In the current political climate, the U.S. and Turkey are unlikely to be able to resolve any of their major files of contention. This in return means that they should invest time and energy in crisis management rather than crisis solution in order to avoid a rupture in the relationship. In other words, crisis management, a transactional approach with clear boundaries, and compartmentalization should define the new shape of bilateral relations. Obviously, such qualitative change in the nature of the relationship requires a new narrative and conceptual toolkits for Turkish-U.S. relations in the new period.

      

Just a week before the Jan. 6 mob attack on America’s citadel of democracy, the U.S. Capitol, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan waged a different kind of assault on one of his country’s last bastions of democratic thought, Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Both events provide the latest evidence of how partisan politics and poisonous rhetoric, as championed by Erdoğan and President Donald Trump, can shake the pillars of a democratic society.

Erdoğan’s move against Boğaziçi – installing his own rector at a renowned and once-independent university — sparked instant reaction, apparently much wider in scope and tone than the government anticipated. It has prompted protests led by students and joined by the faculty at Boğaziçi that continue today, along with vigorous opposition on social media, in opinion pieces, and via petition campaigns at home and abroad. The situation risks sparking yet another faceoff between the secular, democratically oriented segment of Turkish society and a populist, authoritarian president who has grown increasingly intolerant of any demand that checks his power and seeks accountability.

Boğaziçi, where classes are taught entirely in English, is one of the best universities in Turkey and has a historic link with the United States. (Both of us earned degrees there, and one of us, Kemal, was a professor there for 24 years.) It rates in the top 200 on a list of 1,500 top universities worldwide in U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of Best Global Universities. The school was founded in 1863 as Robert College through the tireless efforts of a versatile educator from New England, Cyrus Hamlin, who also happened to be the brother of Hannibal Hamlin, Abraham Lincoln’s vice president.

Istanbul was then known as the Ottoman capital Constantinople, long before the Turkish republic came into being, and a civil war was raging in the United States, itself a fledgling republic. Despite the school’s origins in seminary work, this new institution made a point of opening “its doors to students of all races, nationalities and religions without prejudice or discrimination.”

Robert College eventually was incorporated into the Turkish higher education network and renamed Boğaziçi in 1971, as students at American universities at home and abroad were protesting the Vietnam War and their Turkish counterparts were grappling with ideological clashes on their own campuses. Boğaziçi was home to students holding diverse political views; it stood out for its ability to provide an atmosphere where political divides did not lead to the kind of violent confrontations that inflamed many other universities of the time.

A Shining Light

Similarly to Ronald Reagan’s boast that the United States is a ‘shining city on the hill,’ Boğaziçi has long been a shining light from the hills above the Bosporus Strait, the famed waterway dividing Asia from Europe. The university has traditionally represented Turkey’s western orientation, sought to educate young minds attuned to democratic principles and capable of critical thinking. It provides tuition-free education to a diverse body of students selected on merit alone. Any high school graduate, irrespective of religion, economic, or social background, can become a student at Boğaziçi if they receive the highest scores on a grueling entrance exam taken by close to 2.5 million young people every year.

The tradition of tolerance at Boğaziçi also manifested itself when it resisted compliance with the headscarf ban imposed in the late 1990s by the fiercely secularist state that predated control by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (the AKP), upholding the primacy of the right to education. A rector at the time had worked with his colleagues to institute the practice of academic institutions electing their own presidents and rectors. Erdoğan wrested that authority for himself when he shifted Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system.

The atmosphere of academic independence, despite earlier attempts to curtail its autonomy even before the AKP dominated government, also benefitted the Boğaziçi faculty and students. Boğaziçi is the only Turkish university that continues to rank among the world’s top 200 universities, offering an alternative path to education that contrasts with Erdoğan’s vow to raise loyal and “devout generations.”

Rector by Decree

But on Jan. 1, Boğaziçi suffered a heavy blow to its record of independence, excellence, and tolerance. A presidential decree from Erdoğan announced that Boğaziçi had a new rector, Professor Melih Bulu, an individual dropped into this academic community seemingly by parachute, with total disregard for the established practice of asking the faculty’s opinion in the matter. None among the more than 400 academics that make up the core faculty at Boğaziçi were consulted in the selection process. Bulu was considered for the position by a committee at the Council of Higher Education that did not include a single member from Boğaziçi’s faculty.

Just as Trump chose not to recognize the legally confirmed results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election that he lost, Erdoğan chose not to recognize the need to respect and consult an academic community before putting their institution under the leadership of an individual with a flimsy resume in administrative matters and suspect academic credentials. Bulu is currently fighting allegations of plagiarism. His main qualification seems to be his close affiliation with the Turkish president and his AKP. As such, Bulu joins the ranks of an overwhelming share of the rectors at Turkish universities that have followed a similar career path. Petitions organized in Turkey and abroad call on Bulu to resign, though he shows no signs of complying.

These attacks on democracy that marked the first week of 2021 in Turkey and the United States may differ in nature and scale. But academic independence is no less essential in a democratic society than peaceful transition of power. U.S. democracy was an important model for a country like Turkey, with its young republican history. This week, in both countries, the resolve to protect democratic ideals and institutions was put to the test, each in its own way.

How did we come to this? How is it that these two fundamentally different countries have so dramatically revealed the fragile nature of democratic values and institutions? In the United States, a president’s insistence on one-man rule has divided the country and spun off unprecedented images streaming from the Capitol. In Turkey, a different kind of confrontation also reflects a wider polarization in Turkish society, because of its leader’s obsession with perpetuating personal power. The way Erdoğan chose to appoint the new rector for Boğaziçi reveals an intent to bring into his tight grip an institution that previously had resisted the kinds of attempts that destroyed other institutions in Turkey.

Congress, in its vote the night after the shocking storming of its chambers, verified the states’ certifications of President-elect Joe Biden’s rightful victory, and thus, at least for that moment, prevailed over Trump’s appalling move to serve his personal interests. And American democracy, with its thus-far robust, albeit strained, checks and balances, is holding off the forces of autocracy, though the struggle continues.

In Turkey, however, Erdoğan has long since stripped the country of any institutions that could check his power. For Turkey and Boğaziçi, the prospects look immeasurably more bleak.

      

On September 23, the European Commission launched the “New Pact on Migration and Asylum,” proposing to overhaul the European Union’s long ailing policies in this area. European Union Vice President Margaritis Schinas likened the pact to a building with three floors, comprised of: an external dimension (“centered around strengthened partnerships with countries of origin and transit”), “robust management” of external borders, and “firm but fair internal rules.” The commission proposal must still make its way through the legislative process in the European Parliament and European Council.

The problem is: The pact needs a foundational basement, in the form of recognizing that an overwhelming majority of the world’s refugees are hosted in developing countries. Without a basement, the whole edifice is undermined. The EU must incorporate policy ideas from the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) to rectify this.

The New Pact’s three floors

The pact’s external dimension — which calls for strengthening partnerships with countries of origin and transit in the EU’s immediate neighborhood and beyond — is its ground floor. The second floor relates to policies to fortify and improve the management of the EU’s external borders. The third floor proposes rules to resolve the long-standing challenge within the EU to achieve a more balanced distribution of responsibilities and promote solidarity among EU members in dealing with asylum seekers and refugees.

At all three levels, the pact has faced intense push-back. With respect to the third floor, the commission has been criticized for catering to the priorities of the more conservative and anti-immigrant member states such as Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The pact allows members to opt out from participating in the relocation of asylum seekers and refugees within the EU by offering them the possibility to instead provide administrative and financial support to other member states. Serious doubts have been expressed about the viability of this scheme.

On the second floor, the big concern is that — once again — border security has been prioritized over access to asylum. While emphasizing the principle of “non-refoulement” as enshrined in international refugee law, the pact at the same time introduces measures that are clearly meant to complicate the possibility that individuals fleeing persecution and conflicts can seek or obtain protection in the EU. A former director of the Center for Refugees Studies of Oxford University sees these measures as aiming “to harden and formalize the ‘Fortress Europe.’ Migrants and refugees were to be kept out of Europe at all costs.”

The emphasis on protecting Europe’s borders becomes most evident at the ground floor. Here the pact calls for revamping partnership with third countries and reflects the EU’s long-standing policy of externalizing the cost and responsibility of managing its external borders. Tying policy issues such as development assistance, trade concessions, security, education, agriculture, and visa facilitation for third-country nationals to those countries’ willingness to cooperate on migration management has long been criticized as asymmetrical. The pact takes this relationship to a new coercive level by suggesting the possibility of “apply[ing] restrictive visa measures” to third countries unwilling to be cooperative.

Time will tell whether these problems on each floor will be addressed as the commission proposal makes its way through the legislative process. However, there is a deeper structural problem to the pact, resulting from the missing basement. This is because the pact fails to account for two major global realities confronting the EU.

The missing basement

The first problem is that the pact is so inward-oriented that it fails to recognize the policy implications of the dire state of forced migration globally. The number of forcibly displaced persons has increased dramatically, reaching almost 80 million. According to the U.N. Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of refugees alone has gone up from roughly 15 million a decade ago to  26 million today. And 77% of the refugees find themselves in a protracted situation — defined as having remained displaced without a durable solution (such as voluntary return to their home countries following the resolution of conflicts, resettlement, or local integration) for more than five years. Because of persistent conflicts, only 3.9 million refugees were able to return to their homes between 2010 and 2019,  compared to roughly 10 million between 2000 and 2010 and 15.3 million in the 1990s.

Secondly, the pact makes little allowance for how the COVID-19 pandemic is going to impact EU’s migration and asylum policies. The pandemic has profoundly affected the capacity of host countries to manage the presence of refugees and ensure their protection. Already fragile health infrastructures are stretched in helping local populations, let alone refugees. The pandemic has also eroded income from trade, tourism, and crucial revenue from remittances. The pact should recognize the dire forced migration picture, the impact of COVID-19, and the associated expected rise in poverty. The Economist and the U.N. have noted that the pandemic risks undoing the gains made against poverty in the past two decades. Most affected will be developing countries, according to the World Bank, where more than 85% of these refugees are hosted.

This picture is likely to erode the capacity of these countries to cope with the presence of refugees and manage public resentment as competition for scarce resources between refugees and locals intensifies. Under these circumstances it would not be unrealistic to expect pressures for secondary movements towards the EU to build up, reminiscent of the ones that occurred during 2015 and 2016. The EU has an interest in recognizing the reality presented by the basement floor, and should supplement policies on the first floor and above accordingly.

Improving the pact with help from the GCR

The pact hardly makes any reference to the GCR, as a former UNHCR official points out, but it could be an inspiring source of policy ideas. The idea of the GCR emerged from the September 2016 U.N. summit in New York that was held to address the challenges resulting from the European migration crisis. Adopted in December 2018, the GCR recognizes that the traditional refugee protection system based on the 1951 Geneva Convention is under duress, if not broken. Against this reality, it calls on the international community to work together — in the spirit of burden- and responsibility-sharing — to improve the self-reliance of refugees and the resilience of their host communities, as well as help hosts transform refugees from being a humanitarian burden to a development and economic opportunity. All EU member countries, apart from Hungary, have endorsed the GCR.

Though the pact fails to acknowledge the GCR, Vice President Schinas promises to seek “global solutions and responsibility-sharing” with international partners on migration, as well as proposes to establish a “Union Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Framework Regulation [that] would provide a stable EU framework for the EU contribution to global resettlement efforts.” These reflect at least the spirit of the GCR. However, the EU needs to go beyond this, and heed to the GCR’s call to “promote economic opportunities, decent work, job creation and entrepreneurship programs for host community members and refugees” in refugee hosting countries. Only than can the EU enjoy a solid basement floor for the rest of the pact.

Arriving at a win-win-win outcome on the first floor

The GCR offers a rich array of innovative policy suggestions that the EU can take into consideration when negotiating partnerships with countries hosting large numbers of refugees. One such policy idea calls for a more active involvement of the private sector in supporting self-reliance of refugees through decent and sustainable employment. In its partnership agreements, the EU could include terms incentivizing companies to offer such opportunities for refugees. This could be enabled by extending preferential trade arrangements for countries hosting large numbers of refugees, which is something the GCR mentions. Such partnerships with the EU could be conditioned to refugees being offered sustainable employment opportunities.

The advantage of all this is that the resulting economic growth would also benefit host communities, support social cohesion, and help empower already fragile economies coming out of a COVID-19-induced economic recession. It would also give the partnerships that the EU is advocating for at the ground floor of the pact a much more solid foundation, based on a cooperative spirit rather than the current formulation. In this way, the New Pact would help create a win-win-win outcome benefiting refugees, host countries, and the EU.

      

COVID-19 has exposed the underlying fault lines in societies around the world and in modern globalization. Yet by revealing long ignored flaws, it presents a rare chance to reform.

Unsurprisingly, refugees — the vast majority of whom live deeply precarious lives — have been among the most threatened by the pandemic. A new U.S. administration should seize the opportunity presented by COVID-19 to build a better refugee policy, both for refugees’ benefit and for U.S. national security and strategic interests. With the 70th anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees approaching in 2021, now is an opportune time for an update to U.S. refugee policy.

An erstwhile beacon

The United States has traditionally welcomed immigrants and refugees. Since 1975, it has accepted more than 3 million refugees from various parts of the world, while more than 430,000 asylum seekers have been granted lawful permanent residence since 1990. The United States played a central role in writing the Geneva Convention and establishing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with a mandate to oversee its implementation. These efforts were foundational for the emerging post-war international order and for addressing the immediate practical problem presented by the massive number of Europeans displaced by World War II. During the Cold War and into the 1990s, this system provided refuge mainly to those fleeing Communist oppression in the Soviet bloc or conflict in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Yugoslavia.

Today, vibrant refugee communities can be found in cities like Los Angeles, California, Nashville, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, which host the largest number of Vietnamese, Kurds, and Bosnians in the United States, respectively. A compelling argument can be made that America needs refugees and owes part of its economic success to those who came to its shores seeking shelter from persecution and violence. The arrival of refugees helped to uphold America’s identity as a multicultural nation that accepts all victims of persecution who would come to its shores.

Internationally, overseeing the implementation of the Geneva Convention and the protection of refugees bolstered U.S. leadership of the rules-based international order against its strategic rivals. For all its flaws at home, America’s stewardship of an international consensus on the need to protect and support refugees provided it with an additional moral authority.

A downward trend

But in recent years, this picture has changed sharply. The number of refugees has steadily grown as conflicts around the globe have gone increasingly unresolved. According to UNHCR, their numbers have gone up from roughly 10 million a decade ago to 20.4 million today. (This figure does not include 5.6 million Palestinians refugees and 3.6 million Venezuelans “displaced abroad.”) And 77% find themselves in a protracted situation — defined as having remained displaced without a durable solution, in the form of voluntary return to their home countries following the resolution of conflicts, resettlement or local integration, for more than five years. The persistence of conflicts has caused the number of refugees able to return to their homes between 2010 and 2019 to drop to 3.9 million, compared to roughly 10 million between 2000 and 2010 and 15.3 million in the 1990s.

While the causes of these trends are undoubtedly complex, the erosion of a U.S. commitment to and leadership of the international refugee system cannot be discounted. U.S. resettlement numbers have collapsed from nearly 85,000 in 2016 to 30,000 in 2019. It is slated to go down to 18,000 in 2020. In a January 2017 executive order, the Trump administration specifically banned all forms of immigration from several Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and halted the admission of refugees for 120 days. The immigration ban faced numerous challenges in U.S. courts before an amended version was upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2018. The Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols, introduced in 2019, have restricted access to the United States for asylum-seekers, who are instead required to apply for asylum from outside the United States, mostly Mexico. This is a practice that contradicts the Geneva Convention.

The opportunity

As the 2020 presidential election draws near, a key division amongst Democrats who hope to see President Trump leave office in 2021 is between the restorationists, who think things can go back to the way they were before Trump, and the reformists, who see the hurricane of the Trump administration as an opportunity to build back stronger. COVID-19 should render this debate moot with regards to U.S. refugee policy.

The pandemic has forced refugees, who often live in densely populated areas with little access to healthcare and whose economic condition is fragile at best, into a “double emergency.” Given that the vast majority of refugees are hosted by economically and socially precarious developing countries, COVID-19 is likely to push these countries to a breaking point. Already weak countries like Lebanon, which hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees in proportion to its population (1 in 7), have seen their economies and currencies collapse under the weight of refugees, the pandemic, and bad governance. The recent, massive explosion in Beirut will only serve to exacerbate conditions for refugees.

There are already signs that a post-Trump United States could adopt a more helpful stance on refugees. Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to rescind the Trump administration’s Muslim ban, restore access to asylum, and increase yearly refugee resettlement quotas to 125,000, a move that would show solidarity with countries hosting large numbers of refugees and likely spur U.S. allies to follow suit. There is also support in Congress for shouldering a greater refugee burden, as seen with Refugee Protection Act proposed in November 2019.

The threat facing refugees and the political stability of their host countries calls for the next administration to go beyond simply restoring the traditional U.S. leadership role on refugees.

With a definitive end to the COVID-19 pandemic nowhere in sight, the threat facing refugees and the political stability of their host countries calls for the next administration to go beyond simply restoring the traditional U.S. leadership role on refugees. To address the challenge of rebuilding after COVID-19, the United States should endorse the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR).

Adopted in December 2018, the GCR recognizes that traditional durable solutions are under challenge and protracted refugee situations are likely to persist. Against this reality, it advocates that the international community work to improve the self-reliance of refugees and the resilience of their host communities to transform refugees from being a humanitarian burden to a developmental and economic opportunity.

A U.S. leadership role through the GCR would spur other countries to implement one of its most innovative policy ideas: states and the private sector taking a more active role in creating self-reliance opportunities for refugees and their host communities. In particular, the GCR suggests preferential trade arrangements for countries hosting large numbers of refugees. Trade liberalization to support sectors with a high refugee participation could lead to better and more sustainable job opportunities for refugees. The resulting economic growth would also benefit host communities, serve to support social cohesion, and help power already fragile economies coming out of a COVID-19-induced economic recession and collapse in trade and tourism.

A revamped U.S. commitment to helping refugees carries direct benefits for U.S. national security priorities, in particular with respect to the strategic rivalry posed by a rising China.

Firstly, revamping its leadership role in managing refugee resettlement would go a long way in helping America reclaim the moral leadership it has enjoyed in past decades, which enabled it to create unique solutions to problems. America’s support for refugees does more for it in a “battle of ideas” than its military and economic capacity alone: an America that actively protects the less fortunate might more easily win hearts and minds globally while also serving its own national security interests.

Secondly, pairing trade concessions with actions by a host country to support formal livelihood opportunities for refugees will allow the United States to bolster these economies, supporting regional stability in the process. Faced with the challenge of Chinese debt-trap diplomacy, supporting refugees and thus the economies that host them will make these countries more resilient to Chinese influence. A renewed emphasis on human rights through supporting refugees would strengthen the hand of an American administration confronting China on its own human rights abuses.

The devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deep flaws in countries around the world and endangered the health and livelihoods of millions. To build a better, more democratic, more equitable world after the pandemic, the United States could start by helping refugees, rather than what it can do by merely seeking its own benefit.

      

The COVID-19 pandemic has further revealed the deep vulnerability of refugee populations around the world. The pandemic has exacerbated the precarity of refugees’ lives in terms of access to hygiene and health facilities, decent housing and livelihoods, creating a “double emergency” situation. This compels U.N. agencies and their partners to double down on mobilizing efforts to support emergency responses. However, as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi noted, securing the self-reliance of refugees and the resilience of their host communities remains important. Granting trade concessions to countries hosting large number of refugees would be a novel way to do this.

Overcoming a broken refugee protection system

The 2015-16 European migration crisis revealed the extent to which the traditional refugee-response system — finding durable solutions to forced displacement through local integration, resettlement and repatriation — is broken. This leads to an ever-growing number of refugees finding themselves in protracted situations with limited hope. With the total refugee population now at an all-time high of 25.9 million, nearly 85% hosted in developing countries, it is imperative for refugees to be productive members of society rather than a burden dependent on humanitarian largesse.

The Global Compact on Refugees, adopted in December 2018, provides proposals for improvements. It calls on the signatories to ‘promote economic opportunities, decent work, job creation and entrepreneurship programs for host community members and refugees’. A growing body of research shows that proper employment prospects and a welcoming business environment for refugees contribute to economic growth in host countries.

Limited success

Given the more than five million Syrian refugees dispersed across countries neighboring Syria, improving the self-reliance of refugees has increasingly acquired significance within the international community. This policy perspective became part of the Syria Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan for 2016-17, emphasizing the employability of refugees and supporting start-ups.

These programs have been especially visible in Turkey, which hosts close to four million, mostly Syrian, refugees under temporary protection, the world’s largest refugee population. While livelihood partners have offered numerous Syrians vocational training, Turkish language courses and career counseling, the number of formal jobs with work permits that Syrians have been able to access stood at less than 133,000 at the end of 2019. Instead, an estimated one million working-age Syrians are employed informally, usually under precarious conditions. Programs primarily focusing on supply-side interventions fall short of generating meaningful, formal employment opportunities. It would be more effective to focus their efforts on spurring demand for formal refugee labor.

Trade concessions

Trade liberalization is a key driver of economic growth and employment. It is not surprising that, as part of responsibility sharing among countries hosting large numbers of refugees, the Global Compact on Refugees suggests preferential trade arrangements. This policy tool, used in particular for goods and sectors with a high refugee participation, could create better and sustainable job opportunities for refugees. The resulting economic growth would also benefit host communities and serve to support social cohesion.

But these ideas need to be operationalized further. Currently, the EU-Jordan Compact is the only functioning arrangement matching trade concessions with refugee labor: the EU agreed to give Jordan facilitated access to its markets, particularly for textile products, in return for issuing work permits to Syrian refugees employed in Jordanian companies. The benefits are two-fold: refugees receive economic opportunities while Jordan’s industrial production base expands through exports. Even while falling short of its full potential, some experts regard the compact as a game-changer for demonstrating an effective response to protracted refugee situations.

The Turkish case offers another opportunity to employ trade concessions to benefit refugees. As COVID-19 damages Turkey’s economy and further exacerbates the situation of refugees working informally, extending trade concessions in return for the formal employment of refugees would incentivize more Turkish businesses to hire them. The modalities of this arrangement should be formulated in a manner that ensures local employment, critical to diffusing the belief of many Turkish nationals that refugees take jobs away from them.

One way to achieve this would be for the EU to grant trade concessions tying Turkish agricultural exports to the formal employment of Syrians. Turkey’s existing customs union with the EU has improved employment and economic growth but covers only industrial goods. Exports of fresh fruits, vegetables and processed agricultural products face taxes and regulatory restrictions. Worse still, Turkey’s agricultural sector suffers from a labor supply shortage as both GDP and employment shift towards non-agricultural sectors. However, trade concessions in the agricultural sector is a politically sensitive topic in the EU. Hence, monitoring and ensuring compliance as well as technical assistance for small businesses would need to accompany concessions, to meet the stringent EU food safety and sanitary standards.

Win-win for all

Cooperation between the EU and Turkey to improve refugees’ self-reliance through decent work and economic inclusion is in the interest of all parties. For Turkey, implementing these policy recommendations would help refugees become productive members of Turkish society, defuse growing public resentment and reduce the likelihood of crime, while also growing the economy.

For the EU, this plan would reduce the likelihood of refugee secondary movements and the need to raise funds for humanitarian assistance. Refugees would benefit by accessing sustainable livelihoods and enjoying the dignity that comes with self-reliance. Finally, it would constitute a concrete example of how the burden sharing depicted in the Global Compact can be implemented in a unique and constructive manner.

      

Turkey has luckily managed to avoid the spike in the number of COVID-19 deaths faced by Italy and Spain. By late April, less than two months after the discovery of the first case on March 10, daily reported cases and deaths had peaked. This allowed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to announce on May 4 the gradual and phased reopening of the country. The details and the timeline put forward reveal a continued unease between his priority to open the economy and the more cautious approach advocated by Health Minister Fahrettin Koca.  

Like elsewhere in the world, getting Turkey back on its feet without triggering a second wave of the pandemic will be a challenge.

Like elsewhere in the world, getting Turkey back on its feet without triggering a second wave of the pandemic will be a challenge. But unlike some other countries, Turkey’s political and economic weaknesses serve as further hurdles. This combination of a weak economy and an unending spiral of authoritarianism will make a robust recovery from the pandemic even more difficult. Instead, the path to normalization is likely to be marked by growing political instability and debates over the likelihood of early elections.  

RESPONDING TO THE VIRUS  

Both the Turkish people and the Turkish government were slow in recognizing the danger posed by the coronavirus. As late as mid–March, more than a week after the first case was discovered, President Erdoğan continued to argue that Turkey would not be seriously affected and even predicted Turkey would benefit economically from it. 

The initial response to the pandemic was hesitant, incremental, and even contradictory at times. There was also a degree of tension between the health minister’s preference for policies shaped by science and the president’s political priorities. Nevertheless, Erdoğan did eventually lend his support to social distancing measures, closures of non-essential shops and schools, travel bans, and even a ban on those aged 20 and younger and 65 and older from venturing outdoors. Because the agricultural and industrial sectors were to be kept open at all costs, strict curfews were only imposed during weekends and holidays and were relaxed during the week to enable people to work.  

As of May 25, total confirmed COVID-19 cases had reached more than 157,000 while deaths stood at almost 4,370. Since April 12, when 5,138 new cases were recorded, daily numbers of new cases have trended generally downward to 987 new cases on May 25. Turkey also has a strikingly low confirmed number of deaths per 1 million people—51.46— compared to much higher fatality rates in France (435), Germany (99), Italy (524), Spain (615), and the United States (295).  

Several factors unique to Turkey could have led to this low death rate, including the youth of the Turkish population, thought to afford some level of immunity to COVID-19, and the fact that Turkey’s elderly are still mostly looked after by their families or by in-house caretakers, thus avoiding contagious environments in care facilities. This was backed by a relatively robust health system with unusually large numbers of intensive care units and well-trained personnel. Finally, in a change of pace from Erdoğan’s polarizing political style, the health minister’s more constructive, inclusive, and relatively transparent manner helped facilitate compliance with restrictions.  

OPENING THE COUNTRY  

In speeches delivered on May 4 and 11, President Erdoğan put forward a phased normalization plan spread across three months. The stay-at–home requirement for seniors over 65 years old and youth under 20 years of age would be partially eased. Domestic and international travel restrictions would be lifted gradually. Universities could open their campuses and return to regular academic calendar from mid-June. However, the president warned that these measures required continued compliance with the normalization rules, especially social distancing and the continued wearing of masks in public spaces and reiterated how the government would be strictly guided by the advice provided by the Ministry of Health.  

However, Erdoğan’s announcement that a range of businesses, including shopping malls, would open May 11 raised question marks about his commitment to scientific guidance over political and economic gain. The health minister appeared alarmed when 2.3 million people crowded shopping centers during the first two days of their opening and warned of the danger of contagion. His criticisms were echoed by academics and experts, including representatives from the Turkish Medical Association and Istanbul Municipality Science Committee. Construction, in particular of shopping malls, has long been one of the prominent hallmarks of the governing Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rule since 2002 and a critical part of Erdoğan’s current economic model. Their closures during the pandemic deeply hurt the commercial interests of companies managing these malls, placing Erdoğan under pressure to reopen them.  

With this decision, political expediency continues to trump science, causing policy inconsistencies and putting lives at risk. Thus, the odd inconsistencies that marked Turkey’s attempts to throttle the virus appear set to characterize the country’s normalization, too. For example, the government initially kept parks, open-air facilities, and mosques closed while allowing shopping malls to open. Furthermore, the practice of weekend–only curfews remained in place through the end of Ramadan and Eid in late May. The effectiveness of these intermittent curfews—a practice unique to Turkey—is questionable, as they are alleged to have generated increased traffic before and after the curfews. Much more importantly, academics and scientists complain that they do not have access to detailed data required to provide independent and informed assessments of government policies to reopen the country. The announcement by the health minister that Turkey’s R0 (“R naught”) value stands at 1.56 suggests the virus is not under control. In sharp contrast, in late April, the heads of Germany’s four major scientific research organizations recommended that Germany’s social distancing measures and lockdowns remain in place because Germany’s R0 value had approached 1.  

This suggests that the Turkey’s normalization will be precarious, and risks being further complicated by the economic and political challenges that have marked Erdoğan’s one-man rule.  

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CHALLENGES  

The pandemic in Turkey once more highlights the close link between politics and economics. Erdoğan constructed his presidential system based on majoritarian rule, disregarding traditional separation of powers and eroding the gains from earlier reforms. In this system, winning elections provides Erdoğan the legitimacy to claim solely to represent the national will of the country. This legitimacy was undermined by his failure to prevent the economy from falling into a recession after a currency meltdown in August 2018 and a particularly polarizing campaign ahead of the local elections in March 2019, which resulted in AKP candidates losing important mayoral races including in Ankara and Istanbul. 

COVID-19 arrived just after Erdoğan’s approval rating had steadily declined to 41.1 percent in February 2020. Initially, the pandemic caused a rally around the flag effect, temporarily boosting his popularity to 55.8 percent. Since then, it has slipped back down to 52 percent as of April 2020 and will likely continue to decline due to the pandemic’s economic toll. Ali Babacan, a former economy czar credited for Turkey’s economic success a decade ago, criticized the government’s response to COVID-19 and warned of a looming economic crisis. Travel bans and the contraction in international trade is damaging Turkey’s tourism and export earnings, two important drivers of Turkish employment and economic growth. The International Monetary Fund predicted that the economy could shrink by 5 percent and that unemployment could reach over 17 percent by the end of 2020. This picture largely explains the urgency to reopen the economy, although there is no evidence that Erdoğan will adopt major reforms to address Turkey’s deep-seated economic and political problems.  

Instead, all the indications point to Turkey remaining an “illiberal state,” as Erdoğan attempts to perpetuate his rule by returning to the populist’s book of tricks. He has already depicted Turkey as being under assault from external and internal enemies, while describing the struggle against COVID-19 as a liberation war and his government’s performance as the envy of the world. Simultaneously, the “aid diplomacy” that Turkey has pursued during the pandemic, including to the United States, is presented by the pro-government media as a sign of its global power status. In line with this self-ascribed status, Erdoğan has resisted any talks with the IMF to resolve Turkey’s dire external financing problems and sought to resolve them through bilateral currency swap deals using the goodwill garnered by aid diplomacy.  

As ever, Erdoğan remains intolerant of criticism and open debate. Since the pandemic, numerous journalists and social media users have been detained on grounds of disseminating “provocative news,” while media outlets have been fined. The practice of replacing democratically elected mayors belonging to the People’s Democratic Party, the third largest party in the Turkish parliament, with government appointed trustees due to alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party continued during the pandemic. The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoğlu, of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main opposition party, faces constant obstructionism. His calls for stricter measures in Istanbul to fight the pandemic have been largely ignored while criminal investigations have been launched against him. When Canan Kaftancıoğlu, the Istanbul chair for the CHP, remarked that she soon expected “a government change,” Erdoğan responded furiously that the CHP had “fascist mindset” and “a desire to usurp the country’s administration through a coup rather than coming to power through democratic means.” He was similarly strident in his reaction to criticisms of the homophobic sermon delivered by the head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate suggesting a link between homosexuality and the pandemic.  

CONCLUSION  

These policies are all too representative of President Erdoğan’s rule. Their primary objective is to maintain his political alliance with MHP (the Nationalist Movement Party) and to consolidate the presidential system to ensure his own political survival. Other post-COVID-19 considerations are secondary.  

With the next elections not scheduled until 2023, commentators do not expect Erdoğan to call early elections due to the continued erosion of his electoral base and instead predict that Turkish politics will become more and more deadlocked. By insisting on opening the economy and pushing forward with normalization, Erdoğan risks a second wave of the pandemic. Ironically, this may only aggravate Turkey’s unresolved problems and make demands for an early election inevitable.