Mémoire
| Résumé : | This research investigates the connection between the evolving Turkish citizenship regime and the rights of refugees in Turkey. Currently hosting the largest number of refugees in the world, Turkey's asylum framework grants various protection statuses while maintaining a geographical reserve on the 1951 Convention. These legal statuses provide basic rights to refugees but also place them in a state of limbo; perpetuating temporariness and insecurity, hindering their integration process and denying them the prospect of eventual membership through regular naturalization. Analyzed from an Arendtian perspective, these vulnerable populations are deprived of their right to have rights. The protection system serves as a tool of exclusion where their rights are provided as an act of charity rather than being based on the international human rights framework. Meanwhile, the national citizenship regime is also going through a transformation by introducing exceptional methods of naturalization which emphasize the economic and social capital of the individual. A major change from the classical civic-republican tradition of Turkish citizenship, this new development also functions as an additional exclusionary tool for refugees since it is the only legally available naturalization procedure for them. Therefore, the case of refugees in Turkey shows the risks regarding the increasing marketization of citizenship acquisition and the rise of exceptional naturalization procedures as well as highlighting the need for studies on citizenship and rights-based integration to consider the variety and complexity of legal categories that non-citizens, especially refugees, fall under. |
