Turkey’s Syrian Refugees

This report is the result of a four month long research project conducted in Washington DC and in Turkey. We conducted interviews with specialists in Washington DC and undertook a two-week long research trip to Istanbul, Ankara, Mardin, Şanlıurfa, and Gaziantep. We visited several refugee camps and conducted interviews with government officials, civil society organizations, opposition activists, experts, and academics as well as refugees and Syrian NGOs. In this report, we provide an overview of the situation of refugees in Turkey and the difficulties that Turkey is facing in handling such a major crisis alongside of its Southern border. We also assess the policy implications of this crisis for Turkey and the international community. We discuss Turkey’s open-door policy, the camp and non-camp refugees, the legal framework, integration, the international community’s response, and the impact on Turkish foreign policy choices. We end the report with a series of policy recommendations that we hope will help cope with this monumental task at hand and contribute to a better coordination between Turkey and the international community.