Refugee policy narratives of political parties in Turkey

This study examines the diverging narratives of the governing and opposition parties in Turkey about Syrian refugee policies between 2011 and 2023. We use a mixed method combining process tracing and quantitative exploratory text analysis of 1,001 parliamentary group speeches by four political parties. Our analysis reveals six main narratives about Syrian refugees: temporariness, fraternity, civilizationist humanitarianism, rights-based humanitarianism, burden, and repatriation. The ruling party, AKP, embraced the pro-refugee policies by mixing the first three narratives until 2017, after which the repatriation narrative gained significance. The CHP, the main opposition party, codified a burden narrative, which problematised Syrians as a threat to border security, national economic resources, and social cohesion. Similarly, the Turkish nationalist MHP adopted the burden narrative until its alliance with the government. After the 2019 local election, all three parties’ narratives slightly converged around the repatriation narrative. One exception to narrative convergence(s) among parties is the pro-Kurdish party HDP, which consistently emphasises rights-based humanitarianism. Our findings provide insights about how political parties develop, contest, revise, and converge their narratives about refugees over time. This contributes to the de-centering on political narratives and migration governance by bringing in a non-Western perspective.