This paper investigates the impact of developments in Turkish migration management policy and changes in management of the Greek-Turkish border on border deaths prior to the 2015 mass inflow of refugees. As the locus of multiple and sustained Frontex operations, as well as several autonomous major changes in relevant policies and practices over the 2000–2014 period, the Greek-Turkish border can serve as a post hoc laboratory for analyzing the implications of EU-influenced migration and border management for deaths on the border. We conclude that a chaotic mix of national politics, policy development and law enforcement practices, flexible smuggling networks, and Frontex operations contributed to the mass inflows of 2015–2016 and ensured mass casualties.

This study examines the gender dimension of the brain drain in Turkey, drawing on the results of an online survey to argue that the gender inequality present in sending countries can serve as a push factor in women's decisions to migrate and return or not return. The results indicate that the gender gap in the labor market in Turkey is an important factor in shaping the return intentions of female Turkish professionals and students living abroad. The findings reveal a gender gap in return intentions independent of other main factors, such as age, field of study/occupation, or duration of stay.

This study examines different approaches taken in the late Ottoman Empire to deal with the risks and dangers posed by railroads. Like its counterparts in Europe and the United States, the Ottoman state actively sought to protect individuals against railroad risks. For this purpose, it mandated the use of certain devices meant to facilitate the safe flow of railroad traffic and introduced measures that aimed to discipline railroaders and pedestrians into behaving appropriately. However, the state was not the only actor that struggled to address railroad risks. Railroad companies, primarily to advance their economic interests, incorporated technologies that considerably reduced the risk of collisions. Yet economic concerns also sometimes hampered investments in railroad safety. For instance, the manner in which trespassing cases were handled by accident investigation committees and courts allowed the companies to avoid their obligations with respect to fencing around railroad tracks. As a result, it was easy for pedestrians to use tracks near their homes and workplaces as pathways. Finally, the article also shows that in performing their duties, trainmen enjoyed considerable freedom from control by railroad managers. This freedom was further reinforced by the shortage of experienced and skilled labor in the Ottoman railroad industry.

The number of grandmothers who provide regular care for their grandchildren and do housework for their daughters or daughters-in-law is increasing in Turkey. While perpetuating traditional gender roles for themselves as a surrogate daughter, wife, or daughter-in-law, these women nonetheless enable younger women to distance themselves from obligatory care work at home. The sociocultural concepts of kinship ties, economic need, or love for grandchildren do not fully explain why grandmothers assume the role of caregiver for their grandchildren. Drawing on interviews with 25 grandmothers from middle-class families in urban Turkey, this article shows, first, that these women’s gendered subjectivity is formed by both habitual and intentional actions that defying the oppression and resistance duality within patriarchal Turkish society. Second, in dialogue with the scholarship on the “classic patriarchal bargain”1 and feminist analyses of neoliberal social policy, the article suggests that these grandmothers’ inarticulate desire to live in solidarity with the younger generation of women may be turned into a government instrument in the context of Turkey’s increasingly family-centered neoliberal social policy environment.

This paper analyzes a hundred Turkish aid recipient countries in order to explore the determinants of Turkey’s foreign aid behavior during the period 2005–2016. By estimating the model with the system-GMM estimator, it is demonstrated that Turkey is a regular donor whose amount of foreign aid is positively influenced by the export-based embeddedness of Turkish firms in the recipient countries. Recipients with low levels of per-capita income attract more Turkish aid. However, this income’s effect diminishes in states that were formerly part of Ottoman territory. Recipient countries in an aid relationship with OECD-DAC members also receive more foreign aid from Turkey. In addition, Turkey disburses more foreign aid to recipient countries that can be classified as Turkic republics. Turkish foreign aid behavior is also motivated by Ottomanism, especially in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Finally, and interestingly, although Islam has a considerable impact on attracting Turkish aid overall, this impact disappears in former Ottoman states and Turkic republics.

This article aims to explore the views of the Turkish elite on the state of polarization in Turkey. By identifying four political frames—namely, harmony, continuity/decline, conspiracy, and conflict—that selected Turkish political and civil society elites use in discussing the phenomenon of polarization in the country through their contributions to a workshop and in-depth qualitative interviews, the article finds that there is a considerable degree of polarization among the Turkish elite regarding their views on the presence of polarization in Turkey. Moreover, this overlaps with the divide between the government and the opposition in the country. An analysis of the justificatory arguments employed in constituting the aforementioned frames shows that, while those elites who deny the existence of polarization seek its absence in essentialist characteristics of society, in reductionist comparisons with history, or in internal/external enemies, those who acknowledge polarization’s presence look for its roots in political and institutional factors and processes. The article highlights how, given the denial of polarization by the pro-government elite and the substantial gap between the two camps’ justificatory narratives, the currently reported high rates of polarization in Turkey can, at best, be expected to remain as is in the near future, barring a radical change in political constellations.

This article traces the recent history of border closures in Turkey and Morocco and their impact on human mobility at the two ends of the Mediterranean. Border closures in the Mediterranean have produced new spaces where borders are often fenced, immigration securitized, and border crossings and those facilitating border crossings criminalized. Here, bordering practices are conceptualized as physical bordering practices, border controls, and legal measures. Turkey and Morocco constitute comparable cases for an analysis of border closures insofar as they utilize similar mechanisms of closure, despite having quite different outcomes in terms of numbers. The article’s findings are based on fieldwork conducted at both locations between 2012 and 2014, as well as on analysis of Frontex Risk Assessment Reports from 2010 to 2016. The first part of the article reflects on the concepts of border closure and securitization, together with their implications, and draws for its argument on critical security studies and critical border studies. The second part of the article is an overview of controls over mobility exercised in the Mediterranean from the 1990s onward. Then, in the third and fourth parts, we turn to the particular cases—respectively, Turkey and Morocco—in order to discuss their processes of border closure and the various implications thereof. Through analysis of the two country cases, we show that border closures are neither linear nor irreversible.