The primary objective of the so-called “EU-Turkey Deal” was to curb the massive number of migrants entering Greece in 2015 and 2016. The EU-Turkey Statement, which has received sharp criticism since its initiation, expires in 2021 in the midst of serious challenges. The facilitated mobility of migrants toward the Greek border in March 2020 was followed by immobility due to the lockdown measures following the outbreak of COVID-19, which has exacerbated the already precarious conditions of refugees and migrants in Turkey. In its fifth anniversary, preliminary moves to revitalize EU-Turkey cooperation and to renew the “deal” are on the table at the moment, together with ongoing tensions and a yet unspecified agenda.
This project aims to draw attention to the previous experiences, current needs, and future potentials of multiple stakeholders in migration governance between Turkey and the EU. This project is nourished by bottom-up reflections at the international, national, and local level. The potential of a new composition of partnerships coping with emergent needs as well as new techniques and methods will be examined with the aim of establishing an epistemic community pursuing to create a comprehensive, bottom-up, multifaceted, and long-term response fulfilling the dignity of displaced populations.
Sibel Karadağ is a political scientist specializing in migration and border studies. She is currently affiliated with Kadir Has University, Department of Political Science and Public Administration. Karadağ received her PhD in Political Science and International Relations from Koç University in 2020, with the dissertation titled “Monitoring Migration, Governing Borders in the Aegean Sea: An Ethnographic Study of Practices, Subjectivities and Narratives.” After completing her doctoral research, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MiReKoc within the Horizon 2020 ADMIGOV project. During the 2018/2019 academic year, she was a Fulbright Fellow at Yale University.
Her research interests lie mainly in critical security and border studies, migration and mobility, politics of humanitarianism, sovereignty and citizenship, and social and political theory. She has presented her work at universities in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, and Spain as well as at international conferences such as ISA and EISA. In addition to numerous project reports, her research has been published in academic journals, including Geopolitics, Turkish Studies, and Comparative Migration Studies. Karadağ received her BA in Social and Political Science (2010) and MA in European Studies (2012) from Sabancı University as well as an MSc in Social Policy (2012) from LSE with the Jean Monnet Scholarship.
