One if by Land, Two if by Sea:
In the end, Turkish academics and refugee activists are surrounded by all sides
By Başak Yavçan, Post Doctoral Researcher
Hugo Observatory of Environment, Migration, and Politics at the University of Liège
On July 19th, 2021, Turkey’s most famous participatory blog “ekşisözlük” featured a new entry warning all the readers against “the danger the country is facing, the demographic invasion of refugees and the so-called intellectuals who are trying to justify this invasion because they are sellouts funded by external powers” The blog entry then went on to give a list of well-known academics and activists connecting them to international institutions or EU countries. These institutions such as the Heinrich Böll Stiftung supposedly “bought” them, because they spoke at an event organized by them or they are working as part of a research consortium funded by the respectable Horizon 2020 project of the EU. It did not matter. The point of the entry, which became viral within hours, was not only discredit these intellectuals opinions regarding the rights of refugees and warnings against the xenophobic politicians’ misrepresentation of refugees but it was also to demonize and criminalize these experts, represent them as enemies of the state, and invite the masses to raise their voice against these people listed in the blog. Shortly, hundreds of new entries with a similar xenophobic tone against the refugees and derogatory tone against the intellectuals followed, calling them pimps selling the country, terrorist, traitors, bastards, or dogs for sale to name a few. Of course, the authors added that these academics should be fired from their institutions, deported to the countries they are funded from, that they should be tried in court and sentenced and that the bloggers should make them afraid to even walk on the street.
Since then, many of those academics and activists listed and others receive unending hate speech on social media following each of their refugee-related tweets.
To put things in a context, this blog appeared shortly after a few prominent nationalist politicians of the Turkish opposition made successive statements on Syrian refugees (currently 3.7 million of them living in Turkey). Wanting the seize the opportunity of rising concern with the arrival of Afghani refugees preceding Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, with the pretext of opposition to the government’s foreign policy, most of their statements directly targeted refugees. In particular, they emphasized the need to send Syrian refugees back (even though they were fully aware of the country’s non-refoulment commitments) and not allowing the EU to make Turkey a refugee dumpster. Many of those academics listed in “the blog” were actually the ones who raised concern with these statements, reminded the public of Turkey’s responsibilities grounded in international law and universal human and refugee rights. In a way, they were showing how unrealistic the populist promises of these politicians were. Many also warned against the potential galvanizing effects of these statements on the Turkish public, feeding their readily negative sentiments towards refugees and frustrations with the consequences of the economic tightening. Unfortunately, as foreseen by the “terrorist” academics, shortly after these statements and the widely read blog, on August 11th, a small scale pogrom took place against the Syrian refugees and their businesses in the Altindağ district of the capital city, Ankara; following the killing of a Turkish boy by a Syrian boy.
Many academics, who were in the list or acquainted with those in the list -including myself, continued their reaction to this dissemination of distorted news about Syrians and language of hate. However, every statement that was made on any news outlet faced with even more hateful language by this group. Several female academics were wished to be raped by Syrians and Afghans, almost all were advised to adopt and feed a refugee as a pet, or they were complained to their universities by the lynchers, for their reaction and their efforts to correct the disinformation being disseminated by political actors. Clearly, it did not help that the public institutions have been pursuing very poor public diplomacy since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, which has exasperated this negative public opinion.
Even before this period, in our field studies, we detected very negative attitudes and stereotypes of the host communities, informed by false news about Syrians in Turkey widespread in social media. Nevertheless, these negative attitudes had not turned into behavior and hence intergroup conflict except for a few sporadic incidents. Still, during this time public diplomacy left much to be desired and many of these misperceptions were not addressed extensively by public authorities. For instance the common political discourse of the government was usually along the lines of the EU not keeping its commitments in relation to funds destined for refugees coupled with frequent threats to open the border. Many among the public continued to believe that EU funds that ate part of the March 18 Refugee Deal were not being transferred, that Syrians are temporary guests, who were disproportionately benefiting from welfare programs, that Turkey could singlehandedly decide forcibly returning Syrians etc. The lack of transparent communication with the public paved the way for urban myths and further disinformation. Over time, this disinformation became widely disseminated by the mainstream media because it sells, and is politicized by the prominent figures of the opposition -because of potential electoral gains it would provide. Coupled with actual competition for scarce jobs and lowering of wages in certain sectors due to heavy Syrian employment in the informal sector, the dissent grew. And unfortunately, while the opposition political figures claimed they were not against Syrians but the Turkish government's foreign policy towards Syria, they actively helped disseminating the disinformation and inflammatory speech against Syrians. The fear from these negative attitudes seems also quite pronounced for the government. After the incident in Ankara, even the institutional body responsible for migration management actually compromised to the lynchers with a statement assuring them with a tougher crackdown on unlicensed immigrant homes and businesses, prohibition of future refugee registration in the Ankara province.
In the end, just like the refugees, those whistleblower academics, were to blame, as they did not say what the public was led to believe by vote-seeking politicians and the pressures on their freedom of speech were further increased with normalized attacks on social media. While so far the senior academics and activists have continued to raise their voice, it is very likely that for junior academics self-censorship and keeping a low profile is a more preferable option. As if it was not targeted enough by the government over the years, this time Turkish academia now came under attack by others mainly led by the nationalist opposition.
*This article is originally written for Le Soir by Başak Yavçan
