Changing Numbers, Living Conditions, Unchanging Biopolitical Problematic: Syrian Refugees in Turkey

Abstract

Five years ago, the study titled “Biopolitical Problematic: Syrians Refugees in Turkey” was the second chapter of the book, “Turkey’s Syrians, today and Tomorrow” published and its argument was found remarkable and got good feedback. This study aims to update the recent statistics belonging to the Syrian refugees and revise the new developments in connection with the discussed biopolitical perspectives. It is obvious that with its nationalist character, Turkey continues to give its citizens some moral and respectable codes to save and to defend, which also defines civil types of human behavior and relations, which are all the time culturally and politically approved but put a kind of fear inside people. Therefore, nothing has changed on the theoretical ground, but the reader can find out new references problematizing the integration issue. Syrians' noticeable presence in almost every region and mostly negative narratives of the locals, their integration strategies, and the government's policies have been supported by recent literature and, recently most of the reaction appears because of the thought that “they are not actually guests.” However, rising of such a belief is not enough to change the theoretical framework constructed for the previous study: Agamben’s concepts of the camp, bare life, and state of exception, Foucault’s opinions on the relationship between security, territory, and population as associated with the socio-political practices, and Furedi’s culture of fear is still the key concepts of the theoretical process.