Check out my recent article on refugee protection and policies:

Check out my article about Evolution of refugee law and policies in Greece and Turkey after the Syrian refugee crisis recently published in The Proceedings of The Juris En Conference on International Law, India 2020, i.e., #GlobalLegalism, Volume 1, 2020.

This article is part of a wider research with a focus on refugee protection in general and how refuge protection norms are implemented by Greece and Turkey after the Syrian influx.  In my doctorate thesis, I attempt to examine Greece-Turkey relations under the prism of the 1951 Geneva Convention (Refugee Convention) after the Syrian influx, the research is a comparative study based on findings and interviews with refugees, communities, policy makers and activists from my field visits in Greece and Turkey. It examines the refugee protection mechanisms and how protection norms were implemented by both Greece and Turkey, whether this was effective and efficient enough for refugees, reception conditions and integration process, what was the role of EU and UN mechanisms. And how this influenced the relations in a bilateral level. 

My main argument is that the EU policy implemented in Greece and Turkey (including containment policy, extraterritoriality and shifting responsibility towards refugees to Turkey) led to violations of refugee rights with the implementation of the famous EU-Turkey deal and massive deportations based on the logics “you keep them in your borders, we give you money”, a humanitarian issue becomes part of accession negotiations and turns into a highly politicized issue that I criticize in my research. I argue that the political decisions taken do not fulfil European and international legal standards on refugee rights and that a strong and sincere cooperation based on human rights and refugee protection norms between the Greek and Turkish side could benefit the region and the refugees.

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