RELATIONS of TOLERANCE: SYRIAN WOMEN, INTERNAL BORDERS, AND PUBLIC SPACE

When Turkey became a safe third country for Syrian refugees within the framework of the externalisation of the migration policy of the European Union, the emphasis on “Ansar” lasted a very short time as a convenient inclusion tool. After over ten years of the Syrian presence in Turkey, anti-immigrant sentiments prevail in both the right and left wings of the political spectrum and are apparent in Turkish society as well. This study focuses on the possible discriminative experiences Syrian women are going through in public spaces in Turkey. Though Islamophobia, the commonly accepted apparatus of securitisation of migration, does not apply to the case of Syrians in Turkey, other categorisations such as race, class, gender and especially caste prevail. We hypothesise that even though Syrians in Turkey are entitled to several rights with the temporary protection status, the official narrative at the beginning of migration positioning them as “guests” and the consequent status of being “temporary” create a relation based on tolerance and votality which strengthen the layers of caste and primarily affect women. In this framework, the article first argues that borders hold symbolic and social meanings beyond territorial definition and are constructed through discourse and eventually infiltrated into everyday practices. Our study adopts situated intersectionality and border theory as theoretical background. Accordingly, we hypothesise that within the various intersections of race, class, gender, caste and the individual in question’s positionality, there occur changes in the host community’s perception of refugees, refugees’ position in the public space, and their daily encounters with discrimination. Founded on 20 in-depth interviews with Syrian women living in Turkey, we aim to understand the effects of the discursive, symbolic, and social borders, based on relations of tolerance and deservingness, encountered by female refugees in the Turkish public space and the ways they shape women's visibility, their self-expression, their appearances in society, as well their lives daily. Our study proposes a different perspective for gender and migration studies with a special focus on socially constructed borders.