Turkey's Temporary Protection Regulation and the Syrian Refugee Crisis: A Feminist Policy Analysis

Abstract

As Syria's deadly civil war rages on, more and more Syrians are fleeing to Turkey as refugees, testing the policies Turkey has put into place to manage irregular migrant flows. The authors of this paper sought to analyze the most prominent of those policies, the Temporary Protection Regulation (TPR), specifically to understand the impact it has had on female refugees flowing into the country. Unfortunately, because Turkey did not adequately consider the needs particular to refugee women in crafting the TPR, Syrian women in the country are unduly vulnerable to gender based violence, lapses in appropriate healthcare, and sexual abuse. By recycling old domestic legislation and not effectively delimiting refugee policies, Turkey has many gaping holes in the protections they afford refugees. Building on past feminist policy analyses, this dissection of the TPR highlights the danger of ignoring gender in policy construction and shows the very real world consequences of "gender-neutral" policy. About Shelby Meyer Shelby Meyer is a senior majoring in International Studies with a minor in Chemistry. She was a National Merit Scholar and Global Engagement Fellow. During her time as an undergraduate, she studied in Arezzo, Italy, and Alcala_ de Henares, Spain. After graduation, Shelby plans to enter medical school to eventually become a pediatrician.