Turkey's post-2011 approach to its Syrian border and its implications for domestic politics

International Affairs 93: 4 (2017) 829–846; doi: 10.1093/ia/iix068 © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article examines the implications of the post-2011 conflict in Syria for the relationship between Turkey’s border politics and its domestic politics. The analysis demonstrates, first, that Turkey saw an opportunity to enhance its regional influence through a reconfiguration of the power structure in post-conflict Syria; and, second, that it perceived a threat to its centralized nation-state model in the increasingly intense mobilization of Kurdish nationalism and its territorial claims. The combination of these two factors explains the shifts in its border management modalities, particularly up to mid-2015, after which it progressively sealed off its border. The state’s shifting and differential patterns of border management in this period contributed in turn to the accentuation and politicization of the ethnic and sectarian identity boundaries permeating society and politics in Turkey. While touching upon important recent developments with implications for Turkey’s border management pattern, the analysis focuses particularly on the period up to the summer of 2015. This is because that period was characterized by major fluctuations in the border management pattern, which generated high levels of contestation and made border politics a central issue on the domestic political agenda. Since mid-2015, the state’s border management modality has remained unchanged, and the sealing off of the entire border has continued, along with Turkey’s increasing direct transborder military involvement in the Syrian conflict. This seems to have reduced the relative salience of border politics in public debate and contestation, and to have limited its impact on domestic political dynamics. Turkey’s approach to its Syrian border has traditionally been conditioned by two factors: first, Ankara’s position vis-à-vis the regime in Syria, which has been