The Temporality and Stratification of Refugee Governance in Turkey: An Analysis for Temporary and International Protection from Reception to Return

Turkey faces significant challenges in managing refugee governance, hosting over 3 million protection beneficiaries across various categories, including ‘international’, ‘temporary’, ‘subsidiary’ and the distinct ‘conditional refugee’ status. This framework is characterised by legal ambiguities and a complex protection regime that relies on stratified legal statuses and temporality throughout all stages of refugee management. This paper analyses the temporary and international protection regime and its implications for Syrians and non-Syrians under these protection types, covering the 2018–2024 period, with a specific focus on the ‘return’ dimension. The paper questions how temporality and legal stratification operate as strategic governance tools in Turkey’s refugee regime, shaping the management of Syrians under temporary protection from reception to return. It argues that temporality is a deliberate governance strategy rather than a mere legal condition and that legal stratification institutionalises selective inclusion and control. Temporality and stratification are interconnected mechanisms that sustain governable precarity and they are also used to control the conditions for return. In this framework, the paper explores governance through temporality and its implications at the macro level by examining the legal and institutional frameworks and reflecting on the experiences or perceptions of relevant actors at the meso and micro levels. The research is based on a longitudinal study, desk research, multilayered analysis and multi-sited field research across 4 cities (Ankara, Edirne, Istanbul and Izmir), supported by 2 European Union-funded Horizon projects.