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Turkey is the first country of reception for Syrians refugees escaping the civil war. It hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, more than 90% of whom are living in urban and peri-urban areas. However, Turkey is among the countries preserving “geographic limitation” of the 1951 Convention, which prevents asylum-seekers coming from non-European countries from being granted refugee status. The Law on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP), adopted on 4 April 2013, keeps Syrians under “temporary protection” with access to health and education systems, labour markets, social assistance, and some other services. The lack of financial resources and legal clarity regarding the responsibilities of local administrations concerning refugees is a major obstacle to the enhancement of local action. These administrations have had to accept large refugee communities and are attempting to meet their needs without a well-defined legal framework concerning the assistance and services they should deliver to refugees. This is why the solutions we found vary from one municipality to another, depending on the local administration’s willingness, creativity, financial resources they can deploy, and building capacity. International funding is clearly the most important means of building the capacity of local administrations to deal with refugees effectively. Although it is not possible to determine the exact financial burden refugees impose on municipalities, it is clear that they require financial support from the central budget in order to be able to plan and carry out necessary policy actions to deal with refugee issues.

Due to the country’s then drive towards European Union membership, a comprehensive administrative reform agenda had emerged in Turkey during early 2000s. But a brusque reversal of decentralisation reforms followed the 2010 constitutional referendum. The democratic reform agenda adopted in the 2000s has been overturned to lead to an increasingly authoritarian and centralised power. This recentralisation movement had a direct impact on local governance, triggering a decline of local autonomy accompanied by the dismissal of elected mayors and city council members in some Kurdish-populated cities. The fast decay of democratic accountability was accompanied by clientelism and corruption. Indeed, modifications to the system of local administration in the direction of recentralisation stem from the determination to strengthen the central state. Embracing an extremely nationalist discourse, on the one hand, the state put the screws to HDP-ruled municipalities and disqualified mayors-elect in major Kurdish-populated cities. On the other hand, the provision of public welfare as ‘charitable patronage’, redistribution of public resources, and access to public jobs, health services and public housing constituted the major assets of dependency networks created between the AKP and its electors. Taking into account the crucial role played by municipalities in the constitution of these networks, control over municipalities became imperative for the central state. Nevertheless, even in a marginalised local democracy, mayors still have some tools at their disposal and should put them into service to reinforce and expand democratic rights.

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Iako Turska postupno postaje zemlja azila, zakonodavstvo koje se bavi izbjeglicama i dalje je nedostatno da bi se izbjegličkoj populaciji zajamčila osnovna prava i osigurale osnovne potrebe, primjerice smještaj, zdravstvena zaštita i zaposlenje. Izmjenama zakona uvedenih 1994. i 2013. godine državljani izvaneuropskih država stekli su mogućnost dobivanja “privremenog azila“ u Turskoj. Trenutno gotovo 90% sirijskih izbjeglica u Turskoj živi u gradovima, a najveći broj izbjeglica smještenih izvan kampova živi u Istanbulu. Status privremenog azila osigurava im osnovne potrebe. Izbjeglicama smještenima u kampovima osigurano je sklonište, hrana, voda, zdravstvena skrb i mogućnost školovanja, no ostali mogu iskoristiti pravo na besplatnu zdravstvenu skrb i lijekove jedino ako su registrirani. Stoga izbjeglice izvan kampova stvaraju velik pritisak na općine u gradovima u kojima žive. U radu se analizira turski zakonski i administrativni okvir unutar kojega se na lokalnoj razini pruža pomoć izbjeglicama. Razmatraju se iskustva istanbulskih općina niže razine te se ocjenjuju njihovi kapaciteti i načini na koji su se nosili s poteškoćama u kriznom razdoblju. U radu se u tom smislu detaljnije opisuju tri općine: Zeytinburnu, Sultanbeyli i Sisli. Usluge namijenjene sirijskim izbjeglicama u Istanbulu znatno se razlikuju u svakoj općini. Općine niže razine obično smještaju takve usluge u područje upravljanja kriznim situacijama, posebice u područje pomoći siromašnim i potrebitim osobama. Samo mali broj općina provodi dobro osmišljene i dugoročnije programe usmjerene integraciji. Ne bi bilo netočno tvrditi da se lokalni potezi temelje na snalaženju. Glavnu prepreku unaprjeđenju lokalnih poteza čini nedovoljno jasna pravna situacija što se tiče odgovornosti lokalne administracije prema izbjeglicama kao i nedostatak dugoročne državne politike.