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BORDER GOVERNANCE ON THE WAVES OF THE AEGEAN SEA: ACTORS, DISCOURSES AND PRACTICES

Year 2022, Volume: 21 Issue: Özel Sayı - Türkiye’nin Göç Siyaseti Özel Sayısı, 293 - 315, 11.11.2022
https://doi.org/10.46928/iticusbe.1183277

Abstract

The article provides an extensive empirical analysis of sovereign practices and border governance monitoring and controlling the clandestine migration in the Aegean Sea. By utilizing the notion of “wet ontology” that refers to the distinctive materiality of the sea shaping the nature of the modus operandi, the study analyzes the web of discourses, actual practices and technologies constituting the political space of the Aegean Sea. The article argues that the contextualized “wet ontology” of the Aegean Sea lays the ground for the production of certain governing tool for armed forces to legitimize their military actions of interceptions as a rescue mission. The strategy of intercepting in guise of rescue as a moderated violence is produced and materialized in different manners in Turkey and Greece. In the article, firstly the contextualized “wet ontology” of the Aegean Sea will distinctive be elaborated together with its spatial and juridical configuration that lead to particular power projections. Then, these particular power projections and interception techniques will be empirically discussed within the contexts of Turkey and Greece. The empirical data of the study is based on an ethnographic research design conducted in 2015-2018 in Greece (Lesbos) and Turkey.
Purpose: This article presents an empirical analysis of border practices regarding the unauthorized migration in the Aegean Sea. Utilizing the concept of “wet ontology”, which refers to the materiality and political geography of the sea border, the study analyzes the web discourses and actual daily border practices/technologies that construct the political space of the Aegean Sea.
Method: The empirical data of the study is based on an ethnographic research design. In-depth interviews and participant observation were conducted with coast guards, EU border agency Frontex, and search and rescue NGOs in Greece (Lesvos) and Turkey (Küçükkuyu, Dikili, Çeşme and Bodrum) in 2015-2018.
Findings: In the lights of the findings of the study, the wet ontology, which gains meaning in the geographical context of the Aegean Sea, shapes the policies and narratives of the border actors, and paves the way for the production of a specific governing apparatus to legitimize multiple military interception techniques inherent in the rescue mission. Constructed as a moderate violence, interception practices are integrated with the rescue mission and thus justified.
Originality: The study comparatively examines border actors, discourses and practices through the examples of Turkey and Greece. In the article, firstly, the geographical structure of the Aegean Sea with its spatial and legal configuration is detailed. Then, within this configuration, the daily border practices and discourses of the two states are examined. The study aims to make an significant contribution to the literature in terms of being the first ethnographic research on border governance in the Aegean Sea. 

References

  • Agier, M. (2011). Managing the undesirables: Refugee camps and humanitarian government. Trans David Fernbach, Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Amoore, L. (2007). Vigilant visualities: The watchful politics of the war on terror. Security Dialogue, 38(2), 215–32.
  • Aradau, C. (2004). The perverse politics of four-letter words: Risk and pity in the securitisation of human trafficking. Millennium, 33(2), 251–278.
  • Barnett, M. & Weiss, T.G. (2008). Humanitarianism in question: Politics, power and ethics. NewYork: Cornell University Press.
  • Benton, L. (2009). A search for sovereignty: Law and geography in European empires, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bigo, D. (2014). The (in)securitization practices of the three universes of EU border control: Military/navy – border guards/ police – database analyst. Security Dialogue, 45(3), 209–225.
  • Bose, S. (2009). A hundred horizons: The Indian ocean in the age of global empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Casas-Cortes, M., Cobarrubias, S, Heller, C., & Pezzani, L. (2017). Clashing cartographies, migrating maps: The politics of mobility at the external borders of E.U.rope. ACME, 16(1), 1–33.
  • Cuttitta, P. (2018). Inclusion and exclusion in the fragmented space of the sea. actors, territories and legal regimes between Libya and Italy. İçinde E. Burroughs & K. Williams (der.), Contemporary boat migration: Data, geopolitics and discourses (ss. 75-94). Londra: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Cuttitta, P. & Last, T. (2020). Border deaths: Causes, dynamics and consequences of migration-related mortality. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
  • Davies, T., Isakjee, A. & Dhesi, S. (2017). Violent inaction: the necropolitical experience of refugees in Europe. Antipode, 49(5), 1263–84.
  • Doty, R.L. (2011). Bare life: Border-crossing deaths and spaces of moral alibi. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(4), 599–612.
  • Fassin, D. (2012). Humanitarian reason: A moral history of the present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • Feldman, I., & Ticktin, M. (2010). In the name of humanity: The government of threat and care. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Fekete, L. (2003). Death at the border – Who is to blame? European Race Bulletin, (44), 2-4.
  • Ferrer-Gallardo, X., & Van Houtum, H. (2014). The not so collateral damage politics of deadly EU border control. Acme: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 13(2), 295-304.
  • Gilroy, P. (1993). The black Atlantic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Grotius, H. (2004). The free sea. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
  • Heller, C. & Pezzani, L. (2012). Forensic oceanography: Left-to-die boat case. http://migrantsatsea.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/forensic-oceanography-report-11april20121.pdf (Erişim tarihi: 10 Eylül 2022).
  • Heller, C. & Pezzani, L. (2014). Liquid traces: Investigating the deaths of migrants at the EU’s maritime frontier. İçinde E. Weizman (ed.), Fronsis. The architecture of public truth (ss. 656-684). Berlin: Sternberg Press.
  • Ignatieff, M. (2004). The lesser evil: Political ethics in an age of terror. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • İşleyen, B. (2021). Technology and territorial change in conflict settings: migration control in the Aegean Sea. International Studies Quarterly, 65(4), 1087-96.
  • Karadağ, S. (2019). Extraterritoriality of European borders to Turkey: an implementation perspective of counteractive strategies. Comparative Migration Studies, 7(12), 1-16.
  • Kuus, M. (2013). Foreign policy and ethnography: A sceptical intervention. Geopolitics, 18(1), 115–131.
  • Jones, R. (2015). The Mediterranean: international region and deadly border. Nordia, 44(4), 37-42.
  • Lewis, M. W. (1999). Dividing the ocean Sea. Geographical Review, 8(2), 188–214.
  • Longo, M. (2017). The politics of borders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Malkki, L. (1996). Speechless emissaries: Refugees, humanitarianism and dehistoricisation. Cultural Anthropology, 11(3), 377–404.
  • Mawani, R. (2018). Across oceans of law: The Komagata Maru and jurisdiction in the time of empire. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11-40.
  • Ophir, A. (2005). The order of evils: Toward an ontology of morals (Çev. R. Mazali & H. Carel). New York: Zone Books.
  • Schmitt, C. (2003). The nomos of the earth in the international law of the jus publicum europacum. New York: Telos.
  • Steinberg, P. & Peters, K. (2015). Wet ontologies, fluid spaces: Giving depth to volume through oceanic thinking. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(2), 247–264.
  • Squire, V. (2016). Governing migration through death in Europe and the US: Identification, burial and the crisis of modern humanism. European Journal of International Relations, 23(3),1-20.
  • Squire, V. (2015). Post/Humanitarian border politics between Mexico and the US: People, places, things. Londra: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Stierl, M. (2016). A sea of struggle–activist border interventions in the Mediterranean Sea. Citizenship Studies, 20(5), 561–578.
  • Pallister-Wilkins, P. (2015). The humanitarian politics of European border policing: Frontex and border police in Evros. International Political Sociology, 9(1), 53–69.
  • Redfield, P. (2013). Life in crisis: The ethical journey of doctors without borders. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Rediker, M. (2007). The slave ship: A human history. New York: Viking.
  • Tazzioli, M. (2016). Eurosur, humanitarian visibility, and (nearly) real-time mapping in the Mediterranean. ACME, 15(3),561–579.
  • Ticktin, M. (2005). Policing and humanitarianism in France: Immigration and the Turn to law as state of exception. Interventions, 7(3),347–368.
  • Urrera, L.A. (2004). The devil’s highway: A true story. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
  • Vaughan-williams, N. (2015). Europe’s border crisis: Biopolitical security and beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Walters, W. (2011). Foucault and frontiers: Notes on the Humanitarian Border. İçinde U. Bröckling, S. Krasman, & T. Lemke (der.), Governmentality: current issues and future challenges, New York, NY: Routledge.
  • Weber, L. & Pickering, S. (2011). Globalization and borders. Death at the global frontier. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Weizman, E. (2011). The least of all possible evils: Humanitarian violence from Arendt to Gaza. Londra: Verso.

Ege Denizi’nin Dalgalarında Sınır Yönetimi: Aktörler, Söylemler ve Pratikler

Year 2022, Volume: 21 Issue: Özel Sayı - Türkiye’nin Göç Siyaseti Özel Sayısı, 293 - 315, 11.11.2022
https://doi.org/10.46928/iticusbe.1183277

Abstract

Bu araştırma, Ege Denizi’ndeki düzensiz göçe ilişkin sınır yönetimi uygulamalarının kapsamlı bir ampirik analizini sunmaktadır. Çalışma, deniz sınırının ayırt edici materyalliğine atıfta bulunan “ıslak ontoloji” kavramını kullanarak, Ege Denizi’nin siyasal alanını oluşturan söylemler ağını, fiili pratikleri ve teknolojileri analiz etmektedir. Ege Denizi’nin kendine has siyasi coğrafyası, mekânsal ve hukuki konfigürasyonu bağlamında revize edilen “ıslak ontoloji” kavramı, sınır aktörlerinin durdurma tekniklerini hangi yöntem ve aygıtlar aracılığı ile kurtarma faaliyetine içkin hale getirerek meşrulaştırdıklarını incelemektedir.
Amaç: Bu makale, Ege Denizi’ndeki düzensiz göçe ilişkin sınır pratiklerinin ampirik bir analizini sunmaktadır. Çalışma, deniz sınırının ayırt edici materyalliğine ve siyasi coğrafyasına atıfta bulunan “ıslak ontoloji” kavramını kullanarak, Ege Denizi’nin siyasal alanını oluşturan söylemler ağını, fiili günlük sınır pratiklerini ve kullanılan teknolojileri analiz etmektedir.
Yöntem: Çalışmanın ampirik verileri etnografik bir araştırma tasarımına dayanır. 2015-2018 yıllarında Yunanistan (Midilli adası) ve Türkiye’de (Küçükkuyu, Dikili, Çeşme, Bodrum), sahil güvenlik ekipleri, AB sınır güvenliği (Frontex) personeli ve arama kurtarma sivil toplum örgütleri ile derinlemesine görüşmeler ve katılımcı gözlemci analizi yapılmıştır. Araştırmacı, etnografik araştırma tasarımına içkin olarak, bahsedilen yıllar arasında Midilli adasında bulunan sivil toplum örgütleri bünyesinde arama ve kurtarma faaliyeti yürütmüştür.
Bulgular: Çalışmanın bulguları nezdinde, Ege Denizi’nin coğrafi bağlamı içerisinde anlam kazanan ıslak ontolojisi, sınır aktörlerinin politikalarını ve anlatılarını şekillendirerek çoklu askeri durdurma tekniklerinin kurtarma görevine içkin olarak meşrulaştırılması için belirli bir yönetim aygıtının üretilmesine zemin hazırlar. Ilımlı ve orantısal bir şiddet olarak kurgulanan durdurma ve geri itme uygulamaları, kurtarma görevi ile bütünleştirilir ve bu sayede meşrulaştırılır.
Özgünlük: Çalışma, sınır aktörlerini, söylemlerini ve uygulamalarını Türkiye ve Yunanistan örnekleri üzerinden karşılaştırmalı olarak incelemektedir. Makalede, ilk olarak Ege Denizi’nin coğrafi yapısı, uzamsal ve hukuki konfigürasyonu ile detaylandırılmaktadır. Ardından, bu konfigürasyon içerisinde iki egemen devletin gündelik sınır pratikleri ve söylemleri incelenmektedir. Çalışma, Ege Denizi’ndeki sınır yönetimi üzerine yapılmış ilk etnografik araştırma olması açısından literatüre önemli bir katkı sağlamaktadır.  

References

  • Agier, M. (2011). Managing the undesirables: Refugee camps and humanitarian government. Trans David Fernbach, Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Amoore, L. (2007). Vigilant visualities: The watchful politics of the war on terror. Security Dialogue, 38(2), 215–32.
  • Aradau, C. (2004). The perverse politics of four-letter words: Risk and pity in the securitisation of human trafficking. Millennium, 33(2), 251–278.
  • Barnett, M. & Weiss, T.G. (2008). Humanitarianism in question: Politics, power and ethics. NewYork: Cornell University Press.
  • Benton, L. (2009). A search for sovereignty: Law and geography in European empires, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bigo, D. (2014). The (in)securitization practices of the three universes of EU border control: Military/navy – border guards/ police – database analyst. Security Dialogue, 45(3), 209–225.
  • Bose, S. (2009). A hundred horizons: The Indian ocean in the age of global empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Casas-Cortes, M., Cobarrubias, S, Heller, C., & Pezzani, L. (2017). Clashing cartographies, migrating maps: The politics of mobility at the external borders of E.U.rope. ACME, 16(1), 1–33.
  • Cuttitta, P. (2018). Inclusion and exclusion in the fragmented space of the sea. actors, territories and legal regimes between Libya and Italy. İçinde E. Burroughs & K. Williams (der.), Contemporary boat migration: Data, geopolitics and discourses (ss. 75-94). Londra: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Cuttitta, P. & Last, T. (2020). Border deaths: Causes, dynamics and consequences of migration-related mortality. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
  • Davies, T., Isakjee, A. & Dhesi, S. (2017). Violent inaction: the necropolitical experience of refugees in Europe. Antipode, 49(5), 1263–84.
  • Doty, R.L. (2011). Bare life: Border-crossing deaths and spaces of moral alibi. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(4), 599–612.
  • Fassin, D. (2012). Humanitarian reason: A moral history of the present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • Feldman, I., & Ticktin, M. (2010). In the name of humanity: The government of threat and care. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Fekete, L. (2003). Death at the border – Who is to blame? European Race Bulletin, (44), 2-4.
  • Ferrer-Gallardo, X., & Van Houtum, H. (2014). The not so collateral damage politics of deadly EU border control. Acme: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 13(2), 295-304.
  • Gilroy, P. (1993). The black Atlantic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Grotius, H. (2004). The free sea. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
  • Heller, C. & Pezzani, L. (2012). Forensic oceanography: Left-to-die boat case. http://migrantsatsea.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/forensic-oceanography-report-11april20121.pdf (Erişim tarihi: 10 Eylül 2022).
  • Heller, C. & Pezzani, L. (2014). Liquid traces: Investigating the deaths of migrants at the EU’s maritime frontier. İçinde E. Weizman (ed.), Fronsis. The architecture of public truth (ss. 656-684). Berlin: Sternberg Press.
  • Ignatieff, M. (2004). The lesser evil: Political ethics in an age of terror. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • İşleyen, B. (2021). Technology and territorial change in conflict settings: migration control in the Aegean Sea. International Studies Quarterly, 65(4), 1087-96.
  • Karadağ, S. (2019). Extraterritoriality of European borders to Turkey: an implementation perspective of counteractive strategies. Comparative Migration Studies, 7(12), 1-16.
  • Kuus, M. (2013). Foreign policy and ethnography: A sceptical intervention. Geopolitics, 18(1), 115–131.
  • Jones, R. (2015). The Mediterranean: international region and deadly border. Nordia, 44(4), 37-42.
  • Lewis, M. W. (1999). Dividing the ocean Sea. Geographical Review, 8(2), 188–214.
  • Longo, M. (2017). The politics of borders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Malkki, L. (1996). Speechless emissaries: Refugees, humanitarianism and dehistoricisation. Cultural Anthropology, 11(3), 377–404.
  • Mawani, R. (2018). Across oceans of law: The Komagata Maru and jurisdiction in the time of empire. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11-40.
  • Ophir, A. (2005). The order of evils: Toward an ontology of morals (Çev. R. Mazali & H. Carel). New York: Zone Books.
  • Schmitt, C. (2003). The nomos of the earth in the international law of the jus publicum europacum. New York: Telos.
  • Steinberg, P. & Peters, K. (2015). Wet ontologies, fluid spaces: Giving depth to volume through oceanic thinking. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(2), 247–264.
  • Squire, V. (2016). Governing migration through death in Europe and the US: Identification, burial and the crisis of modern humanism. European Journal of International Relations, 23(3),1-20.
  • Squire, V. (2015). Post/Humanitarian border politics between Mexico and the US: People, places, things. Londra: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Stierl, M. (2016). A sea of struggle–activist border interventions in the Mediterranean Sea. Citizenship Studies, 20(5), 561–578.
  • Pallister-Wilkins, P. (2015). The humanitarian politics of European border policing: Frontex and border police in Evros. International Political Sociology, 9(1), 53–69.
  • Redfield, P. (2013). Life in crisis: The ethical journey of doctors without borders. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Rediker, M. (2007). The slave ship: A human history. New York: Viking.
  • Tazzioli, M. (2016). Eurosur, humanitarian visibility, and (nearly) real-time mapping in the Mediterranean. ACME, 15(3),561–579.
  • Ticktin, M. (2005). Policing and humanitarianism in France: Immigration and the Turn to law as state of exception. Interventions, 7(3),347–368.
  • Urrera, L.A. (2004). The devil’s highway: A true story. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
  • Vaughan-williams, N. (2015). Europe’s border crisis: Biopolitical security and beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Walters, W. (2011). Foucault and frontiers: Notes on the Humanitarian Border. İçinde U. Bröckling, S. Krasman, & T. Lemke (der.), Governmentality: current issues and future challenges, New York, NY: Routledge.
  • Weber, L. & Pickering, S. (2011). Globalization and borders. Death at the global frontier. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Weizman, E. (2011). The least of all possible evils: Humanitarian violence from Arendt to Gaza. Londra: Verso.
There are 47 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language Turkish
Journal Section Research Article
Authors

Sibel Karadağ 0000-0003-1965-5675

Early Pub Date October 19, 2022
Publication Date November 11, 2022
Submission Date October 2, 2022
Acceptance Date November 1, 2022
Published in Issue Year 2022 Volume: 21 Issue: Özel Sayı - Türkiye’nin Göç Siyaseti Özel Sayısı

Cite

APA Karadağ, S. (2022). Ege Denizi’nin Dalgalarında Sınır Yönetimi: Aktörler, Söylemler ve Pratikler. İstanbul Ticaret Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 21(Özel Sayı), 293-315. https://doi.org/10.46928/iticusbe.1183277