Gender and Forced Migration in Turkey

Suriyeli Mülteciler Hakkındaki Veriler Üzerine bir Değerlendirme

Abstract

With increasing intensity of mass and protracted displacement around the world, refugee and forced migration studies emerged as a scholarly field in the 1980s. Around the same period, feminist approach to development studies have criticized the scarcity of research taking gender as an analytical lens in the context of forced migration. One of their major critique of the ongoing discussion is the lack of gender and age segregated data to inform evidence-based policy making.  As Turkey became the highest refugee recipient country in the world in the aftermath of the Syrian war; research on this new population in Turkey has increased exponentially. Following the critiques in the international literature, studies in the Turkish context also highlighted the lack of gender perspective in explaining the reasons, experiences and outcomes of forced displacement. In dialogue with international and Turkey-based literature, this article reviews existing reports and statistics and explores available gender segregated data on several domains. While we discuss the implications of exiting data for refugee population in Turkey, we re-assert that a gender perspective in existing research and data is still scarce.