The main goal of this thesis is to explain the role of refugees for the legitimization of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. Recent scholarship has mainly focused on the taxonomical debate about the type of regime established in Turkey; the aspects explaining the Turkish autocratization along with its ramifications on civil liberties in all of Turkey—invalidating electoral competition and even revoking bourgeois democracy, and rarely zoomed on the function of refugees for the legitimization of competitive authoritarianism as well as effects upon internal dynamics caused by the peculiarities of Turkey’s national and international politics. This thesis builds upon prior research by developing an argument that Turkish’s authoritarian regime has used the “refugee crisis” to gain external recognition and refocus external support away from democratic consolidation to the promise of competitive authoritarian stability in the process of securitizing migration.

By applying Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way’s framework, which underlines the catalyst role played by the transformative effects of external actors for the rise of competitive authoritarianism after the Cold War, the thesis analyzes the Competitive Authoritarianism phenomenon and its effect on refugees over the course of interactions among competitive authoritarianism and threats, and opportunities by both domestic and international environments as the major cause explaining Syrians’ long-term humanitarian and development challenges in Turkey. It also includes an analysis of Turkey’s own bid through the concept of securitization to underpin the research.

In order to do so, an interdisciplinary qualitative study with a qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis in a contemporary historical approach drawing on the political sciences is effectively applied to the political material. The fact that Turkey has not taken a comprehensive approach in regard to Syrians residing in the country; and yet, only a tiny fraction of those were naturalized in the last years. The study shows that the matter of survival as the main agenda of the regime, political decisions of authorities and officials along with their national and international consequences are more likely to develop exclusionary social scenes. Recent developments have resulted in changed norms, practices, policies and the “way of doing things” presented by the “new regime.”