Organized by ASULIS Discourse, Dialog and Democracy Laboratory of Hrant Dink Foundation, two researches on migration policies were discussed in the fourth session of the series “Asulis Social Sciences Grad Students Workshops”. The workshop was held in Hrant Dink Foundation Anarad Hığutyun Building on December 19.

ASULIS aims to encourage pluralism, the ideal of coexistence and future researchers who will carry out new studies in this field. Organized with this purpose, the workshops aims to enable the discussion of master theses, facilitating dialog between researchers studying this topic and making academics and researchers come together.

Firstly, Ayşe Gökçek’s master thesis, which she submitted to Koç University Department of International Affairs in 2017, with the title “State Response to Mass Refugee Flows: The Cases of Bulgarian Turks, Iraqi Kurds And Syrians in Turkey” was discussed. Ayşe Gökçek conducted an archive research through the newspapers Cumhuriyet, Milliyet and Turkey to study on the written records ofTurkish high state officials’ discourses. Evaluating the three different mass influxes of refugees under the titles of “cognates”, “Peshmerga” and “guests” discourses, Gökçek emphasized the role of state policies in creating these discourses.

Secondly, Oğuz Can Ok’s master thesis, which he submitted to Bilkent University Department of Political Science and Public Administration in 2018, with the title “Rethinking State and Civil Society Relations in Turkey: An Analysis on Migrant Health" was discussed. Oğuz Can Ok examined how medical systems in Turkey integrate non-citizen to the system based on the in-depth interviews with 29 people and participatory observation. Ayşecan Terzioğlu from Sabancı University Department of Cultural Studies assessed Ok’s thesis. Mentioning the difficulties of interdisciplinary studies, Terzioğlu said that Ok’s work fills a gap in this field.