Playing the Trump card

Abstract

This thesis explores EU extra-territorialisation practices on Turkish territory in the contemporary geopolitics of mobility. In order to maintain or regain control on its borders “for the fear of loss of comfort”, the EU has to find a way to deal with undocumented, or at least ‘unwanted’ migrants, that are (potentially) crossing its borders and causing an accumulation of migrants to take care of. If the EU succeeds in preventing migrants from entering its territory, it remains legally free from granting them services and rights. Therefore, the EU is extending its geographic scope to where the potential EU migrant is and in that manner making its border management fluid. The extra-territorialisation of migration control practices is a utilized strategy executed beyond ‘EUropean’ sovereign territory towards Turkey, to regain this control again. However, migrants have scandalously turned into a plaything in political power games as Turkey appears not to be an easy partner to transform and negotiate with. Turkey instrumentalises ‘EUrope’s despair to pave the way to certain incentives. But extra-territorialisation seems morally questionable as it is a way to obstruct migrant’s ways to seek asylum. By doing this, migrants fall victim to the Turkish migration system that is inadequate due to the high number of residing migrants and the geographical limitation that Turkey still holds.