turkmen in iraq and their flight - orsam

TURKMEN IN IRAQ AND THEIR FLIGHT: A DEMOCRAPHIC QUESTION
Europe as people were escaping former Yugoslavia
due to the violence following the collapse
of the Federal Yugoslavia. The invasion of Iraq
in 2003 and ongoing military operations since
the first Gulf War have provided another unfortunate
example to show us how conflicts are
determining population movements in certain
regions of the world.
Minority populations are particularly affected
by such conflict situations but one concept is
crucial in understanding such human mobility:
concept of relative deprivation 26 . Gurr argues
that violent conflicts are more likely to occur
when the gap between people’s expectations
and actual situation widens. 27 7 years after the
invasion, we can clearly see that so little improvement
is achieved in Iraq and internally displaced
people and their return in Iraq has grown
to be a major problem particularly in Kirkuk
area. Thus one can expect intensification of the
potential for civil conflict in the country. Such
increase in conflict is I believe going to trigger
more migrations internally as well as internationally.
In the following sections I will elaborate
the concept of the environment of human insecurity
which I developed for understanding
international migration in conflict situations. I
will also briefly introduce the concept of opportunity
frameworks.
There is a growing research interest in the nexus
of conflict and migration. Wars and other
latent, less intensive conflicts are closely linked
to the international migration of disadvantaged
ethnic groups 28 ; however, more importantly,
the research shows that intra-state conflicts,
when compared to inter-state conflicts, cause
greater casualties 29 and, by implication, cause
larger population displacements. Therefore,
intra-state conflicts deserve more attention
from migration researchers. Nonetheless, as a
force which facilitates international migration,
“conflict” is not limited to extremely violent
struggles but includes a range of situations in
which parties with conflicting interests meet.
Contemporary international migration is better
understood as a complicated human movement,
involving different types of migrants,
such as ‘refugees’, ‘asylum seekers’, ‘family migrants’,
‘illegal migrants’, ‘migrant workers’, and
‘professionals’. In most cases it is impossible to
distinguish ‘economic’, ‘political’ or ‘cultural’
reasons from each other, and that people often
move with mixed, and overlapping, motivations
has been highlighted in many cases studied.
30 The concept of environment of human insecurity
(EOHI) also engages with such mixed
causes for international migration.
The relative deprivation concept mentioned
above led to another concept which I call the
‘environment of human insecurity’ which was
initially applied to international migration from
Turkey as migration appears to be one of the
strategic options in conflict situations 31 . Along
with I also introduced the concept of ‘opportunity
frameworks,’ which I have later used in
the analyses of Iraqi and Turkmen migration. 32
Hourani applied it to the Lebanese migration 33
while Erdemir and Zirh saw an application in
the case of Alevi migrants in London 34 . Working
with this model, I found that conflict aspects
were more central and significant in determining
migration mechanisms, typologies,
and policies.
International migration can be discussed as a
process involving two opposing parties—that
of a migrating human person or group and
that of a regulating or controlling agency–with
conflicting interests. At the same time, existing
migration typologies discuss migration in
terms of voluntary versus forced, illegal versus
legal, economic versus political, etc. However,
understanding migration process with reference
to conflict is also critical of those typologies
which are not adequate to represent the multiple
and dynamic causes and motivations for
international migration, and they are especially
not adequate to represent the relation of the
migration process to conflict.
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