FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS OF OPERATION PEACE SPRING BY TURKEY IN 2019 AS A FORM OF SECURITIZATION OF THE SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS

Abstract

The outbreak of civil war in Syria since 2011 has resulted in 3.8 million Syrian refugees having to move to neighboring countries. Turkey is one of them, with the total number of refugees as of December 2020 reaching 3.6 million refugees who fled to Turkey. This led to the emergence of a refugee crisis in Turkey which caused various problems at home. One of the problems with the refugee crisis is that it causes high unemployment in Turkey and is one of the factors inhibiting the economy. As a form of securitization of the refugee crisis by the Turkish state, it has been responded to in various ways and one of them is the Operation Peace Spring’s foreign policy launched in 2019. This policy is in the form of military operations to occupy territories by Turkey in the northern part of Syria, with the aim of providing a "safe zone" for Syrian refugees to return to their homeland. Through the concept of securitization, the writer finds that as a sovereign country, Turkey must provide security to its citizens from threats, especially from abroad. This type of research used in this research is to use a qualitative descriptive method. This method is used to obtain a more detailed explanation regarding developing issues. With this process, it will be explained comprehensively and also pay attention to the structure of how the securitization carried out by Turkey in Operation Peace Spring's foreign policy can provide security for the threats it receives.

Keywords

• foreign policy
• military operations
• refugee crisis
• securitization
• operation peace spring