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Chapter 6
How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate
and Take Root: Local Governments
and Refugees in Turkey
Elif Durmu¸s
Contents
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......................................... 124
6.2 Syrian Refugees,LocalGovernments,andLegalAmbiguity ...................... 127
6.3 The Effectiveness of Human Rights: From Formalist to Sociological Perspectives . . . . . 129
6.4 Grounded Theory Approach and Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................... 133
6.5 Factors Facilitating the Cross-Pollination and Taking Root of Human Rights as a Norm
in LocalGovernance ........................................................ 135
6.5.1 InstitutionalCapacityinLocalGovernments ............................. 135
6.5.2 Networks and the Dissemination of the Developing Norm that Local
Governments Can/Should Improve Refugee Rights . . . . .................... 144
6.5.3 Coordination and Cooperation Between Local Governments and Other
Actors ............................................................. 147
6.5.4 Political Will ........................................................ 149
6.6 Conclusion ................................................................ 150
References ..................................................................... 154
Abstract The human rights regime—as law, institutions and practice—has been
facing criticism for decades regarding its effectiveness, particularly in terms of
unsatisfactory overall implementation and the failure to protect the most vulner-
able who do not enjoy the protection of their States: refugees. Turkey is the country
hosting the largest refugee population, with around four million at the end of May
2020 (https://www.unhcr.org/tr/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2020/06/UNHCR-Tur
key-Operational-Update-May-2020.pdf). As an administratively centralised country,
Turkey’s migration policy is implemented by central government agencies, but this
has not proved sufficient to guarantee the human rights of refugees on the ground.
Meanwhile, in connection with urbanisation, decentralisation and globalisation, local
governments around the world are receiving increasing attention from migration
studies, political science, law, sociology and anthropology. In human rights schol-
arship, the localisation of human rights and the potential role of local governments
have been presented as ways to counter the shortcomings in the effectiveness of
the human rights regime and discourse. While local governments may have much
E. Durmu¸s(
B)
Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance, Cities of Refuge Research, Utrecht University,
Utrecht, The Netherlands
e-mail: e.durmus@uu.nl
© The Author(s) 2021
C. Boost et al. (eds.), Myth or Lived Reality,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-447-1_6
123
124 E. Durmu¸s
untapped potential, a thorough analysis of the inequalities between local govern-
ments in terms of access to resources and opportunities is essential. The Turkish
local governments which form the basis of this research, operate in a context of
legal ambiguity concerning their competences and obligations in the area of migra-
tion. They also have to deal with large differences when it comes to resources and
workload. In practice, therefore, there is extreme divergence amongst municipali-
ties in the extent to which they engage with refugee policies. This chapter seeks
to answer the question why and how certain local governments in Turkey come
to proactively engage in policy-making that improves the realisation of refugees’
rights. Exploratory grounded field research among Turkish local governments reveals
four main factors that enable and facilitate the engagement of local governments in
refugee policies: (1) the capacity of and institutionalisation in local governments;
(2) the dissemination of practices and norms surrounding good local migration and
rights-based governance through networks; (3) the availability of cooperation and
coordination with other actors in the field, and (4) political will. Collectively, these
factors illustrate how a new norm—the norm that local governments can and ought to
engage in policy-making improving the rights of refugees—is cross-pollinating and
taking root among Turkish local governments. This understanding will provide valu-
able insights into how norms are developed, travel and are institutionalised within
social and institutional networks, and how differences in access, capacity, polit-
ical and cooperative opportunities may facilitate and obscure the path to policies
improving human rights on the ground.
Keywords Human rights ·Local governments ·Turkey ·Institutional capacity ·
Local migration policies ·Dissemination
6.1 Introduction
The gap between legal standards applicable to the protection of refugees in Turkey
and the on the ground rights fulfilment mirrors two shortcomings that human rights
have been facing regarding their effectiveness, since their codification in interna-
tional law. The first of such shortcomings, the so-called ‘enforcement gap’ relates to
the discrepancy between the requirements of human rights regulations and the situ-
ation on the ground.1The second shortcoming concerns the effectiveness of human
rights when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable who do not enjoy the protec-
tion of their States, sometimes referred to as the ‘citizenship gap’.2Turkey hosts
the highest number of refugees worldwide—around four million people—of which
1Kennedy 2002; Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005; Donoho 2007; Hopgood 2013; Posner 2014.
2Kennedy 2002;BryskandShafir2004.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 125
around 3.6 million are Syrian refugees under the domestic legal regime of ‘tempo-
rary protection’.3Legislation on temporary protection is operationalised in a highly
centralised manner, and there is no national long-term policy for those under ‘tempo-
rary protection’, nor any official integration policy.4There is no dispersal system that
allocates refugees to provinces and municipalities, no public housing scheme, and no
language courses offered by the State. The central government has established regu-
lations for the basic protection of the human rights of Syrian refugees, such as access
to free health care, wide-scale schooling of children, and opportunities to work in
regularised manner with work permits.5However, the reality on the ground is that an
overwhelming majority of the working refugee population are working irregularly,
that the percentage of children attending school is only 50%, and that access to basic
rights remains problematic.6Most refugees (98.2%) do not live in government-run
refugee camps, but in urban settlements.7However, local governments in Turkey
have no official competences in providing services to refugees under temporary
protection.8The Law on Municipalities contains contradictory clauses on whether
or not local governments are obliged or even permitted to include non-citizens in
their service provision, creating an atmosphere of legal ambiguity.9Despite this lack
of law’s coercive force, many local governments in Turkey have opted to engage
extensively in policies and practices that improve the human rights of refugees on
the ground, but which also require time, energy, personnel and resources.10 Why and
how is this happening?
This chapter will address the question: Why and how do certain local govern-
ments in Turkey come to engage proactively in policy-making that improves the
realisation of refugees’ rights? This empirical question also corresponds to a niche in
literature. In response to the enforcement gap and criticism towards a legalistic under-
standing of how to close it, socio-legal scholars have been drawing attention to the
localisation of human rights—the cultivation of locally sensitive understandings of
human rights and increasing ownership—as a solution.11 At the same time, migration
scholars have been discussing a ‘local turn’ in migration governance, with a focus on
3UNHCR Turkey: https://www.unhcr.org/tr/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2020/06/UNHCR-Tur
key-Operational-Update-May-2020.pdf. Latest 2020 numbers from the website of the Directorate
General of Migration Management: https://www.goc.gov.tr/gecici-koruma5638.
4Temporary Protection Regulation, adopted by Council of Ministers Decision No: 2014/6883,
22/10/2014 No: 29153, pursuant to Law No 6458. The only long-term solutions foreseen for Syrians
under temporary protection are voluntary returns and departures to third countries.
5Kayao˘glu and Erdo ˘gan 2019.
6Erdo˘gan 2017; Korkmaz 2017.
7Erdo˘gan 2017, p. 42.
8See Sect. 6.2 for a detailed analysis. Erdo˘gan 2017.
9Ibid., p. 40.
10Erdo ˘gan 2017; Adıgüzel and Tekgöz 2019; Durmu¸s2020.
11Merry 2006; De Feyter et al. 2011; Goodhart 2013; Oomen and Baumgärtel 2018; Oomen and
Durmu¸s2019;Hoffman2019.
126 E. Durmu¸s
local authorities.12 In both research areas, local governments in non-Western coun-
tries, in centralised settings, are underexplored. Common research cases include cities
such as Barcelona, Milan, Utrecht, all of which operate in a context of (increasing)
decentralisation.13 Research in the Turkish context complements and furthers such
research. First, as Turkish municipalities generally host far largernumbers of refugees
than Western municipalities; this research will demonstrate the pitfalls of decentral-
isation and localisation when a comparatively lower capacity and higher burden are
coupled. Second, non-involvement in human rights and migration policy-making is a
common and acceptable approach in the Turkish context of legal ambiguity, political
uncertainty and centralised governance.14 Researching why those municipalities that
engage, do indeed engage, and how that has come to be, is therefore expected to
provide important insights. Using grounded empirical insights from field research,
this chapter argues that four factors enable/facilitate the engagement of local Turkish
governments with policies that improve the rights of refugees: their capacity, the
dissemination of norms on human rights and their role therein, the availability of
cooperation, and political will. Collectively, these factors illustrate how the notion
that Turkish local governments ought to contribute to the realisation of the rights of
refugees is becoming a norm, is cross-pollinating and is taking root amongst Turkish
local governments. These findings are derived from the Turkish context but may also
shed light on structural and cultural factors that underlie the ‘normativisation’ and
socialisation of human rights elsewhere.
On the path to these findings, Sect. 6.2 of this chapter will provide a brief legal
overview of temporary protection, local governments and ambiguity. Section 6.3 will
then explore the question of human rights effectiveness, in its formalist and socio-
logical evaluations, and how local governments and this study relate to them. After
describing the methodology and grounded theory approach, the four main factors
that have been found to determine whether a local government will engage in policy-
making for refugees will be presented and discussed: (1) its capacity and level of insti-
tutionalisation, (2) whether the ideas and practices of refugee-welcoming or human
rights-friendly municipalities have reached them through networks or other means
of dissemination, (3) the available coordination and cooperation with other comple-
mentary actors in the multi-level governance of migration, and (4) the presence of
political will. Finally, a number of concluding remarks will address the contribution
of these factors and their collective illustration of a norm’s cross-pollination and
taking root, to existing literature.
12Caponio and Borkert 2010; Zapata-Barrero et al. 2017;Bendeletal.2019; Caponio et al. 2019.
13Sassen 2001; Oomen et al. 2016; Oomen and Baumgärtel 2018.
14Erdo ˘gan 2017, p. 40.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 127
6.2 Syrian Refugees, Local Governments, and Legal
Ambiguity
Having ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees with a
geographical reservation, Turkey does not grant asylum to people fleeing to the
country from outside of Europe asylum in the country.15 In this chapter, however,
Syrians under temporary protection are be referred to as refugees, as international
law dictates a declaratory rather than a constitutive character to the determination
of the refugee status.16 The regime provided by the Turkish Law on Foreigners and
International Protection (‘YUKK’)17 for situations in which ‘immediate’18 protec-
tion is needed by mass entries into the country (rendering individual assessment
impossible), is the ‘temporary protection’ regime.19 This regime is not considered as
international protection and does not offer any durable solution.20 In October 2013,
the Council of Ministers adopted the Regulation on Temporary Protection in accor-
dance with this law, declaring that all persons entering Turkey from the Syrian Arab
Republic as of 25 April 2011 will be granted temporary protection.21 This would
be operationalised by the national Directorate General of Migration Management
(‘DGMM’), in accordance with the ‘Temporary Protection Regulation’ enacted by
the Council.22 Here, the conditions of reception centres are regulated in detail, while
the only long term solutions referred are voluntary return and resettlement in a third
country.23 As such, ‘harmonisation’, the preferred term for integration in Turkey, is
not the goal of temporary protection.24 However, today 98.2% of Syrian refugees live
in urban areas (rather than in reception centres in border regions), trying to survive
economically and socially in densely populated metropolitan areas.25 Despite this,
local governments do not appear in the Regulation, and only minimally in the YUKK,
among a list of actors that the DGMM may consult when drawing up harmonisation
policies.26 Local governments are thus not assigned any duties in the reception and
15Ibid., Article 61.
16Hathaway and Foster 2014.
17Law No. 6458, ‘Law on Foreigners and International Protection’ (‘YUKK’), entered into force
11 April 2013, Unofficial English translation by the Department of Communication for Foreigners,
Directorate General of Migration Management, Ministry of Interior Affairs, Turkey. https://yimer.
gov.tr/EN/Legis/215f1c4c-5384-47f9-9ac2-dc2575b4d48f.
18Ibid., Article 91.
19Ibid.
20Article 7(3): ‘Persons benefiting from temporary protection shall not be deemed as having been
directly acquired one of the international protection statuses as defined in the Law.’ Regulation,
supra note 5, Article 91.
21Ibid., Provisional Article I.
22Ibid.
23Ibid., Part 9, Articles 42–45.
24YUKK, supra note 18, Article 96.
25DGMM Website: https://www.goc.gov.tr/gecici-koruma5638.
26YUKK, supra note 18, Article 96.
128 E. Durmu¸s
integration of Syrian refugees.27 Nonetheless, as Syrians constitute the largest group
of migrants in Turkey, most of the local government practices on migration revolve
around them, and so they will be the main focus of this chapter.
The final domestic legal source to consult on the relationship between local
governments and refugees, the Law on Municipalities,28 is inconsistent on the ques-
tion of the beneficiaries of local services. On the one hand, Article 13 holds that
anyone who resides in the territory of a local government is that locality’s ‘hemsehri’
(fellow citizens/townspeople) and is therefore ‘entitled to participate in local govern-
ment’s decisions and services, to be informed about local government activities and
benefit from the material aid of the local government.’29 The local government is then
entrusted with ‘conduct[ing] activities as are necessary for the development of social
and cultural relationships between fellow citizens and for the protection of cultural
values’30 and with ‘ensuring the participation of universities, professional associa-
tions with public organ status, unions, civil society organisations and experts’31 in
these activities. This is the legal basis for all local government activities which benefit
all migrants, including refugees and undocumented migrants.32
On the other hand, Article 14, titled ‘Functions of Local Governments’ lists all
the services that local governments may or should provide, stating that these should
be provided to ‘nationals’ (vatandaslar). This then creates legal ambiguity for local
governments as to whether or not they are now obliged to, or even permitted to provide
these services to non-nationals.33 The fact that local governments receive their share
of the central budget according to the number of nationals residing in their territory
further complicates this matter.34 As such, in extreme cases, such as Kilis, a local
government could be serving a refugee population that is as large as the number of
nationals registered as residents of the municipality, yet only receive a budget based
on the Turkish population.35 The expenditure of local governments in Turkey, as in
all public organs, is scrutinised by the Sayı¸stay (the Court of Cassation). Interviews
and conversations at local government conferences revealed that some local govern-
ments, especially those run by opposition parties, held concerns about being held
accountable for spending towards non-nationals by the Sayı¸stay, perhaps dispropor-
tionately so in the case of opposition-governed municipalities.36 One large district
municipality governed by the CHP in a metropole, stated that Sayı¸stay examinations
27Erdo ˘gan 2017, p. 42.
28Law No 5393, ‘Law of Municipalities’, entered into force through publication in the Official
Gazette: 13/7/2005 under Number 25874.
29Ibid., Article 13(1).
30Ibid., Article 13(2).
31Ibid.
32Erdo ˘gan 2017, p. 40; interviews Sultanbeyli, Maltepe, Zeytinburnu, Keçiören.
33Erdo ˘gan 2017, p. 40.
34Ibid.
35Ibid.
36Anonymous Interviews #1 and #2.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 129
sometimes last ‘many months and up to a whole year’ in their municipality, while
AKP-led municipalities receive visits from Court officials for only one day.37
This environment of legal ambiguity, among other factors, helps to explain the
extreme divergence amongst Turkish local governments in terms of their engage-
ment with refugee policies. The discretionary spaces for local governments to act
in, are shaped both by laws on their competences and legal ambiguities around
these laws.38 The way in which such discretionary space is used by Turkish
local governments ranges from doing absolutely nothing in the area of migration
to addressing the needs of refugees by mainstreaming local services, including
access for refugees,39 setting up NGOs and community centres targeting refugees,40
offering language courses,41 free local healthcare,42 vocational training,43 mobilisa-
tion projects to increase schooling rates,44 free childcare,45 free anonymous STD
testing,46 psychological support,47 legal support,48 disability support49 and even
political participation.50
6.3 The Effectiveness of Human Rights: From Formalist
to Sociological Perspectives
When thinking about the theme of this book, the effectiveness of human rights, it
is helpful to first pose the questions: ‘Effectiveness of what?’ and ‘Effectiveness for
what’?51 When we understand human rights as a sub-field of international law, Taki’s
definition of effectiveness as ‘the efficacy (actual observance) of law as distinguished
from the validity (binding force) of law’52 provides guidance. Like other sub-fields of
37Anonymous Interview #2.
38Oomen et al. forthcoming.
39Interview Zeytinburnu.
40Presentation on Gaziantep during International Migration and Integration Symposium, Istanbul.
Interview Sultanbeyli.
41Interviews Zeytinburnu, Ba˘gcılar, Sultanbeyli, ABB.
42Interviews Sultanbeyli and Anonymous #1.
43Interviews Sultanbeyli, ABB, Zeytinburnu, Ba˘gcılar.
44Interview Ba ˘gcılar.
45Interview ABB.
46Anonymous Interview #1.
47Interview Sultanbeyli.
48Interviews Sultanbeyli, Keçiören.
49Interview Zeytinburnu.
50Anonymous Interview #1, Presentation by Gaziantep in International Migration and Integration
Symposium, March 2018, Istanbul.
51Brysk 2019.
52Ta ki 2013,para1.
130 E. Durmu¸s
international law, human rights suffer from the lack of a central enforcement system.53
While there are international bodies institutionalising the human rights regime, they
nevertheless rely on the consent and compliance of States and other institutions.54
In addition, due to the state-centricity of international law, individuals who are not
(or no longer) able to enjoy the protection of their own States, such as refugees and
stateless persons, are often deprived of the effective human rights protection that
nationals of States enjoy in their own country. This is referred to as the ‘citizenship
gap’.55 To increase the effectiveness of human rights as law, scholars have demanded
formalist steps such as codification, ratification and the legal incorporation of human
rights treaties into domestic law.56
This formalist approach has however attracted criticism for not adequately
explaining norm compliance.57 Both the ‘enforcement gap’ and the ‘citizenship gap’
do not materialise equally and identically in different places. The literature assessing
the effectiveness of the international human rights regime has yielded conflicting
results.58 If the preferred indicator of effectiveness is not a formal one, such as treaty
ratification, but rather the situation on the ground, reliance on interdisciplinarity
becomes almost inevitable. An answer to the question of why some (States, regions,
etc.) comply more than others is found in the sociology and anthropology of law:
the ownership a community develops for a norm.59 Legal incorporation constitutes a
formalist, top-down approach that does not focus on cultivating ownership for human
rights, especially in places where these norms are considered foreign.60 Socio-legal
scholars, especially social constructivists, argue that a top-down legalist perspective
will not lead to human rights ownership among diverse communities. and that, a
process of contestation involving relevant stakeholders in society should take place
instead.61 As such, social constructivists often inquire about the effectiveness (or
rather relevance) of human rights as an idea, value, practice, and as such a social
construction, rather than as law alone.62 The responses to the questions ‘effective-
ness of what?’ and ‘effectiveness for what?’ then become ‘the effectiveness of human
rights as a societal norm’ and ‘the effectiveness of human rights in influencing the
behaviour of actors.’
Risse and Sikkink explain that materialist answers alone fail to explain how state
identities, interests and preferences develop: ‘Material factors and conditions matter
through cognitive and communicative processes, the “battleground of ideas” by
53Ibid.
54Ibid.
55Brysk and Shafir 2004.
56Hathaway 2005;Hoffman2019.
57Helfer 2002;cf.Hathaway2005; Simmons 2009; Fraser 2019.
58Brysk 2019,p.2.
59Finnemore 1993; Merry 2006; Soohoo et al. 2008; Grigolo 2016; Oomen et al. 2016.
60Fraser 2019;Hoffman2019.
61Engle 2000;Helfer2002; Merry 2006;An-Na’im2010; Freeman 2013; Fraser 2019; Oomen and
Durmu¸s2019.
62Grigolo 2017.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 131
which actors determine their identities and interests and to develop collective under-
standings of the situation in which they act and of the norms guiding their interac-
tions.’63 Béland and Cox demonstrate that different ideas in this ‘battleground’,64 of
which the notion of human rights is only one, can also constitute ‘coalition magnets’
that actors rally around for a common cause.65 Berman and the ‘New’ New Haven
School of Law66 also observe the world as a battleground in which ideas, values
and propositions of what constitutes the law are contested, with ‘norm-generating
communities’ proposing their own versions of what law ought to look like.67 Human
rights are presented as a successful example of how a normative ideal can become
accepted by the dominant actors and institutions and come to constitute official law.68
Constituting official law, however, is not the end of the road for a norm. Still, this
norm must be advocated, contested and negotiated to maintain its relevance, provide
opportunities for the correction of errors,69 and reaffirm its ownership amongst
communities. Brysk explores ‘pathways of influence’ such as interdependence, diffu-
sion, legalisation, framing and shaming—through which human rights permeates
the consciousness of nations and communities and gain such ownership.70 Merry
analyses the ‘people in the middle’ who travel between the ‘local’ and the ‘transna-
tional’, who can speak both the language of the international rights regime and the
local culture, and who ‘vernacularise’ international human rights norms.71 Babül, in
her research into human rights localisation among the Turkish police and judiciary
during the EU accession process, explicates the complex and multi-directional nature
of human rights contestation and dissemination between—and amongst—‘insider’
and ‘outsider’ actors. She argues that (the effects of) these normative processes
continue long after ‘projects’ and ‘trainings’ have been completed by local, national
and ‘foreign’ stakeholders.72 In sum, ownership, and thus arguably the effectiveness
of human rights, is increased through localisation, contestation and dissemination of
the norms concerned with(in) the communities on the ground.73 For the purposes of
this chapter, these processes are summarised through the metaphor of human rights
‘cross-pollinating’, i.e. being contested, disseminated and vernacularised through
networks that form a battleground of ideas, and ‘taking root’, which refers to the
process of institutionalisation (both formal and social) of the norms into sustainable
governance practices.
63Risse and Sikkink 1999,p.7.
64Ibid.
65Béland and Cox 2016.
66Berman 2007;Levit2007;Koh2007.
67Berman 2007.
68Ibid.
69Ibid.
70Brysk 2019,p.1.
71Merry 2006.
72Babül 2017.
73Risse and Sikkink 1999,p.6.
132 E. Durmu¸s
Local governments become important in this context with their role as the ‘lowest’
tier of public administration, closest to the people.74 Local governments have been
enjoying widespread scholarly attention from, for example, migration studies, inter-
national relations, political science, law, sociology and geography.75 While increased
urbanisation, globalisation and decentralisation caused local governments to become
implicated with more human rights issues, they have also emerged as a polit-
ical actor cooperating with peers and demanding more voice in national, regional
and international politics, in contestation of the view of the State as monolithic.76
From Barber’s ‘If Mayors Ruled the World’77 to Nijman’s ‘Renaissance of the
City’,78 Aust’s ‘Shining Cities on the Hill’,79 and Oomen and Baumgärtel’s ‘Frontier
Cities’,80 research has focussed on how local governments contribute to solutions
of glocal problems such as climate change and migration management.81 Constitu-
tional lawyers joined the discussion, exploring local governments’ increasing claims
for greater autonomy, powers and competences.82 For human rights localisation,
cities have been described as agents (norm entrepreneurs), actors with human rights
obligations, as well as arenas in which different stakeholders come together, gener-
ating localised understandings of human rights.83 In previous work I have mapped
local governments’ engagement with the ‘formation’, ‘implementation’, ‘defence’,
‘coordination’, ‘dissemination’ and ‘contestation’ of human rights.84
This chapter is a case study for examining these broader processes and their short-
comings. Looking at Turkish local governments and their proactive refugee policies
is relevant to both formalist and sociological views on human rights effectiveness. In
a formalist sense, local policy has the capacity to objectively and measurably improve
the human rights realisation of refugees on the ground, reducing both the enforcement
gap and the citizenship gap. From a sociological perspective, I argue that the precursor
to this outcome-oriented effectiveness of human rights is the success of the underlying
societal norm (that local governments ought to improve refugee rights) in influencing
the behaviour of municipalities. The national reality is legal ambiguity in which it is
perfectly acceptable for local governments not to engage in refugee policies. Where
some local governments are proactive with regard to refugee policy, regardless of
74United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee Report, The Role of Local
Authorities in the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, A/HRC/30/49, para 1.
75Sassen 2001;DeFeyteretal.2011;Barber2014;Marxetal.2015; Oomen et al. 2016; Zapata-
Barrero et al. 2017; Bendel et al. 2019;Hoffman2019; Durmu¸s2020.
76Aust 2015; Nijman 2016; Oomen and Baumgärtel 2018.
77Barber 2014.
78Nijman 2016.
79Aust 2015.
80Oomen and Baumgärtel 2018.
81See also Blank 2006.
82Hirschl 2020. See also the upcoming Special Issue of the European Yearbook on Constitutional
Law on local governments.
83Oomen and Durmu¸s2019.
84Durmu¸s2020.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 133
legal coercion, it is possible to observe the developmental stages of a societal norm,
perhaps one of good-governance or human rights duties of local governments. Ideas
and practices constituting this norm travel (cross-pollinate) and are institutionalised
(take root) among the community of local governments, increasing the effectiveness
of the norm. The four factors I will present below that facilitate/enable this ‘cross-
pollination’ and ‘taking root’ are grounded findings answering the question of why
these processes are successful in some municipalities and not others in the Turkish
context. The four factors are thus the novel, grounded theoretical contributions to the
collection of theories on norms and socialisation.
Let us now briefly problematise the notion of effectiveness. In both formalist,
outcome-oriented assessments of rights realisation on the ground and the socio-legal
assessment of influence on behaviour of decision-makers, conclusive determination
of causality between the results and human rights (as law or as social construction)
is difficult. When we track the dissemination and socialisation of a norm within a
community, the actors may not consider themselves to be acting under influence of
that norm, and/or will be acting in the ‘battleground of ideas’ influenced by a myriad
of them. When actors do not motivate their decisions with a direct reference to human
rights, the risk of ‘hineininterpretierung’, or of reading human rights into motiva-
tions where they are not expressed, is high. This problem arises especially when the
research participant refers to motives such as humanitarianism, non-differentialism,
ethics, or morals, which are normative motivations related to human rights, but which
are difficult to distinguish from each other. Regardless of our conception of effective-
ness, establishing a direct link proves highly problematic. With these disclaimers,
this chapter will be very modest in making statements about effectiveness. Leaving
aside the challenges above for now, this chapter will consider human rights effec-
tiveness as the cross-pollination and taking root of the norm that local governments
in Turkey, despite the lack of coercive force, ought to provide services to refugees
and improve their human rights realisation.
6.4 Grounded Theory Approach and Methodology
Grounded theory methods are ‘systematic, yet flexible guidelines for collecting and
analysing qualitative data to construct theories “grounded” in the data themselves’.85
The process of grounded theory involves seeking data, describing observed events,
posing fundamental questions, and systematising responses thereof and other patterns
emerging from data in theoretical categories.86 Data is collected until such theoret-
ical categories are saturated, i.e. when additional data does not produce any new
categories or theoretical insights on the emerging grounded theory.87 Emerging
85Charmaz 2006,p.2.
86Ibid., p. 25.
87Ibid., p. 96.
134 E. Durmu¸s
grounded theories do not exist in a theoretical vacuum, and ‘refine[…], extend[…],
challenge[…] or supersede[…] extant concepts.’88 In reviewing literature and earlier
theories, the grounded theory should be positioned in, challenge, extend and comple-
ment existing theories and their gaps.89 The proposed original concepts/theoretical
categories must be explained in terms of their content, efficacy and significance.90
An emerged grounded theory that demonstrates credibility, originality, resonance
and usefulness91 can not only explain and interpret a localised reality (in this case,
the Turkish local governance context), but also have cross-cutting relevance for
the understanding of related phenomena across disciplines.92 As Charmaz explains,
‘A contextualised grounded theory can (…) end with inductive analyses that theo-
rize connections between local worlds and larger social structures.’ This is exactly
what this research aims to do; to conceptualise the processes and factors that facili-
tate/enable local governments to go out of their way to improve the rights of refugees.
A close look at these factors and processes in a high-burden, low-capacity institu-
tional context can have cross-cutting relevance and explanatory power for how norms
travel and take root in multidirectional processes within different and/or larger social
and institutional contexts, starting with the local government communities of other
countries with low local institutional capacity and legal autonomy.
This chapter is based on empirical field research conducted in Turkey between
November 2018 and February 2019 as part of the Cities of Refuge Project.93 The
research was guided by the main research question of Cities of Refuge, namely
the relevance of human rights in how local governments (in Turkey, Switzerland,
Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, and transnationally) receive and integrate
refugees. In addition, a useful concept researched was local governments’ engage-
ment with human rights and/or refugee policy.94 The desk research consisted of
analysing literature on the subject, information on the websites of municipalities
and external reports on the work of municipalities for refugees. The field research
included participant observation95 and nineteen interviews. These interviews were
conducted with officials from eight municipalities, three city networks, three NGOs
and two international organisations, and with two academics. The interviewees were
selected using snowball and theoretical sampling,96 starting with local governments
88Ibid., p. 169.
89Ibid., pp. 167–169.
90Ibid.
91Ibid., pp. 182–183.
92Ibid., p. 153.
93The Cities of Refuge Project is funded by the VICI grant of the Netherlands Scientific Organisation
(NWO). https://www.citiesofrefuge.eu/.
94Durmu¸s2020.
95Migration and Integration Symposium, April 2018, Istanbul; International Human Rights Cities
Conference, November 2018, Istanbul; Association of Municipalities, Sultanbeyli; Zeytinburnu
AKDEM; Ankara Refugee Vocational Training Centre; Kecioren Migration Service Centre (One-
Stop-Shop).
96Charmaz 2006, p. 96.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 135
participating in the Human Rights Cities project and local governments that had
received recognition in the media or among other stakeholders in the field for their
proactive engagement with refugee policy. Of the selected governments, three had
a proactive approach to the implementation of refugee policy, two were selected
as Human Rights Cities that were not engaged in refugee policies, and three were
proactively engaged in policies related to human rights in general and to refugees in
particular. To protect their privacy, the names of interviewees are anonymised in this
chapter. The names of municipalities are provided, unless the participants requested
to remain anonymous or if anonymisation is required for safety reasons. The data
collected in Turkey was analytically complemented by the author’s research in the
transnational field, consisting of three interviews97 and participant observation in
several conferences.98 During participant observation, field notes were taken, memos
were drafted as part of the reflection on findings, and the interviews were coded using
NVivo. The four factors below and the concept they collectively illustrate—the cross-
pollination and taking root of a new norm regarding local governments and their role
in realising the rights of refugees—arose as theoretical categories and concepts in
this iterative process of data analysis (coding), additional data collection (theoretical
sampling) and theoretical reflection.
6.5 Factors Facilitating the Cross-Pollination and Taking
Root of Human Rights as a Norm in Local Governance
6.5.1 Institutional Capacity in Local Governments
Against the backdrop of a centralised governance regime and legal ambiguity,
capacity is one of the most important factors indicating whether a local govern-
ment is likely to engage in refugee policy. Within this framework, capacity can be
defined by finances, institutional structure (i.e. departments and branches), quantity
and quality of personnel, the availability of data, and the level of institutionalisation.
In this context, institutionalisation represents the organisational professionalism and
the capacity for—and practice of—medium and long term, systematic, accountable,
assessable decision-making.
97With officials from two municipalities, Gwangju and Sao Paolo, and one official of UCLG.
982017 Metropolis Conference, The Hague; 2018 Human Rights Cities Workshop, Graz; 2018
World Human Rights Cities Forum, Gwangju; 2018 Cities for Rights Conference, Barcelona; 2018
Fundamental Rights Forum, Vienna.
136 E. Durmu¸s
6.5.1.1 Budget
The budgets of Turkish municipalities consist of income from the central govern-
ment (determined on the basis of population size and an urban development score),
and direct income of the local government from local taxes and its business trans-
actions.99 While the budget of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality competes with
that of some European countries, less populated, less developed semi-urban or rural
municipalities will be dealing with far smaller numbers.100 The budget calculated and
assigned by the central government only takes into account the number of Turkish
nationals and not the number foreigners (or refugees).101 This is a serious problem
and creates inequalities between local governments and their workload, combined
with the consequences of the lack of a national dispersal system allocating refugees
to particular localities, disproportionate refugee populations between localities, and
different levels of access to resources. One blatant example of this is Kilis, which is
both a province and a municipality on the southern border of Turkey. Over the past
three years, Kilis has been hosting around as many refugees as registered Turkish
residents. As a result, the beneficiaries of the municipality’s services have doubled
while the budget has remained the same.102 Consequently, while local governments
in metropolitan areas such as Ankara and Istanbul can ‘afford’ to create employment,
education and social inclusion policies to facilitate refugee integration, municipali-
ties such as Kilis are struggling to provide the most basic municipal services, such
as clean tap water and waste and sewage management.103 Although the Turkish
government has received a large sum of money under the EU-Turkey agreement, the
municipalities have not received any share of those funds. Furthermore, the lack of
funding dedicated to services for refugees has contributed to social tension within
local communities among persons who believe that the local government are spending
their ‘rightful’ taxpayer money on refugees.104
The problem of funding can be managed in several ways: local governments
can use funding allocated in their budgets for expenditure on ‘the elderly, sick and
the poor’ which mayors, according to the Law on Municipalities, may use at their
99Adıgüzel and Tekgöz 2019, p. 62: ‘there seem to be basically two sources: (1) allocation by
central government, shares from revenues of national taxes, financial assistance by central govern-
ment, loans and grants and (2) taxes, fees and user charges, contributions to infrastructural invest-
ments, income from municipal assets, revenues from entrepreneurial activities, and other income.
Certain criteria such as population, acreage number of villages in the city, rural population and
city development index are taken into account for transferring allocation from budget to local
governments’.
100Anonymous Interview #3; Anonymous Interview #4.
101Erdo ˘gan 2017; Interview Sultanbeyli; Anonymous Interview #4.
102See number of Syrian refugees under temporary protection registered by provinces at the website
of the DGMM: https://www.goc.gov.tr/gecici-koruma5638; Interview TBB.
103Ya ¸sar 2014.
104Adıgüzel and Tekgöz 2019, p. 62.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 137
discretion.105 Another possibility is to continue spending from the existing munic-
ipal budget (often the budget of the social services departments) and to argue that
Article 14 of the Law on Municipalities allows—or even obliges—local governments
to include co-citizens living within their territory in their governance and service
provision.106 This option may work legally, but can be problematic because of the
increasing social tensions in the Turkish host community or simply by creating budget
deficits. A third option that municipalities have resorted to is writing project applica-
tions to apply for funds from international organisations (‘IOs’) or non-governmental
organisations (‘NGOs’). Among the most popular partners in such projects are the
EU, UNHCR, IOM, UNICEF, Save the Children, GIZ (the German Society for
International Cooperation) which provide funding, a normative framework, a human
rights-oriented set of goals and indicators, as well as, at times, personnel.107 This
collaboration will be further developed in Sect. 6.5.3 below. A final option for local
governments is cooperating with local NGOs that provide services for refugees.108
Local NGOs are observed to fill the gaps in the provision of services and the realisa-
tion of rights where local governments are unable or unwilling to serve refugees.109
However, this creates a circular effect, as we observe some local governments
remain passive in the field of migration and human rights policy-making, due to
a highly active civil society in their locality already providing crucial services.110 A
highly creative local government, Sultanbeyli, has circumvented funding problems
by setting up an NGO and applying for funding as an NGO to provide services for
refugees in the locality.111 This way, Sultanbeyli can circumvent both the discom-
fort of foreign institutions concerning directly funding Turkish public bodies, and
the discomfort of the local Turkish population in seeing their local government use
municipal funds for refugees.112
6.5.1.2 Personnel
A prevalent reference in relation to capacity that emerged in the interviews was
the importance of personnel. While the expertise of personnel seemed to be the
most important issue for the interviewees,113 other key issues concerned the number
105Law on Municipalities, supra note 35; Erdo ˘gan 2017, pp. 40–42.
106See Sect. 6.2 above for details.
107Interviews Anonymous #1, Zeytinburnu, Maltepe, Sultanbeyli, Ba˘gcılar, MBB, TBB, Keçiören,
ASAM, IOM.
108Anonymous Interview #1; Interview Keçiören; Interview ASAM.
109Field Notes #3. Anonymous Interview #1, Interview Keçiören, Interview ASAM.
110Interview ASAM, Interview Keçiören.
111Interview Sultanbeyli.
112Ibid.
113Interview Maltepe, Interview TBB, Anonymous Interview #5.
138 E. Durmu¸s
of personnel in relation to the workload, and problems arising from arbitrary top-
down replacements and reallocations of personnel that disrupted the growth and
the embedding (‘taking root’) of certain practices within the local government. An
interview with officials from the Turkish Union of Municipalities (TBB) revealed
how in a the event of a change of government following local elections, even if the
new mayor had been elected from the same political party, personnel faced risks
of being replaced by new staff in whom the new mayor trusted more closely, or
of being relocated to a different department, outside their area of expertise.114 If
the relocated or replaced official was the main (or only) person who knew ‘how
to get the job done’ in that department, accumulated knowledge and expertise is
lost.115 This phenomenon can be considered both a cause and a consequence of
the lack of institutionalisation in Turkish municipalities. Because of the lack of
institutionalisation, leaders can reshuffle personnel as they see fit. Simultaneously,
institutionalisation is slowed down when this causes work in some departments to
fall apart because the core personnel has left, especially if practices were not (yet)
embedded into institutional tradition for future generations.116 On the other hand,
the institutionalisation acquired by local governments often develops through years
of experience in shorter projects, trainings, cooperation with external organisations,
and through the dissemination of norms and practices through networks of actors
in the field of local governance.117 This is in line with Babül’s findings within the
Turkish police and judiciary.118 These processes also depend on individual agency,
as individuals from different organisations who know each other and have already
worked well together successfully tend to be more inclined to work together again
and thus further develop local governance expertise.119 When personnel, who had in
her/his person accumulated knowledge, experience, ownership and socialisation of
certain norms of good local governance, is relocated to a field outside their expertise,
the chances of institutionalisation are also reduced for the local government, which
could have instead benefitted from the knowledge of the individuals working for it,
to embed that knowledge within institutional structures.
6.5.1.3 Data
A key element of capacity and institutionalisation in the case studies seemed to be
the availability of data on the inhabitants of a specific locality. As one interviewee
114Interview TBB.
115Ibid.
116Anonymous Interview #1, Interview ¸Si¸sli, Fieldnotes #1, example ¸Si¸sli and the fate of the
Department of Migration that lost its director and most of its employees.
117Anonymous Interview #5.
118Babül 2017.
119See Chap. 8of the present book for the relevance of Individual Agency in the introduction of
human rights to local governance.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 139
put it: “You can’t do anything without data.”120 Data is needed for institutionalised
governance, as it allows public bodies to prioritise and make decisions based on the
needs of the unique composition of their constituency. Data allows for the creation
of projects that meet the needs of the population.121 In addition, data is used to put
together project proposals to apply for funds from international organisations and
INGOs,122 and to justify municipal expenditure that is already controversial due
to legal ambiguity. Data on refugees within the locality also enables coordination
between different stakeholders providing financial or material aid to refugees, in order
to avoid double or triple coverage, but also to ensure efficiency and to reach those
most in need.123 Statistical data is mainly collected by the Turkish Statistical Institute
(TUIK) in the centralised country.124 Local governments are not obliged to collect
and keep data, nor is there a mainstream data collection method for local governments
that want to go the extra mile. Local governments generally have information on the
number of Turkish citizens registered as residents in their territory, and perhaps also
on their age and gender,125 but not necessarily more.
When it comes to migrants and refugees, the situation is even more bleak. For
Syrian refugees, there is no other central allocation system to determine where they
will live, except for the Dublin-esque126 requirement that they reside in the provinces
in which they first registered with the local offices of the DGMM. In other provinces,
Syrian refugees have no access to otherwise freely available services such as health
care. As such, only the Turkish police (which falls under the jurisdiction of the central
government) and the DGMM have (limited) data on where Syrian refugees reside.
Turkish local governments diverge in the amount and quality of data they have,
ranging from no data at all to data collected by individual social workers in the
field, from data only on Turkish residents, to data only on individuals contacting
the municipality with requests. While Ba˘gcılar, Zeytinburnu, Sultanbeyli,127 and
the IOM-led one-stop-shop ‘Migrants’ Centre’ in Keçiören collected quantitative
data from the individuals who contacted and requested support from the municipal
facilities, ¸Si¸sli collected only qualitative data through field visits.128 Although ¸Si¸sli
was referred to by many interviewees as an exemplary local government successful in
the field human rights and migration policies, there seemed to be a lack of systematic
120Interview Sultanbeyli.
121Ibid.
122Ibid.
123Ibid; Interview Çankaya.
124Interviews Zeytinburnu, Maltepe.
125Interview Maltepe.
126Dublin Regulation in EU also envisages asylum seekers to be returned the first EU country
of arrival. https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/asylum/examination-of-applicant
s_en.
127Sultanbeyli has a ‘SUKOM’ system in which 19.000 Syrian refugees are registered. The munic-
ipality estimates that this number is more accurate and up-to-date than those held by the central
government. Interview Sultanbeyli.
128Anonymous Interview #1.
140 E. Durmu¸s
data. This appeared to be related to the lack of personnel invested in these policies
(at the time of the interview), as there were initially only three, and later only one
employee in the Department of Migration. Zeytinburnu supplemented the available
data with large amounts of data collected through their ‘Family, Women, and Disabled
Centre’, which also offered migrant integration services, with qualitative data from
field visits.
Sultanbeyli has developed a database called ‘SUKOM’ as part of the Refugee
Association they founded, in which the disaggregated129 data on 19.000 Syrian
refugees is registered. Municipal officials estimate that this data is more accurate
and up-to-date than that of the central government, as refugees are often registered
in the province of their first registration, even though they have already moved to a
different locality.130 With highly disaggregated data on both the composition of the
local population as well as on their economic, educational, financial and social situ-
ation, Sultanbeyli was able to adapt a project initially carried out in a municipality
in Germany to the local reality. Sultanbeyli looked at the number and percentage
of refugees in the locality of working age who were unemployed and available to
participate in training internships with local small businesses two days a week.131
One interviewee stated that ‘In Turkey, not even the DGMM has a database like
ours.’132
Regardless of whether they had attempted and/or succeeded in collecting satisfac-
tory levels of data on which to base their policy, all interviewees expressed problems
and frustration about having access to data which they know are held by central
government authorities such as the DGMM and the police.133 This shows how much
more efficient use can be made of the time, money and efforts of public institu-
tions, with a better appreciation for cooperation and coordination between the main
actors in a given area. In Sect. 6.5.3 below, this chapter will discuss the importance
of cooperation and coordination for local governments and the importance of local
governments in collaborations.
6.5.1.4 Project-Based Governance: An Indicator of Low
Institutionalisation?
An unexpected finding of the field research was the ubiquitous reference to the word
‘project’. While Cities of Refuge colleagues who conducted research in countries
such as Italy and Netherlands investigated ‘policy’, interviewees in Turkey repeatedly
referred to ‘projects’ as means of local government engagement for refugees. This
129Information on the individuals includes education level, age, gender, employment status, whether
they receive financial support from an institution. Interview Sultanbeyli.
130Interview Sultanbeyli.
131Ibid.
132Ibid.
133Interviews Zeytinburnu, Sultanbeyli, Maltepe; Anonymous Interview #1.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 141
finding held similarities with observations from other countries, such as Greece, and
was thus arguably grounded in similar reasons such as: a centralised governance
regime, lack of clear competences and allocated funds for local governments in
relation to migration, and the ubiquitous presence of international organisations and
INGOs in the field due to these countries being considered ‘frontline’ or ‘hot-spot’
countries in terms of hosting refugees.134
Project-based governance, which appears to be very common in the Turkish
context, refers to most local governments opting for short-term projects rather than
long-term institutionalised policies. Most proactive municipalities develop projects
themselves targeting refugees on their own and apply for external funding, or partic-
ipate in projects designed by external actors such as the UNHCR, the IOM, and local
and international NGOs such as Yereliz,135 the Raoul Wallenberg Institute,136 Save
the Children,137 and the German Development Fund (‘GIZ’).138 Closely linked to
the ‘Cooperation and Coordination’ factor that will be discussed in the next section,
many local governments both benefit from cooperation with—and are valuable part-
ners for—other important (non-State) stakeholders in the field. Even when there is
no particular framework for a ‘project’, a practice by local governments seeking
to improve the human rights of refugees often develops spontaneously and without
reference to a policy of strategic planning and budgeting.139
There are many examples of project-based governance. For instance, the Ankara
Metropolitan Municipality carried out140 a project in cooperation with the UNHCR
that consisted of the construction of a large facility in the outskirts of Ankara
that would serve as a comprehensive vocational training centre offering integrated
language courses, psychological support, and day care.141 In a collaboration between
municipalities and international organisations, ‘one-stop-shops’ for the support of
migrants were created in the municipalities of Adana, Keçiören and ¸Sanlıurfa,
together with the IOM. Run with the help of both IOM funding and personnel hired by
IOM, these one-stop-shops located inside municipal facilities serve as a ‘first respon-
ders’ rather than a service provider for all needs. When migrants (including refugees)
register with the one-stop-shop, they are guided through a registration process that
collects data on their needs and wider situation. They are then forwarded to specialists
in education, employment, psychological or legal support, who guide the migrant
in the larger system of actors and stakeholders and assist them in resolving their
problems. The project aims to serve as a learning and transition experience for local
134OECD 2018, p. 138.
135Interview Zeytinburnu, Anonymous Interview #5.
136Interview Maltepe, Zeytinburnu; Anonymous Interview #5.
137Interview Zeytinburnu.
138Interview Maltepe.
139Interview Zeytinburnu.
140The current situation on this project is not known, as the municipality changed (political) hands
in the last local elections, and it is not known whether the previously nationalist new Mayor has
permitted continuation of the project.
141Interview ABB and Participant Observation in the facilities.
142 E. Durmu¸s
governments to adapt to providing basic human rights-related services to refugees.
Sultanbeyli’s ‘Association for Refugees’ is an NGO coordinated by the munici-
pality’s ‘Strategic Planning and Project Writing’ Department. Similarly, employees
of Maltepe Municipality’s Strategic Planning Department were also those partici-
pating in the conferences and training sessions of the pilot project ‘Human Rights
Cities’ that the municipality was part of. Looking at municipalities such as Ba˘gcılar,
Sultanbeyli and Zeytinburnu that did have more institutionalised policies and facil-
ities for refugees, we see a common trend; they evolved from earlier projects and
enjoyed a Mayor and/or Vice Mayor, as well as other high-level municipal decision-
makers who were invested in the purpose of this project.142 ¸Si¸sli, in a rare example
where an entire department is dedicated to migration, did not seem to be able to
conduct wide-ranging projects or programmes. This was mainly due to a lack of
institutional stability (especially with frequent personnel changes due to political
reasons) and a lack of support from higher-level decision-makers. That being said,
even municipalities with more established services for refugees,143 such as long-
standing community centres or the ‘Association of Refugees’, continued to imple-
ment and refer to short-term ‘projects’ which then might or might not be continued
in a more institutionalised format.144
The appeal of projects and project-based governance is not difficult to understand.
For most local governments, the provision of services to refugees only became part
of the local government repertoire after the arrival of Syrian refugees in 2011. Local
governments do not have as much experience in this field as they would in ensuring—
say—local infrastructure and water systems are in place. Legal ambiguity, discussed
in detail above, is another obstacle. As such, local government officials may not want
to, and at times cannot, establish long-term policies for refugees as no budget has been
allocated for this specific group in the five-year strategic plans and thus expenditure
and institutionalised policies are not easily justified. Moreover, and more importantly,
the regular income of local governments is calculated on the basis of number of
Turkish nationals in the territory and often cannot be stretched far enough to cover
the costs of social policies for refugees. Due both to such budgetary concerns and the
lack of experience in this field, local governments opt for experimental projects that
provide external funds and know-how from other actors in the field, but which can
be discontinued when the project does not seem sustainable, appropriate or effective
in the locality.
As an important side effect, interviewees from the Union of Municipalities stated
that projects often facilitated sustainable learning and improved institutionalisation
within local governments. One example was a project that ‘taught’ municipalities
to collect aggregated data.145 One interviewee, who now leads a project on local
governments and human rights in Turkey for an international NGO, provided an
142Interviews.
143Zeytinburnu Interview.
144Interview Ba ˘gcılar, Interview Sultanbeyli.
145Interview TBB, about the project ISKEP and its influence in the municipality of Kars, a remote,
urban locality.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 143
account based on her experience working with the Union of Municipalities and
a district municipality. She explained that that the EU accession process and the
decentralisation (the strengthening of local governance), which accompanied a new
wave of negotiations at the start of the 2000s, provided a good basis for projects and
cooperation with the foreign unions of municipalities who were eager to share their
know-how on local governance.146 The interviewee also explained how in the district
municipality of her previous employment, a project carried out with a UN agency and
local women’s rights NGOs on gender mainstreaming, and the creation of gender-
sensitive policies measured against gender-sensitive benchmarks, was a crucial step
in teaching the municipality key tools of institutionalised governance. Interviews
with current staff from the same district municipality revealed that although they had
no policies for refugees, they were very open to and familiar with the idea of drafting
institutional human rights plans, conducting human rights-sensitive budgeting and
measuring policy outcomes based on human rights indicators.147 This was closely
linked to their previous experience in the field of gender equality.148 Such outcomes
closely reflect Babül’s findings on human rights projects funded by the EU in Turkey’s
police forces and judicial establishments.149 The projects described in Babül’s work
also improved the capacity of institutions and introduced norms, practices and stan-
dards of human rights into the normative consciousness of individuals, institutions
and governance regimes.150
Interviewees also pointed out important shortcomings of project-based gover-
nance. One of the most common problems related to projects was their lack of
sustainability and resilience to change in political leadership.151 The future of the
IOM’s three-year one-stop-shop projects became precarious in the run-up to the local
elections of April 2019, as it was feared that new mayors and the newly appointed
vice-mayors would shut the projects down due to mistrust, unfamiliarity, or simply
lack of knowledge or shared values about its usefulness.152 Even before the local elec-
tions, however, the high-level leadership in ¸Sanlıurfa municipality changed, causing
the project with the IOM to falter and almost fail.153 Following this development,
our interviewee from the Union of Municipalities reported that the IOM representa-
tives approached the Union to seek their support and mediation in this process, and
subsequently, the municipality of ¸Sanlıurfa was persuaded to continue the project.
This was arguably thanks to the mediation of the Union, which was considered more
as an ‘insider’: a ‘national/local’ actor.154
146Anonymous Interview #5.
147Interview Çankaya.
148Ibid.
149Babül 2017.
150Ibid.
151Interviews TBB, Keçiören.
152Interviews TBB, IOM, Keçiören.
153Interviews TBB, IOM.
154Interview TBB.
144 E. Durmu¸s
6.5.2 Networks and the Dissemination of the Developing
Norm that Local Governments Can/Should Improve
Refugee Rights
This leads us to another very important factor facilitating local governments’ engage-
ment with migration policies aimed at improving the human rights of refugees. In line
with literature on how ideas travel, are contested and become norms that socialise
the behaviour of members of a community,155 this section will describe the networks
through which the potential new norm, namely that local governments can and ought
to work for the improvement of refugee rights, is disseminated. Local governments
(globally) have been characterised as part of a ‘norm-generating community’ devel-
oping the norms on ‘human rights in the city’.156 In the Turkish context, ideas, prac-
tices and discourses on the role of local governments in improving the realisation of
refugee rights have been observed to be travelling amongst actors who are institution-
ally placed in local governments, local NGOs, foreign NGOs, international organisa-
tions, city networks, and academics working closely with practitioners in the field. As
such, norms of ‘good governance’ and ‘human rights duties’ concerning local refugee
policies are contestants within the ‘battleground of ideas’157 that Risse and Sikkink
described, struggling for increased attention and ownership among members of the
community of stakeholders active in migration governance. In this battleground, this
new norm travels and arrives at their municipal destinations via local ‘pathways of
influence’ similar to those mapped by Brysk in the global context.158 These local
‘pathways’ include conferences, seminars, workshops targeting local governments,
cooperation with international organisations and NGOs, the dissemination of norms
through city networks, and non-institutionalised interpersonal connections.159 Indi-
viduals are crucial to these processes (see Chap. 8of the present book on the role of
‘individual agency’), including Merry’s ‘people in the middle’, who speak both the
language of the local and the transnational.160 All actors collectively participating
in this processes can be considered to constitute a ‘norm-generating community’.161
This general process can be referred to, more visually, as cross-pollination.
An example of non-institutionalised cross-pollination can be found in an anecdote
by an interviewee from Zeytinburnu about how the current Mayor of Gaziantep—
Fatma ¸Sahin—once visited the community centre of Zeytinburnu in her previous role
as national Minister of Family and Social Policies.162 The ‘Centre for Supporting
the Family, Women and the Disabled (AKDEM)’ of the municipality of Zeytinburnu
155Risse and Sikkink 1999; Berman 2007;Koh1996;Levit2007;Brysk2019; Durmu¸s2020.
156Durmu¸s2020.
157Risse and Sikkink 1999,p.7.
158Brysk 2019.
159See again Sect. 8.5.3 of Chap. 8 in the present book.
160Merry 2006.
161Berman 2007.
162Interview Zeytinburnu.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 145
was unique in its kind at the time.163 The interviewee stated that Fatma ¸Sahin was so
impressed by the centre that in her later years as Mayor for Gaziantep, she founded the
‘Gaziantep Centre for the Support of the Family (GADEM)’. The activities of these
community centres in Gaziantep expanded and continued primarily through GADEM
and through other similarly structured centres aimed at integrating refugee beneficia-
ries into municipal social services.164 The Municipality of Gaziantep went on later
to become one of the most celebrated and widely publicised ‘best practice’ examples
internationally, in the context of local refugee reception and integration. Following
these developments, Fatma ¸Sahin was invited to deliver a number of speeches at
the UN in Geneva.165 Zeytinburnu’s AKDEM also has a ‘Department of Integration
to the City’, which provides guidance, registration, language courses, and main-
streamed access for refugees (including undocumented ones) to the municipality’s
social services provided in the AKDEM centre.166
Slightly more institutionalised pathways of cross-pollination can be city networks,
projects, trainings and conferences. Conferences at the international level, such as the
World Human Rights Cities Forum, and the UCLG World Congress, both enjoying
wide participation from local governments around the world, can act as ‘hives’ for
the dissemination of developing norms on ‘good local governance’.167 During one of
the conferences observed through participant observation in Turkey, the International
Migration and Integration Symposium (April 2018), the municipalities of Ba˘gcılar
and Gaziantep extensively presented their local migration policy, accompanied by
researchers, a representative of the Marmara Municipalities’ Union (with a presenta-
tion of the Migration Working Group of the Union) and even the Director General for
Migration Management and the Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs. Speakers shared
valuable experiences, knowledge and insight into cutting-edge (local) migration poli-
cies. Among the audience were many civil servants of other local governments, such
as those from ¸Si¸sli, another municipality known in the field as being ‘active’168 in
the field of migration policy. As such, it can be said that municipalities participating
in such conferences may be already invested in—and convinced by—the relevance
of the newly developing norm.
However, previously convinced municipalities are not the only ones who will be
exposed to such newly developing norms. Another conference that was attended,
the International Human Rights Cities Conference (November 2018, Istanbul), was
part of the Human Rights Cities Turkey pilot project developed by Research World-
wide Istanbul (RWI) and the Union of Municipalities of the Turkic World (TDBB)
163Interview Zeytinburnu.
164Presentation in Metropolis 2017 Conference by Sarah Kristen Biehl on her field research in
Gaziantep.
165Anonymous Interview #4. https://www.gantep.bel.tr/haber/fatma-sahin-bmde-suriyelilerin-sor
unlarini-anlatti-3472.html.
166Interview Zeytinburnu.
167Durmu¸s2020.
168Interview MBB; Interview Yereliz #1; Interview Yereliz #2.
146 E. Durmu¸s
with eight municipalities of different political colours.169 Turkish and international
researchers working on ‘human rights in the city’ were invited to speak, alongside
the local NGO ‘Yereliz’ (translated ‘We are Local’), whose objective is the ‘locali-
sation of civil society and the civilisation of local government’.170 The conference
also had features of a teaching conference, given that local level human rights indi-
cators—developed by a team of academics, the project coordinator and municipal
officials—were introduced to municipalities participating in the pilot project, with
the aim of receiving feedback from them.171 The collaborating academics were also
recently invited by the RWI to a workshop in Graz, where the municipality of Graz (a
human rights city) and experts from academia and the Swedish Association of Local
Governments (SALAR) shared comprehensive information on the operationalisation
of the human rights city.172 The coordinator of the Turkish human rights cities project
and one of the project’s Turkish academic advisors also participated and presented
at the World Human Rights Cities Forum in Gwangju (2018), where they could
gain deeper insights from other human rights cities such as Barcelona, Vienna, and
Gwangju.173 This process demonstrates the impressively interconnected and complex
nature of the dissemination of developing norms amongst actors from a variety of
institutions and geographic locations. As such, the idea of the ‘human rights city’
can certainly be considered a ‘coalition magnet’ in Béland and Cox’s terms, both
transnationally and in the Turkish context, mobilising different stakeholders around
a common ideal.174
The Human Rights Cities project in Turkey foresees all participating munici-
palities to adopt, through an act of their municipal legislative, a human rights city
declaration in which principles such as equality and non-discrimination are recog-
nised and committed to.175 In addition, municipalities choose priority target groups
from a list of five vulnerable groups, including refugees.176 It can therefore be reason-
ably argued that the project was an ‘arena’ and a collection of processes in which the
notion that refugees are legitimate beneficiaries of municipal services—just like other
vulnerable right-holding group—and that their rights also implicate local government
competences or obligations, was advocated, contested and in some cases internalised
(also referred to as socialization).
169Participant Observation in the International Human Rights Cities Conference, November 2018,
Istanbul.
170Yereliz Twitter Description: https://twitter.com/yerelizdernegi (own translation).
171Participant Observation in the International Human Rights Cities Conference, November 2018,
Istanbul.
172Participant observation in the Workshop in Graz, March 2018.
173Participant observation in the WHRCF, October 2018.
174Béland and Cox 2016.
175Participant Observation in the International Human Rights Cities Conference, November 2018,
Istanbul.
176Ibid.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 147
6.5.3 Coordination and Cooperation Between Local
Governments and Other Actors
The third factor that emerged from the grounded data as an element facilitating the
development by local governments of policies that improve the rights of refugees, was
the availability and quality of cooperation and coordination with other actors.177 This
element is intimately intertwined with other factors discussed above. For instance,
the human rights cities project discussed earlier should also be considered as an
example of cooperation. However, these two factors, while having overlapping qual-
ities, cannot be equated with each other. While dissemination can take place in hier-
archical structures and one-way interactions, cooperation requires a commitment by
two of more parties to collectively seek to address common objectives and concerns.
International organisations (‘IOs’) such as the UNHCR and IOM have the interests
of refugees in mind and seek to realise their goals through individual as well as
cooperative efforts. While cooperation with central governments is important and
necessary, it may not meet all the needs and objectives that these IOs have in the
field.178 For instance, where national policy-making and civil servant training at the
DGMM is the objective, cooperation with the central government will be crucial for
an IO.179 However, for the objective of urgently improving the rights of refugees on
the ground, IOs often prefer to work with local governments, as around 98.2% of
Syrian refugees in Turkey reside outside reception centres in urban areas.180
Local governments also cooperate with and through regional, national and inter-
national city networks; with academics; with local and foreign NGOs (at times
sharing service provision tasks or applying for funding together) and lastly with
members of their local community. For example, a project jointly developed by
Ankara Metropolitan Municipality and the UNHCR enabled the of a refugee voca-
tional training centre.181 The municipality, in accordance with its role as facili-
tator/coordinator within their locality,182 consulted with various actors in the indus-
trial and entrepreneurial sectors, to identify the employment needs in the locality.183
Based on this information, and with funding and the sharing of expertise by the
UNHCR, the municipality identified a location for the centre, built the facilities, and
started providing two stages of trainings for selected refugees who had applied to
follow the certificated course.184 The first stage involves language education, and a
second stage vocational training in fields where especially the industrial sectors of
177See ‘Coordination of Human Rights’ in Durmu¸s2020.
178Thouez 2018; UNGA 2017.
179Interview IOM.
180Erdo ˘gan 2017; Interview IOM.
181Interview ABB.
182Durmu¸s2020.
183Ibid.
184Ibid. Participant observation at the facility and focus group with the employees of the facility,
January 2019.
148 E. Durmu¸s
Ankara needed qualified personnel.185 Having acquired commitments from compa-
nies and entrepreneurs active in Ankara on employing refugees who had received
certification from the municipality, the municipality set out to train refugees (up to
600 at a time), accompanied by services that were deemed necessary in course of
the project, such as free day care, psychological support, and social services.186 The
facilities employ many sociologists, teachers, social workers, lawyers and translators,
including those with a refugee background.187 The examples given in Sect. 6.5.1.4
above, including the ‘one-stop-shops’ run by IOM in cooperation with the munici-
palities of Keçiören, ¸Sanlıurfa and Adana, are also illustrative of valuable access to
cooperation, which can change the municipality’s status on service provision with
regard to refugees from non-existent to genuine commitment and experience.188
There are, of course, some risks and shortcomings. First, for many municipalities
such cooperation seems not only helpful, but also essential. Budgetary constraints
and legal ambiguity push local governments to cooperate with external actors through
projects that are both temporary and externally funded. While such projects can play
as essential role in the transfer of practical and technical knowledge as well as norms
relating to the practice,189 they can also showcase a dependence of the municipality
on external funding and know-how. The lacuna in capacity and institutionalisation
is attempted to be filled by such cooperation.190 This is not necessarily a bleak
predicament, but an unsustainable reality that legislators, human rights researchers
and policymakers need to be aware of.
This leads us to the second concern that emerges from the reliance on cooper-
ation: the inequalities in access to such cooperation. When interviewing persons
in city networks, IOs and NGOs that develop and coordinate projects with local
governments, it became clear that previous engagement of the local government
was a factor for these individuals to be inclined to choose to contact—and work
with—such local governments again.191 Such previous engagement—more specifi-
cally, proactive engagement in fields such as migration and human rights on a scale
beyond the national average amongst local governments was assumed to be an indi-
cator for likelihood of success, including sustainable results from these short-term
projects that always have an explicit or implicit objective of ‘capacity-building’ in
them.192 In one instance this issue was acknowledged and sought to be addressed.
According to interviewees from the Turkish Union of Municipalities, when the IOM
contacted them about the ‘one-stop-shops’ that they intended to develop with local
governments, the Union representatives encouraged the IOM official to carry out
185Interview ABB; ibid., Participant Observation at facility and focus group with employees.
186Ibid.
187Ibid.
188Interview IOM; Interview TBB; Interview Keçiören.
189Babül 2017.
190Interview Sultanbeyli.
191Anonymous Interview #5; Interview IOM; Interview TBB; Interview MBB.
192Anonymous Interview #5.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 149
the project with ¸Sanlıurfa Municipality. This was a municipality that had not previ-
ously committed itself to providing services to refugees or to other institutionalised
human rights projects. However, there was a great need for such policies, due—
among others—to a large refugee population.193 The Union interviewees indicated
that the IOM official was somewhat surprised by this unusual request: other candi-
date municipalities were all amongst those who had shown some initiative or insti-
tutional ‘project experience’.194 Ultimately, however, IOM officials opted to follow
this advice and carry out the project with ¸Sanlıurfa Municipality, in addition to the
Adana Metropolitan and Keçiören Municipalities.195 Interviewees from both IOM
and the Union later indicated that they had experienced difficulties in the process
with ¸Sanlıurfa, stating that the context was ‘very different’, implying that there were
cultural differences and a greater dependence on personal relationships rather than
institutionalisation.196 This experience shows the validity of some of the concerns of
external actors initiating projects for and with local governments.
6.5.4 Political Will
As a final factor, as conceptually vague as it is, political will remains an important
variable. Political will does not exist in a lacuna. An actor’s interests and identities,
as Koh,197 Brysk,198 as well as Risse and Sikkink199 describe, are developed and
constructed in a process that is strongly influenced by the above-mentioned factors
of cross-pollination, in particular the dissemination of norms and cooperation with
external actors. However, this section discusses ‘political will’, mainly as an attempt
to explain why certain highly developed, institutionalised and well-connected local
governments with resources will not engage in policies regarding refugees. When
we look at what unites such municipalities that are otherwise very proactive (for
instance, in the areas of gender equality, children’s rights and the environment),
we can see that there is a political concern at the leadership level that holds the
personnel back from developing policies.200 This political struggle may result from
the perception of the mayor and other leaders that the ‘refugee issue’ is the problem
of Erdo˘gan and the AKP, and that they (who belong to the main opposition party)
should not have to deal with it.201 However, this political struggle can also take place
193Interview TBB.
194Ibid.
195Interview TBB; Interview IOM.
196Interview TBB; Interview IOM; Interview Murat Erdo˘gan.
197Koh 1996.
198Brysk 2019.
199Risse and Sikkink 1999.
200Interview Çankaya.
201See for instance these (Turkish language) news items from the website of the municipality of
˙
Izmir including speeches of the former ˙
Izmir Mayor Aziz Kocao˘glu following visits of European
150 E. Durmu¸s
between different factions within the same political party that have a power struggle
over decisions and departments within the same local government.202 In one district
municipality, the office working on migration was reduced to a single member of
staff, with the leader of the department relocated to a different position.203 Conflicts
among the current Mayor and the previous one as well as employees loyal to each of
them—lead to the opening, closing and reopening of departments, to personnel being
shuffled around and to the reallocation of funds.204 The Migration Department did
not seem to receive consistent support or attention from the mayor(s), vice-mayors,
or other strategic partners, such as colleagues from the planning and project-writing
departments.
Finally, certain localities have constituencies who are particularly opposed to the
presence of—and service provision—to refugees in the country, which might result in
any refugee policies of that local government to be political suicide.205 In some such
cases, municipalities prefer to offer urgent and essential services in secrecy.206 Some
mayors and municipal governments also struggle because they have been elected
within a party that is very nationalistic and whose voter-base is openly opposed to
refugees.207 In such cases, even though municipalities may have humanitarian or
pragmatic rationales for providing services, this will be highly risky and is better
conducted in secrecy.208
6.6 Conclusion
Human rights have been widely criticised for their perceived lack of effectiveness.
One of the most relevant of such criticisms is related to the failure of human rights to
protect those who have lost the protection of their States (such as refugees). Another
criticism is the worldwide disparity between the legal obligations committed to by
States and the disheartening human rights violations on the ground. This chapter has
discussed how research on human rights effectiveness has been shifting away from
a legalist perspective foregrounding the importance of legal incorporation of inter-
national legal commitments into domestic law and an assessment of effectiveness
based on formal criteria—such as treaty ratification—to more empirical, socio-legal
diplomats, indicating that he sees his role as the Mayor of ˙
Izmir (which is on the Aegean Coast,
close to Greece) as assisting in holding back the refugees who want to cross to Greece. https://www.
izmir.bel.tr/HaberArsivi/16084/ara/tr https://www.izmir.bel.tr/HaberDetay/17155/tr.
202Anonymous Interview #1.
203Ibid.
204Ibid.
205Amongst these municipalities are particularly those who have been elected from the nationalist
parties MHP or ˙
Iyi Parti.
206Fieldnotes #2.
207Interview Çankaya.
208Fieldnotes #2; also see Oomen et al. forthcoming, example of Gazipa¸sa.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 151
assessments. This chapter advocates for this latter sociological study of the effective-
ness of human rights, by following the cross-pollination and taking root of human
rights, that is to say, their development, travel, contestation, and institutionalisation
as norms within communities of actors. Together, the cross-pollination and taking
root of human rights can bring about an ownership of human rights in communities
and actors who may be—legally speaking—already bound by them. Such a study is
particularly useful in contexts of low institutionalisation where legal obligations for
State and sub-State actors may not be clearly fleshed out, where divisions of labour
are unclear, and where human rights needs and demands on the ground are high and
urgent. In such contexts, demands of international human rights law may not resonate
as much as hard practical needs on the ground and the new norms (consisting of ideas,
practices and discourses) claiming to address these practical realities, disseminating
and diffusing within the community of actors.
This chapter presented the findings of research grounded in a context of high
human rights demands on the ground, legal ambiguity for local governments on
their competences and obligations concerning these demands, and insufficient and
unequal levels of institutionalisation and access to external resources. Field research
was conducted through interviews with, and participant observation amongst, Turkish
local governments and other actors working with local governments on the devel-
opment of policies that further the human rights realisation of refugees. An extreme
divergence was found in how much—if at all—local governments engage with poli-
cies related to refugees. This was arguably due, at least in part, to the large discre-
tionary space that was created by the legal ambiguity regarding their obligations and
competences. Nonetheless, four factors were identified that facilitate the engage-
ment of local governments with policies furthering the human rights of refugees:
(1) the capacity and level of institutionalisation of the local government; (2) access
to networks and dissemination of the norm that local governments can and ought
to create policies that aim to improve the rights of refugees; (3) access to coopera-
tion and coordination with external actors; and (4) political will. The first factors of
capacity and institutionalisation included the following elements: budget, personnel,
data and the prevalence of project-based governance as a sign that indicates poten-
tial shortcomings in institutionalised long-term policy development. Together, these
factors illustrate the cross-pollination and taking root of human rights amongst public
actors not previously familiarised with them. While factors (2) and (3) on dissemi-
nation and cooperation may focus largely on cross-pollination, factor (1) on capacity
and institutionalisation corresponds to norms taking roots engrained in institutional
culture and practice. Factor (4) seeks to explain external, non-generalisable factors
that prevent local governments from engaging in policies that improve the rights of
refugees for political reasons.
152 E. Durmu¸s
These findings both reaffirm the important hands-on role of local governments in
addressing human rights challenges on the ground, but also warn against tales of ‘The
X City’209 as the ultimate all-powerful actor that is always best suited to realise and
localise human rights. For local governments to reach their full potential in localising
and realising human rights on the ground, they need to enjoy some basic capacities
and opportunities that will allow them to become players in the field. Such basic
factors may make the difference between a proactive and inactive municipality, espe-
cially in countries where local governments do not enjoy clear, well-established and
wide competences and autonomy. As such, this research also encourages the scholar-
ship on local governments and human rights to more proactively consider and study
contexts in developing countries, where the needs are higher, and resources are lower
than the “usual suspects”210 of localisation literature: European and American cities.
These findings are also relevant to developments at the international level regarding
the documentation and codification of the formal legal role of local governments in
the protection and promotion of human rights. International organisations, as well
as large-scale city networks that claim democratic representation of local govern-
ments worldwide, must reach out to less privileged local governments and consider
less-institutionalised contexts when making (quasi-)legal pronouncements on local
governments categorically.
These findings complement previous research on how human rights cross-
pollinate through ‘pathways of influence’211 and take root through socialisation,212
localisation213 and acculturation.214 The factors that that have emerged as theoretical
categories of this grounded theorisation may be relevant and applicable to other insti-
tutional contexts (local, national and international; public or private) and processes
of cross-pollination and taking root of norms therein. Recommendations for further
research include normativisation215 (the development of ideas into norms) in specific
contexts, with a particular focus on the delineation of the norm in the development
phase. The questions ‘When can a practice be understood and classified as a “human
rights practice” if there is no explicit reference to human rights?’ and ‘What reasons
behind a behaviour or practice can be considered as “human rights norms”?’ were
ongoing and unresolved questions in the research underlying this chapter, relating to
and answerable only by tackling broader questions about the philosophical as well
as empirical ‘essence’ of human rights.
209X being an impressive, catchy adjective, see for instance ‘Shining Cities on the Hill?’ by
Aust 2015; ‘Frontier Cities’ Oomen and Baumgärtel 2018; ‘Accelerating Cities’ Oomen et al.
forthcoming.
210This is the term used in our discussions within the project Cities of Refuge, introduced in
particular by my colleague Sara Miellet.
211Risse and Sikkink 1999;Brysk2019.
212Risse and Sikkink 1999; Risse et al. 1999; Simmons 2009; Risse et al. 2013; Haglund and Stryker
2015.
213De Feyter et al. 2011; Merry 2006; Oomen et al. 2016.
214Goodman and Jinks 2004.
215Onuf 1985.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 153
If we leave aside wider questions of ‘what human rights is’ for the time being, the
findings from Turkish local governments show that casuistic legal pronouncements
on human rights law and the competences of local governments are not a sine qua
non condition for local governments to engage with policies aimed at improving the
human rights of refugees. This local engagement with activities in new territories set
a standard and create expectations for their own future activities as well as for other
local governments, effectively expanding norms on what local governments ought
to do.216 One expert interviewee explained this ‘development of the law on local
governments’ by describing that when one municipality takes a step, if there is no
reaction, they continue, allowing the practice to potentially spread.217 If the Sayı¸stay
(Court of Cassation) or other domestic courts seek to restrict or penalise them for this
practice, they might fight and stand their ground legally and discursively.218 If they
challenge the decision and win, or if no one opposes the new practice, this is how
the law on local governments (particularly the norms on what local governments can
and ought to do) is developed.219
In sum, for isolated instances of (human rights) engagement to become new
norms, ideas, practices and discourses constituting the norms (such as their content,
usefulness, legitimacy or necessity) have to cross-pollinate and take root. Cross-
pollination effectively relies on the dissemination, contestation and development
of norms through institutionalised and non-institutionalised networks. Taking root
will require institutionalisation both in terms of its technical elements—budget,
personnel, long-term policies as opposed to short-term projects, data—and in terms
of creating an institutional culture within the norm-generating community, one that
socialises (new) members into accepting the norm as their own. In conclusion, for
Turkish local governments, the establishment of policies that improve the human
rights of refugees on the ground constitutes a norm in development. The fact that a
significant proportion of interviewees indicated that they consider the local govern-
ment as an actor responsible for human rights, while some interviewees do not (yet)
share this opinion, supports this observation.220 It remains to be seen to what extent
this norm will develop into a fully-fleshed rule in the national context, further similar
norms that are proposed and in contestation in the international context, and perhaps
even find its way into national and/or international law.221
216Interview Yereliz #1.
217Ibid.
218Ibid.
219Ibid.
220Interviews Yereliz #1, Yereliz #2, ¸Si¸sli, Anonymous #5, MBB, TBB, Sultanbeyli, Maltepe,
Zeytinburnu, Çankaya, Anonymous #1, Keçiören, ABB.
221The international development of the norm ‘human rights in the city’ is described in for instance
Durmu¸s2020.
154 E. Durmu¸s
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Elif Durmu¸sis a Ph.D. researcher in the project ‘Cities of Refuge’. She is responsible for local
field research in Turkish and Swiss municipalities as well as the transnational field of cities’
engagement with international (human rights) law. Following a Bachelor in Law at Ankara Univer-
sity (Turkey), she obtained an advanced LLM degree (cum laude) in Public International Law
at Leiden University, focusing on the role of non-State actors in international law. She has been
an Assistant Editor for the Leiden Journal of International Law and an Executive Editor of the
Utrecht Journal of International and European Law. She is a founding editor of the blog Human
Rights Here of the Netherlands Network of Human Rights Research and a part-time lecturer
at University College Roosevelt, Middelburg. Her current research interests are cities’ engage-
ment with human rights, the generation, contestation and dissemination of (human rights) norms,
constitutional competences of local governments around the world, and the localisation of human
rights.
6 How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root … 157
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