“HarekAct is offering current analysis of migration policies concerning Turkey. We believe that the EU-Turkey deal demands for a comprehensive and critical analysis of the Turkish-EU border regime”, says Lülüfer Körükmez, co-editor of HarekAct. “Researchers and activists from Turkey, Germany and Austria will make an important contribution regarding bordermonitoring with this transnational information platform.”
While the EU is intensifying its cooperation with Turkey regarding border surveillance and deterrence, there is a lack of independent analysis and information on politics and practices on-site. The critical civil society of Turkey is facing practices of intimidation, making independent research and media reporting more and more difficult. At the same time, the importance of Turkey for the European border regime is growing rapidly.
“In the situation we are facing right now, we feel that it is crucial to establish a critical and free source of information, which aims at strengthening the power of civil society”, explains Lülüfer Körükmez. Activists and the interested public, as well as researchers and journalists should use the information provided by HarekAct to follow, initiate and comment on recent debates, discourses and activities around migration policies.
HarekAct will publish information that is hard to find in the mainstream media and will report to counteract the politically intended growing in-transparency on the topic. Together we will publish elaborate analysis, academic papers and reports from the ground on a regular basis. We explicitly invite fellow activists, critical academics and journalists to contribute to our blog with their own reports and analysis, to improve our activist cooperation. As Gerda Heck, another co-editor of HarekAct comments, through HarekAct “We hope for synergy effects and the strengthening of the Turkish and European civil society in general, among others due to the international networking”.
Currently, a briefing on the state of migration policies in Turkey, a commentary on changing flight routes as well as a comprehensive analysis of the EU-Turkey deal and the situation of migrants in the Turkish-Greek border region are available online. Beyond, HarekAct provides an interview with a refugee, who has been deported from Greece to Turkey in the frame of the EU-Turkey deal. Furthermore the blog offers legal background information and a collection of relevant news reporting.
HarekAct is available from June 20th 2016 at: http://harekact.bordermonitoring.eu/
Further information on HarekAct | Twitter
The trilingual (English, Turkish, German) blog HarekAct has been initiated by researchers and activists from Turkey, Austria and Germany and keeps a close contact with networks and organizations in the migration field such as GAR (Migration Researchers’ Platform, Türkei), Mülteci-Der, kritnet (Network for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies), borderline-europe and bordermonitoring.eu.
The name of the blog is a combination of the Turkish word „hareket“ (movement) and the English word „act“.
HarekAct aims at contributing to a critical and analytical knowledge production on the question of migration in general, with a focus on the case of Turkey in particular. The blog will serve as a collective platform to monitor, increase and share various debates and information on migration, asylum and border issues primarily in Turkey as well as on the general European context as far as it is connected to Turkey.