Dissertation Project

My dissertation reveals that Muslim humanitarians juxtapose Islamic humanitarian refugee protection with the prevalent neoliberal/developmental humanitarian response to refugee governance in Turkey. Muslim actors are critical of what they perceive to be “individualization of aid”—projects fortifying marketable capabilities of individuals and promoting self-reliance through aid distribution—that leads to seeking self-interest and reproduces neoliberal subjectivities among refugee communities.

As an alternative, Turkish FBOs propagate for a community-oriented humanitarian approach in which the nuclear Muslim family is the chief beneficiary of care and support. In FBOs’ efforts to support community-oriented humanitarian mobilization for the recognition of Syrian refugee families, an emerging Turkish-Islamic humanitarianism construing its own humanitarian subjectivities. Within Islamic humanitarian imagery, the good Muslim is envisioned as a humanitarian who volunteers, networks, and performs various forms of hospitality and solidarity. Similarly, the ideal Syrian beneficiary is defined as a refugee who bears sufferings of forced displacement with perseverance, piety, and neighborliness.

Unpacking the new religious emphasis on humanitarian values, this dissertation explores how Islamic humanitarianism provides an alternative moral paradigm with different potentialities and trajectories that challenge neoliberal/developmental humanitarian script while producing its own subject positions. I argue that a significant trajectory of Islamic humanitarianism is its inclusive narrative that makes a responsive social platform available to Syrian refugees where they negotiate their refugee identity and pursue a sense of belonging.