Migrant Muslim Women Crossing Borders: The Role of Women and Religion in Turkey’s Integration Policy on External Migrants

The prospective effect of the Arab Spring was the rise of secularization in the Middle East. However, unexpectedly two results have appeared in the Middle East: the first one is the rise of radical Islam and the other is forced migration. Because Turkey is transition country between Europe and Middle East, both issues have impacted Turkey directly and negatively. Today there are almost 3.5 million Syrian migrants living in Turkey. This figure has raised Turkey to the position of the largest Syrian refugee country in the world. With Syrians, totally Turkey hosted more than 4 million migrants. What is important in the context of this study is that half of this figure is women and majority of them are Muslim. As it is known from the migration literature, integration of migrant women is always more difficult and late than men. In this framework, my work focuses on how religion is a function in Turkey's integration policies, especially for Muslim women immigrants. More precisely, in this work I focus on the context in which the religion in Turkey and the position of women intersect with each other in the integration policy of immigrants. In order to explain this argument, firstly I will analyze related codes of Turkey and secondly I will examine the projects carried out and supported by Turkey on the integration of Muslim women migrants.