Explaining the Elite Narratives of the EU-Turkey Refugee ‘Deal’ through Role Theory: A Comparative Analysis of Germany and Turkey

The March 2016 EU–Turkey Statement (widely referred to as the EU–Turkey refugee ‘deal’) has led to an unprecedented fall of irregular migration flows into the EU and rendered Turkey as a key partner in the management of the refugee crisis. The deal has also functioned as one of the few mechanisms which have facilitated cooperative behaviour in EU-Turkey relations. The process leading up to the finalization of the deal attracted ample scholarly attention, with various work pinpointing the dominance of the process by intergovernmental actors and channels of communication. In this, the existing literature largely places Germany at the epicenter of the closed-door strategic negotiations between Ankara and the EU. However, German and Turkish elite narratives on the refugee deal and its implementation remain widely understudied and undertheorized in the literature. Drawing on (symbolic-interactionist) role theory scholarship and applying narrative analysis to 20 semi-structured elite interviews conducted with German and Turkish policy makers in Berlin and Ankara as well as well as to official documents and statements, this paper explores the competing and overlapping narratives of key representatives of the Turkish and German (federal) governments between 2016 and 2023. In doing so, it illustrates the continuities and changes in German and Turkish expectations from the deal, while uncovering inter-state contestations and congruences regarding national role conceptions as well as external role expectations each country places on the role of the other in the execution of the refugee deal. The findings of the paper also help clarify the puzzle of why the refugee deal endures despite its state of 'fragility' and the persevering, overarching conflicts between the EU and Turkey.