“I feel like I am losing myself”: protection, ontological in/security, and queer/trans refugees in Turkey

Abstract This article explores the protection of queer/trans refugees under temporary asylum in Turkey. It argues that the existing international asylum and refugee regime falls short of adequately protecting queer and trans refugees because of its narrow understanding of security. The regime tends to privilege physical security and offers protection in “emergency” cases in which immediate threats endanger bodily safety. While doing so, it neglects ontological security—the sense of stability and continuity that arises from maintaining one's queer/trans identity and agency. An exclusive focus on physical security has two key implications: it obscures how systemic and structural inequalities and discrimination undermine refugees’ ontological security, and it transforms protection into a mechanism of control, discipline, and containment. The article conceptualizes protection as a contested category continually negotiated by states, international organizations, NGOs, and queer/trans refugees. The meaning of protection shifts across a continuum of varied, and sometimes contradictory, layers of physical and ontological in/security. Methodologically, an interpretivist approach is adopted to analyze how the state, NGO professionals, and queer and trans refugees negotiate the meanings attached to security and protection.