Crisis Governance and Non‐Governmental Organisation Disaster Response Under Institutional Ambiguity: Narrative Evidence From the 2023 Türkiye Earthquakes

ABSTRACT The 2023 Türkiye earthquakes exposed deep tensions in how formal disaster‐management systems accommodate non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) during large‐scale crises. This article examines how NGOs navigated crisis governance under conditions of institutional ambiguity—discretionary access regimes, fragmented authority, and unstable institutional signalling—during the emergency phase of the February 2023 earthquakes. Drawing on 17 in‐depth interviews with local and national NGO personnel, and using a performative, relational narrative analysis, the study identifies five recurrent crisis‐response dynamics in participants' accounts: competence claims as legitimacy substitution; access negotiation as informal control; moral responsibility as a mobilisation and endurance mechanism; coordination and contestation as field‐level governance; and sense‐making under ambiguity as operational adaptation. These dynamics reveal how NGOs secured access, claimed legitimacy, and allocated responsibility when formal systems failed to provide clear guidance. By foregrounding NGOs as meso‐level governance actors, the article contributes to crisis‐management and disaster‐governance scholarship by showing that coordination during large‐scale emergencies depends on situated sense‐making and communicative interaction, not institutional design alone.