Pathways to inclusion: a comparative analysis of Turkish municipalities

Abstract Even after Syria’s December 2024 ceasefire, Turkish municipalities remain confronted with the governance challenges that Syrian displacement has produced over more than a decade. This study examines 81 municipalities through text mining of strategic plans (2006–2022), combined with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of 16 selected cases. The analysis identifies two distinct pathways to inclusive migration governance. Municipalities aligned with the ruling AKP developed more extensive governance repertoires where high refugee presence converged with international NGO partnerships. Opposition-led cities, in particular those governed by CHP and HDP, faced systematic resource constraints and recourse to alternative networks, including EU funding and civil society engagement. Political alignment thus shapes not only resource access, but the opportunity structures within which migration governance capacity can be developed at all. Against this backdrop, Turkey’s authoritarian centralization produces uneven geographies of inclusion, in which local responses depend as much on political positioning as on refugee numbers or economic capacity.