Humanitarian food assistance practices in Turkey: lessons from a protracted refugee crisis

Abstract

Turkey is home to 3.2 million Syrian refugees, making it one of the largest host countries in the world and the country hardest hit by the humanitarian consequences of the Syrian conflict. The presence of a large refugee population, concentrated mainly in urban areas, has not only caused inevitable socio-economic, demographic and political changes, but has also created humanitarian and social challenges for refugee communities and host societies alike. In the aftermath of the armed conflict in Syria and its escalation, it also became clear that, contrary to expectations, the war had brought about a protracted crisis, rather than a humanitarian and refugee crisis that would end in the foreseeable future, where humanitarian aid instruments, international aid programmes and governmental measures aimed at immediate relief were no longer sufficient. This has led the international community and the UN aid agencies to reconsider their aid policies in a host country and in an increasingly intense displacement situation where the government's role in managing the refugee crisis and caring for refugees is clearly visible.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the food assistance aspects of UN aid programmes supporting Syrian refugees in Turkey, in the context of changing instruments and shifting priorities. This paper is an attempt to answer the questions of what food mechanisms have characterised UN agencies' food aid programmes in Turkey, what instruments have been available to the UN, and how forms of assistance have changed with the crisis and the increase in the
number of refugees. The primary starting point for this study is that the evolution of food aid programmes in Turkey is consistent with the changing trends in the international humanitarian food assistance regime. It also shows that it has been essential to apply context-specific aid mechanisms and to review aid modalities as the refugee crisis has dragged on. The analysis focuses primarily on humanitarian food aid to Syrian refugees in urban areas of Turkey and, accordingly, does not go into detail on aid programmes in refugee camps, apart from the initial period of the refugee crisis.

The first part of the paper focuses on trends in the protracted refugee crises and the transformation of the humanitarian food aid system, while the second part of the paper analyses the food aid practices of the UN in Turkey, highlighting the main aid modalities, instruments and primary challenges aVecting aid allocation. Findings on the evolution of food aid modalities are primarily based on qualitative analyses of the reports of relevant international aid agencies, while perceptions of aid programmes and their challenges are based on semi-structured interviews with experts conducted in person and online between 2021 and 2022.