The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII) was founded in 1962 with the primary aim of promoting Swedish and Nordic research about Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean as well as other regions that are connected linguistically, culturally, or historically. In addition to its academic and administrative staff, the SRII has a Research Collegium that consists of 170 members within the scope of the institute or other individuals who have a close link to the scope of the Institute.
The SRII organizes and hosts conferences, seminars and workshops, doctoral and master courses as well as regular lecture series on a wide range of topics. The SRII publishes the scientific series Transactions and Papers, and the more popular Dragomanen. SRII also has a library that includes more than 10.000 volumes, including the Gunnar Jarring Central Eurasian collection. The books of the library are incorporated in the Swedish National Library catalogue LIBRIS. In terms of research environment, the SRII has its premises and main activities in the so-called Dragoman House and its guesthouse, the Annex, located on the same historic ground as is the Consulate General of Sweden. The institute comprises offices, working places for researchers, an auditorium, two seminar rooms, a reception room, joint kitchen facilities, seven single and three double rooms for researchers. With these physical facilities, the SRII provides a forum where students and scholars can meet for study and dialogue in a multidisciplinary environment. The SRII has been supporting many scientific projects and is acting as the leading or partner position within several international and national research projects. Research projects conducted in this environment cover a large geographical as well as temporal span and focus on a number of different areas and topics in fields within both the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Work on these projects is supported through library services, lectures, seminars, workshops and other activities organized by the Institute. Each year the SRII awards both large and small research scholarships for students and researchers affiliated to the Nordic universities.In addition, the Institute has “Senior Research” and “Affiliated” Fellow positions to support interdisciplinary activities.
The GAPs project involves wide-ranging and innovative impacts, including the creation of an interactive data repository on returns, a return cooperation index, return governance indicators, policy briefs and workshops, the formation of stakeholder expert panels, a digital storytelling and video series, the launching of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), as well as open access policy and scholarly publications.
Dr N. Ela Gökalp-Aras the Principal Investigator (PI) for GAPs at SRII. She will be working with Dr Neva Övünç Öztürk (Senior Researcher), Hakan Ünay (Researcher) and Umutcan Yüksel (Researcher). Dr Gökalp-Aras and her team will principally conduct research that focuses on the macro level, more specifically on the legal, institutional and policy framework on the return and readmission policies at the EU level and in the selected nine countries (as the lead ofWP2: will lead Work Package 2 (Legal and Policy Infrastructures of Returns in the EU). WP2 also analyses the legislative framework of the external dimension with non-EU members/third countries. It has four objectives:
▪ Map the legal-institutional-policy infrastructures
▪ Assess these structures critically with the internal and external dimensions
▪ Evaluate the possible ways and methods to develop evidence-based policy- and legal guidelines
▪ Develop guidelines for evidence-based policy and legal guidelines
N. Ela Gökalp-Aras | Principal Investigator – Senior Researcher
Dr N. Ela Gökalp-Aras is the Senior Researcher at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII) (since 2017). She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of GAPS: De-Centring the Study of Migrant Returns and Readmission Policies in Europe and Beyond Project and the co-leader of Work Package 2 (Legal and Policy Infrastructures of Returns in the EU). Previously she served as the PI of the “RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond Project” Horizon2020 Project and was the co-leader of “Refugee Protection Regimes and Comparative” and “Prescriptive Analysis” Work Packages.
Dr Gökalp-Aras has more than 20-year experience and worked in different capacities and roles at public institutions, national and international NGOs, and the private sector in project management, in particular, 12-year experience in academia and research. Before SRII, she worked as a faculty member of (lecturer, then as the Assistant Professor) International Relations, as the EU expert, and as the Director of the Project Development and Coordination Office and Technology Transfer Office (TTO) at two different universities. She has a BA degree in International Relations from Ankara University (2000) and an MSc (2005), and a PhD (2013) in Sociology from the Middle East Technical University with a PhD dissertation that she analysed the EU’s irregular migration policy and its implications in Turkey. She is also a postgraduate student of the Climate Change and Development MSc. Programme at SOAS London University. Her research and teaching experience focuses on European integration, EU–Turkey relations, international organisations, international migration (irregular and transit) and asylum regimes, border management, security, climate change-food security-migration nexus, international human rights, research and project management. Dr Gökalp-Aras published two co-authored books, many articles for international peer-reviewed journals, including International Migration Journal, Comparative Migration Studies and the International Spectator, and chapters in several edited volumes, reports and policy briefs. She is the Director of the Migration Research Centre of the Association of Development, Migration and Social Policies (DEMIS-MIREC) and one of the editors of the International Journal of Human Mobility (IJHM).
Dr Neva Övünç Öztürk - Senior Researcher
Dr Neva Övünç Öztürk is the senior Researcher at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII). She is a graduate of Ankara University Faculty of Law. She pursued her academic career as a faculty member at the Private International Law department of the same Faculty and continues to teach Foreigners Law and Refugee Law (Immigration and Asylum Law) at Ankara University Faculty of Law as a faculty member. Her PhD thesis, completed in 2014 and published in 2015 as a book in Turkish, focused explicitly on refugee status determination. As a European Commission Jean Monnet Scholar, she conducted research for her doctorate at the Queen Mary University of London.
Moreover, she has presented papers at several international scholarly conferences and provided training for NGOs and senior public officers on Immigration and Asylum Law. She has also had the opportunity to work closely as a legal expert with multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual teams in numerous projects conducted or benefited by national and international institutions, such as the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, World Bank, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), International Organization for Migration (IOM), International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) and the Presidency of Migration Management of Türkiye (PMM). She has also contributed to Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). Her contributions to these projects mainly focused on the following subjects: international protection procedures, temporary protection, irregular migration and readmission procedures, legal aspects of migrant and refugee integration, legal aspects of human trafficking and rights of migrants and refugees. She is also one of the members of the Scientific Board of the Human Rights Centre of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations. Her scholarly publications are related to immigration and asylum law.
Hakan Ünay - PhD. Candidate, Researcher
Hakan Ünay (PhD. Candidate, Researcher) is the Researcher at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII). He has a BA degree in International Relations from Selçuk University (2017) and an MSc degree in International Relations from Necmettin Erbakan University (2021). He is currently continuing his education in International Relations as a PhD candidate. Previously, he was the coordinator of “Bridging Youth and Young Professionals in a Migrational Context via Digitalization” within the scope of Erasmus+ KA2 Cooperation among organisations and institutions -Youth Education and “Increase Participation, Achieve Success” projects within the scope of Erasmus+ KA1. Between 2019-2022, he worked as a researcher at the Migration Research Foundation, an NGO operating in the field of migration in Turkey. Ünay, whose main areas of work are borders, border management and migration policies, focuses especially on the border crossing experiences of migrants. Environmental migration and border cinema are also among his fields of study. Ünay has fieldwork experience at Turkey’s with Iran, Syria, Iraq, Greece and Bulgaria borders. He is also the film review editor at Borders in Globalization Review and the producer of a radio program ‘Sınır(lı) Konuşmak’ (Border Talks) on Açık Radyo, a radio operating in Turkey for many years.
Umutcan Yüksel - Researcher
Umutcan Yüksel is the researcher at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII). He is a graduate of Abant Izzet Baysal University International Relations Department and currently continuing his master education in Human Rights Law at Istanbul Bilgi University. He has more than 10 years professional experience in protracted displacement, emergency management and post-emerngency settings with a focus on humanitarian protection and information management. He has first-hand experience on refugee return, social cohesion, conflict sensitivity, border and migration governance, influx and emergency preparedness, access to justice/legal aid. He posses an extensive technical knowledge on quantitative research, big data validation and analysis, and robust human rights monitoring mechanisms. He also worked with various national think-tank organizations and international organizations such as European Commission Humanitarian Aid (ECHO), Welhungerhilfe, German Development Cooperation (GIZ), and Diakkonie at different capacities and roles.
Rajon MD Arifuzamman - Researcher
Research assistant at SRII. Previously worked in the Horizon 2020 EU RESPOND project. He obtained his Master’s degree in Local Development at Padova University, Italy and holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English degree from Daffodil International University. Previously he has worked at Padova University under student collaborations and since 2017, he has been a selected member for Tutoring at Disability and Dyslexia Service at the University of Padova. Rajon has interdisciplinary research interest in migration, integration policy, psychology of religion in peace and conflict, media effects, radicalization, hate speech and hate crimes.
rajon.mdarifuzzaman@gmail.com
Recent Blog Entries
In the context of return migration from Greece, whether considered through the legal and institutional framework or the research on the ‘Return Migration Infrastructures’, the issue of regularity versus irregularity is inescapable. Irregularity has become a central concept in dominant public discourses about migration, often defined in opposition to regularity—or, more specifically, legality. By equating irregularity with illegality, this binary logic is used to stigmatize migrants as ‘threats’ to national and EU social and political structures. This oversimplification, however, neglects the complex ways in which irregularity is not simply a status but a process shaped by…