Notice of Dissertation Defence: Yazgulu Sezgin
August 20, 2026
Abstract
This dissertation examines the gendered experiences of Syrian refugees living under temporary protection in Türkiye, highlighting how legal frameworks, institutional policies, and humanitarian systems produce forms of precarity and inequality. Drawing on feminist, critical migration, and humanitarian scholarship, it emphasizes the importance of centering refugee women’s perspectives to understand how temporary protection and international protection mechanisms shape everyday life.
The first manuscript, Engendering Protection: Syrian Refugees in Türkiye (co-authored with Dr. Kim Rygiel), approaches temporary protection as a form of legal violence, following Kivilcim (2016). Based on field research conducted between 2015–2019 and in 2023, as well as the author’s experience as a UNHCR Senior Field Protection Officer, it examines how temporary protection affects Syrian women’s mobility, access to education, healthcare, housing, and employment. The manuscript demonstrates how legal status itself can generate gendered vulnerabilities and reinforce structural and symbolic violence.
The second manuscript, Rhetoric and Reality: UNHCR and Civil Society Organizations’ Perspectives on Gender Equality in Practice, explores the gap between UNHCR’s gender equality policies and their implementation in Türkiye. Drawing on interviews with UNHCR staff and civil society practitioners, it identifies structural challenges, including underfunding, rigid performance expectations, and fragmented monitoring systems, while highlighting opportunities for more participatory, context-sensitive, and intersectional programming.
The third manuscript, Refugees’ Words, Refugees’ Worlds: Insights into Gender Equality, centers on refugees’ own voices, examining how Syrian communities understand and propose solutions to gender inequality. This manuscript introduces a strengths-based, refugee-centered approach that emphasizes refugees’ agency, lived experience, and perspectives in shaping meaningful gender equality interventions.
Taken together, these three manuscripts show that temporary protection and international protection systems in Türkiye produce gendered precarity that is both structural and experiential.
By connecting legal, institutional, and refugee-centered perspectives, the dissertation argues for policies and practices that move beyond bureaucratic approaches, recognizing refugees as active agents with critical insights. This work contributes to scholarship on displacement, gender, and humanitarianism, demonstrating the importance of integrating refugee voices into both analysis and policy design.
Supervisor: Dr. Kim Rygiel
Committee: Dr. Suzan Ilcan and Dr. Secil Dagtas
Internal/External: Dr. Bree Akesson
External: Dr. Idil Atak, Toronto Metropolitan University
Chairperson: Dr. Joy Philip