Introduction
Border management in Türkiye is characterized by fluctuations, shaped primarily by regional conflicts, security-driven policies, and integration into the EU. Since the establishment of the Republic of Türkiye in 1923, border security has been provided by the military and law enforcement. During the Cold War, Türkiye’s role in protecting NATO’s southeastern flank reinforced this approach. In the 2000s, Türkiye’s EU accession negotiations accompanied a difficult transition toward civilian rule. The Syrian Civil War then pushed Turkish politics in a more security-oriented direction. In this context, the shift to the Presidential Government System in 2018 brought administrative transformation, including in border management. This post outlines the legal and institutional framework of border management, particularly by examining the EU–Turkey Declaration of March 2016 and Türkiye’s working relationship with Frontex. Türkiye has no Frontex status agreement — unlike Western Balkan states — its border cooperation falls outside the fundamental rights oversight mechanisms that govern Frontex operations, creating potential accountability gaps. Instead, Türkiye cooperates with the EU without directly participating in the EU’s integrated border management.
A Central Yet Fragmented Architecture
Türkiye’s border management can be considered at two levels: central and operational. The central level gained strength with Presidential Decree No. 1, which entered into force in 2018, reorganizing the entire central administration and requiring all ministries to operate within the Presidency’s hierarchical structure. The decree does not grant the President direct authority over border management. However, it assigns the Ministry of Internal Affairs responsibility for protecting the country’s land borders, coasts, and territorial waters at the operational level.
The Ministry exercises these powers through affiliated bodies, each of which controls a different section of the border. The General Directorate of Security, together with the General Command of the Gendarmerie, controls border crossings and protects land areas subject to military restrictions. The Coast Guard Command’s authority extends to maritime borders, while the Directorate General of Migration Management (PMM) deals with irregular or illegal migration. At the local level, coordination is provided between the administrative units of the General Directorate of Provincial Administration, which provides services through the governorates and prefectures in the border provinces.
The rest of the picture in border management is completed by the involvement of other ministries with varied competencies. By the same decree, the management of land, rail, air, and sea border crossings, free zones, and customs enforcement responsibility in bonded warehouses is assigned to the Ministry of Commerce. Border security on land is also an important task of border units under the Turkish Land Forces Command. The Ministry of Health and the General Directorate of Health of Border and Coastal Regions, affiliated with it, screen for public health risks of international importance (such as COVID-19 or Ebola) at border entry points. The other inspections at the borders are carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. In this regard, we face a centralized yet fragmented structure spread across at least six ministries and several decentralized institutions. This fragmentation leads to problems in clarity of competence and accountability.
The Presidency of Migration Management and the 2016 Regulation
The Presidency of Migration Management (PMM), restructured in 2018 under the Presidential Decree No. 4, is tasked with migration procedures, protection of victims of human trafficking, identification of stateless persons, implementation of temporary protection provisions, coordinating the fight against irregular migration, conducting Integrated Border Management (IBM) activities, and collecting and analyzing border-related data. The decree also established the General Directorate of Border Management, which is primarily responsible for border investments and risk strategy, serves as Türkiye’s national IBM institution, and coordinates the opening and closing of border crossings. In addition to physical border security, the authority to conduct checks at entry and exit points has been delegated to law enforcement and armed forces. The General Directorate of Border Management does not have any operational authority in this regard.
Efforts to coordinate this fragmented structure date back to 2006, although the legal basis was not implemented until 2016, with the Regulation on Interagency Cooperation and Coordination in the Field of Border Management. This Regulation established three bodies. The first is the Integrated Border Management Coordination Board, which has been making final decisions on border management proposals since 2017. The second body is the Border Management Implementation Board, which is tasked with facilitating border crossings and combating irregular migration, smuggling, and cross-border crimes. The third one is the National Coordination and Joint Risk Analysis Center, which is competent for collecting data together with foreign border authorities and conducting joint risk analysis.
Following a 2024 change, the PMM was designated as the central authority coordinating all three bodies. While this change perpetuates the fragmentation underlying operational authorities, it has legally strengthened the coordinating role of the PMM and the General Directorate of Border Management. The transfer of the coordination task to the PMM indicates that the perspective on border management has evolved from a military dimension to a civilian, migration-focused framework.
EU–Türkiye Cooperation: A Driver of Reform, Not of Integration
The EU and Türkiye began cooperating in the field of border management long before the Syrian crisis. The first National Action Plan for Integrated Border Management entered into force in 2006. Besides failing to achieve the targets envisaged in the Action Plan, Türkiye has had to confront the waves of migration triggered by the war in Syria since 2011. The solution to this problem came in the form of the EU-Turkey Declaration of March 2016. This was a political arrangement rather than a formal one, aimed at preventing irregular crossings to the Greek islands and establishing a repatriation mechanism, with the resettlement of an equal number of Syrians from Türkiye. With this declaration, Türkiye committed to preventing the opening of new sea and land migration routes. In line with this responsibility, the EU funded health, education, and municipal infrastructure projects for refugees and host communities for over ten years. Additionally, the EU provided financial support through the Refugee Facility in Turkey between 2016 and 2019, which ended in March 2026. This Declaration has been controversial because critics claim that neither the EU nor its member states have fully taken responsibility for refugees waiting for protection, and that safe and legal transit routes to Europe have not been adequately implemented.
In the following years, the PMM’s powers expanded, and the 2016 Regulation discussed above established a new institutional framework for inter-institutional cooperation. The EU also directly funded technical assistance projects targeting the IBM architecture. The EU4IBMTR project, launched in 2021, introduces a National IBM Strategy and an updated National Action Plan in line with EU standards and the EU acquis. According to the latest bulletin published, the 2025 study aims to clarify institutional roles and strengthen implementation mechanisms at land, air, and sea transit points. A second EU-funded initiative is ENGAGE. The project aims to improve the PMM’s coordination capacity, strengthen operational capacity along the western borders, and enhance mechanisms for international cooperation. In this direction, the General Directorate of Border Management, which is located under the PMM, is supported with a grant of ten million euros from the Directorate General of Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission. The 2016 Declaration indirectly strengthened EU-Turkey relations on border control in many respects. Irregular crossings through the Aegean Sea have decreased significantly, and the readmission mechanisms have become operational.
Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, is another institution that completes this picture, albeit in a much more secondary role. The intensification of Frontex’s operations in Greece has placed Türkiye at the center of the EU’s policy of externalizing border management. The Cooperation Plan covering the 2020–2022 period, in turn, is based on a memorandum of understanding signed between Türkiye and Frontex in 2012. This may be characterized as a technical cooperation instrument of the kind that Frontex has concluded with non-EU countries; it does not constitute a binding international agreement. Consequently, this relationship remains limited and informal from a legal perspective and is far removed from the level of institutional integration enjoyed by, for example, the EEA/EFTA countries in their relations with EU institutions.
Conclusion: Fragmentation on Both Sides
Türkiye’s border management is a system in which scattered and overlapping powers coexist among agencies affiliated with the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Health, and the Land Forces. Relations established with the EU at various levels tend to further complicate this fragmentation rather than simplify it. The preference for non-binding political declarations over a comprehensive treaty, the prioritization of project-based technical assistance over acquis-oriented legal alignment, and informal cooperation with Frontex further complicate border management. Twenty years after the first IBM Action Plan, Europeanization in this field has failed to achieve the level of institutional integration it was supposed to reach. This is a capacity-building process financed by the EU and conducted around a local structure that EU instruments have so far been able to reshape only to a limited extent. Whether the National IBM Strategy prepared under EU4IBMTR will surpass its predecessors remains an open question for future research.
Posted by Elvin Evrim Dalkılıç and Ömer Ökten
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elvin Evrim Dalkılıç, PhD, elvin@bilkent.edu.tr
After graduating from Ankara University Faculty of Law in 2000, Elvin Evrim Dalkılıç completed her Ph.D. at Gazi University in 2009. Elvin Evrim Dalkılıç was awarded the title of associate professor in 2019 by the Interuniversity Board of Turkey. Dr. Dalkılıç has three published books and articles in national and international journals. Dr. Elvin Evrim Dalkılıç teaches administrative law, administrative judiciary, and international human rights law at Bilkent University Faculty of Law.
Ömer Ökten, omer.okten@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Ömer Ökten is an undergraduate student at Bilkent University, Faculty of Law. He is working as an undergraduate research assistant at the Bilkent University Faculty of Law on various research projects in comparative public law, administrative law, and constitutional law.