The Political and Physical Infrastructures in Jordan and Turkey: An Analysis of the Syrian Refugee Crisis and Refugee Access to Infrastructure

“A slaughterhouse, a complete meltdown of humanity, the apex of horror.”
Since it began six years ago, the Syrian civil war has resulted in over 13.5 million people in Syria needing humanitarian assistance, 6.1 million people displaced within Syria, and 4.9 million Syrian refugees seeking asylum in foreign countries. The majority of these refugees remain in the Middle East, where Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan have accepted millions of them. As of February 2015, Jordan’s population has increased approximately 10% due to the influx of 622,000 Syrians since 2012 (United Nations High Commission for Refugees). Scholars and policy analysts have asserted that Jordan’s infrastructure lacks the capacity to accommodate the influx of Syrian refugees (Berti, Zetter, Yazgan). However, there is little research that examines how this lack of infrastructural support impacts the Syrian refugees’ ability to integrate into the various countries that host them in the Middle East. This research project analyzes and compares how the political and physical infrastructures of Jordan and Turkey are shaping the processes of the integration of Syrian refugees in each respective country.