6 P. ZISS in 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared that ‘highly qualified’ Syrians under temporary protection could be granted exceptional citizenship on a discretionary basis (Akçapar and Şimşek 2018). According to the Interior Ministry, Turkey has granted citi­ zenship to about 238,000 Syrians by November 2023, the most recent announcement (BBC News Türkçe 2023). No official policy states the conditions for exceptional citizenship for Syrians. Accord­ ing to public statements of President Erdoğan, select educated and qualified Syrians, such as teachers, doctors and engineers, would be granted citizenship if they could "contrib­ ute" and feel a sense of belonging to Turkey (Serdar 2023). Syrians are not expected to renounce Syrian nationality and hold dual citizenship in theory, although it is unclear whether the Syrian state will accept the return of dual nationals in future. The application process includes minimum eligibility criteria such as legal entry to Turkey, holding tem­ porary protection status and a clean police record, but the process is shrouded in intran­ sparency and discretion (Serdar 2023). Syrians cannot simply apply for naturalization. The practice appears to be that some Syrians under temporary protection receive an SMS from the Presidency for Migration Management and are invited to submit their application documents. After an indeterminate duration, interviews and security checks, some receive a Turkish ID card (kimlik) while others are rejected for unknown reasons. Syrians of Turkmen origin might be unofficially prioritized (Akyol 2022) but this too is unclear. In line with public anxieties about Turkish national membership more broadly (Yilmaz 2021), a majority of the Turkish population views citizenship for Syrians critically (Erdoğan 2022). Concerns include Syrians competing with lower-class workers for jobs (Akçapar and Şimşek 2018), and posing a voting bloc in favour of the ruling Islamist AKP to the detri­ ment of both nationalist and left-leaning or pro-Kurdish individuals (Güney 2022). Most Syrians with temporary protection, conversely, state that they would like to obtain Turkish citizenship, although the share has been decreasing in recent years (Erdoğan 2022). In research with Syrians who had not yet naturalized, participants stated that Turkish citizen­ ship would help them feel safer on Turkish territory and enable a ‘normal’ life (Akçapar and Şimşek 2018), and access resources such as rented houses, the ability to travel, employ­ ment and wealth (Akyol 2022). The small number of studies directly engaging Syrians with citizenship of Turkey show that they struggle with accessing scholarships, getting free hos­ pital treatment and often accept lower-skilled jobs (Cantürk 2020). Thus, “citizenship does not immediately guarantee inclusion in Turkish society, but is an ongoing process” (Akçapar and Şimşek 2018, 184). This highlights the need to explore more in-depth the differences and overlaps of temporary protection status, citizenship and rights associated with both. Methodology The empirical material draws on qualitative research conducted as part of a PhD project on the local politics of refugee settlement in Istanbul, Turkey and Frankfurt, Germany. The broader study investigated how migration governance, in particular temporary and insecure legal status, shapes how refugees build, maintain and envisage their social lives in the present and the future. For this, I conducted eight months of multisited qualitative fieldwork from May to December 2021: five in Frankfurt and three in Istanbul.