Syrian Refugee Population Simulation: From *ORA to Istanbul (Part 4 Of A Multi-Part Series)

Note: For those who haven't been keeping up with the most recent posts, this is part 4 of a fairly extensive series on network analysis techniques and the human geography of Turkey. In case you missed them, the first three posts can be found here: Part 1 (The Free Syrian Army), Part 2 (Ethnolinguistics of Turkey), Part 3 (Borrowing Analytic Techniques: Populations, Predictions And What Physics Tells Us About The Movement Of Alawites).

Figure 1. Simulating Population Movement
Source: CASOS *ORA Software

No competent analyst today can brief the situation in Turkey without at least mentioning the now 1 million refugees flowing across the porous border with Syria. 

My ethnolinguistic project was no different.  I quickly realized that I would have to do far more than "at least mention" the current crisis in Syria.  In fact, it quickly became the focal point of the investigation.  

Conceptually, the problem was simple. 

How to turn Turkey, a 1000 mile-long country with 81 provinces and 957 districts, into a network. Why did I want to make it a network? So I could use it as an architecture through which I could simulate refugee population flow. 

And the answer is going to surprise you (I know it surprised me).

If you are a tabletop wargamer, you will likely already have an answer to this. Ever played Showdown? Then you know what I'm talking about. 

For those unfamiliar with classic tabletop wargames, they tend to overlay hexagonal grids onto geographic landscapes in order to create a game board. Showdown turns the India-Pakistan border, for example, into a hexagonal grid system on which players explore the possibilities surrounding a hypothetical, near-future, nuclear Indo-Pakistani war.

Intelligence analysts also have a way of assessing terrain of strategic importance within the context of war: The well-known analytic method Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace. With this method, intelligence analysts look at everything from climate to elevation to road/rail infrastructure to land cover/use in order to determine the most strategic plan of attack or invasion. 

Finally, brilliant scientists are using a methodology similar to mine in South Africa to predict elephant migratory patterns and calling it "resistance mapping." [1]

I, however, wanted to take a more organic approach to building the network architecture. And what better way to do so than to use the pre-existing administrative boundaries of Turkey? (A particularly ironic decision given that the original goal of the project was to replace all administrative boundaries with ethnolinguistic ones). 

This is when the 957 districts of Turkey because 957 nodes in a network, and the two to seven district border crossings for each of these 957 districts became a link in the network. It looked something like Figure 2. 

Figure 2. Derived Turkey Network
Source: CASOS *ORA Software and ArcGIS

Now that the nodes and links were established, there was the issue of link weights (if all links were weighted equally, the simulation would spread through the network equally in all directions, and that would be rather useless and not very predictive). 

The link weights were derived for each district border crossing from six factors on a scale of one to three. The factors were a combination of the ethnolinguistic mapping, the gravity model analysis and IPB factors:

     1. Terrain

     2. Roadways

     3. Railways

     4. Expanding, neutral or decreasing ethnolinguistic group

     5. Pre-existing Syrian refugee presence

     6. Gravity model output (influence on area from abroad in the next 12 - 24 months)

A higher link weight was indicative of increased difficulty a refugee would experience in moving from one district to the next. A lower link weight indicated that the route would be easier to navigate for reasons reflected in the factors above. [2] 

The simulation began in the five nodes representative of the seven most frequently-trafficked border crossings as determined by the UN. [3] It iterated 19 times and moved through Turkey revealing some encouraging findings along the way (See Figure 3). 

Figure 3. Simulated Syrian Refugee Population Movement Prediction Over 19 Weeks
Source: CASOS *ORA SOftware

Figure 4. Known Syrian Refugee Presence in Turkey
Source: UNHCR (November 2013)

Figure 5. Known locations of Syrian refugees. Size of dot indicates number of camp inhabitants.
Source: UNHCR (November 2013)

An important element in validating the simulation is analyzing the degree to which it tracks with reality. The simulation ran directly from the border districts between Turkey and Syria and tracked with the known locations of Syrian refugees (See Figures 4 & 5).  When the image of the known locations is overlaid with the image of the simulation it looks like this:

Figure 6. Simulation Overlay on Known Syrian Refugee Presence 

The two provinces outlined in white (Nigde and Aksaray) are where the Turkish government subsequently indicated that it would construct new refugee camps to relieve camps operating at capacity within the region. More confirmatory evidence. 

Now fast forward to two months later. The date is 18 February and, according to the UNHCR, the refugee population has moved further into the provinces indicated in Figure 7. Reality is unfolding within the lines of the simulation from which analytic predictions were drawn back in December 2013. 

Figure 7. Starred Provinces (Left to Right): Konya, Karaman, Mersin, Batman
(Yes, that is correct, there is a Turkish province called Batman)

All of this, from methods and process to final product analysis, led me to Istanbul (or just outside, as it were) where stories from Syrian refugees both challenged and confirmed my predictions. 

Be sure to check out the next installment, What The Syrians Had To Say: Views from Istanbul.

***

[1] The article, Computational Tools in Predicting and Assessing Forced Migration, employs much the same methodology as my approach, but utilizes an artificial hexagonal grid as opposed to the more organic network architecture that I used. It is an excellent read!

Edwards, S. (2008). Computational tools in predicting and assessing forced migration. Journal of Refugee Studies, 21(3), 347-359.

[2] These numbers were later inverted for the purposes of the simulation as, in a network, a higher link weight value indicates a stronger relationship. The numbers were inverted so that, the lower the link weight, the more difficult it would be for a refugee to move there and the less likely the simulation would be to move into that region as a result.

[3] Five nodes represented seven border crossings because each node represented one district. Two of the seven most frequently-trafficked border crossings were located in the same district as another border crossing, therefore only five nodes were necessary. 

Turkey Redrawn: Ethnolinguistic Lines And Populations In Transit (Part 2 Of A Multi-Part Series)

Note: This is the second part in a multi-part series covering an extensive project on the human geography of Turkey and network analysis applications within the field of Intelligence Studies. Be sure to read the first post, My Conversation With The Free Syrian Army!

Turkey’s ethnic populations are, in a word, surprising. 

For example, one would expect that speakers of Azerbaijani residing in Turkey would speak Northern Azerbaijani from Azerbaijan.  Yet, according to Ethnologue, the Azerbaijani spoken within Turkey’s borders is Southern Azerbaijani from Iran. This begs the question: are the ethnic Azeris in Turkey from Azerbaijan or Iran? Or both? Of course, all Azeris are ethnically Iranian, and Northern and Southern Azerbaijani are mutually intelligible as far as languages go, but the fact remains that many many Azerbaijanis living in Turkey did not originate where the name suggests. 

The same is the case for the Kyrgyz speakers in Turkey who did not immigrate from Kyrgyzstan but were resettled in Turkey’s Kars province from the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan after migrating into Pakistan through the Hindu Kush in the early 1980s. 

Surprised? I'll admit that I was. 

Figure 1. Turkey Provinces by Population

Figure 2. Philippine Languages Map

When analysts look at a country, they tend to look at the lines that divide it. International borders, provinces, districts, regions, counties, states.  They serve as the architecture for how we come to understand a region in a defined geographic space. Turkey, for example, is a country comprised of 81 provinces and 957 districts (See Figure 1) that also plays host to the largest portion of the frequently-imagined Kurdistan in the southeast.

The human geography of Turkey, however, maps a different landscape than that dictated by provincial borders. Borrowing an idea from a Philippine Science blog (See Figure 2), I set out to make my own linguistic map of Turkey (See Figure 3). This map depicts an ethnolinguistically diverse country hosting five language families, over 30 living languages and over 30 minority ethnic populations (for a quick dive into Turkey's linguistic diversity, check out Ethnologue's Turkey page).

Figure 3. Linguistic Map of Turkey 

Figures 4 and 5 overlay these social and linguistically driven borders - borders which are truly more reflective of the internal population. Equally as important as recognizing these borders is understanding how they came to be the way the are (I again reference the resettlement of the Kyrgyz from Afghanistan). 

Figure 4. Ethnolinguistic Areas of Turkey

Figure 5. Ethnolinguistic Areas of Istanbul

What began as a geocultural mapping project of Turkey to fill a void in geospatial intelligence quickly evolved into population movement simulations referencing arguably the most prominent humanitarian crisis of today: The Syrian civil war. 

Why? 

Because no competent analyst can submit a report on minority ethnic populations of Turkey without at least mentioning the approximately 1 million Syrian refugees flooding into the country over the last 12 months (Hatay province was always a microcosm of Syria in Turkey; now that can be said for practically the entire southeastern border ... but more on that later). 

The point is that the population movement simulations were only possible with a comprehensive understanding of Turkey's ethnographic landscape in the form of a map which, surprisingly, did not exist prior to the undertaking of this project. 

Did any ethnolinguistic maps of Turkey exist? Sure. See Figures 6 and 7 for some of the better examples. But what did they use for resources? How comprehensive were they? How dated were they? These were the questions I asked myself before starting my own collection. 

Figure 6. Kurdish Language Map
Source: Geocurrents, a fantastic geolinguistics blog

Figure 7. Turkish Language Map
Source: Muturzikin, a Basque Linguistic Mapping Resource

To create my map of Turkey, I went to places some analysts would never go in the name of high source reliability: Blogs. Conducting an Internet deep dive, I looked at independent travel blogs (such as MiddleEastExplorer), organizations seeking to spread Christianity to non-Christian areas (such as The Joshua Project) and a host of sites for endangered languages and minority peoples (like Sorosoro and Linguamon). After all, a small Russian news organization covering a film crew's recent travel to Turkish Tatar villages to research an independent film, Halkim Minem, is as good a source as any to use to identify Tatar villages within Turkish borders. 

Using over 200 resources, albeit many with low source reliability, and taking all pre-existing ethnic maps of the region into consideration, I vetted, corroborated, re-vetted and combined everything I could find on all 30 ethnolinguistic groups in order to compile the most comprehensive and up-to-date ethnolinguistic map of Turkey currently available. 

Making an ethnolinguistic map of Turkey was my way of walking the battlefield in preparation for the bulk of the project, the simulation, which was yet to come. 

Next: Borrowing Analytic Techniques: Populations, Predictions And What Physics Tells Us About The Movement Of Alawites.

***

Below are some of the other maps generated throughout the ethnolinguistic mapmaking process. These maps provide ways of looking at the dynamic fluctuation of identified ethnolinguistic areas.

Ethnolinguistic Groups in Turkey According to Origin of Group.
Internal (from within Turkey) - Purple
External (Such as immigrant or diaspora) - Blue

Ethnolinguistic Groups in Turkey According to Direction
Expanding group - Green
Neutral group - Yellow
Decreasing group - Orange

Ethnolinguistic Groups in Turkey According to Language Status (Scale Provided by Ethnologue)
3 - "Wide Communication" - Dark orange
  4 - "Educational" - Light orange
5 - "Developing" - Yellow
6 - "Threatened" - Light green
7 - "Shifting" - Dark green

My Conversation With The Free Syrian Army (Part 1 Of A Multi-part Series)

Bayramtepe, Tekirdag, Turkey

I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of a two-room apartment filled with floor cushions and a series of bunk beds. Fifteen men between the ages of 22 and 30 stared back at me, some having just woken up, some smoking cigarettes, some waiting intently for me to speak, others merely staring off into the distance. Personal weapons were strewn around the room along with some clothes, everything from dirty socks to handguns.

If this were a chance encounter, I would have said all 15 of them were just like me. But that couldn't have been further from reality.

None of the men knew each other before coming to Bayramtepe (a little town approximately three hours west of Istanbul) from Syria. They all had different stories regarding how they came to be there. Six of them had jobs in factories. The others did not work. Some were from Golan Heights, others from Damascus, Latakia and Aleppo. Some had been in Istanbul for just a month where others had been there upwards of a year.

Bayramtepe, Turkey

They were former fighters in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), one of the leading opposition forces in the ongoing Syrian civil war. About half of them had defected from the Syrian military in order to fight with the FSA. All of them had given up the fight - at least for now. And all of them were in Istanbul hoping to find work.

What led me to Turkey is a long story about simulating refugee population movements, network analysis techniques and a distinct focus on the human geography of Turkey. Over the next several posts, I will seek to elaborate on the projects, the methods and the experiences that span the Syrian civil war and the role of social network analysis in intelligence analysis.

This first post, however, is about the people I met.

***

"What was a normal day like for you?," I asked.

A man who had been with the FSA the longest answered in broken English, "We mostly fought Hezbollah in Damascus. They were our main opposition. We lived normal lives, generally. Wake up, eat something, but sometimes, most days, we had to fight."

"Do you think you will ever go back to Syria?," I continued.

A shorter man with large green eyes who spoke the best English replied, "When al-Qaeda leaves, I will go back!"

Another man piped up from the corner in Arabic. 

"He says he could care less about al-Qaeda, but when Assad is gone, he will once again return to Syria," my translator told me.

The men all laughed.

"What did they say now," I asked.

"That you should deliver the message to President Obama," my translator replied.

***

These are only a few of the people and only one of the encounters that occurred during my recent trip to Turkey to interview Syrian refugees in the outskirts of Istanbul. A collector of stories, I spoke with 20 families and over 100 individuals in just three days, including defected Syrian military fighters, the directors of two independent Syrian refugee organizations, self-identified members of Al Qaeda as well as the Free Syrian Army fighters mentioned in this post. 

We told part of the story in our most recent article, The Potential Of Social Network Analysis In Intelligence, which we published online in the e-International Relations magazine and OODALoop. 

But there is much more.  

Next:  Turkey Redrawn: Ethnolinguistic Lines And Populations In Transit

A Christmas Card With A Secret

As a 'Happy Holidays' from SAM, we bring some cheerful holiday pictures that are a bit more than meets the eye. Yes, they are Christmas trees, but they are also intel!

Population Movement Simulation Results 1 

Consider this a teaser for what is to come from SAM in the new year. 2014 will bring a series of visually-appealing posts on Turkey, Syria, nuclear non-proliferation, refugee population simulations and a host of innovative analytic methods for the everyday analyst's toolbox. 

Population Movement Simulation Results 2

Wishing happy holidays and a brilliant start to 2014 to all our faithful readers!

Teaching Budgeting To Intelligence Analysts (Link List)

One of the things we like to expose our students to here at Mercyhurst is the unspeakable horror of the budgeting process.  If learning to be an intelligence analyst were not difficult enough, trying to figure out what that analysis is worth and what you can reasonably charge for it, is sheer, but necessary, agony for most students.

To make the process a little more interesting (or maybe just a little less onerous), there are a number of simulators that I have either used or would recommend to add depth to lessons on budgeting for intel analysts.  All of these simulations help teach the points that budgeting is often a series of painful trade-offs, that some expenses or policies that receive an awful lot of attention don't really matter when it comes to balancing a budget and, finally, understanding your priorities is the key to achieving your goals while staying within your budget.

http://doiop.com/BudgHero

Budget Hero.  This is one of my favorites and I have used this successfully in class.  This simulation asks the student to determine which policies they wish to enact and which they wish to ignore and then shows how their decisions will impact the US federal budget next year and over the next 20 years.  The data is mostly current and is based on Congressional Budget Office figures and projections. 

http://doiop.com/NYTBudgPuzz

New York Times Budget Puzzle.  The target in this recent interactive infographic is the same as above -- the US federal budget.  The presentation is very different, however.  The interface is simpler and it would be a better choice if time is an issue.

www.budgetsimulator.com

Budget Simulator.  This online product is very different from either of the previous two simulators.  Here, you can actually create your own budget, list your own priorities and involve your students in establishing what matters within the scope of a budget.  The possibilities here are quite intriguing.  For example, the East Sussex County  Council in the UK is using the simulator to help gather input on how they should cut the budget by a whopping 30%.  

I am sure there are other budget simulation programs and games available.  Leave your favorite in the comments!

Good Resource: International Center On Nonviolent Conflict (Liveblogging ISA)

With John McCain's recent speech on foreign policy recognizing the importance of allies and non-military strategies, it is virtually certain that the next president of the US (Clinton and Obama are already on the record with similar statements) will focus less on military strategies for protecting and advancing US national interests and more on diplomatic and other nonviolent strategies. With this thought in mind, it was more than serendipitous -- almost "way cool" -- to bump into the International Center On Nonviolent Conflict booth at ISA (See picture below).

The ICNC "is an independent, non-profit, educational foundation that develops and encourages the study and use of civilian-based, nonmilitary strategies to establish and defend human rights, democracy and justice worldwide." Good stuff, that, and we could use a bit more of it.

What is even better is that they have a number of films and resources that they are happy to send people who request them (Note: I was told by the booth attendant that they were free for the asking but I noted that there are prices -- very reasonable prices, but prices nonetheless -- on the ordering website. I may have gotten confused. Maybe they are only free to attendees of the conference. I certainly got my copies free. I will go back and double check this tomorrow or maybe the ICNC guys can post a comment to clarify).

I picked up two of the movies, Bringing Down a Dictator and A Force More Powerful. I have seen bits of Bringing Down A Dictator about the last days of the Milosevic regime and, having lived through some of that myself, can say that it is pretty good. I intend to watch A Force More Powerful when I get back to Mercyhurst and will blog about it later but my expectation is that it is equally good.

After I watch the movie, I am looking forward to playing the game! That's right, they have even developed a video game based on the movie and book, A Force More Powerful. They were down to their last copy and they told me they would have to send me one. In the meantime I will have to make do with reading the great reviews the game has earned.