A Bird’s Eye View of Migration: Ömür Kurt’s Yaban Ördeği Ailesinin Göç Yolculuğu – The Migration of the Wild Duck Family –and Ecocritical Perspectives of the Turkish Refugee Crisis

In the past eight years, some Turkish authors have sought to depict the global refugee crisis in ways that might educate and develop the empathy of young people. Most of these books feature child characters who make perilous journeys to Türkiye, struggle with daily life in refugee camps, and cope with homesickness and alienation. However, Ömür Kurt’s children’s book Yaban Ördeği Ailesinin Göç Yolculuğu offers an original approach to the representation of migration by featuring animal characters. Here, a family of migratory ducks are separated from their flock and face many obstacles as they journey from the northern forests to the south. The book draws on the perspective of the child duck, Paytak, to depict the fear and loss experienced by human child refugees who must leave the only home they’ve ever known. In this article, we argue that Kurt uses the protagonist’s literal bird’s-eye view to address the relationship between the refugee crisis and a larger global climate crisis. The world as Paytak views it from the air does not have borders; moreover, he perceives humans not according to their national or ethnic identities but rather as members of an increasingly imperiled animal species. Additionally, Paytak’s bird’s-eye view allows him to see the connection between human-created ecological devastation – dried lakes and rivers, pollution, and unchecked development – and the waves of human refugees fleeing violence and limited resources. Thus, we argue, this children’s book offers a crucial ecocritical perspective on the refugee crisis in Türkiye and beyond. Ultimately, we argue that this text – produced in a country that not only bridges two continents but whose imperiled wetlands also tenuously sustain the ecosystems of Europe, Asia, and Africa – exemplifies a critical connection connection between the twin global crises of human migration and climate catastrophe. © International Research Society for Children’s Literature.