Reading diasporic engagements through the lens of citizenship: Turkey as a test case

Abstract

Diaspora policies have recently become prominent for an increasing number of states. While the growing body of literature on new diaspora policies and institutions has shown these as a sign of a state's willingness to include populations from abroad into the polity, an equally new adjacent literature has emphasised the exclusive and controlling aspect of extra-territorial power of authoritarian states. This article argues that a consideration of co-occurrence of positive and negative diaspora politics is needed for a holistic understanding of state-led transnationalism and its contested relationship to national territory and popular sovereignty. In this article, we build on the example of Turkish policies, which on the one hand took considerable steps to include its citizens abroad and on the other continued the exclusion of the 'enemies of the state' and re-defined the limits of political membership at home and abroad. By analysing the new diasporic institutional practices, the enfranchisement of external citizens and the right to exit along with loss of citizenship provisions, we show that Turkish state policy disrupts the assumed holy trinity of nation-state-territory forging a de-territorialised unity between internal and external citizens, as well as a de-territorialised division along the lines of party loyalty. Looking at diasporic engagements in all three dimensions -institutional, political and legal-through the lens of citizenship, we demonstrate that they are neither the extension of a heavy handed extra-territorial state power nor of an all-inclusive diaspora policy but a more complex combination of the two.

Political Regimes and External Voting Rights: A Cross-National Comparison

“…As indicated, the AKP has benefited greatly from nonresident voters, particularly labor migrants. This included launching its overseas mobilization efforts as part of its new diaspora policy, as soon as it acquired the power as ruling party in 2002 via the party's overseas satellites, such as the lobbying institution International Democrats (Uluslararası Demokratlar Birligi, UID), state institutions including the Turkish missions abroad, the Office for the Turks Abroad and Related Communities (Yurtdışı Türkler ve Akraba Topluluklar Başkanlıgı, YTB), and other organizations including the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (Diyaneṫ Işleri Türkİslam Birligi, DITIB) (Adamson, 2018;Sahin Mencutek and Baser, 2018;Yanasmayan and Kaşlı, 2019;Arkilic, 2020). The activities of these organizations included but were not limited to reaching out to the addresses of the electorates, canvassing and registering the DITIB members to the electoral role, and most significantly providing free regular shuttle bus services to vote (Yener-Roderburg 2020).…”

Empowering a fragmented diaspora: Turkish immigrant organizations’ perceptions of and responses to Turkey’s diaspora engagement policy

“…Another strand of the literature has looked at how and why governments have created institutions (amicales) and consular networks to deal with their emigrants (Brand, 2018). Moreover, some have paid attention to intradiasporic policies developed by MENA countries (Tsourapas, 2015;Arkilic, 2016;Şahin-Mencütek & Baser, 2018;Adamson, 2019;Yanaşmayan & Kaşlı, 2019). However, as Aksel (2019) observes, the impact of diaspora engagement policies on home state-emigrant society relations and emigrants' transnational political practices remains understudied in the literature.…”

Host state reactions to home state diaspora engagement policies: Rethinking state sovereignty and limits of diaspora governance

“…The YTB has invested a significant amount of time and effort to maximize Turkey's gains from the diaspora in these four realms by initiating various activities to mobilize dormant loyalties in the diaspora, rebuild and reshape the span of diasporic activities, and to strengthen ties with certain segments of the diaspora while curbing the dissidents’ voices (Baser & Ozturk, 2020). This selective engagement is well documented by scholars who have examined both the actions and discourses of the newly established institutions, and they reveal that most YTB activities target diasporans who would constitute the AKP's voter base rather than the whole diasporic population (Okyay, 2015; Yanasmayan & Kaşlı, 2019; Adamson, 2019). As Burgess (2020: 102) has rightly argued, the AKP and President Erdogan have managed to “shift the lines of inclusion and exclusion in Turkey's imagined community,” and this has been reflected in the diaspora spaces as well.…”