Abstract:

Turkish Migration Policies: A Fundamental Change in the 21st Centrury?

Migration policies can be defined as “rules … that national states define and [enact] with the objective of affecting the volume, origin, direction, and internal composition of [...] migration flows” (Czaika and de Haas 2013) and through these policies a government shows “what it intends to do or not do … in regards to the selection, admission, settlement and deportation of foreign citizens residing in the country” (Bjerre et al ., 2015).

In the 19th century the Ottoman Empire became a destination country for many Turks and Muslims from the Balkans and Russia. With the aim of a nation building process Republic of Turkey has followed this policy and welcomed the migration of Turks from abroad since 1923. For the settlement of new comers and the naturalization of them, Turkish parliament adopted settlement laws and favourable conditions in citizenship laws. According to settlement laws only those who are “of Turkish race” can be accepted as migrants to Turkey.

After the 2010s, it is witnessed that Turkey has been employing a different migration policy as sometimes referred to as the open door policy. The Turkish Parliament adopted a new law entitled the Law on Foreigners and International Protection in 2013. Under this law people coming from Syria have been given the status of “temporary protection”. Unlike the other countries’ experience, temporary status is not given for a specific period of time. As of today, according to official figure the number of Syrians under this status is around 3.3 million. In addition, there are around 250,000 people who are under international protection. The total registered (regular) number of foreigners is around 5 million. It is stated by government officials that 250.000 Syrians acquired Turkish nationality. In 2017, Turkey introduced a “golden nationality” scheme for foreigners who buy real estate worth 250.000 USD. It is estimated that around 380.000 houses have been sold to foreigners and an important number of them obtained Turkish nationality. Furthermore, it is estimated that the number of irregular migrants ranges from a few hundred thousand to millions.

This paper argues that the Turkish traditional migration policy based on the settlement and naturalization of people with Turkish descent has changed in the recent years to cover other foreigners, especially those from Arab counties, Africa, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, by examining laws and regulations as well as statistics in Turkey.