Diaspora diplomacy

The politics of Turkish emigration to Europe

Ayca Arkilic

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781526148674
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the early 2000s, Turkey has shown an unprecedented interest in its diaspora. This book provides the first in-depth examination of the institutionalisation of Turkey's diaspora engagement policy since the Justice and Development Party's rise to power in 2002, the Turkish diaspora's new role as an agent of diplomatic goals, and how Turkey's growing sphere of influence affects intra-diaspora politics and diplomatic relations with Europe. The book is based on fieldwork in Turkey, France and Germany, and interviews conducted with diaspora organisation leaders and policymakers.Diasporas have become transformative for relations at the state-to-state level and blur the division between the domestic and the foreign. A case study of Turkey's diasporas is significant at a time when emigrants from Turkey form the largest Muslim community in Europe and when issues of diplomacy, migration and citizenship have become more salient than ever.

1

Introduction

On 11 February 2008, 20,000 individuals gathered in Cologne’s colossal Lanxess Arena to hear the leader of the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Turkish prime minister,¹ Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speak. Erdoğan’s visit took place a week after an apartment-block fire in the southern German city of Ludwigshafen in which nine Turks, including five children, died.² The ‘Big Reunion’, as the organisers of the rally called it, resembled a pop concert, with light shows, giant screens and cheerful music. After several long hours of waiting, the audience was asked to stand to sing the Turkish national anthem, followed by the German national anthem, before Erdoğan arrived. Finally, a loudspeaker announced that ‘the architect of Turkey, the man [you] all have been waiting for, is here!’ Erdoğan let the audience applaud and scream for quite a while and invited Turkish parliamentarians, ministers and Turkey’s ambassador to Germany to the stage before he began his address to the diaspora: ‘The Turkish people are a people of friendship and tolerance … Wherever they go, they bring only love and joy.’³ He continued:

Today there are 3 million Turks in Germany … Assimilation is a crime against humanity. No one should expect you to see yourselves as ‘the other’ in today’s Germany … You must learn German to gain an advantageous position in this country, but our children must also learn Turkish. Turkish is your native language … With its large population, Turks in Germany should play an essential role in German politics. Why don’t we have mayors, political party leaders and lobby groups in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium? Why don’t we have more representatives in the European Parliament? … Despite their smaller population, some groups are able to pressure their host states through their lobby power. Why can’t we do the same to protect our interests? … I expect Turks in Europe to act as Turkey’s ambassadors and help us join the EU.⁴

Erdoğan also criticised the German government’s failure to respond to xenophobic attacks targeting Turkish-origin Germans and condemned Germany’s reluctance to accept Turkey into the EU.⁵ Despite the generally peaceful atmosphere, the ‘Big Reunion’ generated controversy in Germany for several reasons. First, no other Turkish head of state or party leader had come to Europe before this event to address the diaspora.⁶ Second, the rally became the largest political event post-war Germany had ever witnessed; even the historical speech Chancellor Helmut Kohl delivered after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 attracted only 10,000 people.⁷ During her election campaigns, no more than a few thousand people came to listen to Chancellor Angela Merkel.⁸ Third, according to some German newspapers and policymakers, the spectacle disseminated provocative messages: Die Welt wrote that Erdoğan’s words were harming German Turks’ integration, and Günther Beckstein, the governor of Bavaria at the time, called Erdoğan’s messages ‘nationalistic’ and ‘highly displeasing’.⁹ Chancellor Merkel also criticised Erdoğan’s remarks. She underscored that Turks’ allegiance to the German state should not be questioned and suggested that her government would raise the issue of Turkish integration within Germany in further discussions with Turkey’s prime minister.¹⁰

Erdoğan addressed emigrants from Turkey in other European countries as well. At a rally held in Paris in 2010, the first of its kind in France, he once again reminded the diaspora how important they were and encouraged them to actively and assertively participate in French and European politics without forgetting their national identity and roots: ‘Becoming a French citizen wouldn’t make you less Turkish. Pursue your legal rights in France … You must take this step. If you don’t, others will take advantage of this. Unite, act together, fight together, be strong, be assertive … If you take these steps, you will contribute immensely to your country [Turkey].’¹¹

This book takes a closer look at Turkey’s burgeoning diaspora diplomacy. Diaspora diplomacy is a relatively new phenomenon. The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy defines it as collaborating with expatriate communities, which can provide political, financial and even moral support for the home state.¹² Other scholars refer to the concept as ‘engaging a country’s overseas community to contribute to building relationships with foreign countries’¹³ or ‘a collective action that is driven, directed and sustained by the energy and charisma of a broad range of migrants who influence another country’s culture, politics and economics in a manner that is mutually beneficial for the homeland and the new home base’.¹⁴

In this book, I define ‘diaspora diplomacy’ as the desire to advance foreign policy interests, relations and negotiations via diasporic communities at multiple levels (local, national and supranational). Since the goal is to advance foreign policy interests (not necessarily to improve diplomatic relations), the outcome of these efforts may or may not be mutually beneficial for the home state, the host state(s) and the diasporas. This conceptualisation posits that diaspora diplomacy can be counterproductive. It also disaggregates the diaspora and looks at differences within it rather than treating the group as a unitary actor. In doing so, it takes into consideration the fact that not all segments of a diaspora community might be willing to promote the foreign policy goals of their home state. As such, sending states may engage in diaspora diplomacy by empowering ‘loyal’ émigré groups, controlling ‘disloyal’ groups and even protecting their diaspora allies against the threat of ‘harmful’ diasporas. The book’s goal is to identify some general mechanisms – in terms of actors, issues, processes, the nature and content of diaspora diplomacy activities and the degree of cooperation between home and host states – that help explain when the outcome of diaspora diplomacy efforts is positive or negative, and to generate a definition that emphasises the agency of the diaspora group itself in explaining such outcomes.

This definition reveals that diaspora diplomacy efforts are different from ‘diaspora engagement policies’. The latter promote a state-oriented perspective that centres around home states’ activities and discourse aimed at engaging with their nationals abroad at the individual and collective level through symbolic nation-building, institution-building and the provision of a set of rights and obligations.¹⁵ The term ‘diaspora engagement policy’, therefore, does not capture the new forms of diplomacy carried out by the diaspora that are complementary to official government efforts. Diaspora diplomacy does not view the diaspora’s links with the origin state merely as a top-down relationship and maintains that diaspora communities have their own agency, goals and political clout. In fact, as I show in this study, certain diaspora groups refuse to take part in diaspora diplomacy.

This book examines Turkey’s diaspora outreach efforts as an example of diaspora diplomacy, rather than seeing them merely as diaspora engagement, because Turkey’s changing relations with its diaspora have turned certain segments of Turkey’s overseas population into active political players with significant implications for the country’s diplomatic relations. The core contention of this book is that while Turkey’s diaspora diplomacy has not replaced traditional diplomatic channels between Turkey and European countries, it has emerged as a new force complementing and enhancing Turkey’s official endeavours. A form of unprecedented political activism is being carried out by Turkey’s diaspora with encouragement from the Turkish state, which seeks to defend and advance Turkey’s interests internationally. Since the beginning of the 2000s, Ankara has increasingly conceived of its diaspora in Europe as a political leverage tool. Turkey’s desire to put pressure on and influence relations with European countries has resulted in the empowerment of select, ideologically proximate diaspora organisations, mainly conservative-nationalist and Sunni Islamic groups, across Europe.¹⁶ These groups have organised political demonstrations, press speeches and signature campaigns, and have run for office at the local, national and EU level. They have even formed their own political parties in Europe.

Turkish bureaucrats state that foreign policy is not carried out solely with traditional diplomacy but also with cultural, economic and commercial diaspora networks.¹⁷ The Turkish diaspora’s diplomacy has focused on advancing Ankara’s five foremost official foreign policy goals, which are listed by Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as: (1) the denial of the Armenian genocide; (2) the establishment of closer relations with the EU; (3) the promotion of Turkey as an independent and strong regional power, and the preservation of a distinct Turkish identity in Europe; (4) the disempowerment of terrorist (Kurdish separatist and Gülenist¹⁸) groups abroad; and (5) combating Islamophobia and racism in Europe.¹⁹ These goals shape the ways in which Turkey interacts with its diasporas and other states. While EU membership remains a distant dream for Turkey currently, and conservative-nationalist diaspora groups have done more harm than good in this regard (as explained in the book), joining the EU remains an official foreign policy goal and Turkey wishes to do this by instrumentalising the large Turkish diaspora in Europe. In fact, many analysts acknowledge that ‘Turkish-European citizens play an important role in the economic, political, cultural, and social ties between the EU and Turkey’ and that they are ‘an asset to Turkey’s efforts to join the EU’.²⁰

One of the most concrete examples of Turkish expatriates’ recent active citizenship in Europe took place in 2012, when French Turks organised their largest collective demonstration in response to a French Senate bill that criminalised the denial of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.²¹ Eventually the bill was ruled unconstitutional by the French Constitutional Council.²² In Germany, a political campaign led by resident Turks before the 2013 German federal elections was, in a similar vein, the largest collective action coordinated by the Turkish diaspora in the country. Turks were urged to participate in German elections, challenge Islamophobia and lobby the EU to accelerate accession negotiati...