Turkey and the ‘Euro Turks’: Overseas Nationals as an Ambiguous Asset

Abstract

The export of Turkish labour in the 1960s and early 1970s was in many ways a disappointment for Turkey. Although remittances clearly benefited the individual migrant families, they did not set off the intended economic local or, indeed, national development (Martin 1991; Abadan-Unat 1995). And the guest worker experience certainly did not facilitate important foreign policy priorities such as Turkey’s quest for full membership of the EU (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003b). However, both the recent Turkish governments and the state are seeing the benefits of having an overseas community in the West. There is an increasing awareness among Turkish policy-makers that Turkish citizens who left for work in Western Europe are not going to return. From being referred to as ‘our workers abroad’, they are now increasingly called ‘our citizens abroad’.2 This awareness is reflected in more than just a change of semantics. The debates, policies, and administrative efforts towards the citizens abroad have changed from offers of temporary assistance and return programmes to support for their integration and social mobility abroad. Yet, Turkey wants its citizens abroad not to assimilate into their receiving countries, but to settle as Turks. Accordingly a range of measures has been employed in order to strengthen the economic, political and cultural ties between the Turkish citizens abroad and the homeland. Among the reasons for this is not only that a settled Turkish community in Europe constitutes an important economic resource-base, but also that it could play a role in Turkish bilateral and multilateral relations with EU member states.