Diaspora-making as a State-led Project Turkey's Expansive Diaspora Strategy and its Implications for Emigrant and Kin Populations Aslı Selin Okyay Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Florence, December 2015 European University Institute Department of Political and Social Sciences Diaspora-making as a State-led Project Turkey's Expansive Diaspora Strategy and its Implications for Emigrant and Kin Populations Aslı Selin Okyay Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Examining Board Prof. Rainer Bauböck, European University Institute (Supervisor) Prof. Olivier Roy, European University Institute Prof. Rogers Brubaker, University of California, Los Angeles Dr. Alan Gamlen, Victoria University of Wellington © Aslı Selin Okyay, 2015 No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the author ABSTRACT States’ efforts to create, expand or mobilise extraterritorial populations of emigrant or kin origin have been largely dealt by separate strands of scholarship. This thesis aims to bridge these two strands and offer a broader understanding of home-states’ role in diaspora-making by analysing why and how Turkey has evolved into a hybrid origin-reference state claiming and engaging an expansive diaspora composed of emigrants and a broad set of kin populations defined beyond co-ethnicity. The empirical analysis traces the state’s transformation through focusing on its categorisation and identification practices and policy-discourse repertoire oriented towards these different types of transborder populations over the last two decades. It argues that the ways in which the state identified and targeted both emigrants and external kin groups changed as a function of the interaction between: i) economic liberalisation and outward economic expansion, ii) shifts in the state’s foreign political and identitarian positioning vis-à-vis the West and its non-Western neighbourhood and iii) differing elite-sponsored conceptions of nationhood and narratives of nationalism. These interacting underlying factors have led the home-state to gradually expand the scope and diversify the composition of its transborder membership universe, while simultaneously engage in practices of selection and hierarchisation within its broad diaspora based on its changing definitions of ideal emigrants and external kin. This thesis also scrutinises the implications of changing rationalities and modalities of the state’s diaspora making for the targeted populations. Empirical examination of the cases of the Turkey-origin emigrant population in Germany and the co-ethnic minority in Bulgaria demonstrates that the home-state, through its varying definition, (sub)categorisation, and engagement efforts, significantly impacts the diasporic membership claims and practices of both emigrants and co-ethnics. State-led diaspora-making has (re)structuring effects particularly on intra-minority dynamics as well as different sections’ stances towards and relations with the home-state. Table of Contents Acknowledgments i List of Abbreviations v Chapter 1. Introduction 1 1. State-led projects of diaspora-making: Targeting, change, impact 5 1.1. Politics of targeting: Migrant sending-states, kin-states, and hybrid origin-reference states 5 1.2. Changing extent and content of the state’s transborder membership universe 7 1.3. Implications of changing state categories and policies for targeted transborder populations 9 2. The case and the scope of the thesis 10 2.1. Turkey as a migrant sending-state, kin-state, and hybrid origin reference state 10 2.2. Selection of “targeted populations” 13 3. Methodology, empirical data collection, field research 14 4. Outline of the thesis 18 Chapter 2. States and Migrant and Non-Migrant Diasporas: Conceptual, Theoretical, and Comparative Insights 21 1. How to think of diaspora? 22 1.1. Describing the nature of diaspora as social fact 22 1.2. Diaspora-making as project 24 1.3. Diaspora as a tool for (re)configuring the state’s transborder membership universe 27 1.3.1. Readjusting the scope and composition: Expanding and diversifying diasporas 27 1.3.2. Stipulating the content: (Re)narrating the ideal diasporic subject 29 2. The role of the state in creating migrant diasporas 31 2.1. Transmigrants, transnational ethnic lobbies, long-distance nationalists 32 2.2. States of origin as salient actors shaping the transnational sphere 34 3. Kin-states: From disturbers of the international system to diasporisers 36 3.1. Dangerous liaisons between ethnically motivated states and their transborder kin 36 3.2. Changing modalities of kin-state action in the post-Cold War era 39 4. Dynamics underlying state-led diaspora-making projects 42 4.1. Economically motivated diaspora-making and engagement 44 4.2. Diasporas as ethnic lobbies or justification for projecting power beyond borders? 48 4.3. Domestic politics as the incubator of diaspora-making projects 50 4.3.1. Engaging emigrants out of political expediency or as part of a normative shift? 51 4.3.2. Ethnic kin-states, hybrid origin states, and the limits of domestic political explanations 53 4.4. Diaspora-making as a manifestation of neoliberalisation 57 4.4.1. Neoliberalisation and the hype of diaspora and development 58 4.4.2. Diaspora-making as a neoliberal way of governing national populations 60 5. Conclusions 63 Chapter 3. Political, Economic, Societal Transformations Underlying Turkey’s Changing Diasporic Universe: A Contextual Map 67 1. Neoliberal restructuring, shifting balances of power, crystallising societal cleavages in post-1980 Turkey 69 1.1. Export-oriented industrialisation and emerging centres of economic power 69 1.2. Atatürkist nationalism and the changing status of Islam within national identity 73 1.3. Power struggle in identitarian clothes: The secular establishment versus political Islam 76 1.4. Positioning Turkey in the post-Cold War structure: Foreign policy beyond the West? 78 2. Changes in the national narrative, economic aspirations, and foreign policy orientation: 2002 onwards 82 2.1. The origins and coming of power of the AKP 82 2.2. Expanding Turkey’s economic and political network coverage beyond the West 84 2.3. Increased assertiveness of the AKP in domestic politics and foreign policy 88 2.4. Accentuating the difference and superiority of post-Kemalist Turkey 90 3. Conclusions 96 Chapter 4. From a Migrant Sending-State to a Homeland for Diaspora(s) 99 1. Who is Turkey’s ‘citizen diaspora’? 100 2. From Agents of socioeconomic transformation to potential political dissidents 102 3. Multiple expatriate landscapes seen through different home-state lenses: 1980s-1990s 107 3.1. Political and socioeconomic change in the homeland-expatriate nexus 108 3.2. Safeguarding the Atatürkist Turkish nation-state at home and abroad 109 3.3. Fostering national voting blocks for the promotion of Turkey in Europe 113 3.4. The creation of the “Turkish businessmen abroad” category 115 3.5. Political incorporation of all or only the ideal nation abroad? 118 4. Post-Kemalist Turkey’s offensive diaspora engagement strategy 122 4.1. From pluralistic encompassment to reshuffling of friends and foes 122 4.2. From Euro-Turkish bridges to embodiments of post-Kemalist Turkey 125 4.3. Transforming the community of migrant workers into global Turkish diaspora 132 4.4. Courting and cultivating the citizen diaspora 137 4.4.1. Closing the state’s distance with “the people” 137 4.4.2. Dedicating the state’s emotional and financial resources 139 4.4.3. Practically enfranchising citizens abroad, factoring in the external vote 141 5. Conclusions 144 Chapter 5. Turkey as a Kin-State: Discovering and Creating an Expansive Family Tree 147 1. Defining the post-imperial nation and delineating its transborder “extensions” 148 1.1. Becoming a modern nation-state, refraining from transborder kin-engagement 148 1.2. Difficulties of defining who is a Turk 150 1.3. Complexities of defining who is Turkey’s transborder kin 151 1.4. Hibernating kin-state within the context of the Cold War 156 2. Geopolitics and geo-economics of Turkey’s post-Cold War kin-making 158 3. Modalities and limits of transborder kin-engagement in the 1990s 162 4. Turkey’s creation and engagement of a malleable transborder kin universe 168 4.1. The political economy of expansive kin-making 169 4.2. Cultivating and institutionalising kinship links 174 4.3. How to claim an expansive transborder kin universe beyond co-ethnicity? 176 5. Delimited ethnic kin-state versus hybrid-origin-reference state 178 6. Conclusions 182 Chapter 6. Implications of Expansive Diaspora-Making for Membership Politics of Expatriates in Germany 185 1. Contradictions of embracing the citizen diaspora and the civilisational kin 186 2. Implications of reconfigured diaspora-making project for the targeted population 191 2.1. How do home-states (re)shape transborder membership politics? 193 2.2. Shifting the diaspora’s centre of gravity 195 2.2.1. Former centro-peripheral core moving to the margins 195 2.2.2. From excluded antagonists to legitimised representatives of overseas Turks 197 2.2.3. Official nationalist alliances between the former core and the new centre 201 2.3. Change and continuity in antagonistic margins of the diasporic map 204 3. Increased degree of “diasporaness” echoing post-Gezi homeland polarisation 211 4. Overseas citizens as constituency: formalisation and deepening of transborder membership politics 216 5. Conclusions 221 Chapter 7. Turkey as a Kin-State through the Lens of the Turks of Bulgaria 225 1. The “triangular constellation” in historical context 226 1.1. Bulgarian national identity and minorities under the shadow of Ottoman legacy, 227 1.2. Turk or Muslim? Minority identity inbetween the kin-state and the host-state 228 1.3. The curtain between the host-state and the kin-state: 1944-1984 230 1.4. The “revival process” and the mass exodus of 1989 232 2.