Political Participation among Natives and Immigrants: Identity and Socio-economic Status within the Turkish Cypriot Electorate

ABSTRACT

Based on an original survey (n = 1,017), this paper examines citizens’ participation patterns in the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (‘TRNC’), a de facto state recognised only by Turkey. Since 1974 the ‘TRNC’ has been receiving a constant flow of immigrants from its patron state (Turkey). While Turkish immigrants make up a sizeable proportion of the electorate, they seem to be underrepresented in the political arena. Our findings show that, in determining the level of political participation, socio-economic factors are pre-eminent while having an immigrant background has only very limited effect and gender does not have any impact.

KEYWORDS:

• De facto states
• Cyprus
• ‘TRNC’
• Turkey
• patron states
• settlers
• voting
• protest

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editors of South European Society and Politics and the journal’s two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. They would also like to thank Desiree Birinci, Özker Kocadal, Samin Gokcekus and Ebru Küçükşener for their helpful suggestions in the writing process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2022.2117019.

Notes

1. The domestic structures of the de facto political entities have attracted scholarly interest lately. However, although ‘political attitudes’ of the polity and internal legitimacy (O’Loughlin, Kolossov & Toal 2014), as well as electoral dynamics (Ó Beacháin 2012) have been studied, there is no major political participation literature in the context of de facto states.

2. The UBP in particular has been regularly granting citizenship to gain advantage in elections. The number of voters, which was 161,373 in the 2009 parliamentary elections, increased to 190,553 in 2018, and reached 203,792 before the 2022 parliamentary elections (YSK 2022). This is an increase of almost 27 per cent in 13 years, well above the natural population growth and can only be accounted for by naturalisation.

3. PIDOP is an EU-funded trans-European research project exploring the processes and factors facilitating political participation, predominantly among migrants, women and youth in Europe (European Commission 2019). The authors have no relationship to PIDOP.

4. Table A1 and Table A2 can be viewed in the online appendix.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Enis Porat

Enis Porat is a PhD candidate in International Relations at Cyprus International University, and a research fellow at the Centre for Cyprus and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests include Identity and Conflict Studies, Migration Studies and Political Participation.

Sertac Sonan

Sertac Sonan is an Associate Professor of International Relations and the director of the Centre for Cyprus and Mediterranean Studies at Cyprus International University. His research interests include political clientelism, corruption, the Cyprus conflict, and Turkish Cypriot politics and economy. Sonan has published in various peer-reviewed journals and edited books, and serves on the editorial board of the Cyprus Review.

Omer Gokcekus

Omer Gokcekus is a Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University. His research interests include the relationship between interest groups and trade policies, organisational architecture and performance in the public sector, dynamics and effects of corruption, political participation, economic development, foreign aid, and wine economics. He has published in Economics Letters, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Wine Economics, PLoS ONE, and Public Choice amongst others.