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ABSTRACT
Voting rights are an essential feature of democratic citizenship. Turkey enfranchised its expatriate citizens in 1995, but they were first granted the right to vote from overseas in the 2014 presidential election. We examine turnout and vote choice among expatriates in Turkish elections from 2014 to 2018. We find that turnout among expatriates is low and that they tend to vote in the same direction as domestic voters. Furthermore, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) tend to do better among expatriates compared to their domestic counterparts. Our analyses also suggest that expatriate voting is linked to the strength of voters’ ties to their country of origin. Moreover, expatriate vote choice appears to vary with geographic and political variables associated with the host countries.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Note on contributors
Semra Sevi is a PhD Student in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal.
Can Serif Mekik is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
André Blais is Director of the Chair in Electoral Studies and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal.
Semih Çakır is a PhD Student in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal.
Notes
1 Quoted in Dark, “Americans Abroad,” 733.
2 Sahin-Mencütek and Erdogan, “The Implementation of Voting.”
3 Yıldırım, “Gurbetin Oyları.” Voting for Turkish citizens living abroad occurred at the border one month before the countrywide elections.
5 Data from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/23743/9781464803192.pdf?sequence=3.
6 OECD, “Trends in International Migration,” 271. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that over 6 million Turks live abroad. <http://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-expatriate-turkish-citizens.en.mfa>.
7 Turkish government data on Turkish citizens living abroad are based on citizens voluntarily making a trip to a local Turkish embassy or consulate to register their address.
8 Blais et al., “Deciding Who Has the Right.”
9 See United Nations, “UN Report.”
10 Bauböck, “Towards a Political Theory,” 715.
11 Bauböck, “Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational.”
12 Jacobs and Pieters, “Electronic Voting in the Netherlands”; Germann and Serdult, “Internet Voting for Expatariates”; and Germann et al., “Five years of internet.”
13 Barry, “Home and Away.”
14 Barry, “Home and Away”; Owen, “Resident Aliens, Non-resident”; and Rubio Marin, “Transnational Politics.”
15 Bauböck, “Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational.”
16 Bauböck, “Towards a Political Theory.”
17 Bauböck, “Expansive Citizenship – Voting Beyond”; Bauböck, “The Rights and Duties”; López-Guerra, “Should Expatriates Vote?”; and Rubio Marin, “Transnational Politics.”
18 Kull, “Who Should Vote Where?”
19 Dark, “Americans Abroad.”
20 Ibid., 738.
21 Mercurio and Williams, “The Australian Diaspora.”
22 Orr, “Citizenship, Interests, Community,” 26.
23 Orr, “Citizenship, Interests, Community.”
24 Blais et al., “Deciding Who Has the Right,” 41.
25 Barry, “Home and Away”; Bauböck, “Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational”; Blais et al., “Deciding Who Has the Right”; Lafleur, “Why Do States Enfranchise”; López-Guerra, “Should Expatriates Vote?”; and Rubio Marin, “Transnational Politics.”
26 For existing comparative studies see Collyer and Vathi, “Patterns of Extra-territorial Voting,” and Ellis et al., “Voting from Abroad.”
27 Güngör and Tansel, “‘Brain Drain’ from Turkey: An Investigation,” and Tansel and Güngör, “‘Brain Drain’ from Turkey: Survey Evidence.”
28 Gülsün, Sayılarla Yurtdışındaki İşçilerimiz.
29 Østergaard-Nielsen, “The Politics of Migrants.”
30 Güngör and Tansel, “‘Brain Drain’ from Turkey: An Investigation,” and Tansel and Güngör, “‘Brain Drain’ from Turkey: Survey Evidence.”
31 The PKK is labeled as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States and Turkey.
32 Lowen, “Turkey Brain Drain.”
33 Sahin-Mencütek and Erdogan, “The Implementation of Voting.”
34 Østergaard-Nielsen, “Turkey and the ‘Euro Turks’.”
35 Rabasa and Larrabee, The Rise of Political Islam.
36 Yildirim, “Gurbetin Oyları.” This study is in Turkish.
37 Wolfinger, “The Rational Citizen”; Blais, To Vote or Not to Vote; and Leighley and Nagler, Who Votes Now?
38 Wolfinger, “The Rational Citizen,” and Blais, To Vote or Not to Vote.
39 The HDP passed the 10% threshold in 2015 for the first time and obtained seats in the parliament as a party. Before 2015, HDP candidates ran as independents because they were unable to pass the national threshold. IYI was founded in 2017 by former MHP members. It contested elections for the first time in 2018.
40 Umit, “The 2014 Presidential Election.”
41 Cop, “The June 2015 Legislative Election.”
42 GDP per capita is in US dollars. We collected the data from the World Bank. At the time of writing, GDP per capita was available for each host country for each election year with the exception of 2018. Therefore, we used GDP per capita in 2017 for the 2018 election.
43 Age data taken from TurkStat were placed into age groups. Estimates of average expat ages were obtained by taking the weighted average bin midpoints. The age bins are top-coded. For the highest age bracket, we use the lower bound of the bin in our weighted average.
44 Ayata and Ayata, “The Center-Left Parties”; Bilecen, “The Determinants of Voting”; and Önis, “Conservative Globalism.”
45 Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations.”
46 Carkoglu and Kalaycioglu, Turkish Democracy Today, and Carkoglu, “Ideology or Economic Pragmatism?”
47 Bilecen, “The Determinants of Voting,” and Toros, “Social Indicators and Voting.”
48 Carkoglu and Kalaycioglu, Turkish Democracy Today, and Kalaycioglu, “Justice and Development Party.”
49 Carkoglu, “Political Preferences”; Ekmekci, “Understanding Kurdish Ethno-nationalism”; Hale and Ozbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism; Bilecen, “The Determinants of Voting”; and Toros, “Social Indicators and Voting.”
50 Sevi, “Turkey’s Twist and Turns.”
51 Akarca and Baslevent, “Persistence in Regional Voting.”
52 Bilecen, “The Determinants of Voting.”
53 Ibid.
54 Our data does not allow us to test where AKP voters went.
55 Since coming to power, the AKP took steps to resolve the long-lasting Kurdish question, but this has not yielded a peace settlement or new political arrangement.
56 In , CHP is shown to have a small lead over HDP in Canada. This is an exception to the observed trend in our dataset for Turkish expatriates in Canada.
57 Bilecen, “The Determinants of Voting.”
58 Akgun, “The Turkish Diaspora.”
59 Ibid.
60 Akcapar, Turkish Immigration in Western Europe.
61 Ibid.
62 Bilecen, “The Determinants of Voting.”
63 Wolfinger, “The Rational Citizen Faces,” and Blais, To Vote or Not to Vote.
64 See Stockholm Center for Freedom. “Germany, Netherlands announce.”
65 Bozcaga and Christia, “Turkish Referendum Rallies.”
66 Hutcheson and Arrighi, “Keeping Pandora’s (Ballot) Box.”