When we talk about migration to the Russian Federation, the main receiving countries that come to mind are those in Central Asia, but rarely do we think about Russia’s southwestern neighbor, Turkey. Towards the end of the Cold War, Turkey improved their relations with the Soviet Union through trade deals, which allowed Turkish companies to […]
Turkey
Constructing New National Identities in the Soviet Union and Turkey
As part of his “Introduction” to The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, author Hein de Haas underscores a key point of tension regarding migration in the modern era: while the movement of peoples is nothing new, the challenges they present to nationalist ideas underlying many contemporary nation-states are. From the […]
Ne Mutle Türküm Diyene! Population Exchange and Turkish Nationalism
“Ne mutlu Türküm diyene” – “How happy one is to say I am a Turk!” This expression, famously spoken by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on the tenth anniversary of the Turkish Republic, demonstrates a simple and seemingly benign Turkish nationalism.1 However, Turkey’s history of compulsory international population exchange provides insight to the early republic’s determination of […]
Migration and the Construction of National Narratives in Turkey and Kyrgyzstan
As republics formed following the collapse of expansive empires, the Kyrgyz Republic and the Republic of Turkey have each utilized certain historical and cultural narratives as a means of establishing a unified ethnic national identity. In the case of Turkey, the influx of new “Turks” from the forced population exchange with Greece necessitated a unifying […]
Turkish Migration to Germany & the Netherlands
I read Rinus Penninx’s A Critical Review of Theory and Practice: The Case of Turkey with interest, as I have heard quite a lot about Turkish migration to Germany and the Netherlands in recent years, but knew very little about its origins. I am particularly interested in the social and political aspects of migration, but […]