Citizenship and identity in Turkey: the case of the post-1980 Turkish-muslim immigrants from Macedonia

Abstract

This study traces the relationship between citizenship and identity in Turkey through analyzing the narratives and experiences of the post-1980 Turkish-Muslimimmigrants from Macedonia. It inquires the ways in which the immigrants define their identity, rationalize their migration to Turkey, make their claims to citizenship, andnarrate their interactions with the locals.The research reveals that the Turkish-Muslim immigrants from Macedonia have migrated to Turkey and have made a claim to citizenship on the grounds that they are Turks and Muslims, and that Turkey is their original "homeland". Yet, even though being Turkish and Muslim end up constituting the basic parameters of citizenship in Turkey above and beyond the claims of "civic citizenship", paradoxically these two parameters define the very grounds on which these immigrants are marginalized in Turkey. They are treated as "foreigners" because for the local population, they are "converts to Islam", even "infidels" ("gavurs") and are not Turks but "Albanians". In response to this, it is argued that the immigrants ironically respond within the same essentialist paradigm by "re-articulating" their ethnic and religious identity along "genuineness" as "pure" and "unmixed" and positing it in contrast to an "impure" and "mixed" identity that the locals hold both in ethnic and religious terms. Moreover, the immigrants emphasize their "European" experience and identity in order to differentiate themselves from the locals. Therefore it is argued that in the self-narratives of the immigrants, there is a double and paradoxical process of articulation and construction ofidentity through sameness with and difference from the locals simultaneously. Revealing the contestations over the definitions of "genuine" Turkishness andMuslimness between the immigrants and the locals; this thesis argues that Turkishness and Muslimness that are constructed and articulated on "genuineness" are the main points of reference in the definition and the imaginary of the "proper citizen" within thenarratives of the immigrants as well as in the reactions of the locals in Turkey.