‘New Turks’ Are All in for Erdogan

ISTANBUL—In a light-filled room on the fourth floor of a shabby building in Istanbul’s Zeytinburnu district, a group of Afghan men sit in a semicircle on white plastic chairs, planning ahead for Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections. They have all been granted Turkish citizenship over the past decade, and all say they will be casting their votes for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They cite three main reasons: gratitude, generous immigration policies, and shared religious identity. 

Read more of FP’s coverage of Turkey’s pivotal elections.

Murat Aslan, 36, sits among them. He first came to Turkey as a student and has been living in Istanbul since 2007. He can’t stop grinning as he shows off his shiny Turkish ID card, received just a few days before. No question as to whether he’ll be voting for Erdogan. “Of course,” he blurted out. “He gave me my new passport, my future.” 

Tens of thousands of people with similar backgrounds share the sentiment as the date —May 14—approaches for what will probably be Turkey’s most consequential election. As the country’s longest-serving leader, Erdogan has been in power for 20 years, but he’s facing a tight race with opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who has recently been leading in several opinion polls as Turks grapple with hyperinflation and a cost-of-living crisis, partly due to unorthodox economic policies under Erdogan’s presidency. For Aslan, though, Erdogan is still the man of choice. 

Aslan is part of an ever-growing community of “new Turks,” most of whom will apparently cast a vote for Erdogan, because they say they have no better option. They are a fraction of the 64 million-strong electorate, but in Erdogan’s tightest race yet, they could play a pivotal role. They are people who initially sought a better future in Turkey, whether for work, studies, or as refugees, and who, under Erdogan’s tutelage, eventually secured citizenship. Many escaped conflict in countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, or Iraq.

Murat Aslan, and originally from Afghanistan, holds a flyer in support of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on May 3. He just received his Turkish citizenship and says he will be voting for the current president.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war more than a decade ago, more than 210,000 Syrians have become naturalized Turks. An equal number of Afghans supposedly hold Turkish citizenship, though many of them have been living in Turkey for decades and acquired passports even before Erdogan took power 20 years ago. Last year, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Erdogan’s main opposition, announced that there are a combined 200,000 Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi, Iranian, and Libyan voters in Turkey. Just how many more have since received their citizenship, like Aslan, and are now eligible to vote is unclear; even their respective embassies were in the dark.

“Exact numbers are hard to come by because data on naturalization is very nontransparent,” said Didem Danis, a professor at Galatasaray University in Istanbul. However many there are, she said, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) can almost certainly count on the majority of their votes. 

Part of that is because they are immigrants. The CHP, a secular, nationalist party, has made political hay out of the number of foreigners in the country: Turkey hosts the world’s largest refugee population, with registered Syrians alone numbering 3.6 million. 

“The opposition parties’ discourse is very anti-immigration, meaning many naturalized Turks have no other choice but to vote for Erdogan, especially if their Turkey-residing family members haven’t been naturalized yet,” said Murat Erdogan, an expert on migration at Ankara University. It’s not bad politics: the opposition’s aggressive anti-immigration stance resonated with “88 percent of Turks wishing that Syrians would go back home, voluntarily or not,” he said. 

Read More

Turkey’s Elections Won’t Be Free or Fair

But the opposition could still win.

Analysis

|

Nate Schenkkan, Aykut Garipoglu

Is this the End of Turkey’s Erdogan?

How to understand one of the most important elections of 2023.

Insider

|

Ravi Agrawal

What Happens When a Turkish President Loses an Election? No One Knows.

Erdogan has few role models for how to peacefully concede power.

Analysis

|

Reuben Silverman

Erdogan stands out from his political rivals, especially Kilicdaroglu, by promising not to repatriate Syrian refugees unless they voluntarily choose to go, said Orwa Ajjoub of the Center for Operational Analysis and Research. “Many of those who got Turkish citizenship believe that if it wasn’t for the AKP, they would not have gotten it. All this makes him a favored choice.”

Not that Erdogan’s Turkey has been entirely open-door. Deportations from Turkey last year more than doubled to 124,000, the highest in Turkey’s history. Some 70,000 of them were Afghans, according to the Afghan Embassy in Ankara. Additionally, Turkey arranged the voluntary return of more than 58,000 Syrians who arrived in Turkey fleeing civil war back home. Of the Afghans, many initially arrived in Turkey with the help of smugglers or otherwise overstayed their visas, and many of those who touched down once again in the Afghan capital of Kabul claim that they were forced to sign “voluntary return” forms in Turkey before being put on a plane.

But the majority of naturalized Turks believe that this is still better than what could happen under a Kilicdaroglu presidency.

“We naturalized Turks want to help Erdogan win, and I believe most of us—not just Afghans—will cast their votes for him,” said Izzet Sadat, the only dual Turkish Afghan national running as a candidate for the Turkish Parliament. Sadat is with the far-right ultranationalist and Islamist Buyuk Birlik Party, part of the AKP coalition. Sadat came to Turkey for his studies some 20 years ago. While he says he hopes to help immigrants and refugees who are already in Turkey, his stance on further immigration is rich: “There are a lot of problems with refugees here, and we have to think of our nation, so we don’t want more immigrants coming. We’d rather help improve their situations back home,” he said.

Several thousand dual Turkish Afghan nationals are Buyuk Birlik Party members, he said; some still hope this could help their own family members attain Turkish citizenship.

Campaign posters portray Erdogan and his opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in central Istanbul on May 7.

“Erdogan already made many of us citizens, and of course we’re thankful. He stands out as an example for the Muslim world, and actually the entire world,” Sadat said from his campaign office in Zeytinburnu.

That Sunni card is the other reason why new Turks are leaning toward Erdogan. Last week, Muhammad Karim Rajah, an influential Syrian religious leader based in Damascus, released a statement urging all Muslims who are not of Turkish origin but have obtained Turkish citizenship to vote for Erdogan, asserting that by doing so, they are fulfilling their religious duty.

“Erdogan’s image as an Islamic leader reaches beyond Syrian refugees in Turkey and resonates with Sunni Muslims in general,” Ajjoub said. 

With the May 14 election less than a week away, campaigns are underway across Turkey. Posters of Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu are everywhere, and campaign offices are handing out free swag: tea trays, reusable shopping bags, Turkish flags.

Of course, even among the new Turks, not everyone is an Erdogan supporter. 

Several Syrians who asked to remain anonymous said that they weren’t voting for Erdogan; others said they’d be abstaining altogether. Daud Nasimi is a 43-year-old Afghan Turk, a father of five, and a struggling business owner who has been hammered by Erdogan’s mismanagement of the economy. He is decidedly on team Kilicdaroglu.

“I want a leader who benefits all Turks, all 85 million of us. And that’s not Erdogan.”