Constructing Liberal Subjects? Turkey’s New Diaspora Strategy

Date

2020-01-01

Author

Bahçecik, Şerif Onur

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This chapter argues that Turkey’s diaspora strategy is not about reacting to or courting an already existing Turkish diaspora but about constituting a transnational population. What was once seen as workers abroad or Euro-Turks is now being constructed as a liberal, politically active, and adapted diaspora. By using a governmentality perspective, the chapter shows that Turkey’s diaspora policies produce novel conceptualizations of Turkish migrants living abroad as a sociocultural population, seeking to govern them from abroad. The ideal diasporic subject is one that engages with the host country but keeps his/her cultural heritage intact, and maintains ties to the homeland. Diaspora members are constituted as liberal subjects who use a language of human rights against discriminatory practices in their host countries. In this way, it is shown that transnational non-state actors, in this case the diaspora, have intricate links with the state, and that authoritarian governments can deploy a human rights discourse.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/82340

Relation

A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy

Collections

Department of International Relations, Book / Book chapter

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Citation Formats

Ş. O. Bahçecik, Constructing Liberal Subjects? Turkey’s New Diaspora Strategy. 2020, p. 194.