Swaying between Exclusion and Inclusion: Turkish Policy towards External Citizens

External citizenship is a relatively new and growing topic in citizenship studies. Research has predominantly focused on either normative concerns about the demise of the holy trinity of citizenship, namely state, territory and nation, or empirically on the question of external voting, mainly on the reasons why governments enfranchise citizens abroad. Whereas external voting is indicative of the positive engagement that a state establishes with its overseas citizens, not everyone is deemed equally deserving of the state’s involvement. Looking at the Turkish example, I argue that the negative engagement of the state with those who are thought to be non-conforming is equally important to analyse as it allows to uncover how citizenship law is simultaneously mobilized as inclusionary and exclusionary acts. This paper therefore examines the Turkish policy towards external citizens, with a particular focus on the recent changes that allowed Turkish citizens to vote for elections abroad and the conditions for loss of Turkish citizenship, which typically receives much less attention in the literature. It pays due attention to the recent decree issued in January 2017, which puts a large number of political dissidents living abroad, at risk of losing their citizenship and remaining stateless. Through such a radical act of negative engagement, the government diverged starkly from its tolerant policy for external citizens who abandon Turkish citizenship “with permission” in order to naturalize in other countries. Through the Turkish case study, the aim is to uncover how governments extend their power to include and exclude beyond the state borders.