Transnational Voting Behaviour in Two Polities: an Analysis of Germans of Turkish Descent in the Immigrant German Election Study

This paper analyses how Germans of Turkish descent form electoral attitudes and behave electorally in German and Turkish elections. The analysis draws – for the first time - on a random sample from the Immigrant German Electon Study at the 2017 Bundestag election at a time when both German and Turkish politics were very adversarial. The dependent variables, which are investigated in path models, are: (hypothetical) voting participation and political interest as to German and Turkish politics as well as the evaluations of Angela Merkel and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The paper makes a three-fold argument: (1) Political interest and voting participation here and there follow different logics with only being male being a consistent positive predictor across both domains, (2) the behaviour as to Turkish elections is determined by a strong legacies of minority group membership (Kurds, Alevis), region and religiosity handed down through the family generations and enforced by transnational social ties, (3) individuals who like Merkel tend to dislike Erdogan and vice versa, revealing a clear pattern of how political preferences here and there are linked whereas participation is not. The paper contributes to the literatures on immigrant-origin political behaviour and on the transnational interdependence of political behaviour and preferences.