Fall 2017 JPI

The Worthiness of Citizenship
The Spontaneous Racism and Myth of the Military Nation in the
Public Responses to the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Turkey
Merisa Sahin
On July 2nd, 2016, while he was at a public iftar in Kilis, a city on the Syrian-Turkish border,
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that he was open to granting citizenship to Syrian
asylum seekers. “I believe that within our brothers, there are those who want to become Turkish
citizens. Steps have been taken by our Ministry of Interior. By forming an office by our ministry, we
will, to the best of our power, help and support them, giving them the opportunity to citizenship.” 1
The statement did not go much further than this, suggesting no specific plan for such an important
move. Naturally, due to its controversial nature, Erdogan’s message was discussed in many contexts,
including in the political sphere, in the press, and on social media in the days that followed. The
debates were cut short with an attempted coup on July 15, but even within such a short time frame,
there were trends emerging in the analysis. In this paper, I will focus on the commentary during the
thirteen days between Erdogan’s citizenship promise to Syrian asylum seekers and the attempted coup.
Examples will be drawn from press articles, personal social media accounts, and political statements.
In most responses to Erdogan’s statement during this period, two things are consistent. The
first one is spontaneous racism, that is both auto and hetero-referential. 2 The racist reaction that
emerged after the citizenship statement was not organized around a common doctrine. There were no
demonstrations against the statement, nor were there any attempts at organized opposition. Rather,
there were personal accounts with similar arguments. Also, rather than the mainstream anti-immigrant
sentiment about “invasion,” 3 these accounts consistently glorified the Turkish nation around the
theme of “honor” and “patriotism.” In historical context, this translates to “having fought for their
land.” This narrative automatically degraded Syrian asylum-seekers because of their “cowardice” for
having escaped warfare instead of participating in it. The main idea in most of the criticisms toward
Erdogan’s decision was that it was wrong to naturalize people who “ran away” instead of defending
their own country. This is a narrative that also existed in the statements of politicians and the press at
the time.
The difference between the state response and the public response in Turkey is also an
interesting topic. Derrida notes that there is always tension between state interests and local hospitality
ethics. 4 Though this translated as a xenophobic state but with welcoming citizens in many
circumstances, the opposite could be said for the Turkey. As mentioned above, while the Turkish state
has been following an “open-door” policy since the beginning of the Syrian refugee crisis, the
xenophobic response by the public is growing. And this response is similar in every political segment
of the country. A majority of voters in every party is against the naturalization of Syrian asylumseekers.
In fact, this is the only thing the voters of all three major parties agree on, and naturalizing
Syrian asylum-seekers was one of the few things that Erdogan could not get his followers to support.
I argue that this public response developed because national identity formation in Turkey is based on
1 "Erdoğan'dan Türkiye'deki Suriyelilere vatandaşlık açıklaması." BBC Türkçe, July 3, 2016. Accessed December 10, 2016.
http://www.bbc.com/turkce/haberler/2016/07/160703_erdogan_suriyeliler.
2 Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso, 1991.
3 Ghassan Hage, "État de siège: A dying domesticating colonialism?" in American Ethnologist 43, no. 1 (2016): 38-49. doi:10.1111/amet.12261.
4 Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. London: Routledge, 2001.
JPI Fall 2017, pg. 20