How Does Expatriates’ Enfranchisement Reconfigure Transnational Politics? Analyzing the Recent External Voting Experience of Turkey and Its Diaspora(s)

Abstract

In the light of the current debates on diaspora-homeland relations, this paper sheds light on the ways in which contextual specificities of external voting legislation and its actual implementation influence expatriates’ effective political inclusion on the one hand, and political standing and strategies of homeland political actors on the other. It demonstrates how, regardless of turnout rates and actual electoral difference made by expatriate vote; the enfranchisement of non-resident citizens impacts the conduct of homeland politics and its further transnationalization. Recent developments with regards to Turkey’s diaspora policy, with a particular emphasis on the right to external voting, will be used as a case study. Out-of-country voting was implemented for the first time in the presidential elections and consecutively in the legislative elections. The paper focuses on these recent experiences by focusing on the transnationalization of election campaigns that revealed current political fragmentations of domestic politics persist abroad.

Keywords: Turkey, Expatriate Voting, Diaspora, Kurdish