Presidential Elections in Turkey: Erdogan’s “New Turkey” and “New Challenges”
M. Murat Erdogan
Hacettepe University
Dr. M. Murat Erdoğan was a Visiting Fellow at AICGS from June – September 2014. While at AICGS, he worked on a project entitled “Political Behavior and Participation of the Turkey-Originated Residents in Germany for Turkey and Germany, and the Process of ‘Diasporization.’” In this work, Dr. Erdoğan continued his original survey “Euro-Turks Barometer,” which examines the political and social profile of Turks, including the challenges they face and their attitudes toward a range of political issues in different countries of Europe. Turkish-originated people live in different countries of Western Europe, with Germany hosting 3 million, which makes 60 percent of the total Turkish population in Europe. Dr. Erdoğan started the “Euro-Turks Barometer” surveys in 2010 with Germany, and in 2013, he extended his research to the other European countries where there is a considerable Turkish population.
Dr. Erdoğan has organized several international conferences on this topic; the first was held in Ankara in 2009 after which he published the papers in a book entitled Turks Abroad: Fifty Years of Migration and Integration. The latest conference took place in Ankara in 2013 with the participation of the President of Turkey and other high-level politicians in addition to academics and NGOs, where the report of Euro-Turks-Barometer (ETB) 2013 was released. ETB-2013 focuses on discrimination problems, Islamophobia, political participation, the behavior of Turks, etc. Its primary aim is to build a database and to follow the recent developments in social and political life and experiences of Turks abroad. In this framework, the main objective is to identify the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions/problems Turkey-originated migrants in Europe encounter; to be able to have perspective about the expectations they have both from Turkey and from the country they live in; to be able to compare and contrast with the other countries and country models; and to contribute to the policymaking processes and human-based strategies and policies.
The survey was conducted with 40 questions to 2,634 persons in 11 European countries. Following his ETB-2013 research, Dr. Erdoğan is focusing on the comparative diaspora topics in the United States, and more specifically on the political participation of the Turkish and Muslim diaspora in America, the topic of his research while at AICGS. Meanwhile, Dr. Erdoğan has examined the results of the Turkish presidential election as viewed from United States, especially important as Turks abroad were able to vote for the first time.
Dr. Erdoğan’s other research is “Syrian Refugees in Turkey: Social Acceptance and Integration,” for which he completed field work in six different cities, interviewing both Turkish and Syrian people about their experiences during this period.
Dr. Erdoğan is also interested in political cartoons in Europe and in the United States. So far, he has collected over 5,000 cartoons focusing on Turkey, Turkish-EU relationship, Turks abroad, Islam, Islamophobia, and Turks in Germany.
Dr. Erdoğan is the director of Hacettepe University’s Migration and Politics Research Center (HUGO), deputy director of the University’s European Union Research Center, and advisor to the Rector of the University. His fields of interest are EU-Turkey relations, Turkish migrants in Europe, Turkish domestic and foreign policy, Germany, Islamophobia, European public opinion, and political cartoons.
Dr. Erdoğan received his undergraduate and M.A. degrees from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, in the Department of Politics. He pursued his doctoral studies both at Freiburg and Bonn Universities in Germany as a Konrad Adenauer Foundation scholar and received his PhD in political science from Ankara University. He was a Junior Fellow at the Center for European Integration at the University of Bonn (1998-2000). Dr. Erdoğan worked for the Press Department of the Turkish Embassy in Berlin (2001-2003).
His latest books are Turks Abroad: Fifty Years of Migration and Integration and Fifty Years, Fifty Cartoons: Turks in German Cartoons. He is the co-editor of the book History of Turkish Migration, which will be published in 2014.
Issue Brief 48
Part of AGI’s project on a “Trilateral Dialogue between Germany, the U.S., and Turkey: Turkey’s EU Accession – Endless Negotiations?” this Issue Brief seeks to assess the future of Turkey’s relations with the EU and Germany in light of developments in the EU, security concerns in the Middle East, and domestic politics in Turkey.
