CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Sönmez, Pinar Dilan |
|---|---|
| Title | Discursive Construction of Exclusion in Turkey and Naturalization of Syrian Refugees: Analyzing Citizenship through the Lens of Citizens |
| Summary | Most scholarship on citizenship concentrates on macro level debates of policies, regulation and structural changes. This approach neglects the significant role of citizenship as national membership on individual understanding of ordinary citizens and their everyday practices. Turkish citizenship up to now has predominantly been analyzed through the status and rights of ethnic and religious minorities in terms of equal citizenship and most of those analyses studied citizenship on macro level through institutions. By 2016, with announcement of the exceptional citizenship proposal as a plan to naturalize Syrian refugees which met with a strong backlash, the focus of the scholars has shifted in Turkey from minorities to non-citizens –namely, refugees. With this shift, Turkish citizenship has defined and practiced for the first time through outsiders who are non-citizens. Within the frame of this context, this thesis aims to examine the discursive construction of exclusion through citizenship in Turkey and to investigate the citizenship perception of citizens by adopting a people-centered, micro-level approach. By analyzing the party discourses, social media contents and interviews with 10 shopkeepers, this thesis demonstrates that the presence of the refugees has a renationalizing effect on citizenship by coupling it with national identity and it also reveals that citizenship perception of Turkish citizens is based on a combination of weak territorial membership and strong blood-based membership. |
| Supervisor | Pogonyi, Szabolcs |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/sonmez_pinar.pdf |
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