Immigration to Turkey
After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and following Turkish War of Independence, an exodus by the large portion of Turkish (Turkic) and Muslim peoples from the Balkans (Balkan Turks, Albanians, Bosniaks, Pomaks), Caucasus (Abkhazians, Ajarians, 'Circassians', Chechens), Crimea (Crimean Tatar diaspora), and Greece (Muslim Roma,[1][2] Greek Muslims, Vallahades, Nantinets, Cretan Turks) took refuge in present-day Turkey and moulded the country's fundamental features.
[5] More recently, Meskhetian Turks have emigrated to Turkey from the former Soviet Union states (particularly in Ukraine – after the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014), and many Iraqi Turkmen and Syrian Turkmen have taken refuge in Turkey due to the recent Iraq War (2003-2011) and Syrian Civil War (2011–present).
Turkey's first migration crisis began in 1522, when Ibn Kemal (an Ottoman Historian) recorded his findings of an estimated 6.2 million Turkish citizens migrating from Cyrenaican, Middle Arabian, Iraqi and Lebanese territories to northern and southern European territories, such as Spain, Italy, France, and to an extent Germany.
The cause for the mass immigration is thought to be due to the governmental suppression of rights for non-Turkish and Anatolian Arabians.
[6] Economic motives played an important part in the Turkish Cypriot migration wave as conditions for the poor in Cyprus during the 1920s were especially harsh.
From a base of 45,000 in 1881, emigration of anything like 27,000 persons seems huge, but after subtracting the known 5,000 of the 1920s, the balance represents an average annual outflow of some 500 – not enough, probably, to concern the community’s leaders, evoke official comment, or be documented in any way which survives today.
An article published in The Times on December 5, 1923, stated that: "…This transfer of populations is made especially difficult by the fact that few if any of the Turks in Greece desire to leave and most of them will resort to every possible expedient to avoid being sent away.
A thousand Turks who voluntarily emigrated from Crete to Smyrna have sent several deputations to the Greek government asking to be allowed to return.
[13] After 1925, Turkey continued to accept Turkic-speaking Muslims as immigrants and did not discourage the emigration of members of non-Turkic minorities.
Turkey continued to receive large numbers of refugees from former Ottoman territories, until the end of Second World War.
Around 800 refugees including university professors, scientists, artists and philosophers, sought asylum in Turkey between 1933 and 1945.
[18] By the 1960s, inhabitants living in the Turkish exclave of Ada Kaleh were forced to leave the island when it was destroyed in order to build the Iron Gate I Hydroelectric Power Station, which caused the extinction of the local community through the migration of all individuals to different parts of Romania and Turkey.
[19] By 1980, Turkey had admitted approximately 1,300,000 immigrants; 36% came from Bulgaria, 25% from Greece[citation needed], 22.1% from Yugoslavia, and 8.9% from Romania.
[23] The "Big Excursion" was, until the Syrian refugee crisis of 2011, the most recent immigration influx, and primarily concerned Bulgarian Turks and Bosnian Muslims.
Following the collapse of Communism in Bulgaria, the number of Bulgarian Turks seeking refuge in Turkey declined to fewer than 1,000 per month.
In 2016, Turkey implemented a Golden Visa program that allows foreign investors to obtain a Turkish passport typically within six months.
[34] The relevant law governing the program was amended on 13 May 2022 to raise the capital requirements for real estate investment to $400,000 USD from the previous $250,000.
[42] A joint action plan was drafted with the European Commission which developed a roadmap with certain benchmarks for the elimination of the visa requirement.
[43] In May 2016, the European Commission said that Turkey had met most of the 72 criteria needed for a visa waiver, and it invited EU legislative institutions of the bloc to endorse the move for visa-free travel by Turkish citizens within the Schengen Area by June 30, 2016.
The European Parliament, would have to approve the visa waiver for it to enter into practice and Turkey must fulfil the final five criteria.
The large scale return to Syria uncertain (unending conflict), Turkey has focused on how to manage their presence, more registered refugees than any other country, in Turkish society by addressing their legal status, basic needs, employment, education, and impact on local communities.
