Turks in the Netherlands

The majority of Dutch Turks descend from the Republic of Turkey; however, there has also been significant Turkish migration waves from other post-Ottoman countries including ethnic Turkish communities which have come to the Netherlands from the Balkans (e.g. from Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Romania),[3] the island of Cyprus,[3] as well as from other parts of the Levant (especially Iraq).

More recently, during the European migrant crisis, significant waves of Turkish minorities from Syria and Kosovo have also arrived in the Netherlands.

In addition, there has been migration to the Netherlands from the Turkish diaspora; many Turkish-Belgians and Turkish-Germans have arrived in the country as Belgian and German citizens.

[4] References to the Ottoman state and Islamic symbolism were also frequently used within 16th century Dutch society itself, most notably in Protestant speeches called hagenpreken, and in the crescent-shaped medals of the Geuzen, bearing the inscription "Rather Turkish than Papists".

The Netherlands began to face a labour shortage by the mid-1950s already, which became more serious during the early 1960s, as the country experienced even higher economic growth rates, comparable to the rest of Europe.

[11] The first Turkish immigrants arrived in the Netherlands in the beginning of the 1960s at a time when the Dutch economy was wrestling with a shortage of workers.

During the first period, which lasted until 1966, a large number of Turks came to the Netherlands through unofficial channels, either being recruited by employers or immigrating spontaneously.

In May 1968, new European Economic Community rules forced the Netherlands to instate a travel visa system to regulate labour immigration and from then on, the state recruited foreign workers.

Most of the labour migrants did not come from the lowest strata of the Turkish population, nor did emigration begin in the least developed parts of Turkey, but in the big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir.

[22] Although Bulgaria joined the European Union during the 2007 enlargement, the rights of Bulgarian citizens to work freely as EU nationals in the Netherlands came into full effect on 1 January 2014.

[3] Since the first decade of the twenty-first century, there has been a significant decrease in the population of the Turkish Romanian minority group due to the admission of Romania into the European Union and the subsequent relaxation of the travelling and migration regulations.

Traditionally, most who migrated to Western Europe settled in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Austria; however, since the 1990s, the Netherlands began to attract the bulk of Turkish Cypriot migrants.

The majority of Turkish Syrian refugees arrived in the Netherlands via the highway through Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Austria and Germany.

[3] Turkish immigrants first began to settle in big cities in the Netherlands such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht as well as the regions of Twente and Limburg, where there was a growing demand for industrial labour.

[37] The second most common settlements are in the south, in the Limburg region, in Eindhoven and Tilburg, and in the east: Turks comprise over 5% of Arnhem's population[38] as of 2020.

Firstly, ethnic Turks which have arrived in the Netherlands from the Balkans, Cyprus, the Levant, North Africa, and the diaspora (e.g Belgium and Germany)[3] are recorded according to their citizenship, such as "Belgian", "Bulgarian", "Cypriot", "German", "Greek", "Iraqi", "Lebanese" "Macedonian", "Syrian" etc.

Suzanne Aalberse et al. have said that, despite the official Dutch statistics, "over the years" the Turkish community "must have numbered half a million".

[1] Sometimes sources casually mention much higher estimates, equalling the official total number of non-western immigrants and their descendants.

According to the latest figures issued by Statistics Netherlands, approximately five percent of the Dutch population (850,000 persons), were followers of Islam in 2006.

[49] The Turkish community accounted for almost forty percent of the Muslim population; thus are the largest ethnic group in the Netherlands adhering to Islam.

[51] The Turkish Islamic Cultural Federation (TICF) which was founded in 1979, had seventy-eight member associations by the early 1980s, and continued to grow to reach 140 by the end of the 1990s.

It works closely with the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which provides the TICF with the imams which it employs in its member mosques.

[52] The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) established a branch in the Netherlands in 1982 with the intent to oppose the influence of leftist asylum seekers from Turkey as well as rightist members of Islamist movements such as Millî Görüş.

[53] In April 2006, the Turkish Mevlana Mosque had been voted the most attractive building in Rotterdam in a public survey organised by the City Information Centre.

[54] Dutch Turks generally support left-wing political parties (DENK, PvdA, D66, GroenLinks, and SP) over the right-wing ones (CDA, VVD and SGP).

During the Dutch general election (2002), there were fourteen candidates of Turkish origin spread out over six-party lists which encouraged fifty-five percent of Turks to vote, which was a much higher turnout than any other ethnic minorities.

[58] The party carries the program advanced by the International Institute for Scientific Research, based in the Hague, with the purpose of decolonization.

The same report also noted that "the tone of Dutch political and public debate around integration and other issues relevant to ethnic minorities has experienced a dramatic deterioration".

Another international organisation European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia highlighted negative trend in Netherlands, regarding attitudes towards minorities, compared to average EU results.

[70] According to The Netherlands Institute for Social Research annual report of 2005, most of the original first-generation Turkish migrants of the 1960s and 1970s had a very low level of education with many of them having had little or no schooling at all.