106 Ahmet İçduygu
caused by the Gulf crisis. Whereas 250,000 Turkish citizens were residing
in the Arab countries in the late 1980s, this f igure fell by more than 100,000
to 140,000 in the early 1990s and to 120,000 by the end of the decade. The
2000s have been the revival period for Turkish contract labour-migration to
the Middle East and North Africa both in its scale (i.e., there are increasing
numbers of Turkish emigrants entering into the labour market of the Middle
East and North Africa) and scope (i.e., the destination countries have again
become more diversif ied, now including Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar,
Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the UAE). Two factors can
be cited for this trend. First, it can be argued that national politics, the fact
that Turkey has been continuously under Islamic-oriented governments
since 2002, created an inclination towards closer relations with countries
of the Middle East and North Africa. Secondly, regional events like the US’s
2003 invasion of Iraq and consequent developments in this country have
had a def inite effect on migratory f lows in the region (İçduygu & Sert 2011).
3.2.3 Labour migration to the CIS countries
Flows of relatively small groups of workers to the CIS countries marked
the beginning of the last phase of Turkish emigration (see Figure 3.1). As
emphasised by Gökdere (1994), after the collapse of the former Soviet Union
some of the newly emerging states in the region launched reconstruction
programmes. There was an active involvement of various Turkish f irms
in these programmes, which attracted a crucial level of project-tied and
job-specif ic migration. The foremost signif icance of emigration to the CIS
countries was in terms of its impact on the continuity of emigration from
Turkey: following the Gulf Crisis, in a period when there was a downturn
in migratory f lows to the labour-receiving Arab countries, migratory move-
ment to the CIS countries began to signify a remedy for the emigration
pressure in Turkey. Turkish labour migration to these states showed a steady
increase in the initial years: from 8,000 workers in 1992 to over 20,000 in
1993, and later to over 40,000 in 1994, but this declined to 26,000 in 1996.
In 2005, there were more than 70,000 Turkish workers employed in the
CIS countries. Overall, in the period 1991-2000, over 65,000 workers left
Turkey for the CIS countries; the corresponding f igure for 2001-2010 was over
175,000. These were circular migrants who usually worked for the turnkey
projects of the Turkish companies operating in the region.