118 Ahmet İçduygu
is argued that remittances, even when not invested, can have an important
multiplier effect: initially they stimulate retail sales, then further demands
for goods and services, which then stimulate employment and output
(Straubhaar & Vadean 2005).
Departing from these macro and micro approaches, one can directly
refer to the economic benef its and disadvantages of emigration for Turkey.
The basic economic benef its resulting from emigration include a lessening
of tension arising from unemployment and underemployment, and the
acquisition of skills in the foreign countries. Indeed, since the very early
period of emigration, the Turkish government has viewed emigratory f lows
as contributors to the reduction of unemployment levels, while skilled work-
ers were meant to be encouraged to remain at home, at least at the time
when emigration began – a policy not fully successful. For instance, Turkey’s
f irst Five-Year Plan in 1963 reported that ‘the export of excess, unskilled
labour to Western Europe represents one of the possibilities for alleviating
unemployment’ (Abadan-Unat 1986: 330). It is generally agreed that, since
the early 1960s, around 10 per cent of the workforce in Turkey has been
unemployed and another 15 per cent underemployed. These f igures persist
over the whole of the last 50 years. Thus, reducing un- and underemployment
is of paramount importance. Emigration has obviously helped to reduce
unemployment pressures in Turkey, but it is not easy to quantify the effects of
emigration on unemployment since both are diff icult to measure precisely.
On the other hand, several studies point out that the emigration of skilled
workers has had growth-slowing effects in Turkey (Penninx 1982: 793).
Another expectation of emigratory f lows was that the emigrants would
acquire new skills and training from of their work experience abroad. It was
believed that migration would have a favourable impact on the migrants’
local community in the form of new investments, the transfer of technology
and machinery, and new enterprises, when the emigrants returned. There-
fore, another way to identify the likely impact of international migration is
to look at the process of return migration (Atalık & Beeley 1993: 167; Keleş
1985: 63; Martin 1991: 38). Based on a very rough estimate, we can assume
that more than 1.5 million Turkish workers and their family members have
returned home since the beginning of emigration in 1961. Return migration
has had a clear impact on the Turkish labour market. Some of the return
migrants may directly become employment seekers but, since they return
with skills and work experience for which the labour market in Turkey has
limited demand, the overall outcome of this process for Turkey has been
frustration on two counts. For the state, there has been the realisation that
skills acquired abroad have often failed to make an impact on Turkey’s need