130 Ahmet İçduygu
annual number of naturalisations of Turkish emigrants in Europe ranged
from 60,000 to more than 80,000.
As noted by Toktaş (2012), despite their differences in ethnic background,
language, faith, gender, age or town of origin, the members of Euro-Turkish
communities have experienced integration in their new homelands to
varying degrees. More than f irst-generation migrants, their second-, third-
and even fourth-generation offspring today represent a unique prof ile of
denizens or citizens in the emerging cosmopolitan environment of new
multicultural Europe.
Finally, it should be noted here that the position of Euro-Turkish com-
munities is hotly debated within the context of membership negotiations
between the EU and Turkey. Debates about migration involve a variety of
issues – many politicians in Europe, for instance, frequently speak of the
‘invasion’ of migrants from Turkey, when they publicly debate Turkish EU
membership (Lagro 2008). Moreover, the commonly accepted view is that
Turkish immigrants who are already in Europe and who face integration
dif f iculties, together with intensifying Islamophobia on the continent, have
made Turkey-related migration issues a topic of critical debate in European
circles (Erzan & Kirişçi 2006; Kaya & Kentel 2005). However, proponents of
Turkey’s EU membership argue that it would be in the EU’s interest because
it would reduce demographic pressures on the labour market by bringing
workers into the Union (Behar 2006; Münz 2006). As these examples dem-
onstrate, migration-related issues in the context of Turkey’s prospective EU
membership have attained growing salience in public, policy and academic
debates in the EU, because they have unique and multi-faceted implications
for its economic, social, political and demographic structures and processes.
3.5 Conclusion
Turkey is one of the world’s leading migrant-sending countries, with about
6 per cent of its population abroad. While the issues of emigration and its
impact on economic and social developments are regaining their importance
on international agendas, the Turkish case provides us with a unique set-
ting mainly for three reasons: f irstly, Turkey, as a country of both ‘old’ and
‘new’ emigration, keeps its signif icant position in the ongoing regimes of
international migration in Europe; secondly, the country has had its own way
of dealing with the various social and economic consequences of emigration
over the last f ive decades, with the related policies and practices which are
often reactive rather than proactive, ad hoc rather than planned, partial rather