Turkish citizenship: the perils of hegemonic tendencies and the 'shadow of securitization'

The current article delineates the qualified nature of citizenship in the Turkish Republic. Its primary argument is that the content of citizenship in Turkey has been shaped and reshaped since its establishment by a continuous struggle for social and political hegemony. Throughout this struggle the incumbent regimes, Kemalist, populist, and Islamist, subjected the full range of citizenship rights to conceived–internal and external, real and imagined–security threats, which further legitimized restrictions on Turkish citizenship. The recent downturn in Turkish citizenship, which started in 2011 and peaked following the failed coup attempt in summer 2016 and the referendum of April 2017, should be understood in relation to the contemporary turmoil in the Middle East which confronted the Turkish state with a plethora of security challenges and justified further infringement of citizenship rights in Turkish society.