Who Is A Citizen?
Parliament’s Constitution Conciliation Commission has been unable to agree on a draft related to the definition of citizenship, with each political party insisting on its own definition. Except for the MHP statement, which restricts citizenship to Turks (which is an ethno-racial term and could easily be used to exclude non-Turks, non-Muslims, non-Turkish speakers, etc), the others look like they are not too far apart. Or am I just missing some of the angels on the head of a pin?
According to Hurriyet, the proposals are as follows:
AKP: “Everybody who is bound by the state by the bind of citizenship is a citizen of the Republic of Turkey. The child of a mother or father who is the citizen of the Republic of Turkey has citizenship from birth. Citizenship is gained through the fulfilling of conditions cited by the law and is only lost in situations cited by the law.”
CHP: “For everybody, Turkish citizenship means being a citizen of the Republic of Turkey on the basis of equality regardless of language, religion, gender, ethnic origin, or similar reasons.”
MHP: “Everybody bound by the Turkish state by the bind of citizenship is Turkish. The child of a Turkish father or a Turkish mother is a Turk. Citizenship is a fundamental right.”
BDP: “In gaining, using and losing citizenship of Turkey; language, religion, race, ethnic origin, culture, gender, sexual orientation and similar differences cannot be taken into consideration.”
Imagine that, I agree with the MHP on something! The AKP’s definition is a tautological muddle. I don’t agree that Turkishness is ethno-religious, but I’m probably in the minority. However, this is not necessarily a problem; the consensus can change. So I think a person can be, say, Armenian or Kurdish and Turkish. It might be worthwhile to add the BDP’s disclaimers to prevent discrimination.
Am I misreading it, or does it seem like (from these translated excepts at least) the MHP definition is actually closer to the AKP definition, in that neither specify what *cannot* affect citizenship, and both emphasize that it is through descent that one becomes a citizen? (Makes me want to reread Rogers Brubaker’s “Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany”).
I’m not a legal scholar so I don’t know how salient this is, and this might just be an artifact of how they were excerpted, but one noticeable difference to me is that statute law appears to have place in the AKP’s proposal. The CHP’s and the BDP’s proposals clearly define what statutes cannot take into consideration regarding citizenship. Could the AKP’s proposal also potential make it easier in the future to naturalize immigrants if that part is defined by the law, and put less of an emphasis on jus sanguinis?