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Edinburgh Studies on Modern Turkey

Demographic Anxiety in TurkeyMigration, Identity and Politics

By Sefa Secen and Serhun Al

Format

£90.00

About this book

Offers one of the first systematic and comprehensive analyses of refugee politics in Turkey

  • Provides a cross-regional perspective on migration crises in both the Middle East and Europe, detailing how Turkey has managed substantial migratory pressures originating from each region
  • Analyses both immigration to and emigration from Turkey, offering an integrated discussion of how these simultaneous processes interact and shape public debates and policy responses
  • Employs a rigorously defined mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative data with qualitative sources

Over the past decade, Turkey has witnessed unprecedented waves of migration from the Middle East, as well as from neighbouring regions such as the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. This book offers the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of these public and political discourses, including the collective anxieties – particularly demographic anxiety – and state policies that have emerged in response. It deftly integrates insights from migration studies, ontological security theory and securitisation literature to illuminate public opinion, societal attitudes and governmental approaches towards refugees and migrants. Not only does this book provide a cross-regional perspective on the migration crises of the Middle East and Europe, but it also situates the Turkish case within broader global-comparative debates. It is an examination of how Turkey has navigated significant migratory pressures in ways that resonate with, and diverge from, patterns observed worldwide.

Reviews

This book highlights a critical issue: many post-nation-states are grappling with demographic anxiety. Using Turkey as a case study, which faces both emigration and immigration challenges, the book shows how demographic anxieties have emerged since the Syrian refugee crisis began in 2011. Secen & Al employ structural, discursive, psychological, and strategic approaches to offer a comprehensive, multidimensional analysis that is both theoretically solid and empirically detailed.
The authors deftly unpack the cognitive and emotional power that demographic anxieties contain as a political tool for distorting population realities by framing national projects as under siege (in-migration) or haemorrhaging human capital (emigration). This is timely, essential reading on migration, identity politics, and electoral dynamics in Turkey and beyond.
Table of contents

Table of Contents
List of Figures
About the Authors
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

1. Introduction: Migration and the Age of Demographic Anxiety
2. Theoretical Frameworks and Methodology
3. Reconfiguring the Nation: Transformations in Identity and Turkish Nationalism from Atatürk to Erdoğan
4. History of Migration in Turkey
5. From the Arab Spring to the Refugee Influx: Repositioning Turkey in the New Middle East
6. EU-Turkey Relations in the Refugee Crisis
7. Arabs In, Turks Out: Emigrations from Erdoğan's Turkey
8. Refugees, Far Right and New Electoral Dynamics
9. Conclusion: The Age of Demographic Anxiety in Turkey and Beyond

Bibliography
Index

About the contributors

Sefa Secen

Sefa Secen is an Assistant Professor of International Relations in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida. He is the co-author of The Muslim World in International Relations: Discourse, Power, and Pluralism in Global Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2026) and Demographic Anxiety in Turkey: Migration, Identity, and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2026). His research has appeared in or is forthcoming in leading academic journals, including Perspectives on Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Political Behavior, Journal of Global Security Studies, Third World Quarterly, and Politics, Groups, and Identities, as well as public-facing outlets such as TIME, The Washington Post, and The Conversation.

Serhun Al

Serhun Al received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Utah in 2015. He is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey. He was a visiting scholar at Ohio State University during the 2022-23 academic year. His research interests include politics of identity, nationalism and ethnic conflict, and security studies within the context of modern Turkey and the Kurdish Middle East. He is the author of Patterns of Nationhood and Saving the State in Turkey (Routledge, 2019) and the co-editor of Comparative Kurdish Politics in the Middle East (Palgrave, 2018). His articles have been published in journals such as Ethnopolitics, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Nationalities Papers, Globalizations, Journal of International Relations and Development, Turkish Studies, and Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

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