Turkey

So the question as far as I'm concerned is that lots of people have now in a sense rejected that older type of social organisation, the social contract that you were talking about based on debt and consumption. And the reason I think a widespread demand for different ways of relating to others, relating to the community and dealing with power. So I'm optimistic about that. It seems to me you’d expect that whether or not the left in other parts of the world win elections, I think we've moved perhaps away from the model of the 1990s and the 2000s and a greater sense of community, of going back to certain common values and virtues and idea of the good, the public good, of the Commons, has returned. This is extremely hopeful. 

Citizenship legislation and the associated administrative practices highlight several key points. First, membership in a supranational entity such as the EU has far-reaching effects, erasing to some degree the distinction between citizens and non-citizens but also making Bulgaria a more attractive proposition for various “third-country nationals”. Second, the provision of citizenship via naturalisation has broadened rent-seeking opportunities and exposed institutional weakness, a painfully familiar story in post-communist Bulgaria. Third, and most important, citizenship continues to oscillate between civic and more ethnicised notions. 

I think the European Union promised a great deal and delivered very little.  Voting rights seem to have become totally irrelevant because whoever you elected, it didn’t matter which party, they were carrying out the same elite policies. Greece has made a difference and this will inspire people.  But in order for that to happen you do need to have political instruments and political parties.  It can’t just happen by occupying public spaces.  You know, you need politics for that. And so what we are witnessing in Greece is, in a way, the reassertion of the political and I think that will be extremely important in saying ‘yes, we are citizens; we don’t just have, you know, basic rights.  We have political rights and we want to exercise these political rights and link them to social and economic rights.'

One could argue that the AKP’s neo-Islamist policies of de-secularisation and the return of religion in the public space has helped to furnish with full citizenship rights the religiously conservative mainstream, which the Kemalist modernisers had kept from power. And indeed, the growing number of religious men and women in every-day life, in the economy and in public service suggest a process of reconciliation between the state and the conservative middle-classes. This new coalition has also brought some conservative Kurds, who have renounced secular Kurdish nationalism, into the fold of a more Islamic Turkey. Yet neither secular Kurds and Turks, nor the Alevis, members of a non-Orthodox Muslim community, see themselves represented by this new hegemonic alliance. In terms of every-day citizenship, they feel discriminated against, excluded from public tenders and government services.

Even the most rigorous attempts at enforcing the EU’s borders are unlikely to prevent illegal immigration. The issue thus cannot simply be one of security and enforcement, but also how to ensure the welfare of migrants in a way that promotes social cohesion.