Migration from Central and Eastern Europe to Turkey

Abstract

Until recently, despite the fact that the country had received many immigrants since the initial years of the Republic, migration literature treated Turkey as a country of emigration. Turkey’s position in the international migration system, and thus, in the migration literature, has changed only recently to a country of transit and immigration. In this regard, the literature on international migration in Turkey is still very limited and either focused on mobility of specific groups, or on general historical trends. In this frame, focusing on current trends and implications of Central and Eastern European (CEE) migration in Turkey is a novel task. However, as the collection and distribution of international migration data have been generally neglected and a large portion of international migration in Turkey is on irregular basis, this is a challenging task. In addition to the limited data availability, the heavy internal and external migrant population also complicates migration research and blurs the distinction between the implications of CEE migration and migration in general.