Casting her ballot at the Turkish consulate in Berlin for Sunday’s second round runoff in Turkey’s presidential elections, Cansu Yeni said she and her country faced a make-or-break moment.
The 32-year-old was one of many young people who moved to the German capital from Istanbul five years ago in reaction to democratic backsliding under Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
“The country became a dictatorship,” she said. “Me and my friends suffered a lot. Choosing who to vote for is an easy decision.”
Yeni is one of 3.4 million Turkish voters in Europe registered to cast their ballots abroad. In the first round the diaspora’s choice was split quite clearly between larger and more-established communities, who backed the incumbent, and smaller, newer communities, who chose the opposition unity candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
The continent’s two largest diasporas – Germany, with 1.5 million voters, and France, with 400,000 – and other decades-old communities such as those in the Netherlands and Belgium voted massively for Erdoğan.
Almost 66% of Turkish voters in Germany backed the conservative incumbent. In France, the Netherlands and Belgium, also home to decades-old communities, the corresponding figures were 64%, 68% and 72%.
“You live abroad, you’re not much affected by what’s going on at home, yet you feel closer to it than to your adopted country – the temptation is to vote for someone who flatters your religious and national identity,” said Claire Koç, a Franco-Turkish writer.
On a recent day in the tree-lined grounds of the consulate in western Berlin, those who were eligible to vote at one of the 17 polling stations across Germany, were being ushered into booths. A man with a megaphone directed the crowds.
Instead of ticking a box, voters stamped ballot papers. For Rosa Burç, political sociologist and researcher at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), this adds even more potency to the act of voting. “For many people that physical act of stamping has become a way for them to express a lot of their years of pent up anger and frustration,” she said.
Throughout the morning, a stream of shuttle buses and minivans pulled up in front of the consulate discharging voters from Berlin and other parts of Germany. In the courtyard the atmosphere was mostly upbeat, with people greeting and hugging each other, though sporadic scuffles broke out.
Yeni, who works as an architect, said she had voted for Kılıçdaroğlu. “He says he will bring back democracy to the country and I believe him. He ran a very peaceful election campaign and this is what we need. Basically if he wins, many people will feel they can return home, including me, because it’s hard being an immigrant,” she said.
Gülden, 31, a retail worker who declined to give her surname, said she had come to “support our president”.
For her and her parents, who came to Germany as Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in the late 70s, Erdoğan is the only option.
“He did a lot for our country so there are many, many reasons to vote for him,” she said.
Asked about his response to the recent earthquake, for which the government has faced huge criticism and been accused of incompetence, or his human rights record, she said: “He did a lot to help people after the earthquake. I see this for myself on A Haber [a private, pro-government Turkish TV news channel]. And he admitted he had made some mistakes and I respect him for that.” As for his human rights, she added: “I don’t know much about that as I’m living here but I haven’t heard that there are any problems.”
Hüseyin, 68, a Turkish Kurd clutching amber prayer beads, who received political asylum in Germany five years ago, said he would meet friends at a roundabout cafe in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district to watch the results on Sunday evening. “There are two people in this race,” he said. “A democrat and a fascist. We want to get rid of the fascist so that we can go back home.”
Nearly 49% of people eligible in Germany turned out in the first round. The second round, voting for which closed on Tuesday, is thought to have attracted more voters.
“Voters in Germany as elsewhere, consider this election as a significant juncture for Turkey, which has meant mobilisation has increased over the past week or so, with people feeling they have to make a very clear statement,” said Burç.
Holding his scottish terrier Charlie, 36-year-old Yasin Acarbaş, a Berlin resident who left Turkey a decade ago after the Gezi Park protests, said: “I don’t feel I should have the right to vote when I’m not living in a country. But I feel it’s necessary to use my vote for the last time in order to try to get rid of Erdoğan.”
Elif, 36, a student, standing in front of a large Turkish flag stretched across the consulate railings taking selfies with three friends, said she had turned up to vote “so that Turkey wins”. Born in Berlin to guest worker parents from Antalya, she said she feared the changes a Kılıçdaroğlu government might bring.
“I’m concerned the country will go back to how it was 20 years ago, when many houses had no running water and no toilets,” she said. “So it would be better to keep things just as they are.”
In smaller and more recent communities in Europe, the narrative is very different. In places like the Baltic states, where polling stations have been opened for Turkish voters for the first time this year, Kılıçdaroğlu is the favourite.
He garnered 80% of the vote in Lithuania, for example, where first-generation Turkish immigrants are in general much younger, more likely to be university-educated, and broadly pro-European.
In Estonia, 91% of votes went to the opposition candidate, while in Poland he won 85%. In the UK, whose 130,000 immigrants from Turkey are mostly Turkish Cypriots, members of the Alevi religious minority or Kurds, Erdoğan won only 18% of the vote.
Sweden, home to another Kurdish community that has led to tensions with Turkey, voted 53% for Kılıçdaroğlu and 44% for Erdoğan.
After the closure of polling booths across Europe earlier this week, in a carefully coordinated operation, a cargo plane landed in each location to pick up the diaspora votes before flying them back to Ankara to be stored in the Turkish chamber of commerce until polls in Turkey close on Sunday evening.
