TURKISH COMMUNITY

Turkish Community

Turkish Community

Introduction

A community is a collection of individuals who share the same physical and technological environment, forming a group together identifiable by organizational, linguistic, religious, economic ties and common interests. Usually in a community creates a common identity through differentiation from other groups or communities (generally of signs or actions), which shared and developed among its members and socialized. Generally, a community comes together under the necessity of an objective or goal in common, such as the common good, even though this is not necessary, just a common identity to form a community without the need for a specific purpose. In terms of administration or territorial division, a community can be considered a singular population entity, a commonwealth, a suburb, and so on. In terms of work, a community is a business (Skinner 2003, pp. 123). The participation and cooperation of its members allows the conscious choice of transformation projects aimed at the gradual and progressive solution of the powers of his self-contradictions. In this paper, I am going to discuss the Turkish Community in Britain.

Turkish Community

The Turkish community has gained importance since the 1960s as the largest Muslim immigrant population in Western Europe (Popple 1995, pp. 124). Its early years were dominated by individual migrations undertaken for various reasons, whereas the second period, after 1961, was an era of mass migrations. Thus, the labour migration of the early years shifted to family chain migration and then to clandestine migration flows as asylum seekers and illegal migrants began to seek better living conditions abroad. The multiethnic structure of Turkey's population has also prompted an ethnic migration stream, especially for Kurds living in the southern and eastern provinces of the country (National Occupation Standards).

Most of the literature on the subject gives the impression that Turkey was a latecomer to emigration, with movement beginning only in the late 1950's or even in the early 1960s. Two features of Turkish migration in the twentieth century challenge this view: the emigration of non-Muslim minorities due to direct and indirect pressures before the 1960s (Popple 1995, pp. 124), and small but stable streams of out-migration to Europe and other continents.

From Adventurers to Brain Drain

The first category, separate migrations, may be further divided into three subcategories, one before the establishment of the new Turkish Republic in 1923 and two afterward. In the earlier period, migration was quite significant, amounting to 10,000 individuals per year at the turn of the twentieth century (Solomonides 2008, pp. 201). During this migratory period, the United Kingdom was the preferred country of destination for the great majority of the emigrants.

The second wave of Turkish migration to the United Kingdom, after 1923 and the establishment of the Turkish Republic, took on a different character especially after World War II, when more Turkish professionals, such as doctors, engineers, and other skilled workers, began arriving in the United Kingdom. Their numbers did not exceed 20,000. The latest wave of Turkish migrants motivated by personal reasons includes some 200,000 migrants who arrived in ...