Interacting Political Behaviors and Attitudes across Countries? A Study on Dual Citizens of the Netherlands and Turkey

Transnational characteristics of contemporary politics raise questions about involvement in the country of origin on the one hand and commitment to the country of settlement on the other hand. Yet, not much has been said on this twofold aspect of political behaviors and attitudes among European Turks. The role of potential remedies such as the Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) in clarifying the confused minds of transnational voters still need to be studied. Taking the crisis between the Netherlands and Turkey in 2017, we focus on Turkish Dutch population in our aim to gain a thorough understanding of the subject. Do Turkish Dutch voters cast the ballot in the elections in Turkey and/or the Netherlands? What are the ideologies and party preferences of the Turkish Dutch in case they vote in Turkey and/or the Netherlands? How do Turkish Dutch evaluate politicians’ approaches in the crisis between the Netherlands and Turkey before the national votes in both countries in 2017? How do these political behaviors and attitudes relate to similar behaviors and attitudes across those two countries? What is the role of VAAs in solving potential confusions in such transnational electoral participation with (potentially) conflicting ideologies, preferences, attitudes and behaviors? Taking the novelty of the subject area, a qualitative approach is followed to gain in-depth insights of the ideas and evaluations of our research group. We collected data through semi-structured interviews (N=24) and conducted a qualitative content analysis on the transcripts of these interviews.