Aim and methods

This article aims to explore the life narratives of the Erdoğan-supporting Turkish-origin population in Germany to capture their emotional motivations in appreciating Erdoğan. For the purpose, I consider the Turkish-origin people voting for Erdoğan as an emotional community (Rosenwein Reference Rosenwein2002) who construct similar narratives about their experiences as immigrants in Germany and develop their own feeling rules accordingly. To elaborate on their emotions as practices to comply with or contest to the prevailing social norms, I will employ the concepts of feeling rules and emotion work (Hochschild Reference Hochschild1979). I contend that feeling rules are not top-down impositions, they involve processes of navigation, negotiation, and/or contestation, all of which necessitate emotion work. Drawing on this conceptual framework in the context of migration, and relying on empirical data collected from observations, in-depth interviews, and focus-group interviews conducted with Erdoğan supporters living in Berlin, Germany, I aim to showcase the interactions between their life narratives, emotions, and political dispositions.

Indeed, Turkish-origin immigrants and their descendants constitute a rather heterogenous group in Europe with respect to their economic, political, cultural, ethnic, and religious dispositions (Kaya and Kentel Reference Kaya and Kentel2005: 2). Within this heterogeneity, in my fieldwork I specifically focused on first- and second-generation “guest workers” who define themselves as Sunni-Muslim Turks in Germany. This self-definition was a significant determiner in the field because Erdoğan supporters often have a strong sense of religious and ethnic identity, or at least regard themselves as religious and nationalist. Therefore, while selecting the interlocutors, I asked them how they define themselves instead of asking them directly, whether they support Erdoğan or not. My first-generation interlocutors comprised people around their 60s and 70s, who spend most of their days in small-scale cafés run by Turkish-origin owners in historically migrant neighborhoods. These cafés are the places where they socialize, gather with their peers, and exchange daily conversations while drinking Turkish tea or coffee. The second-generation interlocutors comprised the shopkeepers, the staff of small shops, or regulars to these cafés in Berlin. It was striking to see how the first- and second-generation’s narratives of identity and emotions overlapped. Most of the experiences they narrated were very similar, as well as the feelings they addressed. While the first generation mostly talked about their work experiences, the second generation’s most vivid memories were from their school years or youth. All in all, it was apparent that the first- and second-generation interlocutors of Turkish background constructed an overarching narrative of discrimination and humiliation in Germany. It is also important to note here that because of the spatial conditions of my field, I had difficulties reaching female interlocutors. The cafés and shops I visited were mostly male-dominated. For this very reason, I could conduct interviews with only two women. Thus, the narratives in this article comprise mostly male voices and experiences.Footnote ³ I contacted all the interlocutors either through key persons or the snowball technique. In total, I conducted 11 in-depth and 2 focus-group interviews. The focus-group interviews were composed of four people each who also participated in one-on-one in-depth interviews (all male). I use pseudonyms for all interlocutors (see Supplementary Table 1).

To gain a deeper insight into the links between my interlocutors’ experiences as immigrants, their interpretations of those experiences, and their emotional attachment to and appreciation of Erdoğan, I will apply narrative analysis (Riessman Reference Riessman, Kelly, Horrocks, Milnes, Roberts and Robinson2005; Shenhav Reference Shenhav2006; Somers Reference Somers1994; Stanley Reference Stanley, Robinson, Fisher, Yeadon-Lee and Woodcock2010). Narrative is, in its simplest form, a story, a vehicle through which people develop knowledge about themselves and the world they live in. It shapes agency, goals, actions, perceptions, and experiences. People construct their identities by placing themselves in a narrative and act through the stories they create about themselves and the world. Narratives help people to make sense of their lifelong experiences and to express the emotions generated through the interpretations of these experiences. Thus, narrative analysis, when applied to individuals and communities, can reveal the dynamics of social change and the motives underlying collective inclinations and actions. The methodology relies on emphasizing the role of time, contextualizing narratives within broader frameworks, and forging links between individuals and societal dynamics. The focus in narrative analysis is not on fidelity to truth within narratives, but on how the relationship between past, present, and future is established through them (Riessman Reference Riessman, Kelly, Horrocks, Milnes, Roberts and Robinson2005; Shenhav Reference Shenhav2006; Somers Reference Somers1994; Stanley Reference Stanley, Robinson, Fisher, Yeadon-Lee and Woodcock2010). Drawing on these premises, I will regard my interlocutors’ experiences and expressions of emotions as narratives that are individually and collectively constructed to put their life stories into a frame they find meaningful.

Migration, emotions, and the Turkish-origin population as an emotional community

Migration processes and migrant life experiences offer a rich field for research on emotions. Migrant family and group relationships, their cross-border links with homelands, and their connections with the receiving societies are key issues that a focus on emotions could enrich (Boccagni and Baldassar Reference Boccagni and Baldassar2015: 73–74). The experience of migration itself is a catalyzer of change in the emotional lives of immigrants. The mobility of people causes emotions to be mobile and subject to change as well (Svašek Reference Svašek2010: 867). Times of transition often trigger concerns about the prevailing feeling rules within a community. Individuals tend to perceive these rules most acutely when transitioning between different cultures or roles. It is during these intercultural phases that people often feel conflicted with the former or new feeling rules (Hochschild Reference Hochschild1983: 75). As collective social agreements about how to suppress, reinforce, or regulate emotions, feeling rules are inherent in daily life interactions and subject to questionings, contestations, and changes.

Migration-specific encounters may move certain emotions and experiences: “Adjustment, settlement, nostalgia, a shattered sense of belonging, renewal, loss, discrimination, abrupt endings, new beginnings and new opportunities [are] all potent sources of emotions” for immigrant communities (Skrbiš Reference Skrbiš2008: 236). Yet, neither “immigrants” nor “emotions” are fixed categories of analysis. People constantly shape and reshape their subjectivities by engaging with past, present, and future situations (Svašek Reference Svašek2010: 868). For instance, an immigrant community that does not feel welcomed in the receiving society may cling more to its own culture, people, and identity. Immigrants’ life experiences may reshape their preconceived notions of national identity and feelings of belonging. This process leads to the formation of emotional communities with new feeling rules.

To explore the emotional challenges, feeling rules, and experiences of people of Turkish background in Germany, I suggest conceptualizing my interlocutors as members of an emotional community. According to Barbara H. Rosenwein (Reference Rosenwein2002), an emotional community is a social group whose members adhere to the same valuations of emotions and their expressions. Considering a group an emotional community helps to uncover the systems of feeling, “the emotions that they value, devalue, or ignore; the nature of the affective bonds between people that they recognize; and the modes of emotional expression that they expect, encourage, tolerate, and deplore” (Rosenwein Reference Rosenwein2010: 11). Rosenwein’s notion is quite compatible with Arlie R. Hochschild’s concepts of feeling rules and emotion work. According to Hochschild (Reference Hochschild1983), feeling rules are the guides of emotion work. They establish a sense of entitlement or obligation, which leads to emotional exchanges. People tend to evoke a feeling they wish they had, and block or weaken a feeling they wish they did not have. Thus, feeling rules govern how we evaluate our own emotions and how others perceive our emotional displays, and these rules differ across communities, influencing the emotion work required within each (Hochschild Reference Hochschild1983: 43–57). Members of an emotional community often work “on inducing or inhibiting feelings so as to render them ‘appropriate’ to a situation” (Hochschild Reference Hochschild1979: 551). Social factors are key influences on how members of an emotional community try to manage their feelings. The management requires constant emotion work in an attempt to change a feeling in degree or quality. To trace this process in my interlocutors, I will rely on what Hochschild (Reference Hochschild1979: 561) presents as “two broad types of emotion work”: evocation and suppression. Evocative emotion work focuses on a desirable feeling that is initially absent in a person or a group, while suppressive emotion work focuses on an undesired feeling that is initially present in a person or a group (Hochschild Reference Hochschild1979: 561). To see how emotion work operates, evocation and suppression will be my main conceptual tools while analyzing the life narratives of my interlocutors and their emotional attachment to Erdoğan.

After more than 60 years of migration, there is an extensive literature on people of Turkish origin in Germany. A remarkable number of these studies center around subjects such as transnationality and citizenship, the legal, political, social, and economic status of immigrants, ethnic and generational distinctions, national identity and belonging, Islam and integration, education, socialization, politicization, and gender and labor (Abadan-Unat Reference Abadan-Unat2011; Kaya Reference Kaya2007, Reference Kaya2009, Reference Kaya2019; Kaya and Kentel Reference Kaya and Kentel2005; Soysal Reference Soysal2003, Reference Soysal2004; Yurdakul Reference Yurdakul2009). Focusing specifically on emotions of people of Turkish origin in Germany could facilitate a deeper exploration of the life narratives of my interlocutors, thereby illuminating the links between their migrant experiences and political dispositions. As I will show, my interlocutors’ migration background and national identity intersect in complex ways to generate their emotional attachment to Erdoğan. Their perceptions of self in the context of this intersection determine how they narrate and interpret their experiences and how they express their support and admiration of Erdoğan as an emotionally informed political disposition.

“Is it about politics?” Pre-interview encounters and positioning

Yvonne Albrecht (Reference Albrecht2016) argues that the prevalent approach to immigrants’ emotions takes a pathologizing stance that frames subjects in terms of victimhood and does not attribute agency to their choices. For her, immigrants cannot be merely considered victims of circumstances. On the contrary, they interact with their environment in various ways to tackle the uncertainties and insecurities they face. Immigrants should therefore be “brought into focus as subjects of their own narratives: ‘This way, it is possible to recognize the actors and narrators as individuals who shape transitions themselves instead of constructing them as executors of cultural logic or victims of their presumed conflicts’” (Albrecht Reference Albrecht2016: 28). Such an approach can illuminate immigrants’ engagements and disengagements, attractions and repulsions – all of which reinforce or attenuate the existing feeling rules and require emotion work.

In the beginning, I had difficulties accessing the field and persuading members of the Turkish community to take part in interviews. I asked them to talk about their migration experiences and how they relate to Turkey and Turkish politics at present. Although I am from Turkey, I was met with a certain distance, even suspicion. It was mainly due to my status as a “new” type of immigrant, whose social status as a researcher sounded “foreign” to them.Footnote ⁴ Nevertheless, after gaining the trust of key persons, the interlocutors began to show an interest in my topic and wanted to learn beforehand the questions I was planning to ask. During these dialogs, what struck me most was the recurring question: “Is it about politics?”

I started pondering over this recurring pattern of reluctance among my interlocutors to discuss politics or disclose their political views. Gradually, it became apparent that they viewed discussing politics with a stranger as potentially risky for themselves. They were well aware that supporting the AKP or Erdoğan was frowned upon and criticized within Germany. Thus, from the very beginning of my field research, I identified a sense of insecurity as a significant emotion that my interlocutors share. By listening to their life narratives, I became more aware of their causes. The hesitation of my interlocutors to discuss politics was rooted in a sense of insecurity triggered by exposure to affective stereotyping within the receiving society. As Tamar Blickstein (Reference Blickstein, Slaby and von Scheve2019: 155) observes, affective stereotypes regarding marginalized groups can have tangible repercussions on their daily lives and political agency. Apparently, the interlocutors had learned to manage their emotional expressions about politics by judging their appropriateness to the context they lived in. Therefore, I propose interpreting my interlocutors’ reluctance to engage in political discussions as a deliberate defensive strategy, which seems to be a prevailing feeling rule within their community. As active agents in their own lives, they make conscious choices and employ strategies to safeguard themselves against the structural and emotional challenges they continually confront.

It was notable to see that the primary cause of their insecurity was not only the perceived “inappropriateness” of their political dispositions considering the larger society, but also feelings of worthlessness, disappointment, loneliness, and a loss of trust in others. As is acknowledged, transnational migration necessitates individuals leaving behind familiar environments and entering new life realms, a fundamental process that compels immigrants to grapple with notions of belonging. “In such cases, many of the bases of social togetherness have to be learned anew, as one can no longer interact in a self-evident, unreflected way on the basis of shared codes and routines” (Röttger-Rössler Reference Röttger-Rössler2018: 244). Immigrants’ accustomed feeling rules, which guide their experiences in their country of origin, may not align with those of the receiving country. Moreover, attempting to comprehend and adapt to the knowledge, practices, feeling rules, and behavioral patterns of the new life context often demands significant effort. This experience inherently generates a sense of ontological insecurity.

National humiliation

Being aware that my interlocutors wanted to avoid talking about politics, I began the interviews by asking them about their experiences as immigrants living in Germany. At some point, a narrative of humiliation became an overarching lens on which they retrospectively based their life stories. Especially while talking about past experiences, the interlocutors relied heavily on a narrative of humiliation, not only as an individual experience but also as a collective one, linking the degrading attitudes that German institutions and society had shown towards them with their national and religious identity as Turkish-Muslims. This overarching narrative was a sign that they shared common perceptions regarding the negative feelings of German majority toward them. It led my interlocutors to form their own emotional community mainly deriving from the perceived experiences of humiliation in a foreign country.

One of my interlocutors, İlhan, was five years old when his parents migrated to Berlin in 1971 as “guest workers.” I asked him about the challenges he experienced “integrating” into German society. He told me he experienced insults already in primary school, as well as later in the workplace and in his social life. İlhan described feeling like a “foreigner” as soon as he started school as he could not speak German initially. In addition to formal education – which he had to leave before high school to work – İlhan encountered discriminatory attitudes at the workplaces, too: “people were murmuring about me when I entered the canteen.” He noted that, in the 1980s, Turks were heavily discriminated against in Germany. It was common to see the phrase “Türken raus!” (“Turks out!”) graffitied on walls. As a young man, he wanted to go to discos with his friends, but they were questioned about why they wanted to enter – an experience of rejection he attributed to being Turkish. İlhan reported that at the time, Turks living in Germany were generally humiliated and oppressed by the German majority, which was, for him, the reason they isolated themselves from the rest of the society – self-isolation or belonging to a “parallel society” (Parallelgesellschaft) is a common charge in German public discourse against groups with migration backgrounds.

In İlhan’s narrative, it is evident that the sense of being humiliated as a Turk haunted him in every sphere of his public life. He experienced becoming the object of negative stereotyping at the hands of Germans. As a reaction to these attitudes, and to overcome feelings of humiliation, he formed a social circle entirely consisting of Turks living in Kreuzberg. Outside of his Turkish bubble, he was constantly reminded of his identity and felt vulnerable and inferior. Being aware of the negative stereotyping and perceptions of Germans towards Turks, he became more and more distanced from the wider society; it was also an effort that allowed him to suppress feelings of inferiority. One of the most striking parts of his narrative is the memory of an insult Germans used to communicate their repulsion towards the migrant community. İlhan recalls: “They were calling us [Turks] ‘garlic eaters.’ Now they all eat garlic as they know it is healthy!” Through such exchanges, people of Turkish origin were shown not only that they were perceived as different, but also that German society felt negatively towards them.

İlhan’s experience in Germany is not exceptional. In each of the interviews I conducted, the narrative of humiliation went hand in hand with the question of belonging, and was a leitmotif in the life stories of first- and second-generation immigrants, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Based on Yusuf’s narration, it is relevant to elaborate on what humiliation, as a feeling, does to a person or a group. The emergence of the sense of humiliation relies on encounters and arises as a result of the suppression, exclusion, and weakening of a person or a group. Humiliation is especially powerful when it occurs in public, in front of witnesses. It is something done to a person or a group, which renders that person or group as a passive but conscious recipient of the humiliating attitude. Due to this consciousness, humiliation creates an intense sense of defect in the subject’s self-perception (Mendible Reference Mendible2005: 1).

Acts of humiliation may be considered acts of profound disrespect and always involve an attack on the victim’s honor. Those who are humiliated are likely to have difficulties in restoring their sense of self and realizing their right to be respected (Frevert Reference Frevert2020: 3–12). Perceiving oneself as being unjustly degraded, ridiculed, or denied leads to a decrease in self-esteem and more importantly, to a perception of threat to the core of identity. The perception of threat appears to be a feeling rule amongst the Turkish-origin community in Germany, which also explains why my interlocutors were initially reluctant to talk about their political dispositions with me.

The question here is, what is the consequence of feeling humiliation collectively for an immigrant community? Indeed, personal or individual humiliation is generally less likely to have political repercussions. But if collective identity of a group is framed as a matter of public concern, and if the prejudices and degrading attitudes towards the group’s identity become accepted by a notable segment of the society, it is likely that acts of humiliation will have political consequences (Masterson Reference Masterson2020).

As in İbrahim’s telling, there were several instances in which a narrative of collective humiliation seemed to shape and strengthen my interlocutors’ feeling rules around their national identity. They had constructed exaggerated, nationalism-driven feeling rules within their emotional community, such as an unconditional love and longing for Turkey, and a strong commitment to preservation and glorification of their religious and national identity. Salman Akhtar (Reference Akhtar1995: 1063) describes this inclination to adhere to one’s own culture and identity as ethnocentric withdrawal. Individuals or groups who withdraw on an ethnic basis are likely to associate only with homoethnic groups. For the Turkish-origin people in Germany, efforts to suppress the feeling of humiliation resulted in the formation of an emotional community based on Turkish national identity. The people I interviewed seemingly espoused glorifying discourses about their country of origin to suppress how they felt in Germany and to evoke a more positive feeling about their identity. As a matter of fact, all of my interlocutors held Turkish nationalism as a natural part of their identity. Moreover, the “naturalness” of this nationalism was a sign that their ethnocentric withdrawal from German society was basically an emotional withdrawal: they withdrew from where they felt denied.

To sum up, first- and second-generation immigrants in Germany often narrated their past experiences through a lens of humiliation, linking it to their collective identity as Muslim Turks. They perceived a shared sense of degradation from the German majority, which led them to shape their own emotional community. The perception of humiliation led to a distancing from the wider society, driven by efforts to suppress feelings of inferiority and to evoke exaggerated nationalist sentiments and a deep attachment to Turkey. The glorification of their national identity seemed to serve as a coping mechanism to counteract their negative experiences in Germany.

National identity and ethnocentric withdrawal

My field research revealed how a sense of insecurity and humiliation led the interlocutors to engage in suppressive emotion work: they could only evoke pride by embracing their culture of origin to enhance their sense of belonging. It was a main topic they seemed to like talking about and expressing their feelings around. Migrating to Germany from mostly rural areas of Turkey and building a new life in a foreign country was challenging enough. To make matters worse, they were made to feel that their national identity and culture were not welcome. This pushed my interlocutors to cling tightly to their roots; their experiences of social exclusion and the coupled loss of ontological security strengthened their emotional bonds to the home country (Röttger-Rössler Reference Röttger-Rössler2018: 249).

Upon inquiring about their emotional connection to Turkey, the majority of my interlocutors expressed a deep sense of pride in their roots and maintained a strong Turkish identity, despite having spent the majority of their lives in Germany and harboring no plans of returning. This was indeed an effort to evoke a desirable feeling of belonging embellished with pride while suppressing the undesirable feelings of degradation and humiliation. I contend that the inclination towards collective withdrawal and isolation is a form of suppressive emotion work to compensate for the lack of self-worth. This, in turn, led to a sublimation of the self through the embrace of national identity, which the interlocutors demonstrated by forging connections with nationalist symbols and deliberately instilling this particular sense of belonging in their children:

İlhan’s angry reaction to years-long discrimination he was exposed to, and his emphasis on Turkishness reveals that he found emotional refuge in leaning on his national identity as a source of self-worth and pride – feelings that were initially absent. This emotion work for compensation revealed itself most clearly in most of my interlocutors’ daily practices:

Yusuf and Ali’s insistence on feeling and living as Turks is an example of how they were shaping the feeling rules of their own emotional community via reproducing daily practices based on their national identity. “Feeling Turkish” required such practices as speaking Turkish at home, spending annual holidays in Turkey, making an effort to pass the Turkish culture on to younger generations, and maintaining some distance from the values and feeling rules of mainstream German society, which they deemed foreign or unfamiliar.

In Nuran’s narrative, ethnocentric and emotional withdrawal is framed as an effort to protect and nourish one’s own identity and culture against the threat of assimilation. I propose reading this as a response to a perceived threat to the core of their national identity, along with the awareness of humiliation which is implicated in Nuran’s choice of word: “submission.” I came to understand that most of the narratives of my interlocutors were formed around a tension between integration and assimilation, which led them to preserve and regard their national identity as a source of self-worth.

All in all, it became evident that ethnocentric withdrawal drove my interlocutors to engage in suppressive and evocative emotion work, seeking refuge in their Turkish roots to bolster their sense of belonging and pride. Their strong attachment to Turkish identity revealed itself in employing daily practices and instilling cultural heritage in their children as a means of nourishing self-worth and resisting assimilation.

National pride

Towards the end of the interviews, I specifically asked my interlocutors about Erdoğan’s two-decade-long rule. As I already mentioned, they were initially reluctant to speak about Turkish politics and the AKP government as a way to protect themselves from being frowned upon. But after our long conversations, they started to feel more comfortable and confident and openly expressed their admiration for Erdoğan. In their narratives of emotional attachment to him, it was obvious that they could strongly evoke the desired feeling of pride thanks to Erdoğan’s leadership. I detected recurring patterns tightly linked to the emotion work they undertook to overcome humiliation. One of my interlocutors summed it up:

The main reason for my interlocutors’ admiration of Erdoğan is apparent in this metaphor. The imagination of Erdoğan as a protective big brother also reveals the extent to which Erdoğanism overlaps with masculinity and patriarchal feeling rules. As a result of decades of feeling humiliated, most of my male interlocutors regard Erdoğan as a protector, a “savior” of their national pride. They appreciate his strength, decisiveness, and persistence, and that he changes how others think and feel about Turkish identity: in international politics, Turkey is no longer scorned, but feared. This shift in the feelings of others towards Turkish identity satisfies their desire to feel strong and proud. Thus, the most prevalent reason for my interlocutors’ admiration of Erdoğan seems to be related to his image on the world stage:

Yusuf’s narrative contains many references to the evocation of national pride. Erdoğan’s visibility, prominence, and influence in global politics make my interlocutors proud. They equate him with the Turkish nation, and the country appears as a strong and influential global player under his leadership. They feel that under Erdoğan’s presidency, political leaders and countries across the world have started to take Turkey more seriously. These expressions of national superiority include an explicit anti-Western stance in which the West is perceived as a threat, a general discourse on exogenous forces, and the belief in Turkey’s potential to rule the world. All of these claims are linked to Erdoğan’s nationalistic political discourse and actions and revolve around an enduring sense of omnipotence and pride.

As a matter of fact, I also asked my interlocutors about the current situation in Turkey, including the economic crisis, high inflation rates, the problem of governance, and Erdoğan’s increasingly anti-democratic rule. They all tended to agree that there were problems, yet they did not attribute these to Erdoğan’s leadership:

According to Jessica L. Tracy and Richard W. Robins (Reference Tracy and Robins2007), there are two facets to the feeling of pride: authentic pride and hubristic pride. Authentic pride stems from the specific individual or collective accomplishments of a person or a group, and it is accompanied by a genuine feeling of self-worth. Hubristic pride, in contrast, is only loosely tied to actual achievements. Further, it is associated with an urge to suppress a sense of inferiority and to compensate for a fragile self-esteem by appealing to exaggerated expressions and feelings about a person’s or group’s identity (Tracy and Robins Reference Tracy and Robins2007: 506–507). It seems that my interlocutors’ narratives about their admiration of Erdoğan fit the model of hubristic pride and stem from exposure to (or the perception of) humiliation.

Overall, despite their initial reluctance, the interlocutors openly expressed their admiration for Erdoğan, portraying him as a protector of their national pride and a symbol of strength on the global stage. Their narratives also highlight the overlap between Erdoğanism and patriarchal feeling rules to be strong, decisive, heroic, and respected. While acknowledging issues such as economic crisis and anti-democratic tendencies in the country, the interlocutors attributed these defects to external factors rather than Erdoğan’s leadership, reflecting a form of hubristic pride rooted in the desire to compensate for feelings of inferiority and assert national superiority.