Main opposition CHP leader suggests referendum on whether migrants should be given citizenship

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Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has suggested Turkey should head to a referendum and ask the nation whether migrants should be granted Turkish citizenship.

“If you want to give citizenships to migrants, let’s go to a referendum and ask the people. Let’s see if the people want migrants to be given citizenship,” he said in an interview with Yetkin Report on March 17.

Kılıçdaroğlu also asked whether President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would be granting Turkish citizenships to refugees and making them vote for him in the next elections.

Erdoğan recently said his party will not be sending back refugees. “The opposition says, ‘If we win the elections, we will send the migrants. We will not,” he said.

82 percent of Turkish voters want migrants to return their countries 

Meanwhile, a survey carried out by polling company Metropoll in August last year has shown 82 percent of Turkish voters want migrants living in Turkey to return to their countries, a tweet shared by the company's director, Özer Sencar, showed. 

Around 84.5 percent of voters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) said they agreed with the “Migrants should return to their countries” statement. Only 7.5 percent said they disagreed.

The party with the most respondents that said they wanted refugees to leave was the nationalist opposition İYİ (Good) Party, at 98 percent.

Almost 90 percent of voters of the CHP responding to the statement said they wanted migrants to return to their countries.

Around 88 percent of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) voters and 62.3 percent of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) voters said they believed refugees should return.

The average rate of the voters of all parties was 81.7 percent, according to the research carried out in August 2021.

Only 10.8 of all parties’ voters said they did not agree with the statement “Migrants should return to their countries.” Almost 8 percent said they had no answer or opinion.

Some 76 percent of all voters said they thought the migrants were a burden on the economy, 72 percent said they posed security problems and 71 percent said they took the jobs of Turkish citizens, a separate tweet by Sencar showed. 

Only 14 percent of the respondents said refugees should be given new free passages.