LONDON â€" Around the world this weekend, members of a widely scattered Turkish diaspora staged peaceful demonstrations in solidarity with the protests at home against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In Berlin, London, Paris and other European cities, demonstrators took to the streets to denounce the Turkish authorities’ response to the unrest sparked by popular anger at plans to demolish a park in Istanbul.
In New York, hundreds rallied at Zuccotti Park, the focus of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, to express their solidarity with those who have faced tear gas and water cannons from riot police during the Turkish protests.
In Sydney, Turkish expatriates called on Australians to support the protest movement in their country, which they said was directed at a government attempting to stifle democracy.
Many of the protestors abroad were Turkish students and immigrants among more than five million Turkish citizens who live and work abroad, predominantly in Europe. As many as half of those live in Germany, a magnet for Turkish emigration for half a century.
My colleague Tim Arango writes from Istanbul that many Turks view the large-scale redevelopment of Istanbul as a reflection of the growing autocratic ambitions of Mr. Erdogan and his government.
“In full public view, a long struggle over urban spaces is erupting as a broader fight over Turkish identity, where difficult issues of religion, social class and politics intersect,†Tim writes.
Those same issues are faced by Turks abroad, where Mr. Erdogan is said to have cultivated the large Turkish diaspora in order to lift the popularity of his Justice and Development Party, the A.K.P.
According to Der Spiegel in Germany, that has involved him acting as the self-styled patron of Turkish immigrants as part of a policy that critics say is driving a wedge between immigrant families and mainstream society.
It quoted Mr. Erdogan as saying at a campaign rally in Germany in 2011: “I am here to represent your interests. You are my family, and you are my siblings.â€
In 2010, the government established an office for Turks Abroad and Related Communities to coordinate contacts with Turks abroad.
Kemal Yurtnac, who heads the department, said recently its aim was to transform Turkish people living abroad from just a “crowd of Turkish people†into an organized force capable of defending its rights, while working at the same time to influence decision-making in their host countries.
The stated objective is to help Turks abroad defend their democratic rights. However, critics quoted by Der Spiegel suggested the diaspora agency was being used as part of a lobbying effort on behalf of the Turkish government.
According to Ali Dogan, chief representative of Turkey’s Alevi community in Germany, politicians in Ankara had always tried to exert influence on Turks abroad. But no one, he told Der Spiegel, behaved as shamelessly, and strategically, as Mr. Erdogan.
Mr. Erdogan’s A.K.P. won 61 percent of the overseas vote in the elections in 2011, a higher proportion than in Turkey itself.
The expatriate tally was limited by a rule that Turks had to return home to cast their ballots at airport polling stations. The government is changing the rules in future elections in order to increase the overseas turnout.
Despite Mr. Erdogan’s relatively high popularity among the diaspora, the weekend demonstrations in Europe and elsewhere were an indication he also has some vociferous opponents among Turks abroad as he confronts the unrest at home.
