Political preferences across a transnational space: interviews with dual citizens of the Netherlands and Turkey

What do national votes mean for dual citizens who have the right to vote here and there? Does political socialization in a liberal democratic system lead to a democratic remittance or do immigrant minorities align with authoritarian regimes challenging the West's liberal democratic values? In this article, we analyse voting preferences by using a transnational lens that focuses on the convergence of two different political systems via immigrant-origin voters. We focus on the Turkish-Dutch population from conservative backgrounds in our aim to gain a thorough understanding of support towards Islamic parties here (in the Netherlands) and there (in Turkey). This is one of just a few studies that have investigated the complex and layered nature of political preferences in a transnational world. A qualitative approach is followed to acquire in-depth insights of the ideas and evaluations of our research group. We collected data through semi-structured interviews (N = 21) between 2017 and 2018. Our conclusions indicate the significance of ethnic and religious identity, opening the way for Erdoğan’s authoritarian populism in shaping political preferences across the transnational political environment. Such influence, however, is limited by other factors such as adherence to democratic values and norms on the one hand and rational political calculations on the other hand.