Will Turkey remember the Syrian citizenship debate?

It was on 2 July 2016 that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Syrian ‘guests under temporary protection’ (i.e. refugees) in Turkey would be granted Turkish citizenship. He deferred to the Interior Ministry for further comment, though members of the government themselves seemed to have been taken by surprise. The proposal sparked immediate debate in the political arena and on social media, with not only opposition parties speaking against it but even grassroots supporters of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP). Over one week after the statement, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş said that the Interior Ministry had ‘not yet completed the work on the issue of giving citizenship to Syrians.’ It became clear at this point that not all Syrian refugees would have been eligible to acquire Turkish citizenship but only ‘qualified and educated Syrians with a clean record’. The estimated number was around 300,000. Then, on 11 July, Erdoğan detailed his proposition, saying, ‘there is no need to hesitate’ and that Turkey was big enough to welcome Syrians as citizens.