Turkey’s 2016 Citizenship by Investment Programme has sparked significant debates on citizenship. This study examines how five major Turkish political parties conceptualize citizenship through their positions on this practice. It argues that parties’ conceptions of citizenship shape their political behavior, a dynamic often underexplored in existing scholarship. While opposition parties’ perspectives inform their resistance to citizenship-by-investment policies, ruling parties adopt pragmatic, policy-oriented approaches that occasionally diverge from their stated ideological principles. Empirically, the study elucidates the complexities of citizenship by situating the practice of citizenship-by-investment within the context of Turkish politics. Conceptually, it enriches the literature by analyzing political polarization in Turkey through the lens of citizenship, an approach less commonly pursued compared to frameworks of authoritarianism or Islamization. Employing a case study methodology and critical discourse analysis with an inductive coding approach, the article identifies which citizenship conceptions align with parties’ stances on citizenship-by-investment, drawing on party documents, parliamentary records, and media reports from 2016 to 2025.

Gokhan Bacik, Selling Citizenship in Turkey: Political Parties, Pragmatism, and Polarization, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 2025.