There are approximately 500,000 people of Turkish origin living in Britain. Of those, 150,000 are Turkish nationals, while 350,000 are Turkish Cypriots. In last week's Turkey referendum on ceding new powers to President Erdogan (who has imprisoned 40,000 Turks and has had 100,000 turfed out of their jobs since last July's inept coup attempt) some 77% of German Turks voted "Evet" (Yes), while a mere 18% of British Turks (most of whom live in London) decided to support the "wankerer from Ankara". I can't vouch for these figures, because I only came across them in an unofficial Dutch tweet. The BBC reported the referendum results from the Turkish diaspora thus:
"..just under 50% of the estimated 1.4 million Turks who could vote from Germany did so - and those who did were firmly in favour of granting Mr Erdogan his new powers.
Several other countries also voted Yes, including:
The Netherlands (70.94%)
Austria (73.23%)
Belgium (74.98%)
France (64.85%)
Most countries which returned a No vote had a relatively small number of voters - though Switzerland's 50,374 Turks firmly voted against (61.92%)."
Not a peep as to how Turks in Britain voted. The only analysis I could find was provided by the website, Middle East Eye,
in an article written before the results were published:
"...while the five million or so Turks who make up the diaspora in Germany are composed largely of economic migrants, the UK’s Turkish population - which numbers roughly 150,000 without counting Turkish Cypriots - is heavily dominated by political refugees and their families."
I don't know why I find this interesting, but I do. More interesting, though, is why the BBC reporter didn't see fit to add a line about the vote by British Turks. Odd.
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