Most Britons with migrant origins are natural Tories. Here’s why the Conservatives are losing them.

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29 October 2014

It is that time of the political calendar once again when politicians try to outbid each other in what is now horribly dull and repetitive public discussion on migration. Whilst voices from the business world have continually raised their concerns about the adverse effects of such politics on the British economy, and academics have demonstrated serious problems with the figures and hyperbole casually thrown into discussions to incite hysteria over migration, not many have asked what the Conservatives might be losing in this process.


Attempts to appeal to cohorts concerned enough about migration to consider voting for UKIP is not surprising. Thus the appointment of Sir Andrew Green to the House of Lords and the careless comments made by Michael Fallon did not really shock or awe any of us. If anything, we have been underwhelmed. Yet, what has been increasingly shocking is the continual short-sightedness of such moves, and that the Conservatives still do not recognise what they are losing in this process: the substantial number of votes that they could attract from British citizens who are naturalised or with migrant origins.


For those whose understanding of contemporary Britain and its myriad communities and citizenry is outdated, the main constituency of the Conservative Party might still be imagined to be the archetypal “English” voter. But the reality is that a significant portion, if not the majority, of naturalised citizens and their children have values much closer to traditional Conservative ones than to those of any other party.

This is particularly so for those of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American and Eastern and Southern European origin. 

Voters from these backgrounds tend to be much more socially, religiously, culturally and politically conservative. The legends of “benefit cheats and tourists” blind us from seeing that the vast majority of Brits with migrant roots have had to work incredibly hard to make their home in the UK, and to advance the wellbeing of their family.

Therefore, they highly value hard work, and appreciate the safety nets provided by the British welfare system – since their experiences in their respective countries of origin make them acutely aware of the UK system’s uniqueness in the world. 

And, ironically, if you want to hear the harshest stands on migration, access for new migrants to public funds, the importance of ensuring new migrants respect and cherish the UK, and limiting of number of migrants who can be naturalised as citizens, you need look no further than British voters who were naturalised, or who were born to parents who were migrants.


This means that Conservative Party should appeal to a substantial percentage of such voters with its current platform. The reality is that it is not able to. Many answers can be given as to why this is the case. Clearly, the party still has a long way to go in having voices from such backgrounds represented, and a lot of homework to do in understanding these communities. 

Yet even if the Conservative Party were to address these concerns, the language and tone of migration debates would always be a hindrance for the large number of voters who feel inclined towards traditional conservative values but cannot bring themselves to vote for a Conservative candidate because the rhetoric excludes them.

Often migration discussions lapse into xenophobia, scapegoating and the demonisation of migrants, which in turn makes Brits with migrant roots feel distanced and targeted. It is all the more discouraging that migrant voices are completely absent from discussions on migration, and that most discussions are held as if there are no migrants in the room and somehow migrants don’t hear what is being said about them.

The outcomes of this range from the UK missing out on attracting global talent to British businesses, migrants struggling to integrate and feeling alienated from the British society (which creates fertile ground for radicalisation), and a significant number of Brits feeling that they have no voice in the future of their country. Beyond the domestic context, it is also costing the UK diplomatic capital by underutilising the potential of its own diverse population as natural bridges for global outreach for British government, businesses and culture.

There is a way to discuss the migration issue – which is not only a British challenge but a global one, with identical arguments unfolding all across the world – without alienating migrants and British citizens with migrant roots. If the Conservative Party were to crack that code, it could gain more votes by attracting these rather than by alienating them.

This is a painful but necessary process for the Conservatives. The Conservative Party needs to re-read its voter base, take this challenge seriously, alter its public language on migration and move beyond seeing potential candidates with migrant roots as peripheral window-dressing rather than as integral parts of the future of the party, just as they are integral parts of the future of United Kingdom.

What the UK can do to advance religious freedom worldwide

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29 October 2014


The developments in the Middle East over the last three years have brought home the points which many experts and practitioners have been making: persecution on the basis of religious belief and affiliation is increasing in the world. It is affecting every faith community and those with no faith,  fuelling a wide range of interrelated problems from radicalisation to violent conflict, with direct impact on UK domestic concerns such as increasing numbers of asylum applications and faith community relations.

Now, articles calling for an immediate UK response to religious freedom can be seen emerging from all corners of the political and social spectrum. Whilst these articles stem from good intentions, they suffer similar shortcomings.

Often they start from domestic political and religious positions with a wide range of unspoken anxieties about particular religions or the overall place of religion in today’s world. Most of the time they lack a grounded understanding of local contexts in which religious persecution happens, and lapse into reductionism, seeing a particular religion as the root cause of all that we see unfolding before us.

They also lack awareness of global trends and mirror-image developments in Africa, Asia, and even Europe, that make such reductions of the issue down to a single religion rather shallow. Most worryingly, such articles often ascribe no agency whatsoever to persecuted communities themselves and what they can do and how they can respond in the short and long term to address factors leading to persecution.

One can easily list the causes behind these failures; very few academics actually study religious freedom and religious persecution in the UK, let alone teach it as a course. Hardly any British think-tank has ever conducted a proper study and developed a thought-through policy proposal for the Government besides the myopia of countering violent extremism.

Religious freedom advocacy groups also play their part in this failure: the vast majority are mono-faith organisations, primarily working to advance the rights of their own co-religionists, which is ultimately counter-productive and fraught with ethical shortcomings.

Most importantly, their work is primarily reactionary. They document, lobby and raise the profile of cases of persecution with little reflection provided on the very modus operandi of religious freedom advocacy and its future. One can forgive this shortcoming due to the simple fact of limited resources, and, most importantly, chronic ignorance over these issues for decades by mainstream human rights groups, with notable exceptions such as the Minority Rights Group.

The truth is, long before ISIS brought the conversation onto centre stage, increased attention was already being given to the topic within the FCO and British Parliament. The FCO’s human rights team has increased its reporting on these issues and provided training opportunities to British diplomats on religious freedom. At the parliamentary level, the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom has silently achieved what has never before happened in the UK: it brought a wide range of political figures from different faith and belief backgrounds to raise the issue within the UK political establishment.

Yet this is not enough. While there is merit in the calls for the appointment of an Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom, inspired by the US model, experience from that same model shows how ineffectual this can be. Similarly, given that the US diplomatic machinery produces two sets of excellent reports every year on the situation of religious freedom in most countries in the world, there is no reason for the UK to re-invent the wheel and increase its own reporting.

What the UK government can do, and must do, is to carry the religious freedom conversation forward at home, in the EU and the wider international community. The unique contribution the UK government can make to this end is to focus its attention on the proactive aspects of religious freedom advocacy.

First of all, the religious freedom issue must be taken together with all of its interrelated aspects, from conflict to stabilization, good governance, human rights and humanitarian crises and public diplomacy. This would mean that religious freedom would not continue to be simply a conversation between the FCO and concerned Members of Parliament, but it would directly involve DFID, the Home Office and the Prime Minister’s office.

Secondly, this is a truly complicated issue that demands a wide range of expertise, ranging from specific country and issue experts, to human rights advocates, programming and foreign policy specialists. This is not simply an issue of gathering faith-based NGOs and clergymen to express goodwill. The UK must have its own mechanism in which ongoing issues are analysed and pro-active policy proposals are developed and synchronised across UK government structures.

Thirdly, the UK government must genuinely put its weight behind such a mechanism by directly allocating funds that can be deployed for strategic programmes across the world, and to enable direct access to high-level policy makers across UK state structures. Otherwise, sadly, all these well-intentioned calls for a response, and the clearly-expressed desire of the Government to increase its attention to this issue will be included in the increasingly long list of superficial conversations, when the stakes have never been higher.

Turkey and Egypt: Misconceptions & Missed Opportunities












Published by The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, 05 May 2014


The relationship between Turkey and Egypt has rarely been an easy one. During the British Mandate, the Turkish government found itself clashing with Egyptian authorities over the rights and entitlements of Turks living in Egypt. Then, of course, there was the infamous 1932 incident in which Ataturk humiliated the Egyptian ambassador at an official Turkish state reception by requiring that he remove his fez; the traditional hat had been banned in Turkey as part of Ataturk’s efforts to make Turkey become a “civilized, Western” country.

The 1952 revolution in Egypt brought no positive change to this state of affairs. In one incident, the Turkish ambassador—whose wife was an Egyptian with royal blood who had lost family assets after the Free Officers took control—refused to shake Nasser’s hand at a reception and insulted him publicly. Shortly thereafter, the ambassador was sent back to Turkey, and Turkish – Egyptian relations remained in a poor state for years afterwards. Turkish foreign policy, particularly its engagement with Iraq and its Western orientation, regularly brought both countries into collision as Nasser pursued his ambitious regional projects: Turkey’s support for the British in the Suez Crisis attracted Nasser’s anger, for example, while Nasser’s stances on Cyprus and Syria caused serious concern in Ankara.

Interestingly, it was the Democratic Party government of Adnan Menderes—a religious-conservative Prime Minister who was hanged following a military coup and who serves as a frequent reference point for Erdoğan—that pushed for more Turkish engagement with the countries of the Middle East following decades of Turkish disengagement. Turkey’s feeble attempts to unite and lead the Middle East clashed with the foreign policy efforts of Nasser’s Egypt, and it was only after the 1960 military coup that ousted the Menderes government that Egypt and Turkey began a normalization process.

As both countries went through turbulent times in the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between them remained weak both economically and diplomatically. Both countries suffered from limited knowledge of, and exposure to, the other. Egypt and Turkey also suffered from being sidelined actors in a region dominated and shaped by others even as they both maintained perceptions of power, influence, and grandeur as the gateway to the Middle East. The number of people with deep knowledge of Egypt in Turkey shrank considerably, and many of those left were conservatives who had studied at Islamic institutions in Egypt or were engaging directly with Islamist thought emerging from Egypt.

Following the arrival of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) into power, Turkey once again turned towards a region it had tended to ignore. However, with relatively few academics, policy experts, or diplomats who could speak Arabic or who maintained deep roots in regional matters aside from Islamic theology and related disciplines, Turkey once again set out on an overly ambitious course to become a major player in a hotly contested region without the institutional strength needed to sustain it.

At the same time, things were changing in Egypt, too. The foundations of Egypt’s rentier economy was truly crumbling by the early 2000s, posing serious challenges to the Mubarak regime. Turkey’s economy, meanwhile, showed growing strength, and Turkish firms, which were increasingly turning toward the Middle East, discovered Egypt as a potential venue for investment. Mubarak, who had shared his predecessors’ dislike of Turkish ambitions, nevertheless took steps to open Egypt’s economy for closer engagement with Turkey. According to the Turkish Embassy in Cairo, there were 64 official visits by Turkish delegations to Egypt and 29 Egyptian visits to Turkey between 2003 and the first quarter of 2009. These included reciprocal visits by President Gül and President Mubarak.

The outcome of these interactions can be seen in the free trade agreement signed in 2005 (which came into force in 2007), the extent of visa liberalization between the two countries, and ultimately, the rapid increase in trade volume between two countries. In 2001, Egyptian exports to Turkey stood at a minuscule $91 million, and Turkish exports to Egypt amounted to $421 million; in 2004, Egyptian exports had increased to $255 million, with Turkish exports growing to $473 million (indicating a total trade volume of $728 million).

From 2005 onwards, official records at the Turkish Statistical Institute show generally positive growth in total trade volume between the two countries:


This was welcome progress: both countries had recognized the underdeveloped state of their relationship and the costs of the many opportunities lost because of it. This was also why many observers, myself included, were taken back when Erdoğan became one of the first foreign leaders to publically ask Mubarak to step down in 2011. There seemed to be both too much at stake for Turkish investments and no reason to further increase the already-high foreign policy risks that Turkey faced as its diplomatic hyperactivity ran headlong into complex regional politics. Paradoxically, Turkey’s geo-economic interests grew even as its geo-political maneuvering space shrank, and the idealism that had animated Turkish foreign policy under Foreign Minister Davutoğlu was being tested and forced to modify its ambitions.

Even so, the Turkish gamble paid off (at the time, at least). Mubarak’s resignation and the first wave of changes in the region opened new diplomatic opportunities for Turkey. In Egypt, one could feel the breadth of positive feelings toward Turkey. The Turkish research group TESEV’s survey of public attitudes towards Turkey across the Middle East-North Africa region found that 86% of Egyptians had favorable views of Turkey in 2011, and 84% in 2012. Thus, it was not surprising that when Erdoğan visited Egypt in 2011, many thousands of people showed up to greet him. It was indeed a remarkable moment, as a wide range of Egyptians, not just Islamists, expressed interest in Turkey and the relationship between the two countries. Often, when I tried to learn from Egyptian activists what was happening in Egypt in 2011, questions about Turkey, its politics, economy and social changes shifted the direction of the conversation. This stood in contrast to other visits I have undertaken to Egypt since 2006, in which conversations about Turkey were limited to football or light-hearted chats about culture and food.

In the interim period between Mubarak and Morsi, the Turkish stance on Egypt was clear: whoever comes into power should listen to democratic concerns, and Turkey would support any freely elected Egyptian government. It was impossible for Turkey to predict what might happen in Egypt or even to invest in particular political candidates. Meanwhile, Turkey sought to protect its economic interests amid worries from Turkish firms over the treatment of businessmen from the Mubarak era and growing instability and other investment risks in Egypt. One could sense the anxiety of those operating Turkish businesses in Egypt, but the Turkish government was actively encouraging them to stay in the country. Certainly, Turkish investments had a long-term vision and direct engagement with Egyptian public. In Alexandria alone, there were some 15 Turkish factories at the time employing anywhere from 600 to 4,000 Egyptians apiece. In fact, Turkish textile investors were shutting down operations in Turkey in favor of opening facilities in Egypt, taking advantage of lower labor costs and bringing to Egypt modern manufacturing and technology.

With the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012, however, Turkey found a government with which it could engage much more closely. This, combined with developments in other countries in the region, led Turkey to see a new range of opportunities open up region-wide after it had increasingly found itself being limited by prior developments in the region. Consequently, this is where the first phase of Turkish engagement with Arab Spring, one based on worthy principles, gave way to the second phase, which consisted of new pursuits with potential political allies who had shared some elements of AKP’s Islamist roots.

However rosy this new era might have appeared at the time, it was about to turn truly difficult and highly costly for Turkey. While the AKP government might have seen the emerging Muslim Brotherhood presence in the region as a friendly development, the Brotherhood was never that keen on the AKP and its “Islamist” credentials. In fact, sources in Ankara have told of how they had warned Morsi on his policies and urged him to focus on the economy and reform in order to preclude any possible coup, advice that Morsi shrugged off regularly. In various conversations that I had in Egypt, it was clear that while Turkey was seen as a friendly ally, there were quite a number of voices in the Muslim Brotherhood that also saw Turkey as too ambitious and not closely aligned with their ideals and visions.

If Erdoğan’s risky choice to ask Mubarak to stand down was a surprise, his strong stance against the widely supported military coup that ousted Morsi was not. He personally knew Morsi and his government members, and religious conservatives in Turkish politics had suffered tremendously from similar military interventions; discussions of the coup that resulted in the execution of conservative Prime Minister Menderes were frequently encountered around this time. Indeed, not just Erdoğan but his entire constituency saw a worrying reflection of their own past in the suffering of Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt; this struck a deep chord in AKP supporters which was only amplified as widespread protests against Erdoğan broke out in Turkey. Once again, fears grew among Turkish conservatives of attempts to topple an elected government that they favored, a development that would have taken back all of the openings they had enjoyed since the AKP came to power.

Sadly, strong outbursts in Turkey condemning the developments in Egypt quickly overwhelmed all of the effort expended to forge closer bonds between Turkey and Egypt since the early 2000s, and these outbursts caused the popular perception of Turkey in Egypt to deteriorate dramatically. Many saw Turkey as simply a foreign supporter of Muslim Brotherhood that desired an Islamist takeover of Egypt. The same TESEV study that had recorded more than 80% popularity ratings for Turkey in Egypt in 2011 and 2012 indicated an approval rating of just 38% in 2013. Ironically, Erdoğan had gotten into trouble with Muslim Brotherhood not two years prior for publicly saying that Egypt should have a secular constitution and state, and he had regularly warned Morsi in person not to prioritize Islamist policies but instead to focus elsewhere.

As Egyptians began reacting to Turkish statements and actions with a similar intensity of feeling, a new interpretation of developments in Egypt, filtered through prior Turkish experiences, emerged in Turkey. The use of this new interpretation by the Turkish opposition to corner the AKP’s foreign policy and redefine its political identity turned Egyptian politics into a Turkish domestic issue—Egyptian developments were adapted as means of expressing Turkish concerns about Turkey.

It was within this environment of intense feelings on both sides and amplified public displays of diplomacy that a fascinating story unfolded. At the time, the Turkish ambassador to Cairo, Avni Botsalı, had already been appointed to his next post and was going through his official departure process. He had been a remarkable ambassador who maintained truly deep and effective relationships all across the Egyptian establishment. He had also, however, attracted a peculiar kind of criticism in some Turkish circles who were asking for the appointment of a more conservative ambassador after Morsi took office. When Morsi was ousted, Botsalı had already been scheduled to leave Egypt. However, Egyptian diplomats and statesmen demanded that he stay in Cairo because they trusted him; ultimately, Ankara took the wise decision to keep him in his post. One Egyptian diplomat told me: “We said to Ankara, we don’t want to talk to any other ambassador.” Botsalı’s skill as a bridge between Cairo and Ankara during these turbulent times has been exemplary. Thus, when he was later declared persona non grata by the Egypt government, it was a loss felt deeply in both cities.

This story, among other events, shows how both countries have gone wrong in understanding and handling each other. It is also clear how misperceptions and overly emotional response patterns have caused public views in both countries to fall under the sway of strong, yet generally unfounded, prejudices. However, beyond the public political clashes, both countries’ diplomatic structures had clearly developed better mutual understanding, revealing how Egypt and Turkey could have better navigated the current storm and how they can yet find a way out of the current downturn in relations.
The hope for re-normalization lies in a simple fact that this brief article has tried to demonstrate: Turkey and Egypt did not discover each other only after the election of President Morsi—positive relations between the two countries did not develop just as part of some putative Sunni Islamist plot to redesign the Middle East, as some might argue. Closer relations began in the Mubarak era for extremely important reasons: both countries’ economies have so much to gain from a friendly relationship, and positive relations between Egypt and Turkey would have significant, mutually beneficial regional implications.


The challenges that are ahead now are to rediscover these truths (even as both countries continue to go through domestic uncertainties) and to help members of both societies to understand the other beyond the level of sharp, emotive responses (which Egyptians and Turks share as a common trait). Turkey and Egypt must learn both how to work with each other on issues of economic and political importance and how to constructively engage each other when disagreements and concerns arise. Achieving this kind of relationship is vital because, in the end, Turkey is more important to Egypt (particularly to its future as a healthy society, economy and regional actor) and Egypt is more important to Turkey (particularly regarding its regional interests) than the current, angry outbursts between the two countries suggest.