ABSTRACT

The United Kingdom has not been as attractive as Germany regarding guest workers from Turkey. However, what makes the United Kingdom unique is that it is one of the destinations of political migrations that started in the 1970s and 1980s. The “second wave of migration” from Turkey to the United Kingdom began in 2002 through the Ankara Agreement. The number of residents with this visa type, used by business people who want to start a business in the UK, has increased exponentially, especially in the last five years. The reason for this extraordinary increase is the desire to avoid political conflicts. Considering the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of immigrants, this migration can also be defined as “white-collar migration”, “middle-class migration”, “brain drain”. In this study, I carry out the issue of migration from Turkey to the United Kingdom by using semi-structured interviews and the “conflict model” I emphasize that the search for humanitarian security underlies this migration. My main claim is that politically- based conflicts, humanitarian insecurity caused by these conflicts, or the desire to avoid these conflicts account for the migration from Turkey to the United Kingdom in recent years.