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Floris Vermeulen and Maria Berger Chapter 6 Civic Networks and Political Behavior: Turks in Amsterdam and Berlin Immigrant organizations play a central role in the political behavior of immigrants in host societies. Local organizations often serve as a bridge between local authorities and immigrant constituencies, providing authorities with access to the immigrant communities and representing collective interests of immigrants. The organizing process of immigrants is therefore of particular importance to understanding the political behavior and political positions of immigrant communities . Meindert Fennema and Jean Tillie (1999, 2001; Fennema 2004; Tillie 2004) have suggested that immigrant groups with a relatively high number of ethnic organizations, which are well connected through a dense network, can be characterized as more civic than those with fewer organizations and fewer networks. Networks among immigrant organizations are critical to a civic community, primarily because they create channels for communication. This process of community building is based on an accumulation of trust among organizations, achieved through the communication channels and an exchange of norms and values (Fennema and Tillie 2001). Fennema and Tillie also assumed that social trust among ethnic communities is carried over into a sense of trust in local political institutions, but only if immigrant community leaders in the ethnic elite are adequately integrated in the local political system. The basic idea here is that the greater the number of interconnected organizations an immigrant group has, the more this group can be considered civic. A subsequent question is whether, within more civic immigrant groups, immigrants will also prove to be more politically active on the individual level. Fennema and Tillie’s study of immigrant groups in Amsterdam seemed to suggest this relationship: of all the city’s immigrant groups, Turks have established the densest and most extended network of organizations and have proved the most politically active group of immigrants (Fennema and Tillie 1999, 2001). This chapter takes on these ideas by looking at the influence of the host state on the immigrant organizing process, and seeks to learn how immigrant organizing affects the political behavior of individual immigrants. The focus here is on Turkish organizations in Amsterdam and Berlin from 1970 to 2000. This was the period during which a Turkish organizational structure first emerged in both cities and simultaneously developed, albeit in different ways. In the early 1980s, the Netherlands implemented a multicultural regime that was meant to integrate the growing immigrant population: newcomers could obtain Dutch citizenship with relative ease and ethnic minorities’ right to maintain their cultural identities was recognized. By contrast, Germany’s approach could be characterized as one of exclusion: by making naturalization difficult, immigrants and their descendants were denied access to the political community and, in general, little appreciation was shown for cultural diversity (Koopmans and Statham 2000). After 2000, the political environment for the Turkish communities in both cities changed significantly. Amsterdam witnessed a multicultural backlash, as did the rest of the Netherlands. In Berlin, multicultural practices slowly became institutionalized in local integration policies (Vermeulen and Stotijn 2007).1 This analysis will also examine the relationship between degrees of group civicness and the political behavior of individual Turkish immigrants in Amsterdam and in Berlin. We first analyze the impact of different policies and institutional environments on the Turkish organizing process in Amsterdam and in Berlin. We find that Turks in Amsterdam have established a relatively high number of organizations compared with those in Berlin. Amsterdam’s Turks have also established a more civic associational community: the network structure of Turkish organizations in Amsterdam is characterized by numerous horizontal ties, as measured by interlocking directorates among board members. By contrast, Berlin’s organizational structure is more ideologically polarized and hierarchical: few powerful organizations are included and extreme ideological organizations are excluded. In other words, different host state environments have produced divergent Turkish organizational landscapes. We then examine whether differences in organizational networks affect political participation and political influence, demonstrating how Turkish organizations in Amsterdam have had more opportunities to influence policy making and how they seem to be better incorporated in the local political system. One example is that many Amsterdam politicians of Turkish descent have been active board members in at least one of the many local Turkish organizations. Our research also shows that, at the individual level, membership in Turkish organizations has a positive influence on the degree of political participation by individual Turks in their host societies. This is true in both cities. Turks who are active in Turkish organizations are more likely to respond...

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