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Comment by egeozcan | Hacker News Reader

As a Turkish immigrant in Germany, I really find the word "expat" irritating. Why should I make it explicitly clear that my immigration happened on my own terms?

Apart from that, the sheer amount of Turkish immigrants who left the country in the last decade (including me) are not Erdoğan supporters. However, many of us refrain from heavy criticism as we occasionally go to Turkey to visit our relatives and we don't want some specific person having a bad day destroying our lives.

So you usually hear the other side and may mistakenly think that "expat Turks" support Erdoğan big time. The majority of votes he gets from Turkish immigrants are the Turks who left the country more than a couple of decades ago and partly, their children. The "why" has a complicated answer that touches religion, demographic dynamics and acceptance in society.

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> many of us refrain from heavy criticism

If the people who can speak up don't speak up then how is change ever to be expected? This is btw not what usually happens in such situations (immigrants fleeing authoritarianism are generally vocal against it)

Why should I put the security of my family in jeopardy hopelessly trying to improve a country that I already gave up on?

I love Germany, I'd rather work improving where I'm living, which is something I'm already trying to do, instead of getting stuck in the past.

I definitely know Turks who are vocal against their regime, but I understand that many cannot afford to be. This isn't like the old days, before social media. Now, anything you say on social media can get you or your relatives back home on trouble.

PS Not Turkish but from another country with a regime that retaliates against critics.

I agree with that, and this is a huge regression we didn't even have 3 decades ago. It should be talked more

> immigrants fleeing authoritarianism are generally vocal against it

There's a huge selection bias here (the immigrants most visible are those who speak up), so I wouldn't be so certain about this. My prior is that people don't give a shit about what's happening elsewhere, and their life is certainly easier if they don't _publish_ their controversial views. (Even if that controversial view is shared knowledge among immigrants, it's usually not common knowledge.)

I can give some background on this, I immigrated from Russia to the US when I was 5 and I still have a ton of extended family that lives there.

Do I like Putin or what Russia is doing? Hell no. But at the same time I'm not going to saying anything negative in public about Russia. If I got on the Russian governments radar forget what they will do to me, I live in America, what will they do to my Grandmother, my uncles, my nieces, my cousins?

I don't know what they will do, and for that reason I cannot risk saying anything.

The same applies in places like Turkey, China, etc. Yeah you might not like what the govt there is doing, but at the same time you can't risk speaking up and having the blowback taken out on your family that still lives there.

On the other hand public pressure from abroad does work , and since politics tends to run in families, their families are at risk anyway. I can tell from the experience of my country (greece) during the dictatorial regime 50 years ago. The greeks who were persecuted / emigrated to europe (France mostly) were very vocal about the (US-backed) regime and drew international condemnation, especially the high-profile ones. It certainly contributed to its eventual downfall a few years later, but importantly it helped the swift return of democracy, because there was already a group of people who were politically organized abroad.

Judging by the US, speaking up doesn't matter at all and can only hurt you and your family.

Ironically people sometimes intentionally use the word expat to avoid the "western people are expats, non-westerners are immigrants" terminology trap

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