Abstract
After the granting of citizenship to 300,000 immigrants from Bulgaria in 1989, Turkey has enacted visa regime changes concerning more recent migrants from Bulgaria, who, according to the most recent modification, are only allowed to stay for 90 days within any six-month period. In this article, the authors demonstrate that the broken lines of legality/illegality produced by these changing policies further entrench the sovereignty of the state through the “inclusive exclusion” of immigrants who are subject to the law but not subject in the law. The temporary legalization of Bulgarian immigrants to Turkey in return for voting in the Bulgarian elections reveals that the state extends its transnational political power by drawing and redrawing the broken lines of legality/illegality. We demonstrate not only the ways in which the migrant population from Bulgaria is managed but also the strategies deployed by the migrants themselves in the face of such sovereign acts.
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