The Ones Who Left and What They Took With Them: Turkey’s Brain Drain

A major new survey of 3,100 Turkish professionals living abroad finds that a third have no intention of returning — but nearly two-thirds still want to contribute to Turkey’s future. The findings challenge the dominant narrative on both sides. TurkishBritish Magazine examines the research, adds the British dimension that the survey doesn’t fully capture, and speaks from inside the experience.

By TurkishBritish Magazine Editorial Team  |  Summer 2026

There is a conversation that happens, with notable regularity, at certain dinner tables in North London, at certain networking events in the City, and in certain WhatsApp groups whose members span Istanbul, Ankara, Berlin and New York. It is a conversation about what was left behind, what was gained, and whether the calculus was right. It is a conversation that the participants know well and that almost no one outside the community hears accurately reported.

A new survey, conducted among 3,100 Turkish professionals living outside Turkey and presented publicly for the first time this year, has attempted to give that conversation a quantitative shape. The research — carried out under the auspices of a Turkish diaspora association — covers why people left, where they went, what they do, whether they intend to return, and — the question that surprises most — how much they still want to contribute to the country they left.

The findings are more complicated than either the “brain drain catastrophe” narrative favoured by certain Turkish business leaders, or the “they’re gone and good riddance” dismissal that became briefly fashionable in Turkish political discourse. They describe a diaspora that is geographically dispersed, professionally accomplished, politically disenchanted — and, in large majority, still emotionally and practically tethered to Turkey.

This magazine exists at the intersection of that story. We were founded in London, published in English, by people who made exactly the journey this research describes. We read the data not as outside observers but as participants.

Why They Left: The Push-Pull Architecture

The survey’s analysis of departure motivations distinguishes between push factors — conditions in Turkey that drove people out — and pull factors — conditions elsewhere that drew them in. Both matter, and conflating them produces bad analysis.

On the push side, the data confirms what qualitative accounts have long suggested: economic conditions and political-social conditions are approximately equally weighted as departure motivations, and Alp Akiş, the researcher who presented the findings, argued that political factors may in fact be the primary driver when examined carefully. The economic factors are well documented: inflation that has, in the period since 2021, destroyed purchasing power at a rate that Turkey’s history has rarely seen; wages that do not track the cost of living; a working environment in which regulatory unpredictability makes long-term professional planning difficult. The 2021–2023 lira collapse was not merely an economic event. It was, for the professional class most likely to have international options, a signal.

The political and social factors are harder to quantify but no less real. The survey respondents cite a cluster of conditions: a narrowing of freedoms, a judicial system perceived as unreliable, a media environment that large portions of the educated population do not trust, and a broader social atmosphere described — in the YouTube presentation of the research — as one of mutual suspicion and anxiety. Identity-based pressures, affecting those targeted on grounds of religion, ethnicity, gender or sexuality, add a further layer.

The pull factors are the mirror image: professional opportunities unavailable in Turkey, the ability to work in leading international firms, predictable regulatory environments, and — perhaps most significantly — what the research describes as “öngörülebilirlik”: predictability. The ability to make a five-year plan and have reasonable confidence it will not be disrupted by an overnight policy decision. Daron Acemoğlu, the Turkish-American economist who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on institutions and prosperity, provides an accidental data point: the countries that attract Turkey’s educated emigrants are, in aggregate, the countries with stronger institutional frameworks. This is not coincidence.

The Profile: Who Left and Where They Went

The graduating class most likely to emigrate from Turkey is concentrated in three fields: information technology, engineering, and natural sciences. The destination of preference for university graduates is the United States, followed by Germany, followed by the United Kingdom. These are not equally accessible destinations: the US requires navigating a visa system that, for Turkish nationals, involves significant uncertainty; Germany has been actively recruiting Turkish talent, with a diaspora community of several million that provides social infrastructure; and Britain has its own specific history, to which we will return.

What the destination pattern reveals is that this is not primarily a labour migration. The people captured in this survey are not leaving Turkey for factory or service work. They are leaving for professional positions, research roles, graduate programmes, and entrepreneurial opportunities in sectors that are globally competitive. The distinction matters for how Turkey accounts for the loss — and for how it might think about reconnection.

The Return Question: More Nuanced Than the Headlines

The most discussed finding from the survey is the return intention data. Approximately 31% of respondents stated definitively that they have no intention of returning to Turkey. A further 40% gave responses consistent with having no immediate return plans. This has been reported, in some accounts, as evidence of permanent rupture.

The fuller picture is more complex. The same survey found that 63% of respondents said they want to contribute to improving Turkey’s education, culture and related infrastructure from wherever they are. A further 49% expressed interest in facilitating international business partnerships and acting as a bridge. 41% cited contributing to Turkey’s democratisation and expansion of freedoms. 36% mentioned contributing to Turkey’s economic development.

These are not the responses of a diaspora that has mentally severed its connection. They are the responses of people who are doing something more specific: holding Turkey at a certain distance while maintaining genuine investment in its future. The researchers themselves noted that approximately 60% of survey participants provided their contact information at the end of the questionnaire, indicating willingness to stay connected and be part of future initiatives.

The psychodynamics here deserve careful attention. Researcher Gözde Han described a pattern she identified in the data: many of those who emigrated did so partly because of anxiety about Turkey’s trajectory. That same anxiety is the reason they remain engaged. The departure and the attachment are not contradictory; they are products of the same underlying relationship with the country.

The British Chapter: Ankara Agreement and the Decade of the Quiet Migration

The survey’s British dimension requires supplementary context that the research itself does not fully provide, because the British route for Turkish emigrants has a specific legal and historical character that distinguishes it from migration to Germany or the United States.

The Ankara Agreement — formally the Agreement Establishing an Association Between the European Economic Community and Turkey, signed in 1963 — contains provisions that, when correctly applied, allow Turkish nationals to establish businesses and, over time, seek residency rights in the United Kingdom. These rights were, for most of the agreement’s existence, little known outside specialist immigration legal circles. In the 2010s, they began to circulate more widely within Turkish communities in the UK — passed between friends, discussed in community forums, explored by a growing number of lawyers who recognised the opportunity.

The Brexit decision of 2016 created a particular dynamic. When it became clear that the UK would leave the European Union, and that Ankara Agreement rights would be affected by or extinguished in the eventual settlement, a window of opportunity opened. Turkish nationals who had been considering the British route accelerated their applications. A significant cohort entered under Ankara Agreement provisions in the period between the 2016 referendum and the agreement’s eventual modification post-Brexit.

This was not an easy process for most who went through it. The paperwork requirements were substantial; the immigration rules were complex and subject to interpretation; legal fees were significant; and the psychological toll of navigating an uncertain process over months or years was considerable. Those who completed it successfully found themselves, on the other side, with a degree of security in the UK that many of their peers — who had arrived on different visa routes with fixed durations — did not have.

The Upper Segment Migration: 2018 to Present

The survey captures a migration that is not uniform across time. The period from approximately 2018 onwards saw a shift in the profile of those leaving Turkey for the UK and other Western destinations. The earlier wave had been predominantly younger: recent graduates, early-career professionals, people in their mid-twenties navigating their first major life decisions. The later wave — accelerated by the currency crises of 2018 and 2021, the COVID period, and the political turbulence surrounding the 2023 elections — included a larger proportion of what might be described as established professionals.

These are people who had already built careers in Turkey: business owners, senior managers, doctors, lawyers, architects, academics. People who had significant assets in lira and watched those assets lose 70% or more of their international value over a period of months. People who had children approaching university age and were calculating educational futures in a currency that was rapidly depreciating. People who had, in some cases, spent years building companies or professional practices and were weighing the cost of starting over against the cost of staying.

This cohort does not appear in straightforward emigration statistics as cleanly as younger graduates do, because many did not sever their Turkish ties in the same way. They opened UK companies while maintaining Turkish operations. They spent time in both countries. They sent children to British schools while keeping homes in Istanbul or Ankara. They are, in the survey’s terms, among the 49% who see themselves as bridges.

Not Gone: The Circulation Economy

One of the most important things the brain drain narrative gets wrong is the assumption of finality. The image implicit in the phrase — brains draining, like water leaving a vessel — suggests a one-directional, permanent flow. The reality, particularly for the Turkish-British professional community, is considerably more dynamic.

The people described in this survey are, in large part, engaged in what economists call circular migration: a pattern of movement between two countries that sustains meaningful professional and personal presence in both. They attend meetings in Istanbul. They advise Turkish companies. They sit on the boards of Turkish non-governmental organisations. They bring Turkish clients to London. They introduce Turkish academic institutions to international partnerships. They are, as the survey data suggests they want to be, exactly the kind of bridge that Turkey’s own policymakers say they want — but have not yet found systematic ways to activate.

The defence sector offers an instructive example. The survey researchers noted that Turkey’s defence industry has been actively and successfully recruiting diaspora engineers and technical specialists back to Turkey, offering competitive salaries, research environments, and the specific appeal of contributing to national capability. The returnees in this sector are real; their motivation is genuine; and the lesson — that the right conditions and the right appeal can bring back significant talent — is not sector-specific.

What is true for the defence sector could, in principle, be true for healthcare, for technology, for education, for the creative industries. The 63% who want to contribute to Turkey’s educational and cultural infrastructure are not making an abstract statement. They are identifying a specific, actionable desire. The question is whether Turkish institutions, companies, and government agencies have the imagination and the operational capacity to take them up on it.

The Media and Information Ecosystem: An Underreported Story

The survey also captured data on how diaspora Turks consume news — a dimension that speaks directly to how this community forms its political views and maintains its relationship with Turkey. The finding is striking: the diaspora professional community overwhelmingly consumes Turkish news through YouTube channels and social media, rather than through mainstream Turkish television or print outlets.

The specific channels named — Neşvin Mengü, Fatih Altaylı, Sözcü TV, Özlem Gürses, Cüneyt Özdemir — are, without exception, voices critical of or independent from the governing AKP. This is not surprising given the survey’s description of who emigrated and why. But it does underscore something important about information asymmetry: the diaspora professional community has access to a much wider range of Turkish media voices than many people inside Turkey do, precisely because they are not dependent on the cable packages and algorithmic defaults that shape domestic media consumption.

For a magazine like this one — published in English, for a bilingual audience — the implication is clear. This community wants quality analysis, not propaganda. It wants its experience described accurately, not flattered. It wants its connection to Turkey acknowledged, not dismissed. And it wants, when it reads about itself, to see the complexity reflected back.

What Good Policy Looks Like: Lessons from the Data

The survey researchers were careful not to prescribe policy, but the data points in specific directions. A diaspora that is 63% willing to contribute to education and culture is telling Turkish universities, foundations, and cultural institutions something direct: come and ask. The infrastructure for doing so — diaspora engagement offices, visiting academic schemes, joint research programmes, mentorship platforms connecting diaspora professionals with Turkish early-career workers — exists in some countries and not others. Turkey has the pieces; it does not yet have the system.

The 49% who want to act as business bridges are identifying a specific economic function: the introduction of Turkish companies to international markets, and international companies to Turkish ones, through intermediaries who speak both languages in every sense. This is precisely what diaspora communities in other contexts — the Indian diaspora in the US, the Chinese diaspora in South-East Asia, the Lebanese diaspora globally — have done with enormous economic effect. Turkey’s diaspora is smaller and more recent, but it is not too early to build the institutions that would activate this potential.

The UK context adds a specific dimension. The Turkish-British professional community is, in aggregate, well-positioned to operate in both markets. It understands UK regulatory and business culture. It has networks in both countries. It reads the Financial Times and the Turkish business press. It attends London Tech Week and Istanbul’s startup events. It is already doing informally, at small scale, what could be done systematically and at far greater scale with modest institutional support.