Demographic engineering

Deliberate efforts to shift the ethnic balance of an area

Results of demographic engineering: elimination of Greek, Assyrian (listed here as "Nestorian") and Armenian populations from Anatolia and Eastern Thrace

Demographic engineering is deliberate effort to shift the ethnic balance of an area, especially when undertaken to create ethnically homogeneous populations.[1] Demographic engineering ranges from falsification of census results, redrawing borders, differential natalism to change birth rates of certain population groups, targeting disfavored groups with voluntary or coerced emigration, and population transfer and resettlement with members of the favored group.[1] At an extreme, demographic engineering is undertaken through genocide.[2] It is a common feature of conflicts around the world.[3]

## Definition

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The term "demographic engineering" is related to population transfers (forced migrations), ethnic cleansing, and in extreme cases genocide. It denotes a state policy (such as population transfer) to deliberately effect population compositions or distributions.[4]

John McGarry states that during a territorial dispute—and especially before negotiations—the disputants often try "to create 'demographic facts' on the ground which undercut the claims of competitors, strengthens one’s own claims, and present fait accomplis at negotiations".[5] He cites many examples of demographic engineering, including the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus dispute, Germans in Poland, Arab-Israeli conflict and Ossetians in Georgia.[6] Although he restricts demographic engineering to state policies, McGarry also notes the existence of "a grey area where state representatives use surrogates to inflict violence on minorities" or fail to prevent mobs, as occurred with the anti-Jewish pogrom Kristallnacht and anti-German violence in interwar Poland.[7]

## Goals

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The aim of demographic engineering does not have to be ethnic homogeneity. Before the rise of nation states demographic engineering was used to secure the newly conquered territories of empires, or to increase population levels in sparsely populated areas, often having strategic importance for imperial trade routes and increasing the political and economic power of a privileged ethnic group. Demographic engineering in the era of nation states, that is, after the decline of empires, has been used in support of the rise of nationalism (usually ethnic nationalism, but also religious nationalism).[4]

## Examples

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### Ottoman Empire and Turkey

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See also: Late Ottoman genocides and Sürgün

There are three phases of demographic engineering as a state policy of the Ottoman Empire. Between the 16th and 18th centuries the policy of population transfer was commonly practiced to achieve demographic engineering of the populations of newly conquered regions. (This type of demographic engineering is sometimes called "ethnic restructuring".) The second phase between the 1850s and 1913 saw thousands of Muslims displaced in the aftermath of significant Ottoman military defeats in the Balkans. This was also the start of demographic engineering policies in Anatolia that eventually escalated to genocide in the Armenian Genocide.[4]

According to Dutch Turkologist Erik-Jan Zürcher, the era from 1850 to 1950 was "Europe’s age of demographic engineering", citing the large number of forced population movements and genocides that occurred. He states that for much of this period, the Ottoman Empire was "the laboratory of demographic engineering in Europe".[8] Swiss historian Hans-Lukas Kieser states that the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress "was far ahead of German elites" when it came to ethnic nationalism and demographic engineering.[9] Kerem Öktem connects demographic engineering to the state-led efforts to change toponyms derived from the language of the undesired population group during or after state efforts to effect its reduction or elimination (see geographical name changes in Turkey).[10] Dilek Güven states that the 1955 Istanbul pogrom was demographic engineering because it was provoked by the state in order to cause ethnic minority citizens (Armenians, Greeks, Jews) to leave.[11] McGarry states that tens of millions of Europeans were uprooted by demographic engineering projects in the twentieth century.[12]

### Eastern Europe after WWII

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In the wake of the Second World War, most ethnic Germans fled or were expelled from the countries of Eastern Europe.[13]

### Kuwait

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In recent decades, numerous policies of the Kuwaiti government have been characterized as demographic engineering, especially in relation to Kuwait's stateless Bedoon crisis and the history of naturalization in Kuwait.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20]

The State of Kuwait formally has an official Nationality Law that grants non-nationals a legal pathway to obtaining citizenship.[21] However, as access to citizenship in Kuwait is autocratically controlled by the Al Sabah ruling family it is not subject to any external regulatory supervision.[17][21] The naturalization provisions within the Nationality Law are arbitrarily implemented and lack transparency.[21][17] The lack of transparency prevents non-nationals from receiving a fair opportunity to obtain citizenship.[22][17] Consequently, the Al Sabah ruling family have been able to manipulate naturalization for politically motivated reasons.[17][18][23][24][19][22][25][26][27] In the three decades after independence in 1961, the Al Sabah ruling family naturalized hundreds of thousands of foreign Bedouin immigrants predominantly from Saudi Arabia.[24][20][17][25][18][26][23][22][27][28] By 1980, as many as 200,000 immigrants were naturalized in Kuwait.[20] Throughout the 1980s, the Al Sabah's politically motivated naturalization policy continued.[20][17] The naturalizations were not regulated nor sanctioned by Kuwaiti law.[17][18][24][28] The exact number of naturalizations is unknown but it is estimated that up to 400,000 immigrants were unlawfully naturalized in Kuwait.[28][24] The foreign Bedouin immigrants were mainly naturalized to alter the demographic makeup of the citizen population in a way that made the power of the Al Sabah ruling family more secure.[19][17][18][24] As a result of the politically motivated naturalizations, the number of naturalized citizens exceeds the number of Bedoon in Kuwait.[22] The Al Sabah ruling family actively encouraged foreign Bedouin immigrants to migrate to Kuwait.[20] The Al Sabah ruling family favored naturalizing Bedouin immigrants because they were considered loyal to the ruling family, unlike the politically active Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian expats in Kuwait.[20] The naturalized citizens were predominantly Sunni Saudi immigrants from southern tribes.[27][24][18] Accordingly, none of the stateless Bedoon in Kuwait belong to the Ajman tribe.[18]

The Kuwaiti judicial system's lack of authority to rule on citizenship further complicates the Bedoon crisis, leaving Bedoon no access to the judiciary to present evidence and plead their case for citizenship.[22] Although non-nationals constitute 70% of Kuwait's total population the Al Sabah ruling family persistently denies citizenship to most non-nationals, including those who fully satisfy the requirements for naturalization as stipulated in the state's official Nationality Law. The Kuwaiti authorities permit the forgery of hundreds of thousands of politically motivated naturalizations[22][28] whilst simultaneously denying citizenship to the Bedoon.[22][28] The politically motivated naturalizations were noted by the United Nations, political activists, scholars, researchers and even members of the Al Sabah family.[22][17][18][24][19][23][29][25][20][26][28] It is widely considered a form of deliberate demographic engineering and has been likened to Bahrain's politically motivated naturalization policy.[17][19][27] Within the GCC countries, politically-motivated naturalization policies are referred to as "political naturalization" (التجنيس السياسي).[17]

### Israel

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Numerous policies of the Israeli government have been characterized by scholars and human rights organizations as demographic engineering.[30][31][32][33] A Human Rights Watch report charging Israel with committing the crime of apartheid cites its policies that fragment the Palestinian population in the occupied territories as facilitating "the demographic engineering that is key to preserving political control by Jewish Israelis"[34]

Israel's efforts to ensure a Jewish majority has influenced its policies towards the Israeli-occupied territories over time. David Ben-Gurion had initially been in favor of withdrawal due to the much higher birth rates of the Palestinian population in the newly occupied territories and "to insure survival a Jewish state must at all times maintain within her own borders an unassailable Jewish majority".[35] Yigal Allon was in favor of holding the Jordan Valley, which was sparsely populated, while allowing autonomy for the rest of the more heavily populated West Bank so that "The result would be the Whole Land strategically and a Jewish state demographically".[36] Large scale Russian Jewish immigration to Israel was hoped, by the Israeli right which favored retaining the territories, to be enough of a buffer to allow for both absorption of those territories and maintain a Jewish majority.[35] The West Bank barrier follows a route to maximize the inclusion of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and minimize the Palestinian population, with Ariel Sharon telling Arnon Soffer "For the world it is a security fence but for you and me, Arnon, it is a demography fence."[37]

Israel's efforts to establish a Jewish majority that would ensure control over the Palestinian population extended to Israel proper. Following an attack by Jewish forces on Lod that saw the fleeing or expulsion of 20,000 Palestinians from the city, the Palestinian population attempted to return to their homes. The Israeli response was to both rebuff them with military attacks and to settle a massive number of Jewish immigrants in the now seized properties that had been abandoned. While 1,030 Arabs were allowed to remain in Lod, in the years immediately following the 1948 war over 10,000 Jewish immigrants were settled in the city. A new master plan for the city saw massive construction of housing and other infrastructure for Jewish residents, unlike the intensive demolition carried out in the Arab core of the city.[38]

A 2017 report by Richard A. Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, and Virginia Tilley, a political scientist from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, wrote that "The first general policy of Israel has been one of demographic engineering, in order to establish and maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority."[39]

### Syria

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During the colonial period, the French used demographic engineering, among other measures, to contain the Arab nationalism. For example, the "loyal" refugees were resettled in strategically important areas.[40]

The Syrian government's actions in Homs during the Syrian Civil War were described as demographic engineering seeking "to permanently manipulate the population along sectarian lines in order to consolidate the government’s power base."[41]

## Forms

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Forms of demographic engineering in recent decades include:

* Population measurement[30]
* Pronatalist policies[30]
* Assimilation[30]
* Boundary changes[30]
* Economic pressures (both direct and indirect)[30]
* Population transfers (ethnic dilution, ethnic consolidation and ethnic cleansing)[30]

## See also

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* Cultural assimilation
* Deportation
* Ethnic cleansing
* Ethnic nationalism
* Genocide
* Immigration
* Racial segregation
* Settler colonialism
* Forced sterilisation
* Forced adoption
* Social cleansing
* Redlining
* Internal colonialism
* Illegal immigration to the United States
* White genocide conspiracy theory
* Great Replacement conspiracy theory
* Eurabia conspiracy theory

## References

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1. ^ a b Üngör 2011, p. x.
2. ^ Morland 2016, p. 36.
3. ^ Aktürk, Şener (2024-04-01). "Not So Innocent: Clerics, Monarchs, and the Ethnoreligious Cleansing of Western Europe". International Security. 48 (4): 87–136\. doi:10.1162/isec_a_00484. ISSN 0162-2889.
4. ^ a b c Şeker, Nesim (2007). "Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Armenians". Middle Eastern Studies. 43 (3): 461. doi:10.1080/00263200701246157. S2CID 145162078.
5. ^ McGarry 1998, p. 627.
6. ^ McGarry 1998, passim.
7. ^ McGarry 1998, p. 622.
8. ^ Zürcher 2009, pp. 1000–1005.
9. ^ Kieser 2018, p. 317.
10. ^ Öktem 2008.
11. ^ Güven, Dilek (2011). "Riots against the Non-Muslims of Turkey: 6/7 September 1955 in the context of demographic engineering". European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey (in French) (12). doi:10.4000/ejts.4538. ISSN 1773-0546.
12. ^ McGarry 1998, p. 630.
13. ^ Weiner, Myron; Teitelbaum, Michael S. (2001). Political Demography, Demographic Engineering. Berghahn Books. p. 66\. ISBN 9781571812537.
14. ^ "Kuwait's humanitarian disaster Inter-generational erasure, ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Bedoon". OHCHR. 2019.
15. ^ "Kuwait's Laws and Policies of Ethnic Discrimination, Erasure and Genocide Against The Bedoon Minority Submission on 'Human Rights Protections for Minorities Recognised in the UN System'". Susan Kennedy Nour al Deen. 2020.
16. ^ "Kuwait Bedoon - Special Rapporteurs, United Nations, Requesting Investigation of Kuwait's Treatment of the Bedoon". Un Special Procedures Request. January 2019.
17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rivka Azoulay (2020). Kuwait and Al-Sabah: Tribal Politics and Power in an Oil State. Bloomsbury. p. 100-110. ISBN 9781838605063. "Political naturalizations of tribesmen"
18. ^ a b c d e f g h Claire Beaugrand. "Statelessness and Transnationalism in Northern Arabia: Biduns and State Building in Kuwait, 1959–2009" (PDF). p. 137\. "Extra-Legal Naturalisations and Population Statistics"
19. ^ a b c d e Michael Herb (18 December 2014). The Wages of Oil: Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE. Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801454684. "How then do we explain the naturalizations that have occurred in the Gulf states in the past, such as the granting of citizenship to thousands of bedu (bedouin) by Kuwait in the 1960s and 1970s? Typically these naturalizations were imposed by the ruling families and were designed to alter the demographic makeup of the citizen society in a way that made the power of the ruling families more secure"
20. ^ a b c d e f g Andrzej Kapiszewski (2005). "Non-indigenous citizens and "stateless" residents in the Gulf monarchies. The Kuwaiti bidun" (PDF). p. 70.
21. ^ a b c "IV. DISCRIMINATION BASED ON ORIGIN AND STATUS: THE BIDUN". Human Rights Watch. 2000.
22. ^ a b c d e f g h "Human Rights Council, Forty-sixth session, 22 February–19 March 2021, Agenda item 3, Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development. Written statement* submitted by International Council. Supporting Fair Trial and Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization in special consultative status. The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31". United Nations. 17 February 2021. p. 2\. Archived from the original on 5 April 2021. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
23. ^ a b c Frederic Wehrey, ed. (February 2018). Beyond Sunni and Shia: The Roots of Sectarianism in a Changing Middle East. Oxford University Press. p. 186\. ISBN 9780190911195. "To counter the strong influence of Arab nationalism in the decades after independence in 1961, Kuwait naturalized more than 200,000 Bedouin tribesmen to serve as a reliable pro-government bloc in parliament."
24. ^ a b c d e f g Rivka Azoulay (2020). Kuwait and Al-Sabah: Tribal Politics and Power in an Oil State. Bloomsbury. p. 21\. ISBN 9781838605063.
25. ^ a b c Gwenn Okruhlik (February 8, 2012). "The identity politics of Kuwait's election". Foreign Policy.
26. ^ a b c Justin Gengler (August 29, 2016). "The Political Economy of Sectarianism in the Gulf". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
27. ^ a b c d John Warner (April 17, 2013). "Questioning Sectarianism in Bahrain and Beyond: An Interview with Justin Gengler". Jadaliyya.
28. ^ a b c d e f Sheikh Sabah Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah (February 10, 2018). "اتقوا الله وجنِّسوا الكويتيين البدون". Al-Shahed Newspaper (in Arabic).
29. ^ Mohammad E. Alhabib (2010). The Shia Migration from Southwestern Iran to Kuwait: Push-Pull Factors during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Thesis). Georgia State University. p. 46.
30. ^ a b c d e f g Bookman 2002, pp. 25–51.
31. ^ Nadim N. Rouhana; Sahar S. Huneidi (February 2017). Israel and its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State. Cambridge University Press. pp. 166–. ISBN 978-1-107-04483-8.
32. ^ Abdulla, Rinad (2016). "Colonialism and Apartheid Against Fragmented Palestinians: Putting the Pieces Back Together". State Crime Journal. 5 (1): 51–80\. doi:10.13169/statecrime.5.1.0051. "Israel has used deliberate demographic engineering in the entire Palestine–Israel region to fragment territory and people to create and maintain dominance of an immigrant Jewish population: demographically, economically and politically."
33. ^ "A Threshold Crossed". Human Rights Watch. 2021-04-27. Retrieved 2021-05-23.
34. ^ "A Threshold Crossed". Human Rights Watch. 2021-04-27. Retrieved 2021-05-25.
35. ^ a b Morland 2016, p. 155.
36. ^ Morland 2016, p. 156.
37. ^ Morland 2016, p. 159.
38. ^ Tzfadia & Yacobi 2007, p. 439–441.
39. ^ "Falk & Tilley (ECSWA), Israel Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid". The Palestine Yearbook of International Law Online. 20 (1). Brill: 233. 2020-07-22. doi:10.1163/22116141_020010010. ISSN 2211-6141.
40. ^ Cimino, Matthieu (2020). Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State. Springer Nature. p. 51\. ISBN 9783030448776.
41. ^ "No Return to Homs: A Case Study on Demographic Engineering in Syria". ALNAP. Retrieved 26 December 2021.

## Sources

[edit]

* Bookman, Milica Zarkovic (2013) [1997]. The Demographic Struggle for Power: The Political Economy of Demographic Engineering in the Modern World. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-24829-1.
* Bookman, Milica Zarkovic (2002). "Demographic Engineering and The Struggle for Power". Journal of International Affairs. 56 (1): 25–51\. JSTOR 24357882.
* Kieser, Hans-Lukas (2018). Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-8963-1.
* Lay summary in: Kieser, Hans-Lukas. "Pasha, Talat". 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
* McGarry, John (1998). "'Demographic engineering': the state-directed movement of ethnic groups as a technique of conflict regulation". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 21 (4): 613–638\. doi:10.1080/014198798329793.
* Morland, Paul (2016). Demographic Engineering: Population Strategies in Ethnic Conflict. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-15292-7.
* Öktem, Kerem (2008). "The Nation's Imprint: Demographic Engineering and the Change of Toponymes in Republican Turkey". European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey (7). doi:10.4000/ejts.2243. ISSN 1773-0546.
* Schad, Thomas (2016). "From Muslims into Turks? Consensual demographic engineering between interwar Yugoslavia and Turkey". Journal of Genocide Research. 18 (4): 427–446\. doi:10.1080/14623528.2016.1228634. S2CID 151533035.
* Tirtosudarmo, Riwanto (2019). "Demographic Engineering and Displacement". The Politics of Migration in Indonesia and Beyond. Springer. pp. 49–68\. ISBN 978-981-10-9032-5.
* Tzfadia, Erez; Yacobi, Haim (2007). "Identity, Migration, and the City: Russian Immigrants in Contested Urban Space in Israel". Urban Geography. 28 (5). Tayloy & Francis: 436–455\. doi:10.2747/0272-3638.28.5.436. ISSN 0272-3638. S2CID 145502001.
* Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2011). The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-965522-9.
* Weiner, Myron; Teitelbaum, Michael S. (2001). Political Demography, Demographic Engineering. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-57181-254-4.
* Zürcher, Erik-Jan (2009). "The Late Ottoman Empire as Laboratory of Demographic Engineering". Il Mestiere di Storico (1): 1000–1012\. doi:10.1400/148038.