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“TURKEY IS BIGGER THAN
TURKEY”
Diaspora-​building and the transnational
politics of the Turkish state

Banu Şenay

Introduction
Burgeoning research on political transnationalism and diaspora politics has revealed the growing
concern of origin states to reach out to their emigrant populations in an attempt to build
stronger ties with them (Gamlen et al. 2019; Ragazzi 2014; Adamson 2018). The Turkish
state has been no exception. Indeed, it has been an innovator in diaspora mobilisation. From
the late 1970s onwards, when state authorities realised that most “guest workers” were now
permanent settlers in the destination countries, a shift in policy occurred, encouraging Turkey-​
born emigrants abroad not to return home but to integrate into the receiving countries and to
contribute to the political and economic affairs of their “homeland” from their new places of
residence. Much more recently, under the ruling Justice and Development Party (hereinafter
AKP), the state elites have invested themselves further in diaspora-​building efforts. Not only
has the term “diaspora” become a well-​established idiom in their language over the last decade,
but a fully-​fledged and generously funded “Diaspora Policy” has been put in place. Its aim is to
produce a “high-​quality (kaliteli) diaspora”.1
In this short contribution, I sketch out the key features of this new diaspora policy, exam-
ining the kind of affective ties that it strives to build with a cluster of groups that have been
selectively nominated and interpolated by the AKP-​led government bureaucracies as members
of a “Turkish diaspora”. What are the ideological driving forces and political objectives fuelling
the state’s outreach projects, which have expanded and diversified remarkably in recent years?
And what continuities and/​or ruptures (if any) exist with the transnational politics pursued
by state institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the AKP had not yet established its
hegemonic power over the state apparatus? Let me explore these issues by considering the last
question first as a way of offering a brief overview of the transnational politics of the Turkish
state addressing its citizens abroad.

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Diaspora-​building in historical perspective

When I first began doing fieldwork in Australia in 2007 examining the conditions that enabled
and sustained the creation of a Turkish politico-​religious transnational sphere there, the state-​
sponsored diaspora policy had not yet attained its current formalised shape and explicit char-
acter. This was just before the founding in 2010 of the Presidency of the Turks Abroad and
Related Communities (Yurtdışı Türkler ve Akraba Topluluklar Başkanlığı, YTB hereafter),
the primary bureaucratic organ charged with the coordination and management of Turkey’s
diaspora-​engagement activities. Yet as I briefly discuss below, even in a place like Australia, so
distant from Turkey’s region, the Republic still regularly addressed, politicised, and mobilised
Turkish migrants. The dual efforts to inculcate a nationalist subjectivity in Turkish emigrants,
while seeking to manufacture Islam (as the state does in Turkey) into an instrument legitimising
the Turkish state’s nationalist and laic enterprises were central to its transnational political
strategy vis-​à-​vis its emigrant population in Australia in the post-​1980 period. In my pre-
vious work I used the term “trans-​Kemalism” to capture these core dimensions of the state-​
endorsed ideology and political project seeking to configure Turkish civil society abroad (Şenay
2012; 2013).
The shifting priorities in the Turkish state’s approach to international migration and its
emigrants abroad since the beginning of large-​ scale labour emigration to Europe in the
1960s have already been analysed in a number of studies (Aydın 2014; İçduygu and Aksel
2013; Adamson 2018; Aksel 2014; Mencutek and Baser 2018). Economic concerns heavily
determined the state’s labour-​exporting policies of the 1960s and 1970s when Turkey signed a
series of bilateral agreements with the governments of labour-​demanding countries in Western
Europe (Germany, France, Austria, and the Netherlands were key destination places for
immigrants from Turkey), and with Australia. Immigration of the unskilled was encouraged as
a “safety valve” that would help alleviate high levels of unemployment in Turkey. The overall
policy in these years also promoted the return of migrant workers, even as it put in place a
number of mechanisms to attract the flow of investments and remittances. Indeed, the incoming
remittances were a major source of foreign currency, contributing significantly to Turkey’s
economy in the 1970s and 1980s.2
While national economic development objectives prevailed in the first two decades of mass
migration from Turkey, in the post-​1980 era, political concerns directed towards monitoring
and mobilising Turkish migrants were foregrounded, on the basis of a new realism concerning
the non-​return of Turkish migrants. In the 1980s and 1990s, the state’s politicisation of its
emigrants involved its policing activities, which, in the main, targeted left-​wing political
activists and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK), as well as its
explicit supporting of right-​wing, nationalist groups as a lobby force against those “dissident”
Turkish and Kurdish nationals who threatened the “national interests” of Turkey. For example,
Østergaard-​Nielsen notes that in Germany the state established “coordination councils” for
these purposes (2003: 118). Financed through the Turkish consulates, these quasi-​ official
umbrella organisations comprised right-​wing political associations set up by Turkish migrants,
including the ultranationalist Idealist Associations, closely aligned to the Nationalist Movement
Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) (Aydın 2014: 8). Following the 1980 military coup, the
consular institutions’ politicisation of Turkish emigrants intensified. In 1981, the junta made a
legal change in the citizenship law, announcing that those Turkish citizens abroad involved in
“hostile activities” against the state were to be expelled from Turkish citizenship if they failed
to return back to Turkey.3 The year 1982 marked another important event in Turkish “diaspora
policy”, the legal permission of dual citizenship, which further revealed the change in political

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consciousness that “guest workers” had now become “our residents abroad”. Following this,
the state’s obligations towards its nationals abroad were laid down in the junta-​devised 1982
constitution, holding the government responsible for ensuring the family unity, social security,
cultural, and educational needs of Turkish citizens abroad.
The Turkish state’s interpolation of its emigrant population continued in the 1990s.
According to Aydın (2014: 9), two intentions lay at the heart of the diaspora policy in this
decade: “the successful integration of all people from Turkey in the countries that received
them, and support of migrants in their demands for cultural rights”. Yet, as Aydın adds, state
officials’ take on the conception of “integration” was rather limited. Not only was migrants’
socialisation into the traditions and culture of the countries they resided in to be rejected (Aydın
2014: 9) but, at the same time, there was growing stress in the official rhetoric on migrants’
preservation of “national values” and “national culture”, as well as on the protection of “recip-
rocal interests”, imagined to tie migrants with their homeland. As one Turkish ambassador
in Australia remarked in 1993, “Every Turkish community outside Turkey is an extension
of Turkey in so much as they are representatives of Turkey. What makes them both strong is
relationships based on reciprocal interests” (Şenay 2013: 97). This entreating of people of Turkish
origin living abroad to become “an extension of Turkey” continues to inform the current dias-
pora policy, revealed in the motto of the Turkish state’s long arm, the YTB: “Wherever we have
our citizen, kin and relative, we are there.”
What were the key institutional sites and producers of the diaspora policy during the 1990s
and 2000s prior to the setting up of the YTB? As I discuss in my book Beyond Turkey’s Borders
(2013), the consular institutions formed one cluster of sites engaged in diaspora management
and collective identity construction. This was carried out via the sponsoring of a range of
events (for example, commemorative rituals, award ceremonies, festivals, and talks) aiming to
produce pride in a shared ethnic Turkism, and via the regular dissemination of information
about issues of national significance through their electronic networks. This took the form of
press releases by the Turkish army and state departments in Ankara, policy documents, declar-
ations, and speeches made by Turkish state officials on days marked on the national calendar.
Another stream of circulated material involved the petitions and protest letters that the con-
sulate wanted Turks to send out to local or national politicians, or to media organisations in
Australia. At the time of my fieldwork (2007–​2009), a good portion of these petitions and
complaint letters urging Turkish citizens to act in the name of the nation were directed against
the political initiatives of Armenian, Greek and Assyrian civil society groups, and the PKK,
including organized protest against any mention of the Armenian genocide in public discourse.
The State’s reconfiguring of its transnational constituency has also been channelled through
the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a key institutional innovation made by the Kemalist
establishment in 1924 to serve its project of governing religion and incorporating Sunni Islam
(while ignoring other heterodox expressions of the religion) into the state machinery. The
instrumental role of the Diyanet in the instituting of a Turkish-​style “secularism” –​or, for an
alternative expression, in the creation of an anthropocratic political order (see Houston 2019)4 –​
has been discussed by a large number of scholars (Gözaydın 2009; Seufert 1999; Dressler 2013).
Although in official discourse the need for the Diyanet was justified on the grounds of separ-
ating “religious affairs” from “state affairs”, in reality its practices “reinscribed Islam within
Kemalism” (Sayyid 1997: 63), even as the Republic specified what Islamic doctrine it (Diyanet)
was to preach.
From the early 1970s onwards, the Diyanet’s management of Islam began to expand beyond
Turkey’s borders, first, with its exporting of religious personnel to Europe, and then with
the subsequent opening up of Diyanet-​franchised offices in those countries with substantial

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Turkish emigrants. Its transnational mission was directed not only to the “spiritual needs” of
the diaspora. As Çitak notes, in the early 1980s (and thereafter), under the official ideology
of the “Turkish–​Islamic Synthesis”, a “concern with the rise of many political and religious
movements deemed as dangerous by the Turkish state and the corollary aim of combating the
influence of those groups” was central to the overseas expansion of the Diyanet (2011: 226).
This intention to use the religious sphere as a tool for political scrutinising and control con-
tinues to guide the extra-​territorial activities of the Diyanet today. This is evident in the recent
mobilisation of the Diyanet offices abroad as part of the government’s efforts to purge the influ-
ence of the Gülen movement (now labelled as Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü, FETÖ) following the
failed coup attempt of 15 June 2016. In a speech made in March 2019, Turkey’s vice president,
Fuat Oktay, called upon all Diyanet posts in and outside Turkey to take action against “terror
organisations like the PKK and FETÖ”, urging the Diyanet staff “to take ownership (sahip
çıkmak) of its neighbourhoods, cities, and mosques”.5 Similarly, the message calling the dias-
pora to unite against terrorist organisations reverberated in the speech that the Diyanet’s current
president, Ali Erbaş, delivered at the Gallipoli Mosque during his visit to Sydney in April
2019. According to Erbaş, an effective fight against the terrorists required consciousness-​raising
work, especially of Turkish children abroad. Stressing the urgent responsibility to protect “our
homeland, nation, ezan (call to prayer), and our flag”, the president’s address connected the
obligations extracted of external citizens to the sacrifices of the nation’s “martyrs” in places like
Gallipoli and Sarıkamış in Eastern Turkey.6
Here we find another deep-​seated continuity in the ways in which a narrative of martyrdom
and of militaristic sentiment feeds into the state-​produced speech economy directed at Islam
and Turkish Muslims abroad, seeking to mobilise a community of sentiment. The funeral
prayers in absentia held in Turkish mosques abroad for “martyred” Turkish soldiers killed in
fighting against the PKK is a powerful illustration of this (Şenay 2012). An empty coffin placed
at eye level in front of the prayer line becomes a powerful ritual device, facilitating an experi-
ence of mourning and grief for the unknown Turkish soldier. The launching of fundraising
campaigns by the Diyanet and the Mehmetçik Foundation of the Turkish Armed Forces in
order to mobilise support for the families of martyred Turkish soldiers who died fighting against
the PKK, is yet another example of the militaristic overtones of the long-​distance nation-
alism manufactured by the self-​declared “secular” state. To these, Mutluer (2018) adds the
sermons that the Diyanet issues on those days marked on the government’s national calendar.
“The frequent themes that come up in these sermons”, she notes, are “the loftiness of mili-
tary service, the virtue of defending the homeland, and the happiness of reaching the rank of a
martyr”. These efforts to nationalise Islam while utilising it as a tool for legitimising the polit-
ical intentions of the state are not separate from the Diyanet’s broader ambition of “preserving
national unity and solidarity”, as set out in its mission statement.7

“Strong diaspora, strong Turkey”: the rise of new diasporic institutions

Under the “new diaspora policy” of the conservative centre-​r ight AKP government, the con-
sular institutions and the Diyanet are not alone in managing diaspora affairs. Established in April
2010, the YTB has now championed this role, tasked with engineering a “diaspora strategy”
and strengthening Turkey’s ties with its diaspora(s). This institutional innovation is, in itself, a
testimony to how diaspora affairs have become a major concern and policy agenda item for the
AKP government since the early 2000s. As Ankara has taken concerted action by mobilising
its budgetary resources and institutional infrastructure to this end –​note also the opening up
of Yunus Emre Cultural Centres after 2007 to promote Turkish language and culture to the

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outside world (Kaya and Tecmen 2011)8 –​a much more enlarged, yet also diffused, polit-
ical imaginary of a “Turkish diaspora” emerged. It posits three constituencies as the object of
state-​sponsored policy: Turkish citizens abroad; kin and co-​ethnic communities in the Balkans,
Middle East, Caucasus, and Central Asia; and foreign students studying at Turkish universities
on YTB scholarships.
But why is there such intense enthusiasm for diaspora-​building in the first instance? As sev-
eral studies have discussed, one relevant context of the AKP government’s self-​investment in
a more assertive diaspora policy is its broader foreign policy activism (Aydın 2014; Mencutek
and Baser 2018; Akçapar and Aksel 2017; Yanaşmayan and Kaşlı 2019). This has been par-
ticularly evident in the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia where the
government has sought to play a more influential geopolitical role and bolster Turkey’s inter-
national stature. The state’s incorporation of “kin and relatives” from this vast region and of
those YTB-​sponsored foreign students into its “diaspora strategy” cannot be separated from its
ambition to create the image of a “strong” and “new” Turkey. If one side of this image-​making
involves projecting Turkey as a powerful homeland that, after decades of “benign neglect”, now
cares for its emigrants and their descendants abroad, its other side concerns fashioning Turkey
as a resilient global actor that takes an active interest and responsibility in the well-​being of its
region. In line with this vision, the instrumental role that the YTB carries as part of the broader
foreign policy is to enhance Turkey’s “soft power”. As the minister of foreign affairs, Mevlüt
Cavuşoğlu declared in a recent speech: “In the sphere of our foreign policy our soft powers are
working in full capacity and YTB is at the forefront of these. With YTB we are manifesting
Turkey’s soft power to the whole world”.9 From this perspective the government identified a
role for its expanded diaspora as a public diplomacy asset in the international arena.
Secondly, in keeping with earlier forms of transnational policy, the domestic political situ-
ation continues to shape the contours of the state’s diaspora engagement practices. Two recent
examples will suffice. First, it has been no secret that following amendments to electoral laws in
2012, which hugely expanded overseas voting,10 the ruling government has utilised the YTB
and consular institutions abroad as a means for mobilising support for the AKP (Turkish citizens
abroad have now voted in four elections and one constitutional referendum) (Yanaşmayan and
Kaşlı 2019: 29–​30; Öktem 2014: 24). Prior to the June 2018 presidential and parliamentary
elections, the YTB became the long-​distance mouthpiece of the government, disseminating
President Tayyip Erdoğan’s speech performances as he called upon “European Turks” to vote
for his party.
Another example pertains to the mission taken up by the YTB in the ongoing political
mobilisation following the failed coup attempt of July 15 (2016), involving its dissemination of
the government’s dominant narrative about the insurrection. Immediately after the event, the
YTB issued a press release and publicity material titled “15th July, The Glorious Resistance of
the Nation”, targeting external members of the nation about the real intentions of the coup’s
perpetuators, and prescribing the collective actions to be undertaken against the plotters. In
addition to its narrative work, the YTB was also active in approaching Turkish civil society
organisations abroad, especially those in the USA (where exiled Fethullah Gülen continues to
live today), calling them to take up a unified position against the enemy. In February 2019, the
YTB’s president, Abdullah Eren, announced that the projects and budgetary resources directed
at civil society groups in the USA would be increased so as to build stronger ties with them.11
Alongside this, the YTB has also participated in the government’s “ceaseless sponsoring of sym-
bolic events and crafted commemorative processes” (Houston 2018: 3) aimed at “develop[ing]
in citizens certain desired affective feelings about the plotters and the martyrs” (ibid: 10). The
series of ritual–​symbolic initiatives incorporating foreign students in Turkey illustrates this

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point. For example, not long after the failed coup, the YTB published “The Epic of 15th July
through the Eyes of International Students”, a compilation of testimonies by students reporting
how they showed solidarity with the Turkish nation in the face of the unfolding events.12 A year
later, a “martyrs vigil” was held in Ankara where foreign students offered their public prayers for
those who died, represented as faithful members of the nation and the Islamic ummah. A panel,
inviting students to discuss the potential “FETÖ threat” in their own countries, followed. As
we see below, similar government-​orchestrated initiatives aimed at constituting meaning and
affective sentiments about the attempted coup continued thereafter.
To take stock, both the foreign policy aspirations and the domestic political concerns of
the AKP government have been crystallised in its diaspora policy, which generously sponsors
a huge repertoire of activities –​pedagogical, affective, legal, policy oriented –​directed at cul-
tivating certain ties with each selected diaspora group.13 In the words of YTB’s president,
Abdullah Eren, these are “ties of citizenship” with citizens abroad; “ties of culture” with kin
and co-​ethnics; and “ties of sympathy” with foreign students undertaking tertiary education
in Turkey. What exactly do Turkish diaspora-​builders mean by these? And what strategies do
they put in place to achieve their aims? I turn to these questions in the following three sections.

i. A quality generation: crafting national consciousness

An examination of the YTB’s modes of operation in this first field of activity reveals that
underlying its efforts is a desire to create a certain type of diasporic subject: one who strongly
identifies with and remains loyal to the “homeland Turkey” while, at the same time, playing an
active role in pursuing its interests in their country of residence. A significant amount of policy
programmes tied into this diasporic subject-​formation is youth oriented. The YTB’s president
explains why: “Upon raising up a high quality generation, a high quality Turkish diaspora will,
too, emerge in politics, education, and culture”14 (5 June 2019). Yet a mood of anxiety, too,
pervades this urge to reach out to the children of Turkish nationals abroad. “We know that the
continuity of Turkish presence and Turkish cultural identity in Europe depends on our chil-
dren”, stated one state minister, prescribing that “investing in our youth” should be the main
strategy if “our goal is to enhance the quality and the prestige of our diaspora”.15
This discourse interpolating youth as “our most vital investment [yatırım]” circulates widely
in the state’s youth-​directed transnational practices. While these present a wide spectrum of
activities and policy programmes, three modes of engagement with diaspora youth especially
stand out: (i) pedagogical activities aimed at knowledge production and infilling; (ii) politics of
affect that seeks to instil in citizens a sense of belonging to the homeland; and (iii) transnational
practices tailored towards fostering active citizenship. In demarcating these modes of operation,
my intention is not to treat them as separate domains of activity –​each intersects with and spills
over the other. Here I am only artificially separating them in order to sketch out an extensive
array of practices taken up by Turkey’s diaspora builders.
The pedagogical intent and design of transnational activities aiming at identity formation
and maintenance is remarkable. A substantial number of these activities are reserved for Turkish
language training, and other educative practices through which young people abroad can be
inculcated with the so-​called values of their ancestral country. To mention a few, the “Weekend
School Programme” socialises children and young people across different age groups (6–​18)
into the Turkish language and official history. Language training also extends to preschool
groups through YTB-​initiated bilingual playgroups. To further encourage children’s exposure
to the language of their real homeland, the state has also began to establish mini-​libraries under
its “Anatolia Reading Houses” programme (the YTB aims to increase their number to 1,001

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by 2023). Further, in order to equip Turkish language teachers with appropriate skills, the
Turkish state runs special training programmes from afar, and by way of inviting teachers to
take up training in Turkey. These transnational activities of the pedagogical state are accom-
panied with a stream of prize competitions (for example, Turkish Language Awards, Gallipoli
Project Awards, etc.) as well as with a cluster of scholarship schemes (Scholarships for Citizens
Abroad) offered specifically to emigrant children so as to help “raise role models and good
quality generations” (kaliteli nesil).
Further, under the vigorous diaspora policy of the AKP, Turkey itself has become the spa-
tial focus of a large number of transnational activities assembled by the state. Each year the
YTB-​organised “Diaspora Youth Academy” brings together selected members of the youth
diaspora in Turkey for two weeks, initiating them into the fundamentals of the language, his-
tory, and culture of their ancestral home (In 2018, 47 people from ten different countries
attended). The programme’s mission is described as “consciousness raising”.16 Another initia-
tive, “Turkey Internships”, socialises university students into the bureaucratic structures of the
“home” country, setting up for them a month-​long internship at a state institution in Ankara
during which participants are also exposed to educational seminars on history learning and
various extracurricular activities. These fully state-​funded transnational practices do not merely
seek to infill emigrant youth with official history and knowledge, they also endeavour to instil
in them certain affective feelings and moods, and can thus be usefully understood also as affective
practices. The discourse surrounding the cultural mobility projects that the YTB runs emphasise
the urgent need to boost young people’s identification with and loyalty to the homeland chosen
for them. Take, for example, the “Youth Camps” project through which the YTB (together
with the Ministry of Youth and Sports) brings hundreds of young Turkish citizens from abroad
to Turkey so as to “strengthen their cultural identity and a sense of belonging to the mother-
land.” Annually held heritage tours also partake in this affective transnational field that the state
strives to build. “Evliya Çelebi cultural tours”, “Journey to Our History with Our Youth”, the
“Ottoman Civilisation Project through Bursa, Edirne and Istanbul”, and “The Canadian Youth
Is Meeting Its Ancestors” are just a few examples. The diaspora-​builders recognise that there is
no substitute for cultivating cultural intimacy with the homeland through embodied familiarity
with its landmark places, as they also take the “Turkishness” of young participants for granted.
A final major cluster of outreach programmes directed at citizens abroad endeavour to craft
active citizens. Active citizenship is understood here to build up a capacity to advocate for
issues that concern the well-​being of local Turkish communities abroad, as well as a will-
ingness to take action to defend Turkish national interests. To this end, the YTB has been
actively building relations with those “acceptable” Turkish civil society groups abroad, not only
through sending delegations from Ankara but also through its setting up of diaspora forums.
In the meantime, it has introduced a number of “awareness-​raising” programmes and finan-
cial support schemes that cater specifically for young professionals abroad. Amongst them are
the “Human Rights Education Programme”, first introduced in 2012, that provides leader-
ship training in human rights, international law, anti-​Islamism, and discrimination, and the
“Struggle against Discrimination and Islamophobia” funding programme (introduced in 2018),
which seeks to raise legal experts who can take leadership in combating racism and right-​wing
populism directed at Islam in the West. Other policy initiatives along this line involve the
“Civil Society Education Programme and the “Diaspora Communication Academy”, both of
which seek to manufacture the human capital necessary for using media effectively. A language
of “consciousness-​raising”, “network-​building”, “capacity enhancement”, and “human cap-
ital formation” resonates strongly in the state discourse on the mission of these youth-​focused
programmes.

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ii. Geography of the heart: building kinship

A second core dimension of the Turkish state’s diaspora-​building strategy under the AKP regime
has been the proliferation of kinship-​building efforts. Although the state’s engineering of a pan-​
Turkist public diplomacy to reconnect with the “ethnic Turks” in its surrounding regions is not
new,17 the incorporation of these transborder co-​ethnic communities into the state’s diasporic
imaginary is a recent phenomenon. Grounded in an ethnocultural definition of nationhood,
and fuelled by a synthesis of pan-​Turkist, pan-​Islamist, and neo-​Ottomanist political affect and
intentions, the state-​led transnational politics now prioritises also the mobilisation of cross-​
border political identifications across a vast region from the Balkans, to Africa, to the Middle
East, to Central Asia, which the YTB maps as its “geography of the heart” (gönül coğrafyası).
Political officials refer frequently to the myth of “common descent”, “shared blood”, and
“common heritage” often expressed in terms of kinship and family imagery. In a striking rhet-
orical flourish, one government official refers to the people of the Central Asian Turkic states
as “the children born from the same mother and the same father yet who grew up in different
cradle”.18 As Eriksen reminds us, kinship “is not merely about descent and blood lines; it is
also about alliances and affinality” (2004: 59). A quick glance at the rich repertoire of ritual-
istic events assembled by the YTB, and occasionally by other Turkish state institutions, over
the last five years reveals this. Take, for example, the celebration of Abdullah Kadiri, the first
Uzbek novelist, at a YTB-​organised conference in Ankara, as well as the series of commemora-
tive events dedicated to remembering the forced deportation of the Meskhetian Turks and the
ethnic cleansing and exile of Crimean Tatars under the Soviet regime.
These YTB-​sponsored “strategic memory projects” (Juan 2009) are often accompanied by
various pedagogical programmes such as cultural mobility, language training, and oral history
projects to document the “Turkish presence and heritage” in the so-​called geography of the
heart. In a recent initiative the YTB equipped kindergartens and preschool education centres in
the Gagauzia region of Moldova with Turkish language material. The efforts to expand Turkish
language learning among “siblings and relatives” also involve sponsoring them to visit the “kin-​
state”, as in the case of the Iraqi Turkmen teachers brought to Ankara for Turkish language
education. A larger YTB initiative offers scholarships to academics and bureaucrats from kin
communities to attend a ten-​month Turkish learning course in Turkey.
As with the transnational practices of the state directed at Turkish emigrants abroad, a sub-
stantial amount of effort that goes into fostering affective ties and loyalties with ethnic “Turks”
is youth oriented. Since 2016, the YTB has devised a number of cultural mobility programmes
so that kin-​youth can build intimacy and embodied familiarity with the heritage of Turkey by
being there (e.g. the Balkan Youth School, the Academy Rumeli project, the Ottoman World
Spring School). Assembling a series of seminars on Turkish history and culture, art lessons,
and trips to nationally significant sites, these transnational educational package tours integrate
young members of kin communities into a single national community in an attempt to instil in
them a sense of belonging to a transborder Turkish nation.19
Another pragmatic intention, too, drives this “kin state” enthusiasm of the current gov-
ernment, and that is, to mobilise effective ties with kin and relatives for political action. The
official discourse of “shared descent”, “shared civilisation”, and “shared identity” goes hand
in hand with the rhetoric of “finding unified solutions to [our] shared problems”, which
the YTB representations stress frequently. Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslim
diasporas are constituted by the YTB as a shared frame of reference around which collective
solidarity can be built. To this end, there has been a remarkable increase over the last five years
in the institutional cooperation platforms and transborder exchanges between the diasporic

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institutions of Turkey and kin societies. A strategic action plan was signed between Turkey,
Azerbaijan, Kirgizstan, and Kazakhstan in March 2019 to enhance “kin solidarity”. The plan
underlined the strategic importance of fostering solidarity and collective identities through the
holding of joint commemorative events (Nevruz was especially flagged), transnational educa-
tional activities, and capacity-​building projects directed at “kin diasporas”, an ethno-​linguistic
and ethno-​religious category which comprises all Turkish-​speaking and Muslim diasporas
around the world.20

iii. Islamist third worldism: ties of friendship

The third and even more interesting project of the YTB is their attempt to incorporate citizens
of a huge range of other countries as advocates and friends of the Turkish Republic (and of the
AKP government). Under its “Türkiye Scholarship” scheme (first introduced in 1992 under the
presidency of Turgut Özal, and relaunched in 2012), the Turkish government offers financial
support to international students wishing to pursue higher education at all academic levels in
Turkey including both undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes. The scholarship
covers tuition fees, a monthly stipend, a once-​off return flight ticket, accommodation, and a
default one-​year Turkish language course, which all awardees must take up. Since 2012, more
than 27,000 students have received the scholarship, the majority of whom came from less
developed Muslim-​majority countries –​or from Muslim minorities in non-​Muslim countries
such as India or Bulgaria. At the 2019 graduation ceremony, the President Erdoğan said with
pride that their target was to increase the number of international students in Turkey to 200,000
by 2024, adding that “the fact that the majority of the applications to the scholarships came
from places that struggle with hardships such as Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq,
Somalia and Myanmar proved that the program has attained its original purpose”.21
What is the purpose of the programme then? Although Erdoğan does not explicitly com-
municate the programme’s mission, the metaphorical language that he uses in addressing the
graduands give us clues about what kind of moral relationship is imagined with foreign students:

In this hall, I see the soldiers of the heart (gönül neferleri) who, with their good work,
shall serve both their home countries and the whole humanity. I see each one of our
international students and graduates as a member of the greater Turkish family, and at
the same time as representatives of their home countries. The heart of our nation and
the doors of our state are always open to them. We shall never forget you and I believe
you shall always keep us in your hearts. (emphasis mine)

The president continued his address by reminding the graduands that Turkish was now their
“shared language”, and that “they [could] communicate, run their businesses, and live their
lives in Turkish in a wide geography from North Africa to Middle East, from Eastern Europe
to South Asia.” “Being in such a great network of relationship is a priceless treasure in the con-
temporary world”, he concluded.
The state’s imagining of foreign students as kindred spirits taps into the broader goal of
the AKP government to expand Turkey’s hinterland and to create proxy groups that can be
mobilised as soft power. Students are constantly referred to as “a bridge between their home
countries and Turkey”, reminded that it is their duty to stand for Turkey’s interests as much as
they are expected to serve their own countries. Loyalty is emphasised. Back at the graduation
ceremony, the YTB’s president declares that “our graduates are now entrusted with a greater
responsibility […] Allah willing, as our voluntary ambassadors, you shall continue our vision

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that Turkey is greater than Turkey and Turkey is the hope of the world”. In the eyes of the
state officials, then, the “gift” of scholarship establishes a moral economy of exchange in which
foreign students are expected to grow a sense of gratefulness to their surrogate parent and recip-
rocate by contributing to Turkey’s affairs once they are back in their own countries.
To facilitate this, the YTB has been active in setting up alumni networks of foreign students
around its “geography of the heart”, from Senegal, Sudan, Pakistan, and Djibouti to Nigeria.
Clearly, transnational engagement with these alumni groups serves the government’s internal
political purposes. Following the “15 July” event, the YTB’s president declared that these “civil
society” groups “carry a crucial role in the battle against FETÖ”, likening them to a “safety
valve” against this terrorist organisation.22 The alumni clubs –​currently there are 25 of them
around the world –​are charged with consciousness-​raising and political lobbying in the coun-
tries in which they are based, as they also become extended spaces for government-​endorsed
ritual-​symbolic events. On July 15, 2019, the martyrs who died fighting against the coup
plotters were not only remembered and prayed for by the foreign students on YTB scholarships
in Turkey, but commemorations expanded also to the alumni associations, addressed by the
Turkish state as members of the greater family of Turks.

Conclusion
The brief analysis offered in this chapter reveals that the Turkish state has long extended its
historic social-​engineering project beyond its own territory. In the 1960s and 1970s migrants
abroad were addressed as sources of hard currency, their remittances an invaluable source in
developing the national economy. After the 1980 military coup, the Turkish state initiated
a new transnational politics, driven by an intention to ensure emigrants’ preservation of the
“correct” national culture. A more activist political practice directed at collective identity con-
struction and mobilisation for the defence of national interests marked the state policy in the
1990s and beyond. This continues to be a salient strategy informing Turkey’s diaspora policy
under the AKP regime.
However, the AKP’s diaspora policy in the more recent present has also taken on new
dimensions. Here we can identify at least three developments. First, there is the government’s
manufacturing for the first time of the “diaspora” label, an image that not only encompasses
those abroad whose origins are in Turkey, but two other selected constituencies, now also
charged with an obligation to stand for Turkey”s national interests and even to act for the
state: (pan-​Turkist) kin and relatives, and foreign (second-​and third-​world) students. A second
added dimension is the reform of the diaspora policy to become a central strategic element
in the government’s foreign policy agenda, including its expansionist and ambitious desires
to enlarge Turkey’s hinterland and to bolster its sphere of influence in its surrounding region
(“Turkey is bigger than Turkey”). In this sense, the pragmatic calculations that undergird the
state’s cross-​border politicisation and attempted mobilisation of diasporic groups no longer
derive from domestic political interests only. More, the foreign policy goals of the AKP gov-
ernment have fuelled its dual strategies of kin-​building and mobilisation of selected diasporic
groups as public diplomacy assets. Thirdly, while earlier policies were directed at emigrants as
an economic remittance source and then to punish dissident political groups amongst them, the
new diaspora policy pursues a different kind of affective politics in which the state aims to estab-
lish gift exchange relationships with its designated diasporic groups through a myriad range of
emotional, symbolic, and pedagogical activities as described above. Obligation, responsibility,
reciprocity, and belonging appear to be the keywords constituting the moral economy of this
state-​sponsored diasporic public sphere.

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Do these new developments herald a true change in the policy of Turkish state institutions,
and in Turkey’s long-​distance Kemalism? Do they signal a halt in their nationalising of the
Turkish diaspora, and of the manufacturing of Islam as an instrument that legitimises their
nationalist enterprises? My assessment is that the new diaspora policy manifests no fundamental
clash with the transnational state policies of the pre-​AKP era. Yet, unlike before, what we see
today is a systematically formulated and institutionally empowered diaspora policy that is much
more assertive in its vision and ambitious in scope. Its political practices can be described as an
enlarged tran-​Kemalism, amalgamating ethnic-​Turkism with the ideology of the Turkish-​Islam
synthesis, alongside Islamic third-​worldism.
This “new” diaspora policy is far from inclusive. Its plethora of activities has almost nothing to
offer Turkey’s Kurdish, Alevi, Christian, and Jewish minorities, abroad or at home. Accordingly,
while this chapter has focused on the strategies utilised by political elites to construct an
imagined “Turkish diaspora”, a more comprehensive way of examining it would also include
study of the interaction between state discourses and the experiences and ways of organising
themselves of all those “from Turkey” (Türkiyeli) abroad. As the analysis here shows, a diaspora
is not something that is just out “there”, something that naturally occurs as an outcome of the
movement of migrants. By contrast, it is a claim made by the state authorities, and a project to
constitute a certain kind of consciousness in subjects whom they address as members of a dias-
pora. The task of fully assessing the force and effectiveness of such consciousness-​raising work
requires us to examine subjects’ own responses to such efforts.

Notes
1 See the interview with Abdullah Eren, president of the Turks Abroad and Related Communities
(YTB) in the daily Yenişafak, www.ytb.gov.tr/​haberler/​ytb-​baskani-​abdullah-​eren-​kurumumuzun-​
calismalarini-​anlatti
2 Since 1960, Turkey has received over US $75 billion from remittances (İçduygu and Aksel 2013: 174).
3 The “Call to Return Home” was made to 29,000 people. See www.turkiyehukuk.org/​
9-​maddede-​12-​eylul-​darbesinin-​ic-​yuzu/​
4 According to Houston, what distinguishes anthropocratic political projects like Kemalism from more
secular ones, is their establishing of religio-​political apparatuses whereby God and/​or revealed law is
co-​opted and mobilised to facilitate and legitimise the rule of [some] humans over others, most often
in the form of religious institutions, education and urban ceremonies” (2019: 7).
5 The full speech is available at: www.hurriyet.com.tr/​gundem/​diyanete-​cagri-​gerekli-​tum-​onlemleri-​
almalidir-​41136441
6 www.haberler.com/​diyanet-​isleri-​baskani-​erbas-​sidney-​de-​gurbetciler-​11951348-​haberi/​
7 The Diyanet’s principles are stated on its website: https://​dinhizmetleri.diyanet.gov.tr/​sayfa/​51/​
ilkeler-​ve-​hedefler
8 Named after the fourteenth-​century Sufi mystic Yunus Emre, the Yunus Emre Foundation was
established in 2007 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Law 5653 identifies its mission: “to pro-
mote Turkey, its cultural heritage, the Turkish language, Turkish culture and art, to enhance Turkey’s
friendship and cultural exchange with other countries, […] to serve those abroad who wish to receive
education in Turkish language, culture and arts”.
9 The full speech, dated May 15, 2019, is available at: www.ytb.gov.tr/h
​ aberler/b​ akan-c​ avusoglu-t​ urkiyedeki-​
uluslararasi-​ogrencilere-​hitap-​etti
10 External electoral participation was first introduced in 1987, but this allowed voting only at polling
stations at the borders.
11 www.ytb.gov.tr/​haberler/​ytb-​olarak-​abdye-​ayri-​bir-​sayfa-​aciyoruz
12 This material is available at: www.ytb.gov.tr/​guncel/​uluslararasi-​ogrencilerin-​gozunden-​15-​temmuz-​
destani
13 The funding allocated to the YTB in 2019 was around US $60 million. Its budget is estimated to
double in the next four years, reaching $116 million by 2023. See YTB Strategic Plan Document
(2019º2023) www.ytb.gov.tr/​kurumsal/​stratejik-​plan

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14 www.ytb.gov.tr/​haberler/​ytb-​baskani-​abdullah-​eren-​kurumumuzun-​calismalarini-​anlatti
15 See the speech made by the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Ersoy, in December 2018: www.
milliyet.com.tr/​genclik-​ve-​spor-​bakani-​mehmet-​kasapoglu-​ankara-​yerelhaber-​3188868/​
16 www.aa.com.tr/​tr/​kultur-​sanat/​diaspora-​genclik-​akademisi-​2018-​programi-​basladi/​1217809
17 In 1992, the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA) was established
to pioneer Turkish public diplomacy by way of implementing development projects in Central
Asia, Caucasus, and the Balkans. Since the AKP has taken office, the TIKA-​sponsored projects have
expanded to other regions including the Middle East and Africa.
18 See the speech by Yalçın Topçu, a special adviser to President Erdoğan: www.turksoy.org/​tr/​news/​2019/​03/​
15/​turk-​dunyasi-​nin-​onculeri-​14-​dogumunun-​125-​yilinda-​ozbek-​cagdas-​romanciliginin-​kurucusu-​a
19 Sometimes state-​sponsored heritage tours are reciprocated among kin. For example, following the
YTB’s sponsoring in 2016 of a trip by a young Azeri group to the martyrs’ cemeteries in Çanakkale,
a selected group of Turkish youth were taken to Azerbaijan to visit the graves of Ottoman martyrs
(known as the Islamic Army of the Caucasus) who died there during the First World War.
20 See the YTB’s Strategic Plan (2019–​2023) document: www.ytb.gov.tr/​kurumsal/​stratejik-​plan
21 https://​turkiyeburslari.gov.tr/​en/​new/​8th-​international-​students-​graduation-​ceremony-​organized
22 www.ytb.gov.tr/​haberler/​ytb-​baskani-​abdullah-​eren-​kurumumuzun-​calismalarini-​anlatti

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