Turkey's diaspora youth diplomacy

This chapter examines one new feature of Turkey’s current diaspora policy, namely the enlarged diaspora imaginary of the Justice and Development Party government by focusing on an increasingly important target group: the youth. By teasing out the range of programmes and activities that Turkey’s primary diaspora institution sponsors for specific external youth groups, the chapter shows how Turkey occupies a unique place in the spectrum of migrant-sending states that strive to tap into the political capacities and contributions of their post-migrant citizens. Turkey’s current definition of a ‘diaspora’ is anchored in a rather large and flexible formulation, reckoning not only its emigrants and their children but also ‘kins’ and non-Turkish international students studying in Turkey as its external communities. The chapter analyses the importance ascribed to these youth groups from a diplomacy framework and proposes ‘diaspora youth diplomacy’ as its organising conceptual framing.