The Impresario State: Rituals of Diaspora Governance and Constructing Regime-Friendly Publics beyond Turkey’s Borders

Abstract: Since the early 2000s, under successive Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments, Turkey has developed more systematic ‘engagement’ policies with its extra-territorial communities, including citizens abroad, kin and ‘relatives’, and non-Turkish international students sponsored to study in Turkey. This article examines the governmental techniques taken up by the ruling AKP elites to mobilize these constituencies as a source of what Félix Krawatzek and Lea Müller-Funk call ‘political remittance.’ To achieve this goal, the Turkish state has configured itself as an ‘impresario.’ It utilizes public pedagogy and political spectacle as key devices through which to generate desired remittances from extra-territorial communities, as well as to cast and craft its future leaders, friends, and allies.