Diaspora Diplomats: Harnessing Indian and Turkish Youth Activism

With the US elections coming to a close, revolutions propping up in various international regions, and other election cycles running their courses around the globe, it’s safe to say that the youth of the world has never been more politically active. From social media trends to on the ground activism, young people are actively shaping, influencing, and overturning longstanding institutions in almost every nation. In my previous blog posts, I offered an introduction to the usage of diaspora populations by the nations of India and Turkey to expand nationalist sentiment and grow financial and cultural support for increasingly autocratic regimes. Today, I’d like to dive deeper into the government organizations that manage diaspora relations, their goals and aims, and the rationales behind youth engagements and activities.

In India, there is presently no government agency that handles direct diaspora affairs other than the Ministry of External Affairs, which handles the Republic’s foreign affairs at large. Though there had previously been a Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, this was merged with the MEA in order to further Narendra Modi’s policy of minimum government and promotion of privatization. Diaspora management, coordination, and community building have been conducted by private and often religiously affiliated organizations and individuals since the growth of the Indian diaspora in the late 20th century. In my previous blog post, I mentioned the Howdy Modi event in Houston which brought the Indian leader to America to address the Indian diaspora alongisde President Donald Trump through an organization known as the Texas India Forum. Its official social media has only been active to promote the event and has no other online presence. Like other Indian diaspora organizations, its private structure and limited visibility outside of in-person events make it incredibly difficult to trace the path of diaspora relations. 

In Turkey, however, this is far from the case, having numerous organizations that have clear links to the Turkish government and its policies. The Turkish management of diaspora relations is far more centralized and robust than that of the Indian efforts due to its origin during the Gastarbeiter period in the mid 20th century when the Turkish, German, and other European governments were seeking to manage the flow and residencies of Turkish guest workers in their respective nations. In the modern era, the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Relative Communities (YTB) manages direct cultural, political, and economic relationships today. 

According to the YTB’s website, the organization serves to assist Turk abroad as their needs and conflicts change. In the 60s during the guest worker movement, the presidency’s predecessor organization focused on finding accommodations for Turks abroad and connecting them with religious and cultural groups. In subsequent decades, the organization, alongside corresponding foreign policy, stressed social and cultural integration with their citizens’ new nations of residence. But why? If we know that the Turkish government has maintained relations with the diaspora in order to sow support for ethnonationalist ideology, why would it want its diaspora to assimilate with the German, American, and European societies they inhabit today? According to scholar Bahar Baser, the answer lies with the same rationale for engaging the Indian diaspora in a joint Modi-Trump rally: soft power and public diplomacy. By engaging with their diasporas, these governments allow for the acceptance of their respective government policies by host countries and promotion of their nations through public visibility of their diaspora members. 

Up until the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, the nation had been pursuing a foreign policy that would grow its ties to the European Union in the eventual hope that they could join the group and be provided the same benefits of visa-free travel, access to its united economy, and future financial and security benefits that could cushion future conflicts or economic struggles. A primary method of achieving this was promoting, uplifting, and recognizing the achievements and place of Turkish diaspora members in European society through the YTB in encouraging public diplomacy through assimilation and greater integration into European society. In achieving quicker membership in the EU, the Turkish government’s efforts have failed miserably. However, Erdogan and the AKP have taken strong notice of the successes in uniting various Turkic ethnic groups and sowing their support for the Turkish government. In recent years, a larger shift has been made in the messaging these diaspora groups receive. No longer does the YTB solely focus on working migrants, though their support systems still remain in the form of encouraging conferences uniting Turkic groups. Now a brunt of their work focuses on energizing and promoting public diplomacy among one of the most active and driven groups on Earth: students and youth. Researchers like Jessica Taft, an associate professor as UC Santa Cruz, have noted that youth activism and engagement in political movements is on the rise world-wide. Thus, engaging youth and appealing to their challenging of longstanding insitutions and influences is critical in expanding any ideological movement.

I mentioned in my last post that I became indoctrinated into the world of Hindu nationalism as a child and into my teenage years. I was the youth coordinator of our temple’s Chetna program for a time: a leadership group consisting of teens from 8th grade into high school. We organized youth engagement events, promoted temple activities, and encouraged volunteer work with organizations across Indianapolis and Central Indiana. From here, I was accepted into an internship with a DC based advocacy organization known as the Hindu American Foundation (HAF). It was billed to me as the largest, most powerful advocacy organization on Capitol Hill for Indian-Americans. They secured a place for me in a Hindu congressman’s office and paid for my housing. It seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. 

In my first meeting with HAF staffers, I began to realize what the organization’s true aims were. I was instructed that I should never use the term South Asian when discussing the diaspora, only the term Indian and Indian Subcontinent. I was told that India was a Hindu nation and it should remain as such. Our main concerns as an organization was tackling the issues of bigotry and racism towards Indian Americans yet much of our advocacy work seemed to be focused on promoting pro-Indian action in Congress on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir. I soon found that much of the organization’s support both financially and logistically came from VHP for America: an Hindu diaspora organization with significant ties to the ultranationalist RSS (remember them?). Much of its support was garnered through activism around the revitalization of conflict along the Pakistani-Indian Line of Control in Kashmir. Many of its senior staff had written pieces attacking Muslims in India and dismissing attacks on their communities by Hindu mobs as fake news and anti-Hindu rhetoric. 

In a time where human rights, racial equity, and anti-bigotry activism is popular among youth and students across the world, Turkish diaspora organizations and Indian advocacy organizations have pivoted their focuses and messaging towards combatting hatred and phobias. Hindu nationalist organizations have taken to promoting the awareness of “Hinduphobia,” a term that arose in the late 2000s, while Turkish organizations have promoted the youth battle against Islamaphobia across Europe. This has allowed these organizations and affiliated leaders to paint condemnations of the Indian government’s actions in restricting human rights in the region and allowing communal violence against Muslims as Hinduphobic. In the Turkish world, actions conducted by world governments in condemning the ultranationalist paramilitary organization, the Grey Wolves, have been promoted to the Turkish public as cracking down on Turkish diaspora organizations and revealing their governments to be Islamaphobic. 

I am by no means stating that bigotry against Muslims and Hindus is a manufactured occurrence. It is an incredibly real and horribly pervasive problem in Western societies. However, the co-opting of narriatives surrounding this issue by Indian and Turkish entities to promote support or sympathy with nationalist rhetoric is incredibly concerning. It taints the overall efforts of throusands of youth in advocating for equal treatment, positive outlooks, and civil rights through public diplomacy and soft power. If such an influence is allowed to continue and diaspora public diplomacy is corrupted to be only a tool for the nationalist elite in promoting further tensions and divsions within their own societies, the entire movement will be lost. 

Outside of engaging youth activism and appealing to civil rights movements to leach support for nationalist policies, organizations like HAF and YTB offer various internships and fellowships to future leaders from their respective communities. By offering resume builders and leadership opportunities, these organizations can utilize a highly motivated group of politically oriented youth to promote nationalist foreign policy and public diplomacy both in their work and their social circles. Aside from various internship opportunities and youth leadership initiatives advertised on their website, the YTB often hosts applications for Turkish and Turkic youth to visit the Republic of Turkey to learn about its modern history of independence, imperial past, or religious situation through the Evliya Celebi Cultural Trip. Similar programs also exist for Indian youth through the Indian government’s Know India Programme. 

The American Jewish community has recently seen a rise in Jewish student protest movements against their birthright trips, similar to the trips offered by both the Turkish and Indian governments. Youth are now saying that these trips further nationalist rhetoric among their peers and encourage ignorance of the Palestinian plight and occupation. In 2014, a group of researchers published a study of the Israeli birthright trip’s effect on increasing nationalism and found that it increases positive attitudes for the homeland and attitudes against the division of Jerusalem among youth in a possible peace deal without invoking ethnonationlist rhetoric. Thus, it is conceivable that such trips work as vehicles for nationalist affinity regardless of the presence of substantive “indoctrination.” In the Indian community, these can be used to paint India as a Hindu nation to Indian youth while ignoring its status as having the largest population of Muslims out of any country around the world. In the Turkish community, these trips can promote the Turkish governing regimes and the revolutionary ideals it was born from to diaspora teens while ignoring the significant issues of ethnic cleansing of Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, and other minority ethnicities in favor of a manufactured Turkish ethnostate. 

The efforts in achieving public diplomacy and engaging soft power in foreign affairs through the engagement of diasporas by the nations of India and Turkey are very clear. Though their respective agencies and affiliated organizations may have begun their work by fostering easier transitions for working migrants, they have begun to tap into youth activism in order to give greater support for their international and domestic policies and shifted their methods of engagement to fit this new era of youth activism and political involvement.

Resources

2017 Güz Dönemi Staj Başvuruları. (n.d.). Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.ytb.gov.tr/yurtdisi-vatandaslar/genel-bilgi

Baser, B. (n.d.). Turkey’s diaspora engagement policy under the Justice and Development Party. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://imi.socsci.ox.ac.uk/blog/turkey2019s-diaspora-engagement-policy-under-the-justice-and-development-party

Dogru, A. (n.d.). France to dissolve Turkish diaspora group. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/france-to-dissolve-turkish-diaspora-group/2028451

Emmott, R. (2020, October 06). Turkey’s EU membership bid evaporating, Commission says. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-eu-democracy/turkeys-eu-membership-bid-evaporating-commission-says-idUSKBN26R2NH

I. (2016, January 7). Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs merged with MEA. Retrieved from https://www.indiawrites.org/diplomacy/ministry-of-overseas-indian-affairs-merged-with-mea/

Kamdar, B. (2020, March 13). Ahead of Holi Holiday, Indian American Students Protest Hindutva. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/ahead-of-holi-holiday-indian-american-students-protest-hindutva/

Meghani, M. (n.d.). HINDUTVA: THE GREAT NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20080704173942/http://bjp.org/history/htvintro-mm.html

Stockman, F. (2019, June 11). Birthright Trips, a Rite of Passage for Many Jews, Are Now a Target of Protests. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/us/israel-birthright-jews-protests.html

Youth activism is on the rise around the globe, and adults should pay attention, says author. (n.d.). Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/09/taft-youth.html

Sasson, T., Shain, M., Hecht, S., Wright, G., & Saxe, L. (2014) Does Taglit-Birthright Israel Foster Long-Distance
Nationalism? Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 20(4): 438-454, DOI: 10.1080/13537113.2014.969149