Turkey Plans to Expand Its Influence Abroad Through Mosques

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 6 – When the Soviet Union collapsed, it was commonly assumed that Iran would promote Islamic ideas and that Turkey would push secular ones. But that has never been strictly true as Tehran has pushed a variety of economic initiatives and Turkey, especially in recent years, has sought to promote Islamic ideas.
    That Turkish trend is likely to continue and even expand to judge from a report on the strategic plan of the Turkish government’s Administration for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) for the next four years (nordicmonitor.com/2024/10/turkey-aims-to-influence-millions-abroad-by-utilizing-mosques-and-government-employed-imams/).
    The plan calls for officials at Turkish embassies to work with mosques to promote Turkey’s positions, something that some West European countries are concerned about and that may increasingly dominate Turkey’s soft power efforts in the Turkic republics of the former Soviet space (vpoanalytics.com/sobytiya-i-kommentarii/turtsiya-religioznoe-vedomstvo-diyanet-rasshiryaet-zarubezhnuyu-deyatelnost/).
    That would be completely consistent with the current Turkish government’s plans to promote a Turkish world and give it an increasingly Islamic content (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/ankara-directs-turkish-schools-to-again.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/moscow-analysts-fear-turkic-world-only.html, and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/turkic-world-real-threat-to-russia-and.html).