Cupcea, Adriana: Religious Soft power in Turkey’s Kin State policy in the Balkans: The Role of the Diyanet and TIKA in the Muslim Communities in Kosovo and Dobruja Region in Romania. În: Armakolas, Ioannis – Bouzarovski, Stefan – Demjaha, Agon – Elbasani, Arolda – Karasniqi, Gëzim – Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie (edit.): Confronting multiple crises:local and international perspectives on policy-making in Kosovo. Kosovo Foundation for Open Society, Prishtina 2022. pp. 433 – 465. 

The chapter analyses the role of religion in Turkey’s kin state policy in the case of Muslims in Kosovo and of the Turkish and Tatar communities in the Dobruja region of Romania. More specifically, by focusing on the work of Turkish state institutions Diyanet and TIKA, the chapter investigates how Turkey accumulates religious soft power potential in Kosovo and the Dobruja region, by using its kin-state position to strengthen the Muslim communities in these states and how its kin-state religious policies are influencing and shaping the communities at the local level. The chapter also analyses the extent to which Turkey has the same purpose and the same level of influence in both Kosovo and Romania. The approach draws on Roger Brubaker’s triangular relationship of the national minority, the nation state in which the minority lives, and the homeland to which the ethnic group belongs. This framework is complemented by an additional fourth element, which is the transnational Islam, defined by John R. Bowen as a public, global space for reference and normative debate, where the norms and practices of Islam are negotiated and redefined beyond national borders. The chapter finds that in a number of manifestations of public and religious life of Muslims in Kosovo and the Dobruja region the activity of Diyanet and TIKA has produced significant soft power potential for Turkey. The analysis also identifies the key differences between the way religious influence and presence of Turkey manifested itself in the two countries as well as the different goals of Turkish policy in the two cases, largely due to the different structural elements pertaining to issues of demography and ethnic and religious make up.

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