The semantics and substance of contesting Turkishness in the diaspora

The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it deliberates the insufficiency of the ethnically loaded hyphenated identity of ‘Euro-Turks’ in defining the diverse diasporic community of Turkey’s citizens and/or their descendants in Europe. Second, it lays out the advantages and disadvantages of using the Türkiyeli concept as an alternative to the hyphenated identity Euro-Turks, which allows peoples and observers of Turkey to acknowledge and emphasise the heterogeneity of Turkey’s diasporas in Europe. In doing so, the analysis shows that the Türkiyeli identity was already introduced by Turkey’s leftist diaspora groups in Europe from the late 1960s, but has since been contested by Turkey’s different diaspora groups on the one hand, and lost in translation when converted into other languages (i.e. English, French and German) on the other.