Every year thousands of children from around the world come to Turkey for two weeks to put their skills in the Turkish language to the test in the “Turkish Olympiads.” They travel across the country and perform in large stadiums, reciting Turkish poems, singing Turkish songs, dancing Turkish folklore, and acting out skits in Turkish. The performances are televised live, covered extensively by the media, and attract thousands of spectators to the stadiums, including state dignitaries, businessmen, and prominent intellectuals. Foreign children’s performances in Turkish evoke a strong sense of euphoria and nationalist pride among the Turkish public. The Turkish Olympiads, organized by a faith-based movement in collaboration with the state, is an effective venue for public relations in domestic politics. Through an analysis of their organization, rhetoric, and symbolism, this paper seeks to explain the popularity of the Olympiads for the Turkish masses and discusses their role as a new venue for public diplomacy and the promotion of a new national image. The Turkish Olympiads provide us important insights into the construction of a new sense of Turkish national identity and state image. They explicitly challenge the defensive, insular, and statist character of the Kemalist nationalist narrative. They depict the Turkish state as a “civilizing power” in underdeveloped contexts and yet a scientifically oriented, culturally tolerant, modern Muslim state in Western contexts. They situate Turkey at the center of global economic interactions and advertise the image of a “Turkish speaking and acting foreigner” as a showcase for Turkey’s growing soft power. This paper underlines how the Olympiads constitute power for the government by energizing the masses and promoting its successes in the international arena. The research for the paper is based on interviews, on-site observations as well as the publications and websites of the Turkish Olympiads.