This presentation focuses on the interwar migration of non-Turkic Muslims from Yugoslavia to Turkey - migration that became an important element in nation building processes for both states newly created after World War I. The Turkish Republic inherited the Ottoman flow of migrants and continued to be perceived as a safe haven for Muslim minorities fleeing various oppressive regimes, even when they were not Turkish. Faced with the continued influx of migrants from the Balkans, Turkey pursued a regional policy of normalization with the Balkan states that would also regulate travel and migrant properties in their home countries to somewhat offset the costs of migrant settlement. Furthermore, Turkey went on to conclude population transfer agreements where the parties considered the Greek-Turkish population exchange as an example of success. The legacy of Ottoman migration policy, the experience of Ottoman immigrant management, and the large numbers of already naturalized immigrants represented an important precedent in continuation of such practice in Turkey. Turkish asylum policy defined the non-Turkic migrants as those “affiliated with Turkish culture” to encompass the mostly Slav and Albanian Muslims fleeing violence, discrimination, and dispossession in Yugoslavia. The non-Turkish speaking migrants were accepted as muhacir, but they were also ecnebi, so measures were taken to integrate them into the Turkish national body through settlement laws and naturalization processes that did not always materialize as planned. At the same time, Yugoslav and Albanian Muslims – officials and migrants – lobbied to discourage migration, while some even managed to return. Based on Turkish and Yugoslav sources, this study analyzes the significance of migration in nation-state building processes in the early Turkish Republic, and the roles migrants came to play in crafting the national character and state policies of their new homeland well into the twentieth century.