This presentation will analyze some of the changes in Turkish political life under the AKP (Justice and Development Party; in power since 2002) on the basis of religion. Modern secular Turkey, founded in 1923 on the ashes of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, was built by almost totally rejecting its imperial, Islamic and Middle Eastern pasts. However, there has been a renewed interest, even a new centrality, of Islam in society, in education and finally in Turkey's international deployment since the beginning of the 2000s. Our study addresses how this new Islamic bent is manifested by Turkey, both by the state and non-state actors on the international stage, in their quest to be both an emerging economic force and a leader of the Muslim world. By questioning the internal political mechanisms that allowed (Kemalist) Turkey to move from a religiously neutral secular state to a leading country of the Islamic cause on the international scene, we can understand the trajectory, factors, issues and the actors of this religious internationalization within a historical construction around individual actors and specific groups. The relationship between Islam and diplomacy, or specifically Turkey's foreign religious policy, has shifted since the 1970s from a desire to balance the defence of Islam and religious neutrality to a an increasingly marked erasure of secular Kemalist ideals. In drawing on participant observation in NGOs and religious madrasas, periodicals, newspapers, and the annual reports of the Diyanet (religious affairs directorate), this paper will seek to demonstrate the deployment of a unique "Turkish Islam" in the Muslim world and thereby broaden the theoretical debate on the place of Islam in foreign policy. It will also discuss the strengths, weaknesses and challenges of Turkish religious internationalization, showing both continuities in change in Turkey's religious diplomacy, in particular in countries of Muslim west Africa, in the last decades. In adopting an approach associated with comparative transnational studies, we will argue that this Islamic civilizational discourse is sustained and implemented by both state and private actors in support of Turkish interests on the world scene.