Turkey and Japan have enjoyed friendly relations for over 125 years, with comprehensive cultural, economic, and diplomatic ties. There have been numerous state-led initiatives since diplomatic relations between the two countries began in 1924. While robust formal diplomatic relations have been ongoing for more than a century and well-documented, several Japanese expats in Turkey have also recently initiated bottom-up efforts toward the promotion of Japanese-Turkish intercultural communication. These are entirely unexplored in scholarship. In a similar vein, there are hardly any studies of individual-driven applications of citizen diplomacy (Samuel-Azran, 2019), let alone through digital means. To mitigate this lack of scholarship and adequate theory, in this paper, I analyze Japanese expat in Turkey, Yoshi Enomoto’s YouTube channel (@YoshiEnomoto). Adopting a digital discourse analysis for online videos (Bhatia, 2022), this study, at the intersection of digital diplomacy and citizen diplomacy, asks: How does Enomoto self-brand himself as a representative of Japan and Japanese culture in Turkey? Do his videos debunk or reinforce Japanese stereotypes in Turkey? More broadly, what is the potential of digital citizen diplomacy in furthering national goals? Preliminary findings show that although Enomoto invokes Japanese stereotypes that circulate in Turkey to attract viewers, paradoxically, some of his videos also perform a corrective function to debunk stereotypes. Significantly, all of his videos elicit interest in and dialogue about Japan and Japanese culture, highlighting the importance of digital citizen diplomacy toward intercultural communication and nation branding. This study complements and broadens the scope of the mostly state-centered scholarship of digital diplomacy and public diplomacy, by theorizing digital citizen diplomacy through the fusing of digital diplomacy with the Japanese concept of 民間外交 [citizen diplomacy] (Kinhide, 1975). References: Bhatia, A. (2022). Analyzing online videos. In Vásquez, C. (Ed.). Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis, 177-196. Kinhide, M. (1975). Transnationalize citizens’ diplomacy. Japan Quarterly, 22(3), 214. Samuel-Azran, T., Ilovici, B., Zari, I., & Geduild, O. (2019). Practicing citizen diplomacy 2.0:“The Hot Dudes and Hummus—Israel’s Yummiest” campaign for Israel’s branding. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 15, 38-49.