Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives: Implications of Global Power Shifts 3030926478, 9783030926472

Citation preview

Global Power Shift

Toni Alaranta

Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives Implications of Global Power Shifts

Global Power Shift Series Editor Xuewu Gu, Center for Global Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany Managing Editor Hendrik W. Ohnesorge, Center for Global Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany Advisory Editors G. John Ikenberry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Canrong Jin, Renmin University of Beijing, Beijing, China Srikanth Kondapalli, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Beate Neuss, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany Carla Norrlof, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Dingli Shen, Fudan University, Shanghai, China Kazuhiko Togo, Kyoto Sanyo University, Tokyo, Japan Roberto Zoboli, Catholic University of Milan, Milano, Italy

Ample empirical evidence points to recent power shifts in multiple areas of international relations taking place between industrialized countries and emerging powers, as well as between states and non-state actors. However, there is a dearth of theoretical interpretation and synthesis of these findings, and a growing need for coherent approaches to understand and measure the transformation. The central issues to be addressed include theoretical questions and empirical puzzles: How can studies of global power shift and the rise of ‘emerging powers’ benefit from existing theories, and which alternative aspects and theoretical approaches might be suitable? How can the meanings, perceptions, dynamics, and consequences of global power shift be determined and assessed? This edited series will include highly innovative research on these topics. It aims to bring together scholars from all major world regions as well as different disciplines, including political science, economics and human geography. The overall aim is to discuss and possibly blend their different approaches and provide new frameworks for understanding global affairs and the governance of global power shifts. All titles in this series are peer-reviewed.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/10201

Toni Alaranta

Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives Implications of Global Power Shifts

Toni Alaranta Finnish Institute of International Affairs Helsinki, Finland

ISSN 2198-7343 ISSN 2198-7351 (electronic) Global Power Shift ISBN 978-3-030-92647-2 ISBN 978-3-030-92648-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book is about Turkey in a changing international system. The purpose is to draw together various distinct strains in its history: the Republic of Turkey with its ever-changing and constantly reinterpreted experiment with modernization; Turkey’s increasingly activist foreign policy during the past two decades; the heated debates about the fate of what is called the Liberal International Order; and various layers in the study of ideology and narrative. Fortunately, the book will see daylight before 2023, the centennial year of the Republic of Turkey. Naturally, it is tempting to use the forthcoming 100th anniversary as an opportunity to synthesize and explain current events and trends against the backdrop of its entire nation-building project. Nation states are peculiar entities. They may seem to be self-sufficient, with distinct national narratives, yet they are also profoundly constituted by the overall international system within which they come into being, in constant interaction. I hope this book captures these mechanisms and gives the reader a better understanding of contemporary Turkey on the eve of its centennial while shedding light on relevant aspects of ongoing global power shifts. Helsinki, Finland

Toni Alaranta

v

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Turkey in the World: Change as Processes and Narratives . . . . . . . . 1.2 Research Questions and the Structure of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 10 17

2 The Global Power Shift and Liberalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The Liberal Narrative in IR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Liberal Contradictions and the Multiplex Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19 19 22 28

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 The European Context of Kemalist Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Kemalism Past and Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Turkey in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31 31 40 48 59

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Domestic Power Struggle and the Politics of History . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63 63 75 90

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5.2 Secular-Liberal Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Turkey and China in the New World Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Narrating Russo-Turkish Rapprochement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

123 123 129 137

vii

viii

Contents

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 The Pandemic and Turkish Visions of the Post-Pandemic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

139 139 153 166

8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Turkey in the World: Change as Processes and Narratives It has been increasingly recognized that changes in international relations and the concomitant alterations in the distribution of power in world politics are essentially a combination of processes and narratives. The accounts produced and consumed about the actors, their mutual relationships, and the characteristics of the current state of the world are ultimately stories with characters in which processes evolve as sequences of events in particular times and places. One such prominent narrative of the current era describes a major transformation on a systemic level, a weakening if not the outright collapse of what is called the Liberal International Order. As this influential story evolves, states and international organizations are starting to put significant amounts of energy into ensuring that ‘their narrative’ is the one that dominates or at least becomes duly recognized, in shaping conceptions about international reality. Within the larger struggle over the ability to shape narratives about global politics is profound narrative contestation within individual nation states, nowadays often characterized by highly conflicting views about the national identity and the ideal future of the political community. Even a precursory look reveals the recent emergence of deep domestic dispute in nations such as the US, France, Hungary, the UK, and many others, about the national identity and the proper place of these states in the international system. In this way, these various and contested narratives develop in tandem with various multi-level processes that combine several materials and ideational factors from the micro to the macro level. This book is about Turkey in an age of ongoing shifts in global power. More specifically, it identifies the international and domestic historical processes that have produced a certain type of dualistic narrative tradition concerning Turkey and its place in the world. It also investigates how the global power shift—understood here as both a process and an influential story—is represented in recent narratives of Turkish foreign policy. Stories focusing on Turkey’s place in the world, on its actual and ideal responses to opportunities, challenges, and threats in the international arena, are thus © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Alaranta, Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9_1

1

2

1 Introduction

set, first and foremost, in the context of the ongoing transformation of relative power in the international (state) system. Within the most immediate domestic sphere, since July 2018 Turkey has gone through a change of political system from parliamentarian to presidential, as powers have increasingly accumulated around incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, backed by his close circle of loyal advisers. This domestic transformation in regime type is thus the immediate domestic context for the current study. However, it should be pointed out that the concentration of power and the ongoing domestic Islamic-conservative state project were initially launched in 2002, and reached an early culmination point in 2010. Turkey’s citizens voted for a major package of constitutional amendments, which many analysts identify as the first major formal steps toward increasing power concentration. Although many of the reforms introduced in 2010 were generally positive, the new formulation for the appointment of judges to Turkey’s higher courts specifically gave the executive branch unchecked authority (Ye¸silada, 2013, p. 88; Ciddi, 2011). In this sense, the road to an increasingly authoritarian system in the country was initially embarked upon in a framework of liberal concepts and reformist legislation. On the global scale, on the other hand, the reforms were largely interpreted at the time as signs of larger processes of liberal internationalism. Thus far, the overall concentration of power has led to the accumulation of power in the formulation of Turkish foreign policy in fewer hands than before. The establishment of the presidential regime has thus already had profound effects on the making and substance of Turkish foreign policy, as its traditional statecraft, and particularly its Western orientation has been rapidly eroding (Kiri¸sçi & Toygür, 2019, p. 3). At the same time, what could be called Turkey’s foreign policy narratives have become more varied, and what is more, the sites in which its place in the world during the ongoing shift in global power are constantly being renegotiated. This could also be defined as the ‘politics of foreign policy’ in that the government has explicitly declared its intention to refashion the country’s foreign relations. The foreignpolicy initiatives implemented in recent years—its decoupling from the West, the search for strategic autonomy (Keyman, 2021), and increasingly transactional relations with all states (Aydınta¸sba¸s, 2020)—have undoubtedly been one major driver of this increasing domestic contestation. The same could be said about the presidential regime. Supporters of the incumbent Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) Islamic-conservative state-transformation project see the new system as the long-awaited finalization of the allegedly ‘healed’ state-society relationship, whereas its opponents perceive it as an unacceptable power grab. Thus, the controversies and, in many cases, outright oppositional interpretations one finds in these narratives are exacerbated by both the domestic power concentration and Turkey’s increasingly active factual foreign policy. In particular, the country has been heavily involved in two major international armed conflicts, namely the Syrian and Libyan civil wars. On the other hand, this foreign-policy activism is taking place in an increasingly conflictual global context in which old alliances are challenged and major-power competition is on the rise. Turkey’s foreign-policy narratives are clearly strongly affected by these structural changes, reflecting new hopes and threats.

1.1 Turkey in the World: Change as Processes and Narratives

3

The Western debate on the current state of international politics is full of analyses pointing to a decline in if not the complete collapse of what is called the Liberal International Order (LIO). The inauguration of Biden as US president in January 2021 may have slightly lessened anxieties in this respect, but it is unlikely to change the big picture. Irrespective of whether one accepts or refutes the notion of a coherent liberal international order that is now under severe pressure, one thing is certain: a global power shift is happening, and the main driver is the economic growth of China. Further, following this economic growth is an increasingly assertive Chinese foreign policy worldwide (Bishop, 2020). At the same time, Russia, using both force and diplomacy, has re-emerged as a powerful global actor, although its economy is relatively weak compared to China, the EU, and the US. The question of what exactly has already changed, and what is the destiny of the Western-originated, mostly American-led international order remains the subject of heated polemics, but the power shift is by now beyond any serious doubt. There are thus many debates and controversies regarding the geographical and normative scope of the liberal international order since its inauguration after World War II, but from the perspective of the Western liberal establishment, its decline is seen as highly negative and degenerative. On the other hand, in Turkey, the current power shift is often perceived in terms of opportunities rather than threats. This observation is a useful starting point in all debates on Turkey-West relations, as Turkey seems to be the only NATO country not only adjusting to but also actively advancing the ‘new multipolarity’, possibly together with Hungary (Zaman, 2021). As I will show in what follows, many Turkish commentators see the current state of the international system as the next, albeit ambiguous step in the transformation that started at the end of the Cold War. Ever since the 1990s, the Turkish debate on foreign and security policy has been characterized by a multi-faceted search for a new, more prominent role for Turkey (Sayarı, 2000). The foreign-policy narratives analyzed in this study capture this currently ongoing debate. Turkey’s incumbent Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002 with a democratizing agenda. It accelerated the country’s bid for European Union membership by continuing and speeding up EU-related reform packages initiated by the previous coalition government. At the same time, the EU clearly signaled that it was close to starting the official negotiation process with Turkey, which it eventually did in 2005 (Tocci, 2014, p. 2). Above all, the new AKP government engaged in a liberal critique of Kemalism—Turkey’s long-term state ideology—and managed to get on board a large spectrum of actors from liberal Europhiles to religious conservatives. Using liberal notions of rights and freedoms in its attack, the leaders of the AKP drastically switched their political articulation, which until then had concentrated on criticizing the ideology from an Islamist perspective. However, after the abovementioned 2010 referendum, the narratives espoused by the AKP’s leading cadres abandoned the previous vocabulary and have since increasingly criticized liberalism and its alleged excessive departure from Islamic, religious-civilizational premises. Nevertheless, there is a danger in putting too much weight on the AKP’s transformation. One could also argue that although the party has definitely changed its political rhetoric, the core mentality of the leading cadres has moved very little. Hakan Yavuz,

4

1 Introduction

writing as early as in 2009, pointed out (in the footnotes) that although the AKP had moderated its ideology to achieve power, it was still true that ‘the perennialist cult within the AKP is very powerful. Their main target is the secular foundational principles of the republic’ (Yavuz, 2009, p. 95). The revisionist account of Turkey’s twentieth-century political history has, for three decades by now, tended to downplay the positive aspects of Kemalist modernization and to highlight the problems and negative consequences. According to ˙Ilter Aytürk (2015, p. 2), this could be defined as a ‘post-Kemalist paradigm’. Its grounding assumption has been to locate the causes of Turkey’s limited democracy, authoritarian tendencies, polarizing political culture, and disrespect for human rights in the period 1908–1950, in other words to the late Ottoman and early Republican era that was dominated first by the Young Turks (1908–1914) and subsequently since 1923 by the Kemalist one-party regime. The tendency to equate authoritarianism with the Young Turk and Kemalist eras started with the notion that the 1902 ˙ congress of the Young Turks’ Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti) saw the triumph of Turkish nationalism over competing currents, especially Ottoman liberalism. These discussions centered on the theme of the so-called ˙ ‘Second Republic’ (Ikinçi Cumhuriyet) during the 1990s, the implication being that the top-down modernization and secularization project had not produced democracy in Turkey. Accordingly, there was a need to establish a ‘second Republic’ that would end discrimination against various minorities, whether ethnic or ideological and replace it with a genuine civil society and liberal democracy (Özkazanç, 2005, pp. 63–73). The normalization process that, according to both liberal intellectuals and AKP actors, has taken place recently increases the tendency to emphasize the enduring state tradition in Turkey, previous scholarship having produced a narrative according to which the so-called Kemalist state managed to reproduce itself decade after decade, always securing its basic ideological tenets and internal coherence. Within this discourse, the authoritarianism of the Erdo˘gan regime is often explained not in terms of its own characteristics but as a continuation of Young Turk and Kemalist authoritarianism, ultimately implying that all undemocratic developments in Turkey are reducible to the ‘original sin’ of previous authoritarian modernizers. This book is grounded on the conviction that, after two decades of AKP rule, it is necessary to scrutinize the post-Kemalist paradigm with a critical eye and to conduct an analysis that combines international and domestic processes and narratives. What seems to be in place today is an interconnected mechanism that somehow brings together several phenomena. First, there was the AKP’s initial critique of Turkey’s state-led secular-national (Westernizing) modernization project based on liberal concepts that were widely in circulation in the post-1991 world, dominated by an allegedly ‘benevolent hegemon’ (the US). This was followed in around 2010 by an increasingly Islamic-conservative narrative, authoritarian power concentration, and the AKP’s abandonment of liberal-democratic ideals. Simultaneously with Turkey’s authoritarian turn, there has been an increasingly anxious debate about an alleged crisis in the Western-led liberal international order and the relative weakening of the

1.1 Turkey in the World: Change as Processes and Narratives

5

West. Finally, a more assertive Turkish foreign policy has emerged, which underscores Turkey’s role as the leader of the Islamic world and the country’s decoupling from the West. The big picture thus seems to pose several difficult questions regarding the interconnectedness—and internarrativity—of Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies, and the transforming international system. The aim of the present book is to tackle this cluster of problems through the analysis of current Turkish foreign-policy narratives and the long-term historical processes that have enabled them. As understood here, talk about a global power shift indicates a change that simultaneously affects processes and narratives. In the domestic context, the response to these change-producing processes and the concomitant stories that allegedly describe them is an endless array of narrative evaluations that could be called foreign-policy narratives. Such narratives, on the other hand, concern domestic politics just as much as, or sometimes even more than, the state’s foreign policies and relations with the outside world. State-level ‘strategic narratives’ and foreign- and security-policy strategies devised by government authorities tend to eradicate or hide any serious domestic contestations about the long-term strategy. As interpreted in this work, a foreign-policy narrative differs precisely because it encompasses a larger bulk of texts commenting on the country’s external environment and its preferred actions. In this sense, it is, among other things, the site of a struggle over the meaning, nature, and interest of the national community embedded in the international state system that is going through an explicit process of change. Although this book analyzes a large number of texts produced by various authors in different years, it goes without saying that it covers only a fragment of the total output of statements, official government documents, scholarly articles, think-tank briefings, newspaper articles, and the like that is constantly produced in Turkey. However, we all come across fragments in our lives—they constitute individual experience, as it is impossible to reach ‘all’ that is taking place in the external reality. Furthermore, each foreign-policy narrative comprises such fragments, thereby offering its own interpretation of the world. It has recently been observed in the US, to give one prominent example, that there are several competing national narratives, such as ‘restorationist’, ‘America first’, and ‘democratic community’ (Gvosdev, 2019). From the outset, one is welladvised to note the inherent circularity: foreign-policy narratives present the world (the processes), but at the same time they are constantly affected by the international state system, endlessly generating new events and mechanisms requiring new (narrative) responses. On the theoretical level, this mechanism is based on the difference between events and their representation: the difference between a story (events or a sequence of events) and narrative discourse (how the story is conveyed). In the case of non-fiction, such as foreign policy narratives, a determining element is, of course, a reference to the real world (Abbot, 2008, p. 15). It is argued in this book that the two-part conceptualization of change as a combination of processes and narratives is especially useful when there is massive controversy about a state’s current position, together with alleged indicators of a major change in its long-term strategic culture that other states tend to perceive as increased

6

1 Introduction

unpredictability. On such occasions, the debate often becomes stuck in endless quarrels about what has changed and to what extent. The current debate about Turkish foreign policy and the country’s future relations with its traditional Western allies is a typical example of this (see, for instance, Danforth, 2021). It may be that, by analyzing a country’s position within the broadly understood framework of change consisting of processes and narratives, one can move beyond strict, short-term judgments, instead paying attention to what seems to be within the boundaries of the possible. In other words, aspects of the narratives that are widely used by different groups and constituencies could form the building blocks of the strategic culture at any given present, indicating the limits beyond which actual foreign policy is highly unlikely to move. This does not rule out the emergence of a completely new and radical foreign-policy doctrine, with no previous narrative tradition, although that sort of radical break is relatively rare. The concept of narrative has become almost all-embracing in humanities and the social sciences in recent decades, and in the view of many, no doubt, its explanatory value and thus its utility has been exhausted. However, it has also been very convincingly argued that narrative form penetrates fundamental cognitive processes (Akimoto, 2019), and those identities as individual persons and as members of meaningful communities are constituted in and through narratives (McAdams & McLean, 2013; Brockmeir & Carbaugh 2001). Thus, from this perspective, the question of whether narrative has any explanatory power left misses the point. The phenomenon to which this concept refers is very real, and it is hardly disappearing: it is difficult to see how it could be abandoned in debates and studies about purposeful human actions in international relations. From these premises, this book does not purport to develop any new theory of narrative. Instead, it adopts the concept to categorize a large number of texts that comment on international relations and Turkey’s place in the world as a sequence of events and processes taking place in particular times and places. As understood here, a narrative is simply the form in which a group of incidents, events, and processes come together in the act of narration, thus becoming meaningful as parts of an interpreted whole. Intentionality is to be underscored. The act of writing about global politics and Turkey’s place in it should be seen as purpose-oriented, an intentional act through which the writer actively interprets the world around, and then offers that interpretation to others in the form of a narrative. In this way all narratives have their ‘flesh-and-blood’ agency—they are produced by specific actors in specific circumstances rather than ‘floating in the air’ or emanating from some sort of enigmatic and ahistorical discourse (see, for instance, Mühlberger, 2020). As I explain in the next paragraph, this intentionality and emphasis on individual actorness are implied in my conceptualization of foreign-policy narratives as micro-level constituents of macro-level ideational structures of the international system. Thus, it is posited that foreign-policy narratives have their own discursive power, at least potentially, and thus a specific kind of explanatory power. Individual Turkish commentators telling stories about global politics, and about Turkey’s role in them, obviously cannot have any direct effect on the material basis of the distribution of global power, namely the size and capability of military forces, the size of national

1.1 Turkey in the World: Change as Processes and Narratives

7

economies, the level of technological development in various states, or the size of populations. These are the indicators that tend to be highlighted, especially in realist interpretations of global politics based on power distribution. There is no reason to doubt that these material capabilities exist irrespective of the narrative. However, narratives are crucial in conveying the relative meaning of these capabilities and their relations to other forms of power, as well as the conceptions of actors and their roles in the international system. Accordingly, narratives have, at least potentially, a direct effect on conceptions about the characteristics and legitimacy of the international order, and on the reception and credibility of the strategic narratives espoused by major states and international organizations. Furthermore, these foreignpolicy narratives may have direct action-generating power in the sense that they may play a part, sometimes even a significant part, in generating various micro-level actions and behavior that then directly influence macro-level power structures. The approach taken here in terms of narratives in general and Turkish foreignpolicy narratives, in particular, presupposes their significant constitutive power. In other words, if foreign-policy narratives are to be considered worthy of serious scholarly analysis they should be seen as much more than descriptive a posteriori accounts of events and mechanisms in external reality. In what follows, events, actors, and the world are given meaning and come into existence through narration. This also means that the actors construct their narratives within settings that are already narratively ordered—a view that is built on narrative ontology according to which language is not merely a tool for representing the world, it is a force that is constitutive of it (Hagström & Gustafsson, 2019, pp. 392–393). The constitutive power of narratives, combined with the fact that the positions from which actors interpret the world are ‘pre-narrated’ to some extent, point to the need for research into the prevalent long-term narrative traditions in a given society, which ultimately reflect and give shape to major ideologies and mentalities. Thus, all foreign-policy narratives, no matter how original and groundbreaking, are necessarily part of, and contribute to, the wider social and political thinking of their era. In this case, therefore, analyzing such narratives ultimately requires the detection of prevalent, and occasionally even marginal, political thought in contemporary Turkey. As Michael Freeden observed, access to political thinking is through political ideologies, that is ‘through the configurations and clusters of interdependent political concepts and ideas that circulate in that society at different levels of articulation’ (Freeden, 2005, p. 131). The level of articulation under scrutiny here is Turkey’s foreign-policy narratives. To the extent that it is possible to say something relevant about the underlying convictions, presuppositions, and interpretational logic upon which Turkish foreign policy is based, what we hope to achieve is to analyze the various narratives operationalizing those convictions in the act of narration. The main bulk of texts analyzed in the study comprises articles by contributors (yazarlar) to pro-government newspapers such as Yeni S¸ afak and Sabah, as well as to opposition supporters, such as Cumhuriyet, Sözcü, and several others. Additional materials include official party programs, statements by Turkish officials, and articles and briefings published by Turkish think tanks and independent analysts.

8

1 Introduction

This is not the first book to be written about Turkish foreign-policy narratives, not to speak of Turkey’s transformed domestic and foreign policy during the AKP era. Regarding the more specific approach focusing on the various narratives dealing with Turkish foreign policy, Lisel Hinzt’s (2018) Identity Politics Inside Out: National Identity Contestation and Foreign Policy in Turkey comes closest to the present book. Hinzt analyzes parliamentary debates, government archives, legislation, novels, social media, television shows, and interviews with university students. She identified four major ‘identity proposals’: Pan-Turkic nationalism, Western Liberalism, Republican nationalism, and Ottoman Islamism. Primarily, she investigates the interplay between the notions of national identity and foreign policy in competing groups, specifically from the perspective of the AKP’s rise to power since 2002 and its path leading to the conquering of Turkish state apparatuses. Complementing Hinzt’s recent study, other influential books were written during the past ten years also touch upon some of the main issues relevant to the present volume. In terms of Turkey’s foreign-policy traditions, its competing expressions, and their domestic ideational roots, Malik Mufti’s (2009) Daring and Caution in Turkish Strategic Culture: the Republic at Sea is by far the most meaningful. Building on the concept of ‘strategic culture’, Malik analyzed Turkey’s twentieth-century history and the main phases of its foreign policy, detecting two main variants of strategic culture, Republican and Imperial. It is noteworthy that these largely correspond to the two most powerful ‘identity proposals’ found by Hinzt, namely Republican Nationalism and Ottoman Islamism. Mufti’s investigation convincingly demonstrates how the former has tended to generate a cautious, pro-status quo and non-interventionist foreign-policy approach centered on the nation-state paradigm and strict Turkish secular nationalism, whereas the latter expresses a much more activist and even prointerventionist approach built on a more universalist conceptualization of OttomanIslamic civilization as the key ingredient of Turkey’s national identity and place in the world. These observations directly guided the question addressed in the present study concerning how the ongoing global power shift affected these established dominant identity proposals and their respective expressions of ideal Turkish foreign policy. The key study on the critique of Kemalism and the AKP’s ability to form electoral hegemony uninterruptedly for 15 years through the implementation of neoliberal economic policy is Yıldız Atasoy’s (2009) Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberalism: State Transformation in Turkey. Atasoy argues that the embrace of neoliberal and democratic principles by the AKP led to a transformation of the authoritarian fundamentals of the Kemalist state. She further suggests that two parallel processes of liberalization led to this transformation. First, the AKP was committed to democracy and a new social contract that facilitated engagement between society and the state based on universal justice and human-rights principles. Second, it was pursuing neoliberal economic policies, including the privatization of public corporations, the liberalization of trade, entrepreneurship, and private investment. Together, according to Atasoy, these two processes deepened democracy and altered the ‘Kemalist epistemology’ of state-centrism. With regard to the long-term mechanisms affecting Turkey-West relations, Ay¸se Zarakol’s (2010) analysis in After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the

1.1 Turkey in the World: Change as Processes and Narratives

9

West provides important clues for the present analysis. Zarakol brings to the surface the enduring debate in Turkey about not being accepted as good as the West in the eyes of the West. This is particularly meaningful in the current context as Turkey, under the AKP, expresses revisionist rhetoric and demands the rebuilding of the international system from new premises. To the extent that leading powers are reluctant to do this, one could see Turkey’s ambitions in reference to what Steven Ward calls status immobility. According to Ward (2017, p. 5), status immobility produces demands for policies that reject the international status-quo order, not just because this is perceived as the only way of satisfying ambition, but also because defying and delegitimating the order avoids the indignity of being complicit in one’s own humiliation. As demonstrated throughout the study, status immobility is a major aspect of the domestic power struggle in Turkey, and it is closely attached to the domestic ‘politics of foreign policy’ in encouraging both the secular nationalist and the Islamic-conservative foreign-policy narratives to attack the Western-led liberal order. Finally, my own book (Alaranta, 2015), National and State Identity in Turkey: The Transformation of the Republic’s Status in the International System, also investigates the representation of competing ideological traditions and competing expressions of national identity that have been central in Turkey’s transformation, including their linkages to the international system as analyzed from the broadly constructionist IR perspective. To some degree, the present study could be seen as continuing from where I left with this earlier book. A major rationale behind the present book is its overall historical framing. From today’s perspective, there is a need for a more rigorous analysis of historical liberalism, of its internal contradictions and their reflection in the so-called liberal international order. One could also call for a more rigorous attempt to move beyond the so-called ‘post-Kemalist paradigm’ in interpretations of Turkish domestic politics. Finally, in light of the voluminous array of narratives, both by academics and by political leaders, on the ‘crisis’ of the liberal international order, there is a strong need for a research perspective that extends beyond the mutually constitutive role of all these phenomena, which exist and come into being as a result of internarrativity/intertextuality. In other words, the paradigm within which many existing studies on Turkey’s transformed domestic and foreign policies have approached their subject could be broadly described as ‘post-Kemalist’. This is the overall perspective from which Turkey’s domestic transformation has been interpreted as the emergence of material and ideational social forces, also anticipated in academic writings through which Kemalist convictions about state-building, national identity formulation, and the modernization project were largely abandoned. Moreover, since the 1980s the postKemalist paradigm has envisioned a transformative path emphasizing the democratic potential of the social forces that had thus far been marginalized by the semiauthoritarian Kemalist center. This understanding was most clearly manifest vocally in the Turkish liberals’ view of the AKP and the Islamic-conservative constituencies as some kind of ‘natural force’ capable of tame or even completely unmaking the authoritarian state. Thus, in the first years of the 2000s, the post-Kemalist paradigm more or less coincided with the rise of the AKP as a liberalizing and democratizing

10

1 Introduction

force. One could see this at play, for instance, in Atasoy’s book, mentioned above, which was published just before the authoritarian turn of the AKP. Later, as the AKP rule under Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan’s leadership turned increasingly authoritarian and exclusive, this symbiosis naturally ended. However, at least thus far, this has not resulted in any systematic re-evaluation of the post-Kemalist paradigm, nor has it produced a new dominant approach, defined by Aytürk (2015) as a post-post Kemalist paradigm. As Aytürk rightly noted, authoritarianism in Turkey did not start with Kemalism, and neither has it ended with the replacement of the Kemalists by the AKP. This book does not purport to provide such a new paradigm. My aim is rather to analyze some of the main political processes of Republican Turkey, and even of the late Ottoman Empire, to question and challenge some of the core assumptions inherent in the post-Kemalist approach. I will then use this long-term historical analysis as the ideological-historical backdrop against which to analyze current foreignpolicy narratives. The present book is unique in its focus on the Liberal International Order and Turkish foreign-policy narratives as an intertextual process. From these premises, it critically re-evaluates some of the key processes of Republican Turkey, and based on this, provides a much-needed context for Turkey’s increasingly active and perplexing foreign policy in the age of a global power shift.

1.2 Research Questions and the Structure of the Book As explained above, the Western debate about the current international system is characterized by deep anxiety over the fate of the so-called Liberal International Order. According to the mainstream (liberal) view, this order was established after World War II, it was upheld and developed by the Western block of states during the Cold War, and it was then successfully globalized after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bankruptcy of international communism (Duncombe & Dunne, 2018; Ikenberry, 2018). To shed light on how Turkish foreign-policy narratives account for current world politics one should have sufficient understanding of how this Western narrative (of order) is interpreted in Turkey. However, even before that, it is necessary to analyze what could be called the matrix of current foreign-policy narratives. The first step in such an enterprise is to analyze some of the long-term assumptions and ideological positions in the light of Turkey’s twentieth-century history, as well as the primary meanings attached to the Republican state and to the nation-building efforts of the first-generation Kemalist cadres, in particular. This entails detecting the basic assumptions inherent in the Kemalist tradition, the name given to Turkey’s official modernization ideology during the 1930s. For a long time, these convictions constituted the basis of Turkey’s foreign-policy doctrine and the interpretations given to the country’s place in the international order. This still holds nowadays, in that they still provide the basis on which a significant portion of opposition narratives about proper Turkish foreign policy is built on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Kemalist narrative tradition functions as a container for a set of foreign-policy

1.2 Research Questions and the Structure of the Book

11

assumptions that are under vehement attack from the ruling Islamic-conservative power block. The current stage—the ascendency of China and the relative weakening of the West—hypothetically at least has the potential to cause a paradigm change in Turkey. A master narrative depicting the Ottoman Empire and subsequently the Republic of Turkey implementing its defensive modernization project with competing secular and religious forms of nationalism in the face of Western dominancy is being relativized for the first time since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and its hegemonic position as the (dualistic) articulation of Turkey’s place in the world is being challenged. As Küçükömer (1994, p. 8) explains, confronted with Western dominancy, Turkey’s history has witnessed a power struggle between two competing visions of an ideal ‘rescue plan’, namely the Westernizing-secularist (Batıcı-laik) and the Eastern-Islamic (Do˘gucu-Islamcı). Although it is not unusual to hear arguments that this binary dichotomy is much too simplistic and should be avoided, they seem to be based on a misunderstanding of the mechanism involved. As Carter Vaugh Findley (2010, pp. 18–19) explains, acknowledging the Westernizing-secularist versus the Eastern-Islamic structure as essential does not mean that their respective supporters would not have found a shared interest in various issues and borrowed many things from each other in certain periods of time. In other words, within the larger confrontation has always been convergence. Present-day Turkish nationalism, which combines elements from both traditions, exemplifies this very well. Hypothetically, the rise of China and the relative decline of the West thus has the potential to bring about a ‘narrative earthquake’ in the Turkish debate about the country’s international role and state identity. On the one hand, many foreign-policy narratives are founded on a strategic culture that tends to be recalcitrant and resistant to any major changes, whereas, on the other hand, strategic narratives are produced within the overall, often contested, national narrative. The concept of strategic culture has been defined as the existence of an interlocking set of values and beliefs held by politically interested people of each nation state, which relate to foreign and security policy (Dueck, 2006, p. 15). The problem is that this may imply a view of strategic thinking as too harmonious and uncontested. Alan Bloomfield (2012, pp. 452–456) responded to this by suggesting that one should understand strategic culture as a relatively coherent tradition that is nevertheless constituted of several subcultures. I would suggest, on the other hand, that these subcultures are given a concrete form in the foreign-policy narratives. Ultimately, all Turkish foreign-policy narratives reproduce, redefine, or reject the long-term master narrative of defensive modernization as the prior framework of Turkey’s domestic modernization project and its relations with the outside world dominated by the West. More specifically, when the narrative reproduces the defensive modernization theme one needs to determine whether is it caused by the internal logic of the narrative, namely its emotional and intellectual effectivity, or alternatively, how much of its perceived effectivity is the result of current external changes in global power relations and their effects on Turkey that still render the master narrative emotionally and rationally comforting. These initial assumptions give rise

12

1 Introduction

to another major question concerning interpretations of the past and national identity constructions as a narrative mechanism bridging individual actors, transitions in foreign and security policy, and global politics. This book is based on the initial observation that the ongoing global power shift is further intensifying the struggle over the meaning of Turkey’s national past, modernization, and its ideal role in the world. Within the theory of strategic culture, this intensified struggle appears to indicate the process-like nature of strategic subcultures, and their individual manifestations in the narrative form. On the theoretical level, the combination of changing power relations in international politics and its interpretation by individual actors is equivalent to the agent/structure debate in social sciences in general, and in International Relations theory in particular. Every present constitutes a combination of interpretations of the past and expectations about the future, and the world exists only through the act of representation and as a combination of interpretations. On the other hand, each individual actor interprets the world from a particular position, and that position is conditioned by existing power relations. These power relations seemingly have two sides, the real or objectively observed existing structures, and the subjectively interpreted structures in which the actor perceives he or she is embedded. Thus, foreign-policy narratives are understood here to emerge within this kind of ‘structural idealism’ (Mann, 2002). It is precisely these existing power relations that are being evaluated by the actors in their assessment of the past and predictions about the future. The textual combinations (interpretations of the past together with meaningful anticipation of the future) are the focus of this study. This further strengthens the claim that this is not a book about Turkey’s foreign policy per se, although that is discussed as well. Under scrutiny here are what I call foreign-policy narratives, within which existing power structures, their transformation, and individual actors’ expectations and intentions converge to form an account of global politics and Turkey’s place in it. In this work, therefore, a foreign-policy narrative is an inherently coherent story of international politics from Turkey’s perspective. Obviously, very few of the materials analyzed are fullfledged accounts of the world and Turkey’s place in it. The narratives are typically descriptions of certain individual issues, mechanisms, and events in global politics that are then analyzed by the authors in terms of their meaning for, and their effects on, Turkey. However, ‘Turkish foreign policy narratives’ emerged as a category during the research project through the analysis of a group of texts produced by different authors. Indeed, a foreign-policy narrative is always, either implicitly or explicitly, about the national past. There can be no meaningful interpretation of what specific international political issues mean to a particular political community without prior understanding of its essential nature and interest. In this sense, the Turkish foreign-policy narratives necessarily include narratives about Turkey’s history, in accounts and interpretations of the main events and the leading figures. Thus, one aspect of the present work concerns the way in which these historical representations are present in foreignpolicy narratives, how they are utilized in argumentation, and how they contribute to evaluating the meaning of contemporary international issues.

1.2 Research Questions and the Structure of the Book

13

The book is further based on the observation that global reality is increasingly characterized by various forms of popular discontent, fueled by feelings of material inequality, contempt for political elites and their orthodox market fetishism, and perceptions of being unable to shape one’s living conditions. These concerns arise, in differing forms, in the global north and south. This is exacerbated in the Middle East and Africa, Turkey included, by a demographic pyramid characterized by large youth populations, often with bleak hopes for the future. It has led to a specific blame game in which demands for individual liberties traditionally cherished by liberalism are intertwined with communitarian calls for meaningful solidarity groups based on national, religious, and civilizational identification, usually expressed through nationalism. Together, all this produces an odd mixture of emancipatory and exclusionary practices that tend to create strained social relations in the age of globalization. Bernard Yack (2002) and Beate Jahn (2018) demonstrate how this seemingly contradictory mechanism is produced at least to some extent by the internal characteristics of liberalism. As much as it is about changing relations between major states, the ongoing global power shift is also about this sub-stateand supra-state-level dissatisfactions, identity constructions, and boundary-making mechanisms. In this kind of social reality, the educated class, namely those functioning as the mediating mechanism between domestic political processes and global power shifts, tend to infuse their foreign-policy narratives with attempts to create a new kind of self-representation, both individual and collective. From these premises, one issue this book purports to shed light on is how and to what extent Turkish foreign-policy narratives function as sites for expressing emotions, perceptions, and identity constructions such as these. For some time now, there has been growing dissatisfaction with grand-scale structural approaches in studies on international relations. The dissatisfaction concerns the perceived gap between large-scale structures analyzed via various systemic theories and the local, individual responses to them on the one hand and the fact that many major issues in world politics originally emanate from local, micro-level processes on the other. In this context, the present book can be considered an attempt to alleviate this dichotomy, by demonstrating how foreign-policy narratives function as a micro-level, textual site for either questioning or reproducing global power structures within a single nation state. This requires detection of the conceptual repertoires that function as the ideological foundation of these narratives. Identification of the above issues allows the meaningful tackling of questions concerning how Turkish foreign-policy narratives interpret the liberal international order. As a concept, the liberal international order comprises three distinct subconcepts, each of which is not unproblematic, and which, when combined, become even more open to competing interpretations. From this perspective, the very concept is a hugely influential narrative. In this sense, an analysis of how various Turkish foreign-policy narratives interpret the liberal international order is ultimately about narrative reactions to something that, in itself, is a powerful narrative of contemporary international relations. The claim that in the field of international relations, order in general and the liberal international order, in particular, are best understood as narratives may require some

14

1 Introduction

explanation. According to J. G. Ruggie, for instance, orders such as these should be understood as the coming together of power and legitimate social purpose, such that these elements are fused to project political authority onto the international system (Ruggie, 1982, p. 380). From this perspective, an international order would appear to exist only as a narrative. In other words, if international order is something purposeful rather than the unintentional conglomeration of power relations, if it is about ‘legitimate social purpose’, it can exist only as a narrative that gives expression to this purpose. This very observation already attests to the profound importance of intertextuality and internarrativity in global politics. As a concept, intertextuality challenges the traditional understanding of interpretation, whereby the meaning of the text is to be found only in that specific text. According to the theory of intertextuality, however, ‘meaning becomes something which exists between a text and all the other texts to which it relates and refers, moving out from the independent text into a network of textual relations’ (Allen, 2000, p. 1). As understood here, international order as an expression of legitimate social purpose acquires its meaning in such a network of converging and conflicting narratives. To the extent that a significant number of these textual relations converge, one could speak of an international order rather than a mere international system based on the distribution of power. The implicit and explicit accounts of the Liberal International Order in Turkish foreignpolicy narratives simultaneously address Turkey’s relationship with its traditional Western allies. However, a fuller understanding of the alleged choices and alternatives that Turkey presumably faces also requires at least a relatively organized idea of how the foreign-policy narratives conceptualize China and Russia, the two states that seem to be the most vocal in challenging the Western-led order. The last block of questions addressed in this book relates to major individual events and crises in contemporary world politics, namely the Syrian civil war and the Covid-19 pandemic. These are analyzed as critical foreign-policy issues, which are nevertheless strongly related to the overall interpretative frames utilized by different actors. In other words, both the pandemic and the Syrian civil war could be understood as cases against which the more abstract narrative constructions related to the meaning of modernization and Turkey’s place in the allegedly liberal international order are highlighted, contested, and renegotiated. The two cases also further demonstrate the way in which Turkish foreign-policy narratives gain their external meaning only with reference to foreign-policy narratives produced in other major states. I have already hinted at the profound intertextuality of international relations narratives. This is further highlighted here as the key theoretical concept that explains the obviously strong relationship between the conceptual repertoires utilized in Turkish foreign-policy narratives and the ongoing power shift in which the rules and principles of the emerging system are being renegotiated on the level of narrative. In terms of overall structure, the book is divided into two parts. The first part, comprising Chapters 2 and 3, deals with long-term historical processes, ideological formations, and narratives, which have been giving shape to and are being shaped by some of the major events in Turkey’s republican history and the evolving international system during the modern period. The ambiguous relationship between nationalism and liberalism could be described as the overall ideological matrix lurking behind

1.2 Research Questions and the Structure of the Book

15

these phenomena. The two chapters thus analyze materials produced during the long period stretching from the early decades of the Republic to the present. The second part, comprising Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7, analyzes materials produced mainly within the previous ten years, which cover the way in which the ongoing global power shift and Turkey’s role in the world are represented in the current context of the new presidential regime and Turkey’s increased foreign-policy activism. Chapter 2, entitled The Global Power Shift and Liberalism, begins with a review of the academic literature focusing on the ongoing global power shift and the alleged weakening of the Western-led liberal international order. It briefly scrutinizes how this transformation is taking place, what the liberal international order is, what has allegedly caused its weakening, and how some of the leading scholars see the future of the international system. It does not purport to be in any way a comprehensive account of this scholarly debate, but rather provides a general overview of how different writers and theories conceptualize the alleged global power shift, and how the future of the international system is understood in Western scholarship. The key task in this chapter is to decompose the ‘liberal international order’ as a concept. In particular, it investigates liberalism in its historical context and in terms of its main characteristics, namely its strained relationship with nationalism, and the underlying organizational principle of modern international relations. In sum, the chapter demonstrates that domestic liberal projects, as well as the liberal international order, presuppose, and are built on, a specific ‘liberal philosophy of history’. Chapter 3, entitled Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History, provides a detailed analysis of individual Kemalist narratives, contextualized by a fresh look at some of Turkey’s major political processes. The main contours of its republican history are scrutinized in terms of an interplay between major domestic political events, global history, and some of the key ideological patterns at play from the 1920s to the 1990s. The transformation and redefinition of classical political ideologies during Turkey’s twentieth-century history is a further example of the dual mechanism through which the call of liberal individualism for personal freedom and dignity together with a communitarian quest for meaningful belonging, boundary-making, and expectations of solidarity, forge the repertoire from which Turkish foreign-policy narratives will draw on in responding to challenges that emerge from global power structures. In identifying some of the key assumptions of Kemalism, the official modernization ideology of the Republic of Turkey, this analysis enhances understanding of the strained relationship between liberalism and nationalism, a crucial aspect, I believe, of the current crisis of the liberal international order. The chapter further investigates the extent to which Kemalism shared the basic assumptions of what could be called the Liberal Philosophy of History, a conglomeration of key ideas and assumptions that have shaped liberalism and, ultimately, the liberal international order. It goes on to describe the main changes that have affected Turkey in the post-Cold-War era, how Turkey has responded to these events and the extent to which politicians and intellectuals have engaged in proactive and even groundbreaking initiatives based on their own premises, simultaneously with the neoliberal restructuring of Turkey’s economy and society since the 1980s.

16

1 Introduction

Chapter 4, entitled Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization, begins with an analysis of the domestic power struggle in present-day Turkey, focusing specifically on how interpretations of Turkey’s and Ottoman history have long been, and are increasingly in the present era, a battleground for various groups, thus indicating the use of the past in the present, often described as the ‘politics of history’. The analysis continues, focusing on the foreign-policy narratives espoused by the different groups and how the notion of defensive modernization has represented the basic mentality of Turkish foreign-policy narratives. This has been closely connected to the reformation and modernization policies that were initially inaugurated during the latter part of the eighteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, and subsequently radicalized in the Republic in its endeavor to transform society with Western novelties to end Western dominance. The project to modernize quickly and thus to resist outside intervention could be described as the most widespread and influential conceptualization of Turkey’s place in the world during the greater part of the twentieth century. The chapter concludes with a question: to what extent has the theme of defensive modernization been abandoned by Islamic-conservative foreign-policy narratives, that build on the idea of a’New Turkey’ and its more assertive foreign policy? Chapter 5, entitled Interpreting the Liberal International Order in Turkey, focuses on how Turkish foreign-policy narratives frame the liberal international order. Is this the same order depicted by Western commentators, or do Turkish commentators understand it in a markedly different manner? In other words, is that which is now allegedly crucially changing the same thing as in Western debates? The investigation thus concerns the ways in which Turkish foreign-policy narratives represent twentieth-century international relations, to what extent they reject Western accounts, and what wider historical understandings are used to justify the arguments. Evaluating several ideological and political currents in terms of this same question paves the way for a comprehensive understanding of the overall ideational Turkish ‘foreign policy landscape’. Chapter 6, Approaching the Non-West: Russia and China, focuses on the way in which Turkish foreign-policy narratives depict these two powerful actors, with which Turkey has recently engaged not only in increasing cooperation but also in conflict. The widely shared view in Turkey that the international system is transforming, and that this transformation is something that the country should actively facilitate raises the question of Turkey’s actual and ideal relations with the actors and processes that are seen as the driving forces of the change. From this perspective, the chapter analyzes the extent to which different foreign-policy narratives conceptualize Russia and China as Turkey’s potential partners, the kind of ideological currents that are used to frame relations with these states, and the extent to which opposing Turkish narratives converge in their views on Russia and China. In Chapter 7, entitled Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic, the analytical focus shifts from how Turkish foreign-policy narratives interpret the overall characteristics of the post-World War II order to issues that are more specific. The narratives analyzed in the first part of the Chapter focus on the Syrian civil war. The war emerged after peaceful demonstrations were brutally crushed by the Syrian

1.2 Research Questions and the Structure of the Book

17

government, leading to violent clashes between government forces and armed opposition militias, which by the end of 2011 increasingly also included salafi-jihad groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra. By the summer of 2011, Turkey’s AKP government had abandoned its initial approach of trying to persuade President al-Assad to implement political reforms and turned to a full-fledged regime change by using proxy forces. The increasingly conflictual Turkish foreign-policy narratives of the Syrian conflict are analyzed, including their role in the overall Turkish narratives of the ongoing global power shift. The analytical focus then shifts to interpretations of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ways in which wide array of international and Turkish analysts and commentators have evaluated it, including both states’ immediate responses and predictions about its longer-term consequences. As will be demonstrated, the crisis generated a wide range of interpretations and evaluations concerning the future of international relations, from the level of preparedness in individual states to the use of surveillance technologies, economic policies, and the fate of (neoliberal) globalization. The narratives about the Covid-19 pandemic thus serve to shed light on the fears and hopes concerning international politics in Turkey. The conclusion underscores the key findings of the analyses. First, it identifies the main tropes found in various narratives, their shared elements, as well as the conflicting and converging ‘story-worlds’. Finally, it evaluates the current state of the international system and the ongoing global power shift from the perspective of Turkish foreign-policy narratives: this includes an evaluation of the mutually constitutive nature of foreign-policy narratives and strategic culture.

References Abbot, H. P. (2008). The Cambridge introduction to narrative. Cambridge University Press. Akimoto, T. (2019). Narrative structure in the mind: Translating Genette’s narrative discourse theory into a cognitive system. Cognitive Systems Research, 58, 342–350. Alaranta, T. (2015). National and state identity in Turkey. The Transformation of the republic’s status in the international system. Rowman & Littlefield. Allen, G. (2000). Intertextuality. Routledge. Atasoy, Y. (2009). Islam’s marriage with neoliberalism: State transformation in Turkey. Palgrave MacMillan. Aydınta¸sba¸s, A. (2020). The Turkish Sonderweg: Erdo˘gan’s New Turkey and its role in the global order. IPC-Mercator Policy Brief. Istanbul Policy Center. Aytürk, ˙I. (2015). Post-post Kemalizm: Yeni bir paradigmayı beklerken. In Birikim (Vol. 319). Bishop, C. W. (2020). To understand China’s aggressive foreign policy, look at its domestic politics. Blog Post, October 8. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/blog/understand-chinasaggressive-foreign-policy-look-its-domestic-politics. Bloomfield, A. (2012). Time to move on: Reconceptualizing the strategic culture debate. Contemporary Security Policy, 22, 437–461. Brockmeier, J., & Carbaugh, D. (Eds.). (2001). Narrative in autobiography. Johns Benjamins Publishing Company. Ciddi, S. (2011). Turkey’s September 12, 2010, referendum. Meria Journal 15(4). Danforth, N. (2021). Turkey and the West: A hostile dance. Policy Paper 60. Hellenic foundation for European and Foreign Policy.

18

1 Introduction

Dueck, C. (2006). Reluctant crusaders. Power, culture and change in American grand strategy. Princeton University Press. Duncombe, C., & Dunne, T. (2018). After liberal world order. International Affairs, 94(1), 25–42. Findley, C. V. (2010). Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity. Yale University Press. Freeden, M. (2005). Liberal languages: Ideological imaginations and twentieth-century progressive thought. Princeton University Press. Gvosdev, N. (2019). Emerging narratives for U.S. Foreign Policy. EIA Blog, Ethics and international affairs. https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2019/emerging-narratives-for-u-s-foreignpolicy/. Hagström, L., & Gustafsson, K. (2019). Narrative power: How storytelling shapes East Asian international politics. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32(4), 387–406. Hinzt, L. (2018). Identity politics inside out: National identity contestation and foreign policy in Turkey. Oxford University Press. Ikenberry, G. J. (2018). The end of liberal international order? Foreign Affairs, 94(1), 7–23. Jahn, B. (2018). Liberal internationalism: Historical trajectory and current prospects. International Affairs, 94(1), 43–61. Keyman, E. F. (2021). Türkiye-Batı ˙Ili¸skileri: Stratejik Otonomi Bitiyor mu? Perspektif, May 11. https://www.perspektif.online/turkiye-bati-iliskileri-stratejik-otonomi-bitiyor-mu/. Kiri¸sçi, K., & Toygür, ˙I. (2019). Turkey’s new presidential system and a changing west: Implications for Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkey-West Relations. Turkey Project Policy Paper No. 15. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/20190111_turkey_ presidential_system.pdf. Küçükömer, ˙I. (1994). Batılıla¸sma & Düzenin Yabancıla¸sması. Ba˘glam Yayıncılık. Mann, D. (2002). Structural idealism: A theory of social and historical explanation. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative Identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413475622 Mufti, M. (2009). Daring and caution in Turkish strategic culture: The Republic at Sea. Palgrave Macmillan. Mühlberger, W. (2020). Introduction: The power of narratives in political contexts. In W. Mühlberger & T. Alaranta (Eds.), Political Narratives in the middle east and North Africa: Conceptions of order and perceptions of instability (pp. 1–17). Springer. Özkazanç, A. (2005). Türkiye’nin Neoliberal Dönü¸sümü ve Liberal Dü¸sünce. In M. Yılmaz (Ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Dü¸sünce, Cilt 7: Liberalizm (pp. 634–657). ˙Ileti¸sim. Ruggie, J. (1982). International regimes, transactions and change: Embedded liberalism and the post-war economic order. International Organization, 36, 195–231. Sayarı, S. (2000). Turkish foreign policy in the post-cold war era: The challenges of multiregionalism. Journal of International Affairs, 54(1), 169–182. Tocci, N. (2014). Turkey and the European Union: A journey in the unknown. Turkey Project Policy Paper Nr. 5. Brookings. Ward, S. (2017). Status and the challenge of rising powers. Cambridge University Press. Yack, B. (2002). Nationalism, popular sovereignty, and the liberal democratic state. In T. V. Paul, G. J. Ikenberry, & J. A. Hall (Eds.), The nation-state in question (pp. 29–50). Princeton University Press. Yavuz, M. H. (2009). Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey. Cambridge University Press. Ye¸silada, B. (2013). EU-Turkey relations in the 21st century. Routledge. Zaman, A. (2021). Turkey’s persistent watering down of anti-Russian language leaves NATO in bind. Al Monitor, May 28. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/05/turkeys-persistent-wat ering-down-anti-russian-language-leaves-nato-bind. Zarakol, A. (2010). After defeat: How the east learned to live with the west. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2

The Global Power Shift and Liberalism

2.1 The Liberal Narrative in IR The mainstream account charting the rise of the Liberal International Order places its emergence in 1945, at the end of World War II. This was coincident with the establishment of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Institutions, which established a system of payment based on the dollar that defined all currencies in relation to the dollar, itself convertible into gold, and above all, ‘as good as gold’ for trade. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) also dates back to that time, whereas the World Trade Organization (WTO) was established more recently. Liberal ideals were expanded through these and other minor arrangements. Regarding normative expansion, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established in 1948. According to the liberal account, this order became global after the Cold War but it has been losing influence in the last ten years. Whether justified or not, the Western debate on the international system at the beginning of the 2020s was quite an alarmist. According to one prevalent view, the open, democratic, and ultimately, civilized institutions and practices established since the 1940s were quickly evaporating before our eyes. With the advent of the populist Trump Presidency in the US, the EU suddenly seemed to be the last man standing, guarding the liberal order—with its own peculiar tools—against nationalist, protectionist, and as this account seems to imply, barbaric forces (Schwarzer, 2017). However, Brexit and the increasingly authoritarian and illiberal tendencies in some EU countries, Hungary in particular, indicated that the liberal order was now being challenged within the EU as well. Many informative studies, both full-scale monographs and journal articles have already been published about the very real power shift taking place in world politics—attributable most of all to the impressive economic growth of China (see, e.g., Cooley & Nexon, 2020; Porter, 2020; Öni¸s, 2019; Kagan, 2018; Acharya, 2017)—and also about Western (self) narratives of a civilization in decline. Indeed, the idea of the West as almost always being on the verge of collapse is a constant theme in the tradition of Western cultural and political thinking. In the words of Lehti and Pennanen (2020, p. 63), ‘a belief that the West is © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Alaranta, Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9_2

19

20

2 The Global Power Shift and Liberalism

in decline and under a threat has been a dogma held with equal fervor. From the late nineteenth century, prophets have been prognosing that the last days of the modern West are at hand’. The current global power shift has many aspects. One of them is relatively unproblematic: one can quite easily gather numerical data about the economic rise of China and, to a lesser degree, of other emerging states (e.g., India and Brazil), and the relative weakening of core Western countries in comparison. One could also point to indexes showing a rather bleak picture of the state of democracy around the globe, indicating in very concrete terms that the advancement of democracy, allegedly one of the key elements of the liberal international order during its heyday, was now in retreat. Linking these two processes—the economic ascendancy of non-Western states and the troubled state of democracy in today’s world—however, already changes the discourse from mere objective observation to a narrative that combines mechanisms and phenomena that are not necessarily strongly connected outside of this specific narrative presentation. On the other hand, if economic development, rising national GDPs, and the decline of democracy worldwide do have a strong interrelationship, then it challenges one of the key assumptions of global governance during the liberal era. It was long assumed, after all, that increasing GDP and rising living standards in the global south would generate more democratic (and liberal) political regimes. The ongoing power shift is real, but it seems to be accompanied by a narrative reality whereby a certain powerful interpretation about what is happening attaches aspects that are not so self-evident to it. However, it is also obvious that the narrative coherence one might find during a hasty first glance through academic literature and policy papers is in fact deeply contested within the discipline of International Relations. In other words, different approaches within IR convey a very different understanding even about the very starting conditions of the current ‘West in crisis’ narrative. Thus, the alleged existence of a coherent liberal international order vigorously upheld by leading Western states is thoroughly questioned in some IR approaches. For the sake of simplicity, I will exemplify this controversy about ‘what was there before’ by citing two prominent IR scholars, namely John Ikenberry and Patrick Porter. It indeed turns out that these two scholars—one a liberal internationalist and the other a realist—have a very different understanding of the liberal international order. According to Ikenberry (2018), the US had acted as a largely benevolent hegemon since the 1940s. Under its restrained power projection, during the 1990s a major part of the world was drawn into a liberal world order characterized by institutions and practices that weakened tendency to violence on the state level. This was accompanied by an order whereby liberal market economies became increasingly dependent on each other in a mutually beneficial way, and adherence to human rights, democracy, and civil liberties became the normative expectation, although not always implemented in practice. In the eyes of many, this was the most recent phase of the liberal ascendancy that had started in the nineteenth century under the British Empire. It was subsequently halted during the interwar period, but after the end of the Second World War, the beacon of liberalism switched from Britain to America. The US now started to build institutions and alliances restricting its own power so that the states

2.1 The Liberal Narrative in IR

21

within the Western bloc voluntarily accepted US leadership, because it also served their own interests. Consequently, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Eastern bloc built on international communism –which had been losing the race for modernization and progress to the capitalist Western camp since the 1970s—allowed an ever larger part of the globe to be included in the liberal order so that it now became truly global. Patrick Porter (2018) paints a much gloomier picture of international relations since the 1940s than is implied by this account of a coherent liberal order bringing progress, better living conditions, and greater liberties ultimately to all nations. First, he criticizes the ahistorical character of Ikenberry’s liberal account, pointing out that if there ever was a liberal international order worthy of its name in terms of free markets, it started in the 1990s and was very short-lived. It was only at this stage that states beyond Euro-Atlantic countries, Japan and Australia were drawn into the liberal economic order, having implemented neoliberal policies. On the other hand, the US never stopped protecting its own key industrial production by imposing various restrictions and limitations and saw to it that all trade agreements benefited it either directly, or at least established relationships and dependencies that would be useful later on. What is more, the American hegemon never shied away from using coercion against those who did not submit to its arrangements, nor did the liberal edifice obstruct the US in its support for all kinds of undemocratic, anti-liberal regimes and leaders whose domestic success it considered vital for the US national strategy. All in all, according to Porter, the kind of coherent liberal international order that constantly promoted liberal values under a benevolent US hegemon that had learned to restrain its own power through institutions and alliances, had never existed, at least not in the (strongly idealized) form claimed by Ikenberry and other liberal internationalists. However, useful attempts have already been made to provide conceptual clarification that could lead to a workable synthesis of various interpretations. According to Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann (2019), there is reason to argue that the global power shift has not, at least by now, resulted in the break up of the current order but has rather provoked significant challenges within it. This interpretation builds on a ‘minimalist’ description of the post-war global order based on fundamental substantive and procedural ordering principles, namely sovereign interstate relations and a relatively open global economy, characterized by practices of inclusive, rulebound multilateralism. Here, (Westphalian) state sovereignty and a relatively open global economy are the substantive core of the post-1945 international order, whereas multilateralism—a set of widely agreed-upon rules and principles, enshrined in and premised on a general respect for international law—is the conglomeration of procedures used by state actors to uphold the substantive principles of state sovereignty and economic openness. This is a ‘minimalist’ account in the sense that it takes economic liberalism as a central tenet of the liberal international order, whereas political liberalism and democracy are considered an aspiration rather than the essential elements of the existing order.

22

2 The Global Power Shift and Liberalism

The merit of this minimalist account is that one may speak about a liberal international order without claiming that it (and the US as the benevolent hegemon implementing it) has consistently attempted to uphold democracy and political liberalism. As Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann (2019) justifiably argue, one should learn to conceptualize international orders as a dynamic construct, parts of which have been continuously challenged and renegotiated. From this perspective, they point out, what is currently being witnessed is not so much a definitive crisis of the existing order, but rather its ongoing and tricky transformation into a broader, more inclusive system of global governance, reflecting the need to accommodate new actors and problems.

2.2 Liberal Contradictions and the Multiplex Word The following pages contain many Turkish foreign-policy narratives implicitly or explicitly attacking the current form of the liberal international order and the global neoliberal economic regime closely attached to it. There has been a strong tendency among Western commentators to dismiss such views as old-fashioned leftist or parochial nationalist slogans. However, it is necessary to understand that the argument according to which the liberal international order and globalization mainly benefit a small transnational elite, is also presented within the liberal theory, at least in the normative variant. As Richardson (2018, p. 47) points out, a normative liberal theory building on John Rawls’ work stresses the extent to which everyday social life around the world has increasingly become framed by the attitudinal and structural regulations of global institutions that, in fact, operate in favor of small elites in both rich and poor countries. This internal critique notwithstanding, Richardson further claims that external critics of the liberal theory of international relations are most likely right in suggesting that the internal normative critique is very unlikely to change the liberal mainstream: mainstream IR liberalism is ‘politically inclined towards a systemic status quo, centered on the global necessity of American leadership, of neoliberal globalization and of Western-led institutionalism—a worldview that effectively is incompatible with a normative questioning of first principles’ (Richardson, 2018, p. 47). All this means that the global power shift is, in reality, a multi-faceted phenomenon. Water-proven facts are hard to find, and, at least for the sake of analysis, a distinction should be made between numerical data indicating economic growth in leading nation states and other sufficiently quantifiable factors from the much more murky and ambiguous field of norms, identities, and legitimacy. What is also urgently needed in this context is a thorough problematization of liberalism that addresses some of its key internal contradictions and defines what could be legitimately described as the core principles of liberal ideology. There are grounds for arguing that the kind of inherently coherent and well-defined liberalism presumed in the narrative of the ‘liberal international order’ has never existed in reality. Etymologically, liberalism is defined by its primary concern with liberty, which throughout its history has been defended against various threats such as absolute monarchy,

2.2 Liberal Contradictions and the Multiplex Word

23

established religion, and the tyranny of the majority. As the common definition puts it, this kind of freedom is perceived as a ‘negative freedom’, that is, the freedom of individuals to act and think as they please (Crowley, 2000, pp. 47–48). Thus, individual freedom must be seen as a primary liberal value. However, the liberal tradition has also been strongly influenced by ‘positive freedom’. Throughout its history, liberalism has encompassed highly contrary meanings attached to freedom. During the early stages, its proponents sought to limit the frontiers of state, claiming that individual liberty was possible only if civic liberties were immune from government interference (negative freedom). On the other hand, later they advocated political intervention in the economy in order to eliminate unemployment and low wages, also demanding public healthcare services and other social-welfare rights (positive freedom) (Eccleshall, 2003, p. 23). Moreover, the exaltation of individual liberty in liberalism has been clearly and simultaneously linked to the idea of a shared community as a necessary basis for any individual development. One must surely admit that, from the liberal perspective, the basic unit of analysis is indeed the individual, whereas in nationalism it is the nation. As Mark Haugaard notes, the autonomous individual of liberalism is preoccupied with the community as a constraint upon freedom, whereas for the nationalist it is a condition of self-realization. However, even though the ‘unencumbered’ self of liberalism is inherently rational, it is created through socialization. The world of interchangeable individuals presupposes that they are relatively similar. Hence, as Haugaard (2006, pp. 346–349) points out, in the liberal state a common educational system functions as a form of mass state-controlled socialization. Haugaard maintains that the founders of modern sociology (Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) shared the common Enlightenment misconception that modernity was a move from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, from traditional communities to societies governed by abstract reason. On the contrary, he argues that Gemeinschaft does not disappear in the transition to modernity, nor is overcome, but it is transformed, even if it appears counter-intuitive to suggest that the disenchanted, individualistic and de-essential modern world could be a fertile ground for a nationalist Gemeinschaft. What is even more interesting, Haugaard also argues that the autonomous self has no further meaning to the liberal self, hence it makes no sense for the self to be sacrificed for a collective social construction that is arbitrary convention. In contrast, to the nationalist, the nation is what gives meaning to the self as a socialized being. Socialization makes one part of the nation, which is made real by the belief that it is beyond convention and part of the enchanted world. To such an actor the ultimate self-sacrifice, dying for the flag, represents a union between the self and the real. As Durkheim argued, such self-sacrifice is not self-annihilation, it is self-realization (Haugaard, 2006, pp. 350–352). In addition to having a much more complicated relationship with communitarianism and nationalism that tends to be acknowledged, historically liberalism has also cast severe doubt on popular sovereignty. As John Crowley points out, liberalism implied that the people could govern itself badly, and the distrust of popular

24

2 The Global Power Shift and Liberalism

sovereignty clearly ran through liberal thought from Tocqueville to Mill and Schumpeter. Accordingly, liberal diffidence appears to reflect worries or fears about the relation between the characteristic metanarrative of progress and the core liberal value of freedom. Fear of the uncontrolled and uneducated masses was strongly present in John Stuart Mill’s thinking. As the squalid realities of the industrial society and mass politics became unavoidable, the classic problem of the ‘mob’ went to the heart of liberal thinking. For Mill, fear and confidence were still compatible, in that he defined the problem by advocating the safeguarding of liberal institutions until education had transformed the mob into a virtuous democratic political community. Thus, snobbery and humanism were uneasily held together by the belief in progress (Crowley, 2000, pp. 53–56). Crowley continues, noting that since the mid-eighteenth-century questioning of religious doctrine by applying forms of reasoning and standards of proof derived from natural science changed the character and consequences of toleration. Instead of being merely politic, it was increasingly seen as intellectually necessary. No truth was ever definitive, and no view, even the most eccentric, was unworthy of the opportunity to challenge received wisdom. This did not lead to relativism, however, because of the unquestioned assumption of progress and of the universal application of the experimental method. Accordingly, after liberalism came into conflict with religion, God could no longer set the purpose and limits of government. What could justifiably be called the ‘liberal philosophy of history’ was developed from these convictions. Accordingly, history is the development of human potential, and given that, in the eyes of classical liberals, the highest standard of human excellence has remained essentially unchanged since antiquity, development could only mean the broadening and deepening of human potential. Thus, Crowley concludes, liberals necessarily became pragmatic elitists, not because anyone is by nature better than anyone else, but because some have not yet fully developed (Crowley, 2000, pp. 49–53). For early liberalists such as Locke, the ultimate non-political basis for politics was provided by God through the idea of natural law. However, given that liberalism had discredited religion as a justified basis for permanent knowledge, this idea was no longer tenable. In this new phase, history came to be seen as the progress of human potential, and, as noted above, because the highest standard of humanity was the same as in antiquity, development could only mean one thing, namely the eternal deepening and broadening of human potential. From this perspective, the path to progress was in universal education, compounded by the permanent criticism of received traditions. In this context the institutional system that prevents any dogma (including public opinion) from imposing itself on society is valuable not so much per se but because it is the condition for human flourishing—which lies in the gradual diffusion of human enlightenment. Thus, there is absolutely no doubt that classical liberalism includes, and is predicated on, a certain synthesizing interpretation of history that also if at all inherently coherent, should prohibit all kinds of temporary marriages with status-quo ideologies such as conservatism. As Crowley points out, the power inherent in these ideas is that they go far deeper than any particular set of institutions or historical circumstances. Accordingly, something of this kind is a necessary component of any philosophically consistent liberalism (Crowley,

2.2 Liberal Contradictions and the Multiplex Word

25

2000, pp. 52–54). Among other things, this discussion underlines the fundamental philosophical and political incoherence of the Reagan/Thatcher attempt to marry liberalism with conservatism, a significant aspect of the ideological foundations of neoliberal globalization in many nation states, Turkey included. These traits of historical liberalism, that only through significant distortion is it made to team up with conservatism, and that it has often presupposed a more or less unified political community resembling what nationalism espoused, are of high significance to the liberal international order: the liberal traits of hegemonic power are also reflected in the international field, the hegemon’s guiding principles animating the principles of the entire international order. However, liberalism is seldom the only player in the game in the world’s liberal-democratic states. Inherently consistent liberalism requires a commitment to the Enlightenment idea of human emancipation and the triumph of rationalism and reason. The progressive ideal and the universalist pretensions of liberal internationalism ultimately rest on such a ‘liberal philosophy of history’. Yet, during the alleged heyday of the liberal international order, the hegemon supposedly upholding it—the USA—was often dominated by a power bloc blending conservatism and neoliberal economic policies. The contradictory marriage between conservatism and liberalism was at the heart of the liberal international order during several phases of its development since 1945, reflecting the domestic ideological synthesis of its hegemon, the US. Furthermore, the often-herd claim that nationalism threatens the liberal international order is much too simplistic a description of the ambiguous relationship between the two. As observed above, any concrete liberal society requires large-scale socialization mechanisms, ultimately mass education provided by the public-school system, which allows enough group solidarity and common purpose for a liberal individual to develop and flourish. Moreover, as I will examine in what follows, liberal theory has advocated the clear distinction between domestic and external realms: the state’s domestic order is conceptualized as the arena of a liberal society, whereas the external, international field is understood as anarchical. This trait is further evidence of the historical interlinkage between liberalism and nationalism. Bernard Yack (2002, p. 35) sheds light on these matters, making a strong distinction between the two concepts of nation and people. According to him, both nation and people are ‘imagined communities’ in the sense once coined by Benedict Anderson. However, they are also distinct in terms of time and space. National community implies a community over time. What binds people to national communities is their images of a shared heritage that is passed (and altered) from one generation to another. Consequently, national communities are imagined to have started from some specific point of origin in the past and to extend into an indefinite future. Its people, in contrast, present an image of the community over space. This image portrays all individuals within the given boundaries of the state as members of a community from which the state derives its legitimate authority. Thus, whereas the national community bridges generations, the people offer a bridge over the chasm that separates individuals from each other in their efforts to shape and control the authority of the state. Through the concept of the nation, one can imagine the evolving community that precedes individual existence and survives

26

2 The Global Power Shift and Liberalism

death. Through the concept of the people, one can imagine a community of which one is a part at any given moment in dealing with the state’s coercive authority. The idea of the people as sovereign implies that it precedes and survives the dissolution of the political community. This, on the other hand, requires that the people share something crucial beyond a relationship based on being participants of the same political authority (Yack, 2002, p. 36). Further, according to Yack (2002, p. 40), defenders of the modern concept of popular sovereignty—liberals and liberal theory in the front row—have no consistent answer to the question of what, exactly, this common pre-political characteristic is. This has facilitated the close identification of political with national community, and of the people with the nation: the nation provides precisely what is lacking in the political community. Thus, in promoting the idea of the political community as distinct from and prior to the establishment of political authority, the liberal conception of popular sovereignty brings it much closer to a national community than it has been in the past. These observations give some insight into why nationalism as an enduring political ideology in the modern world, and national sovereignty as the essential principle of the state system, have been and are likely to remain the main components in the formation of state identities and the overall international system. They also explain why the struggle between different constituencies to define the national past (of the individual nation states) constitutes the general framework within which all national politics ultimately coalesce, and which explains the close historical relationship linking liberalism and nationalism, an individualist and a communitarian ideology. Any attempt to define a ‘liberal international order’ that misses these fundamental connections between liberalism and nationalism is likely to go astray, replacing objective analysis with ideological narratives. According to the theory of hegemonic stability, the weakening of hegemonic power and the emergence of new powers also lead to the evaporation of the international order upheld by the hegemon. Many current accounts describing the end of the ‘liberal international order’ postulate that the order requires one hegemonic power with enough material and ideational force to maintain it. Susan Strange (1987) fine-tuned the theory by introducing strong and weak versions, the former implying that a hegemon suffices to uphold order, the latter claiming the hegemon is necessary but not sufficient in itself. In any case, the process of weakening a hegemonic order tends to lead to a period of intense struggle between various powers and the renegotiation of rules, norms, and practices once shared under the hegemon through consent or coercion. However, as this investigation into the liberal premises of the liberal international order has demonstrated, the ‘liberal philosophy of history’ it presupposes has always been at least somewhat contested, in particular by the hegemon (and other states, Turkey included) when ruled by a combination of conservatism and neoliberalism, and by liberal requirement to find a community-based platform for the ideal of liberal emancipation, most importantly through state-led education. It should also be noted that the Liberal International Order is based not only on liberalism but also on the liberal internationalist paradigm within the IR discipline. Although advocates of liberal internationalism tend to underline their paradigm as an explanatory endeavor, it could also be credibly argued that it serves to justify the

2.2 Liberal Contradictions and the Multiplex Word

27

order. According to Inderjeet Parmar (2018), liberal internationalist IR theory has indeed functioned as more of a legitimating ideology than an effective explanatory framework for understanding how the Liberal International Order works. In other words, it should be understood as an influential narrative of international politics that can only partially account for how the existing world order works in practice. From this perspective, the narrative of the LIO becomes part of an intertextual narrative web within which its nature and value are constantly renegotiated. The increasing tendency to challenge it, therefore, involves not only explicit attempts to replace it but also bringing to the surface narratives that aim to expose its ideological nature as directly generated by the liberal internationalist paradigm within the heavily Westerncentered IR discipline. The current transition of power and capabilities is unique in the sense that previous power transitions throughout history have taken place in altogether different eras, and thus can only provide some general evaluation tools of how such processes may unfold rather than with strict models. All the actors involved, no matter how far back in time their strategic cultures may reach, have never faced the same external circumstances as now, nor have they possessed the internal qualities they have at this exact moment. It is nevertheless suggested in the theoretical literature that, in the transition phase, new rising powers will probably attempt to shape the institutions and rules in accordance with their own interests, whereas the declining power normally feels threatened by any signal that indicates its ongoing loss of control, material benefits, and prestige. However, as the past two centuries have shown, there are major differences in how hegemons react, and thus also in the prospect of subsequent major international conflict. Before World War 1, for instance, Germany’s ascendency was perceived as an outright threat by the British Empire, which led to increased military spending and ultimately full-scale war between the two and their allies. In contrast, the change in hegemonic position from Britain to the US after World War I took place peacefully, mainly because Britain’s political leadership did not perceive the US as a direct threat: it was rather an actor through which the country could continue and extend its power as a friendly state on the other side of the Atlantic. In any case, most analysts evaluating the current situation do not expect the emergence of a single new hegemon and unipolarity, but rather anticipate a new multipolarity or, as Acharya (2017) suggests, a multiplex world in which there are several international orders with both converging and conflicting ordering principles. In addition, the current key players in international politics are not limited to great or rising powers, but also include international institutions, non-state actors, regional powers and organizations, and multinational corporations. In any case, it seems reasonable to agree with Acharya’s comment that the rising powers require space for their own principles and approaches to sovereignty, security, and development. This could lead to a significant redefinition of the existing order, moving it beyond the point at which it could no longer sustain unquestioned US primacy. As will become evident in the following pages, Turkey is among the countries that repeatedly demand a bigger role in defining the future rules of the game. The ongoing power shift is real, and the era of unipolarity under the American hegemon is over. However, the international order that was built after World War

28

2 The Global Power Shift and Liberalism

II is unlikely to turn to something completely different in the near future. At the same time, it is reasonable to expect that the rising powers will challenge many of the rules and practices established during the unipolar era. What will emerge, however, will be better described as something beyond simple multipolarity, in that all the key state actors are challenged not only by each other but also by forces and mechanisms that are not directly reducible to the balance of power among the most powerful states. The debate on the extent to which the post-1945 order could be described as a coherent and unproblematic ‘liberal international order’ is likely to continue. There are many aspects of the definition that point to its character as a powerful International Relations narrative—articulated by specific groups of people who see the world from a particular perspective. This applies to basic analytical concepts such as ‘revisionism’ and ‘status quo’, which according to Turner and Nymalm (2019) function as narrative-ordering principles in scholarly analyses, such that the former is typically conceived of as disruption from the non-West amidst a fundamentally moral Western order that represents civilizational progress. From this perspective, narratives of international revisionism and the status quo have long worked to construct and legitimize understandings of a principally Western-led global status quo and the universal advances it brings. However, this does not mean that all the components represented in the narrative are false. Obviously, there was a widespread commitment to liberalizing market policies from 1945 to the beginning of the 2000s, and post-World War II no doubt witnessed the consolidation of liberal democracies in the Western world, whereas the end of the Cold War subsequently increased the pressure on many other states to experiment with democracy and free markets. Turkey was definitely among the states that were strongly influenced by these mechanisms, both after 1945 and during the 1980s.

References Acharya, A. (2017). After liberal hegemony: The advent of a multiplex world order. Ethics & International Affairs, 31(3), 271–285. Cooley, A., & Nexon, D. (2020). Exit from hegemony: The unraveling of the American global order. Oxford University Press. Crowley, J. (2000). Liberal values, liberal guilt, and the distaste for politics. In Z. Suda & J. Musil (Eds.), The meaning of liberalism: East and West (pp. 47–72). Ceupress. Eccleshall, R. (2003). Liberalism. In R. Eccleshall, A. Finlayson, V. Geoghegan, M. Kenny, M. Lloyd, I. MacKenzie, & R. Wilford (Eds.), Political ideologies: An introduction (pp. 17–46). Routledge. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, M., & Hofmann, S. C. (2019). Of the contemporary global order, crisis, and change. Journal of European Public Policy. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/, https://doi. org/10.1080/13501763.2019.1678665?needAccess=true. Haugaard, M. (2006). Nationalism and liberalism. In G. Delanty, K. Kumar (Eds.), The sage handbook of nations and nationalism (pp. 345–357). Sage. Ikenberry, G. J. (2018). The end of liberal international order? Foreign Affairs, 94(1), 7–23. Kagan, R. (2018). The jungle grows back. Knopf.

References

29

Lehti, M., & Pennanen, H. (2020). Crises of the west: liberal identities and ontological (In) security. In M. Lehti, H. Pennanen, & J. Jouhki (Eds.), Contestations of liberal order: The West in Crisis? (pp. 61–97). Palgrave Macmillan. Öni¸s, Z. (2019). Turkey under the challenge of state capitalism: The political economy of the late AKP era. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2019. 1594856 Porter, P. (2020). The false promise of liberal order: Nostalgia. Polity Press. Porter, P. (2018). A world imagined: nostalgia and liberal order. Cato Institute: Policy Analysis 843. Parmar, I. (2018). The US-led liberal order: Imperialism by another name? International Affairs, 94(1), 151–172. Richardson, J. L. (2018). Liberalism. In R. Devetak, J. George, & S. Percy (Eds.), An introduction to international relations (pp. 36–49). Cambridge University Press. Schwarzer, D. (2017). Europe, the end of the west and global power shifts. Global Policy, 8(4), 18–26. Strange, S. (1987). The persistent myth of lost hegemony. International Organization, 41(4), 551– 574. Turner, O., & Nymalm, N. (2019). Morality and progress: IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32(4), 407–428. Yack, B. (2002). Nationalism, popular sovereignty, and the liberal democratic state. In T. V. Paul, G. J. Ikenberry, & J. A. Hall (Eds.), The nation-state in question (pp. 29–50). Princeton University Press.

Chapter 3

Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

3.1 The European Context of Kemalist Modernization In a curious way, Turkey’s modern history shares some obvious similarities with other Middle Eastern Muslim-majority societies on the one hand, whereas on the other it embarked on a very different, and distinctly more radical path from early on. The starting points were different, of course, in that, unlike almost all other states in the region, Turkey was never formally occupied, and no foreign rule has been directly established. Moreover, it is well documented that the strong state tradition with its powerful institutions, such as the army and the bureaucracy, were able to survive and continue operating during the transformation from the Ottoman-Islamic Empire to the secular Republic of Turkey (Kramer, 2000, pp. 4–5). Conventional wisdom holds, however, that this transformation was steeped in experiences of loss, alienation, collective trauma, broken families, mass expulsions, and family histories characterized by fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. There is no reason to downplay these significant and deeply devastating experiences. As always in similar cases, the forced expulsion and relocation of large numbers of people (in this case especially Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and Kurds, but also many smaller ethnic groups) create family histories that continue to haunt individuals even generations after the traumatic events. It should be understood from the outset in this case that the Kemalist Republic was as much a result as a cause of these sorrowful experiences. The loss of Ottoman territories in the Balkans during the nineteenth century meant that many Muslim communities had to abandon their homes and evacuate to the Anatolian territories that became the Republic of Turkey in 1923 (Keyder, 1987, pp. 80–81). The deep feelings of sorrow and humiliation generated by these events are amply recorded in many personal diaries and memories from the period. The First World War, on the other hand, was a catastrophe that affected several ethnic communities still living under Ottoman rule, especially the Ottoman Armenians. The Republic of Turkey was one of the outcomes of the massive transformations that began during the latter half of the nineteenth century and culminated in the Great War, a consequence fueled by © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Alaranta, Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9_3

31

32

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

the powerful forces of nationalism, modernization, imperialism, and war (Reynolds, 2011, p. 18). None of this is meant to imply that the actors in question were nothing but puppets in the theatre of history. All the events and processes involved individuals and groups acting and reacting to circumstances that were, to a larger or smaller extent, direct consequences of their predecessors’ decisions and actions, initially taken in near or faraway places. The Republic of Turkey, in turn, maintained the mechanism that was in place during the latter part of the Ottoman Empire and, as is widely recognized, was not unique in its strongly nationalist and centralist drive. After the establishment of the Republic, the Kurds became the main target of state repression mainly because they represented a double threat to the centralizing-modernizing program: first, they rejected the idea that all citizens were Turks, and second, they vehemently rejected the strict centralized state and its secular-modernist ideology that tolerated neither cultural nor administrative autonomy. There is thus no doubt about the violence and repression that were at the core of the establishment and maintenance of the Republic of Turkey. Acknowledging this, however, should not make one blind to other, much more positive processes. The building of the new secular Republic was frequently accompanied by feelings of fulfillment, a common purpose, and optimism regarding the breaking down of oppressive traditions. This was especially the case with the teachers, instructors, and officials who manned the institutions of the new modernizing regime (Sim¸ ¸ sek, 2005, p. 88). Neither is there any doubt that, in the long run, the modernization projects implemented by the Kemalist state established the foundations of almost all that is presupposed in modern political systems based on popular sovereignty, universal education, improving living standards, and overcoming traditional social relations (Esen, 2021). Of course, these effects were highly unequal in different parts of the country and among different groups of people, but they were there, nevertheless. As many analysts have observed, the subsequent emergence of counter-elites and both conservative and Islamist intellectuals could never have happened if the Kemalist, secular-nationalist state had not launched these processes. Previous studies analyzing the emergence of nationalism and liberalism since the latter part of the Ottoman Empire and subsequently in the early Republic provide very useful accounts of nationalism as the overriding force—and concomitantly the very weak position of liberalism. It is tempting to suggest that, as a consequential element in the thinking of the ruling cadres, liberalism only came to the stage during the Democrat Party (Demokrat Partisi, DP) era, beginning in 1950. This is not downright false, but it is too simplified. As demonstrated in what follows, the ‘liberal philosophy of history’, the main characteristics of which are explained in the previous chapter, animated the Kemalist revolution—not, however, as operationalized in the practices of government but as an underlying mentality of the modernization project. The strong linkage between Turkey’s modernization process and the Liberal International Order is thus to be found in the actors and places that are characterized in the majority of studies written during the last three decades, at least, by the exact opposite elements, namely, authoritarianism, protectionist nationalism, and disrespect for individual rights and freedoms.

3.1 The European Context of Kemalist Modernization

33

According to one influential interpretation, the AKP’s Islamic-Conservatism, as well as previous expressions of Turkish political Islam more generally, developed as a counter force of strict Kemalist secularism. There is an alternative way of describing the mutually constitutive mechanism of their emergence, however. Kemalism could rather be perceived as a counter-movement against the politicization of Islam in the Ottoman Empire during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Mainstream academic interpretations of Turkey’s modern history could be classified Kemalist and liberal. The former has developed since the 1920s and refers to the Republic of Turkey as a consequence of the Anatolian Resistance Struggle of 1919–1922, which in turn is claimed to mark the inauguration of the Turkish Revolution, or alternatively, the Atatürk Revolution. According to the Kemalist interpretation, this event marked the beginning of Turkish enlightenment, which modernized and westernized both state and society. Hence, Kemalism is seen essentially as a project of emancipation (Kili, 2002). The liberal interpretation, on the other hand, emerged for the most part in the 1980s, depicting Kemalism as elitist, state-led, forced, and, in the final analysis, an unacceptable project that became a major obstacle hindering Turkey’s democratization and the consolidation of basic liberal freedoms (Aytürk, 2015). Thus, for a long time, the implication was that as soon as Turkey got rid of its authoritarian Kemalist legacy, it could achieve genuine democracy. However, this so-called postKemalist interpretation has been challenged during the last ten years. ˙Ilker Aytürk (2015) neatly summarizes the requirement for a new paradigm: ‘authoritarianism in Turkey did not start with the Kemalists, nor has it ended with their elimination.’ Özlem Demirta¸s Bagdonas (2008, p. 105) rightly argues that Kemalism was no longer a unified doctrine in the post-1990 era, it was rather a repertoire of concepts and terms that have been utilized in various discourses in different ways. However, this has generally been the case since the 1950s and the advent of the multi-party regime when, as a result of the ‘must-be-Kemalist’ tradition established ultimately by the Turkish Constitution (Köker, 2002, p. 98), many political actors have explicitly called themselves Kemalists, or have at least declared their commitment to Atatürk’s mission—resulting in major conflict concerning the groups and interpretations that could be considered acceptable (Kongar, 2006, p. 23). There has been one major exception to this general situation, however. Unlike the conservative and, to some degree, the liberal-oriented democrats of the 1950s, the ultranationalists and leftists of the 1960s, and the rightist military interventionists of the 1980s, Turkish political Islam has, from its inception, called for a war against Kemalism, claiming to represent its fundamental challenger and ready to emancipate Turks from the ‘Kemalist yoke’ (Da˘gı, 2005, p. 24). During the late 1990s, however, processes emerged that transformed this traditional view of Turkish politics. As Yüksel Ta¸skın (2008, pp. 57–60) observes, radical Islamism lost its vigor, and the Islamist movement was taken over by the so-called reformists who founded the incumbent AKP in 2001. The leadership assumed power by publicly rejecting Islamist politics altogether, declaring they represented a new centrist and conservative catch-all party, and picturing the AKP as a re-incarnation in the contemporary context of the Democrat Party (Demokrat Partisi, DP), and the center-right tradition that followed it (Dalay, 2014, p. 2). However, current President Recep Tayyip

34

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

Erdo˘gan made his famous statement describing how he and all the other leading figures of the newly founded AKP had taken off their Milli Görü¸s jackets in a very specific context, a few days after his mentor Necmettin Erbakan had returned to politics by assuming leadership of the new Saadet Partisi, the most recent party of the Milli Görü¸s (Bila, 2003). Looking back, one feels justified in arguing that at least Erdo˘gan only placed a liberal center-right coat around his shoulders when he went outside, instead of never taking off the jacket of political Islam. Nevertheless, between 2002 and 2010, the AKP was widely regarded as a force that was capable not only of guiding Turkey beyond the traditional secularism-Islamism divide but also of providing a wide centrist platform concentrating on economic development and good governance. The main accusation leveled against the Democrat Party during the 1950s was that it exemplified the tyranny of the majority. In this narrative, the DP made a mockery of real democratic principles in its effort to silence the opposition altogether, most of all by claiming that it alone was capable of representing the true will of the Turkish nation (Güventürk, 1964, p. 46). As Fuat Keyman argued in 2010, something similar occurred in Turkey under the AKP. According to him (Keyman, 2010, pp. 324– 325), since the beginning of the AKP regime in 2002, Turkey had witnessed the rising tide of conservatism, not only conservatism with a Sunni Islamic core but also the conservatism of the secular middle classes. Moreover, rather than heralding democratic consolidation, the AKP experience paved the way to increase the power of conservatism as representing skepticism and the closure of difference, pluralism, and multi-culturalism, resulting in the widening and deepening of political, societal, and cultural polarization. In fact, the AKP had equaled democracy with parliamentary majoritarianism, and privileged claims of religious rights and freedoms over other claims. In conclusion, Keyman refers to the strengthening perception in Turkey that in equating democracy with parliamentary majoritarianism the AKP was taking a heavily instrumentalized approach to democracy. As noted in the previous chapter, the problem of the ‘mob’, and the observation that people can govern themselves badly, runs through liberal thinking. This being the case, it is worth asking whether, regarding Turkey, the dangers of majoritarianism can be overcome, and whether there exist more enduring dichotomies that continue to put significant pressure on Turkey’s political process. One could argue that Kemalist modernization ideology was premised on a particular emancipation project that essentially opposed the Islamic-conservative ideology of the AKP, and further, that inherent in this Kemalist emancipation project were certain preconditions for the establishment of a pluralist democracy that the AKP regime could not fulfill. To uncover the Kemalist emancipation vision and its implied idea of genuine democracy, one needs to explore the presuppositions of legitimate political authority as advocated throughout the republican decades. Such an investigation would require, in particular, a close reading of the program set out by the contemporary Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), as well as of the political argumentation employed during the Kemalist one-party era (1925–1950): both of these have left a significant ideological legacy not only for contemporary Kemalism but also for the social-democratic center-left. As I will demonstrate, understanding this Kemalist

3.1 The European Context of Kemalist Modernization

35

political articulation is a prerequisite for understanding how Kemalist ideology developed as a counter force against the politicization of Islam during the last decades of the nineteenth century. It is also a prerequisite for understanding the sharply differing interpretations of Turkey’s place in the world. Thus, the Kemalist project and its rejection by currently dominant Islamic-conservative Turkish nationalism provide the underlying matrix of current foreign-policy narratives. The investigation also offers clues as to why the liberal emancipation project has, for the most part, been marginalized in the political struggle. In present-day Turkey, Kemalist ideology provides, in varying degrees, a shared belief system for the secular middle classes who vote predominantly for the CHP, other left-wing parties, and some minor nationalist groups. Paradoxically, even the incumbent AKP has reproduced some of its nationalist aspects, although otherwise representing an opposing version of Turkish nationalism. It is clear from the current party program of the CHP that the so-called six principles of Kemalism (nationalism, republicanism, secularism, national solidarism, statism, and revolutionism) still constitute its ideological core, together with the more recent notion of social democracy. However, particularly during the last ten years, the party leadership has leaned on (universal) social-democratic ideals as well as liberal notions of rights and freedoms in redefining core Kemalist principles to better respond to current needs and circumstances. This ongoing attempt to redefine Kemalist principles from a more liberal perspective has also made the CHP a battleground between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘social democrats.’ The CHP has thus not abandoned core Kemalist principles but has tried to reformulate them. The process of redefining the Kemalist legacy is ongoing and has not yet produced a coherent synthesis. The Kemalist principle of (Atatürk’s) nationalism is conceptualized as a tool with which to embrace cultural variation while simultaneously preserving the ideal of equal citizenship. Republicanism now seems to represent human rights and pluralist liberal democracy, whereas secularism is perceived as a concept for safeguarding different lifestyles and beliefs. National Solidarism (Kemalist halkıçılık is usually translated, albeit problematically, as ‘populism’) stands for humanism and solidarity among citizens. Finally, statism symbolizes social justice and the idea of human progress (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, 2018, 13). Meanwhile, the contemporary CHP continues to identify the Anatolian Resistance Struggle of 1919–22, and the ‘Societies for the defense of national rights’ (Müdafaa-i hukuku milliye) that formed its organizational core, as not only the matrix but also the first stage of the party. Even though the six principles of Kemalism notably do not include democracy, I do not focus on this: after all, the current CHP program explicitly advocates democracy, universal human rights, and the rule of law (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, 2008, pp. 11; 19–22). Furthermore, the establishment of these basic rights has been the party’s main agenda under the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan. What is more to the point, the six principles of Kemalism have always been contested and highly flexible, hence the analysis of these principles as such does not help to explain the idea of popular sovereignty built into Kemalist ideology. Hence, it is necessary to look beyond the six principles to bring to the surface the idea of popular

36

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

sovereignty in the Kemalist tradition. It would be useful to read the current CHP program together with influential early Kemalist texts such as Mahmut Esat Bozkurt’s ˙ Atatürk Ihtilali (The Atatürk Revolution), originally published in 1940, and Recep ˙ Peker’s Inkılâp Dersleri (Lectures on Revolution), published in 1935. The reason for concentrating on these two texts is that in the contemporary political context, they are the first explicitly ideological pronunciations to include the main line of argument with reference to which the secularist center-left has built its conception of legitimate political authority up to the present day. Further, they express the Kemalist principles that are currently most vehemently attacked in the most explicit way by representatives of Islamic-Conservative ideology. At least as important is the tension between the emancipatory ‘liberal philosophy of history’ and the conceptualization of a strong central state as the instrument of its implementation, an essential element of early Kemalist modernization project. However, before analyzing the key early texts of Kemalist ideology, it is necessary to discuss Turkey’s modernization in its wider intellectual and historical contexts. Robert A. Dahl (1971, p. 105) offers a useful theoretical framing for this problematique. According to him, a political system is in peril as soon as it becomes polarized into antagonistic groups. Any such dispute in which a large section of the population feels that its way of life or its highest values are severely threatened by another segment of the population creates a crisis in a modern democratic system based on competition. Dahl (1971, p. 116) also points out that members of the majority in a country divided into majority and minority subcultures do not, on the one hand, feel much inclined to be conciliatory toward the minority as they can form a majority coalition among themselves. On the other hand, members of the minority may see no reason to be conciliatory either, easily thinking that they cannot possibly free themselves from the political domination of the majority. There is no doubt that this kind of mechanism has been observable in Turkey. In simplistic terms, there are two major understandings of what is considered sufficient elements of a democratic government. The minimal version (in its contemporary formulation) is that fair, equal, and frequent elections make democracy. The broader definition is much more demanding, listing a number of further guarantees of individual and civic liberties, and even recognition of a pluralist and democratic political culture, as a necessary precondition. One could argue in favor of evaluating Turkish democracy against the broader definition, primarily because Turkey has set itself the objective of becoming a Western European democracy. Even if one accepted this self-proclaimed mission, crucial problems remain. Democracy (in the broad sense of the term) has been a long historical process in Western Europe, fueled by major intellectual transformations, class struggles, and the subsequent political compromise-making between labor and capital in the context of fostering economic development. It is worth emphasizing the fact that the decades-long European struggle between trade unions and employers, as well as the ideological struggle between liberals and Catholics, are not mere exceptions or distortions on the overall path to peaceful democracy, they constitute the very mechanism through which a relatively well-functioning democracy was finally established.

3.1 The European Context of Kemalist Modernization

37

From the perspective of political ideologies, early liberalism called into question the traditional and hierarchical conceptions of political authority, which happened as a consequence of the new epistemology that rejected traditional conceptions of communal life based on God-given truths (Eccleshall, 2003, p. 18). All this resulted in a change of understanding about the legitimate bases of political power during the English, American, and French revolutions, and from this period onwards it was the people—first defined narrowly and later much more broadly as encompassing all adult citizens—that was perceived as the only legitimate possessor of sovereignty. Secularization was one of the basic components of this process. Although now largely forgotten, the sovereignty of the people required the functional and symbolic separation of religion and state in Western European history, and even more importantly, the secularization of the ‘life-world’. As a result, a majority of the population considered it natural that politics and religious beliefs belonged to two distinct realms, the former public and the latter private. Ultimately, the liberal international order erected after World War II as a system-level organizing principle of international politics was based on these liberal premises. According to Christopher Clark (2010, pp. 194–195), the European revolutions of 1848 produced a climate within which the secularizing and sometimes anti-clerical thrust of liberal demands across Europe opened a gap between liberals and the advocates of ultramontanism, the belief according to which Roman Catholicism should be established as the basis of government policies. In short, the new postrevolutionary Catholic Church equipped itself for the battle against European liberalism by acquiring many of the attributes of a modern corporation. Clark uses this as evidence of the modernity of the Catholic political movement, of its ability to use modern dissemination tools, and its overall mobilization drive. However, what Clark lacks, at least to some extent, is a critical discussion distinguishing form from content. It is too hasty, in my view, to argue for the modernity of the political Catholic movement in Europe simply because it learned to use modern methods. The content should be paramount in any evaluation, and from this perspective, there was enough of a determined attempt to fight not only liberalism but also modernization. Given the alleged uniqueness or special radicalism and intolerance of Kemalist secularization attempts in Turkey, it is useful to note how European history witnessed a tremendous struggle between liberals and political Catholic movement that also included a very radical secularist credo. The rise of liberal nation-states pressed Catholic institutions and loyalties all over the continent. In Prussia, after the establishment of the German empire in 1870, Bismarck introduced an array of laws in order to neutralize Catholicism as a political force. This triggered a Kulturkampf (struggle of cultures), that shaped the contours of German politics and public life for over a generation. In Italy, the fight between Papal States and the government resulted in a stand-off between the church and the secular kingdom of Italy, with far-reaching consequences for Italian political culture. In France, the new secular elite and the forces of clericalism waged bitter battles, to the extent that secular and Catholic France had almost become two separate entities (Clark, 2010, p. 196). Clark (2010) continues, noting how the Catholic polemic of the era of European culture wars projected a Manichean vision of the world in which the forces of

38

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

Christ were arrayed against those of Satan. Confronting these was a similar rhetorical radicalization within European liberals, and anti-Catholicism became one of the defining strands of later nineteenth-century liberalism. However, Clark seems eager to reject the long-held liberal conviction that political Catholicism hindered or delayed processes of political modernization in Europe, arguing that for all the antimodernism of its rhetoric, the Catholic Church, its lay auxiliaries, and its political allies were deeply implicated in processes of rapid social and political transformation. It seems to me that this line of reasoning confuses tactics and goals because one could quite credibly argue that the liberal-oriented modernization and secularization processes forced the Catholic political movement to adapt and to use modern mobilization tools and thereby make its presence felt in the new types of social organization and their practices. However, this only implies that the Catholic political movement was keen to obstruct these modern tendencies, if only it had been able to do so. In any case, in conclusion, Clark (2010, p. 202) observes that the inherent authoritarianism and intolerance of ideological and confessional pluralism were largely dissolved in the realities of interwar Europe. Thus, the horrors of Nazism and of World War II were sobering phenomena to many traditional opponents of the liberal order. The Nazi regime put Catholic organizations under its surveillance in Germany and Austria, for example, whereas Catholic groups in Italy faced extensive harassment from state authorities during the 1930s. The Europe-wide war forced Catholics to choose between the liberal, secular regimes exemplified by Britain and France and the fascist regimes ruling Germany and Italy. As a result of these experiences, advocates of political Catholicism who had tended to support authoritarian politics before World War II now became disillusioned and turned to the democratic and participatory politics in European secular and liberal nation states. In sum, the younger generation of political Catholics abandoned the authoritarian corporatist visions after 1945, embracing democracy and the market economy. PostWWII Christian Democratic parties in Europe thoroughly internalized the idea that a modern political sphere was a priori secular: in other words, neither the political institutions nor the ordering principles of public life could be based on religious tradition. It was, therefore, crucial for the development of Western European democracy that not only political elites but also the people at large perceive politics and religion as clearly distinct realms. However, the relationship between democracy and religion became a heated issue again during the new millennium, arguably fueled by postmodern philosophy and its recycled glorification of emotions in romanticism and conservatism against Enlightenment reasoning. However, Andrew Davison’s (2003, p. 335) argumentation seems to be justified in this case. He notes that the rejection in secularism of religious imposition and citizenship criteria (for both religious and nonreligious citizens), along with its legitimation of non- and antireligious ways of thinking and living—the multiple and dynamic ways of being that one may find within a given political space—has made it a common centerpiece of contemporary democratic political theory. As I explain further on, the re-surfacing of the secularismreligion debate in Europe since the 1980s has had its parallel in Turkey and the wider Middle East, where the battle regarding the political role of religion, which never completely ended, has made a powerful comeback in the rise of political Islam, in

3.1 The European Context of Kemalist Modernization

39

varying degrees and in different decades, from the 1970s onwards. Political Islam was at its most vocal during the 1990s, in other words in the same decade perceived by many as the heyday of the liberal international order. Bassam Tibi (2008, p. 5) neatly defines this as the ‘return of the sacred in world politics.’ This is a major paradox within the narrative of the liberal international order, as its internal logic requires the emancipatory liberal project based on secularism. How does this affect the Turkish case? If Turkey has set itself the objective of becoming a Western European democracy, is not secularization a precondition? As Haldun Gülalp argues, whereas secularization has been a precondition for democracy in Western Europe, the two seem to have been mutually exclusive in Turkey. He further refers to the aim of Kemalism to move directly into the space originally occupied by Islam and, by doing so, to take on some of the functional characteristics of religion. In his view, nationalist (Kemalist) sacred and unquestionable truths replaced those of Islam. In conclusion, Gülalp argues that Kemalism functioned as a ‘quasireligion’ in Turkey, and thus restricted democracy (Gülalp, 2005, pp. 352–357). This argumentation has at least one obvious flaw. The claim that Kemalist secularism developed into a dogma that could be considered a kind of religion with its own unquestioned truths, does not in itself explain why secularization should not be a universal precondition for democracy, at least in its broader sense. It is illustrative that Gülalp does not give any answers to the question of how a pluralist democracy could have been established in the face of Islamic modernization, which Gülalp sees as an alternative to Kemalist secularism in Turkey. In other words, if Islamic means the implementation of Sharia law and the Quranic revelations as a legitimate form of knowledge—grounding the idea of sovereignty in God and not in the people—how could this offer the basis for democratic pluralism and individual liberties? How could this even happen if Turkey is to become a Western European democracy if one basic presupposition of such democracy—secularism—is rejected? It seems rather obvious, however, that the roots of social polarization and different understandings of legitimate political authority in Turkey cannot be explained this simply. Obviously, the AKP regime, which (initially) wanted to transform Turkey into a Western European democracy, cannot simultaneously propose an Islamic understanding of democracy based on religious law. The problem lies elsewhere—in the conflicting perceptions among Turkish parties and voters concerning the very preconditions of genuine democracy. On the one hand, the religiously oriented conservative majority feels that strict Kemalist secularism has repressed individual freedoms such as a religious lifestyle and will continue to do so. The AKP and its supporters have often claimed that if it is the will of the majority to bring religious values into the public and political arena, then this should be allowed to happen if Turkey really is a democracy. On the other hand, the Kemalist-minded minority finds this unacceptable. Hence, the core problem comes to the surface. The mission of making Turkey a modern European nation state was initiated by the Kemalist state elite who ruled Turkey as an authoritarian one-party regime during the first three decades of the Republic. These state elites wanted to make Turkey European, and they saw the separation of religion and politics at the heart of European (and especially French) reality. A Kemalist understanding of legitimate political authority was established

40

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

during their nation-building program, which has often been dismissed as undemocratic. Nevertheless, it clearly includes a basic component that is at the core of Western European democracies, namely secularization. The way in which this most salient feature of the Kemalist project has traditionally defined the ideological struggle in Turkey has been transformed by the changing global intellectual and political context during the last three decades. In today’s world, secularist-political religious debates take place in the midst of significant renegotiation around the salience of the Enlightenment tradition, especially in the Islamic world. All this all points to the observation that the ongoing polemics concerning the consolidation of democracy in Turkey are raging in a society that lacks consensus regarding the values upon which a functioning democracy could be established. Moreover, this is taking place in an international context in which some of the key premises of European modernity have become questionable. As mentioned above, one of the trickiest issues here is that the ‘return of the sacred’ in world politics has coincided with an alleged liberal ascendancy and the globalization of the liberal international order since the 1990s. Strong secularism has been a fundamental premise of the liberal project. It thus seems that we are far from establishing an inherently coherent account of international politics during the post-Cold War era. The secularism-religion debate in Turkey has been reformulated in the last 20 years in academic debates by underscoring the role of Diyanet, the Presidency of Religious Affairs. Existing studies rightly observe that Kemalist secularism (laiklik) was not about the separation of state and church, it was about the control of religious institutions and public manifestations by the state. The instrument for exerting this control was Diyanet, which was given the power to instruct all mosques and their personnel in the religious education sanctioned by the state. However, the fact that Kemalist Turkey controlled religion instead of separating it from the state and allowing it an autonomous sphere, does not remove the essential dichotomies regarding the place of religion in a modern society espoused by Kemalism and the Islamic-conservative tradition. This is demonstrated by the fact that the same Diyanet used to promote a rationalist and laic (secularist) interpretation of Islam to create an ideal secular citizen, is now used by the AKP to create conservative Sunni Muslims who are loyal to the Islamic-conservative state project (Öztürk, 2016). Accordingly, the Diyanet is just a tool or instrument at the disposal of those in charge of the state. How and for what purposes it is used is ultimately reduced to very different understandings of modernity and modernization in the Turkish context. The following analysis of Kemalist assumptions will shed more light on this.

3.2 Kemalism Past and Present The leader of the resistance forces and the first President of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938), gave the official historical account of the Anatolian Resistance Struggle (Milli Mücadele) as the Turkish Revolution in 1927, in his famous six-day speech (Nutuk). He gave fundamental definitions, which have

3.2 Kemalism Past and Present

41

pervaded Kemalist discourse ever since. For example, he claimed that the purpose of the Anatolian Resistance Struggle was to establish a secular Turkish nation state, not to preserve the traditional rights of the Anatolian Muslim population and the integrity of the Ottoman state. Further, during his historical presentation in his Nutuk, he explained that the Turks had taken their proper place as part of the resistance struggle in the universal history of progress and that the leader of this struggle, Mustafa Kemal, personified the national will in its entirety. Finally, he confirmed that this will was manifest in the Turkish revolution aimed at secularization, rationalization, and the establishment of an entirely independent nation state (Atatürk, [1927] 2006). In the wake of this orthodox narrative, ideologues of the Kemalist one-party regime, most notably Recep Peker (1889–1950) and Mahmut Esat Bozkurt (1892– 1943), set out to synthesize Kemalist principles in an ideology of the revolution. Their lectures were part of the institutionalization of education on the Turkish revolution that took place during the 1930s. Other events on the top level included the founding of ˙ Türk Inkılâbı Enstitüsü (Institution of the Turkish Revolution) in the summer of 1933. On the grassroots level, in turn, the new revolutionary education was provided by so-called People’s Houses (Halkevleri), which were established in many cities during the 1930s (Sim¸ ¸ sek, 2005, pp. 74–75). Recep Peker pointed out at the beginning of his ˙ Inkılâp Dersleri that his lectures concerned the Turkish Revolution (Türk inkılâbı), which had universal significance and had lifted the Turkish nation from poverty to prosperity, and from shame to dignity (Peker, 1984, p. 13). This statement must have been the starting point for an academic systematization of revolution and the utopian vision attached to it. Most Kemalists must have known that the Turkish nation had not yet progressed from poverty to prosperity, but the claim of national dignity was much harder to ignore. Prosperity was conditional and it would become a reality in the future only if the nation always followed Kemalist revolutionary principles. Peker also described how the rays of civilization began to shine over the world after a long period of darkness in the middle of the fifteenth century: ‘Our participation in this re-born civilization was not as fast and widespread as it should have been. We received the printing machine three hundred years too late’ (Peker, 1984, p. 115). One major aspect of civilizational progress, according to Peker, was the popular demand for freedoms. He made a categorical distinction between two major types of historical revolution: freedom revolution (hürriyet inkılâbı) and class revolution (sınıf inkılâbı). The former occurs when people rise against their rulers to secure their lives, property, and personal dignity. According to Peker (1984, pp. 25–26), as widespread behavior, this kind of action became possible after the early-modern period had established knowledge as the basis of an enlightened philosophy of life. It seems, then, that the all-encompassing cultural narrative of ‘enlightenment’ was the main narrative trope of Peker’s lectures, and soon became one of the core concepts of Kemalist political articulation. Peker was thus arguing that knowledge became indispensable to humankind in the early-modern period and that this enabled humanity—a universalistic concept—to struggle for its freedom. It is obvious from these lectures that, for the Kemalists, the Anatolian Resistance Struggle was never a mere war of independence, it was a struggle of universal proportions, attaching the Turks to the process of modernity launched by the great European revolutions.

42

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

Thus, according to Recep Peker, a universal history characterized by an intentional human struggle for emancipation and freedom originated in Europe and then spread to all humanity. Given the future self-understanding of the Kemalist narrative, the state elite in charge until 1950, and the subsequent intra-Kemalist quarrels regarding Westernization, it is obvious that the Kemalist ideology synthesized by Peker attached the Republic of Turkey to the same historical orbit as the West. In other words, Kemalist enlightenment (aydınlanma), which legitimized almost all early Republican political reforms—and the suppression of any opposition—were conceptually void without the strong identification of the Turkish Revolution with the Western ‘liberal philosophy of history’ that repeatedly underscored human emancipation through scientific rationalism. However, the paradoxes of the Kemalist enlightenment narrative were also detectable in Peker’s lectures. He first listed all the classical liberties that any modern defender of liberal democracy would praise, namely freedom of speech and publishing, freedom to choose one’s work, freedom of gathering, freedom to travel, and freedom of conscience. However, he proceeded to deplore the fact that ‘maladies’ had begun to emerge after the first idealists had secured these advances, as liberty degenerated into excessive libertarianism and, more significantly, parliamentarism. Although Peker (1984, p. 27) conceptualized parliamentarism as a natural outcome of the freedom revolution and the right to organize political parties, he argued it soon gave rise to class revolution and continuous fighting, bringing into being the authoritarian state. Thus, accompanying the obvious democratic potential of early Kemalism from the beginning was anxiety about mass politics, which seemed to put the new regime under threat. Consequently, the one-party regime of the ruling CHP was declared the sole manifestation of the national will. This, on the other hand, presupposed that the Turkish nation was defined as homogenous, not divided among different, antagonistic classes. According to several analysts (Kansu, 2002; Parla & Davison, 2004), the emphasis on an organic and homogenous nation in early Kemalism appeared to indicate that corporatism and nationalism, even with similarities to National Socialism, were much stronger tenets of Kemalism than liberalism. Indeed, there is no reason to deny the strong corporatist current in the Kemalist vision. It was a continuation from the pre-republican era, and already influenced the thinking of Ziya Gökalp, the most prominent ideologue of the Young Turk era and the first systematic theoretician of Turkish nationalism. However, corporatism was a child of European modernization, a reaction to rapidly changing social realities and the individualist tendencies expressed by liberalists. Acknowledging the strong corporatist element in Kemalism does not loosen its unambiguous attachment to the liberal philosophy of history. Further, as explained in the previous chapter, liberalism’s emphasis on individual liberty has historically necessitated a political community that shares the same core principles, devised through the institutions that the national state was able to provide. However, rejection of the idea that Turkish society comprised different social classes did not endure the establishment of a multi-party regime in 1945. In particular, the Republican People’s Party was refashioned as a social-democrat party during the 1960s, and this naturally included acknowledging the existence of a Turkish

3.2 Kemalism Past and Present

43

working class with aspirations (and class interests) that differed from those in other social groups. The end of the one-party era and the separation of the CHP and the Democrat Party produced an axis of left–right politics that has been specific to Turkey. These events occurred in a crossroads situation brought about by the internal split of the CHP in 1946, explicitly manifesting the division in Kemalism into Left and Right. The right wing, in other words, the Democrat Party, comprised people who saw Kemalism as nation-building and modernizing project heading towards a liberal-populist order of bourgeois middle class (i.e., Kemalism before 1932 and its statist policies). According to one influential interpretation, the left-wing that was concentrated within the CHP rather saw the corporatist and above-the-classes management of society as being under the control of a strong state, implemented especially during the statist (devletçilik) policies of the 1930s, as the ‘Golden Age’ of Kemalism (Bora & Ta¸skın, 2002, p. 531). By the beginning of the 1970s, the leftists had won the internal ideological struggle within the CHP between the left-of-center group led by Bülent Ecevit and the more rightist factions, and social democracy became its core ingredient (Bilâ, 2008, pp. 244–246). In the view of Suat Kınıklıo˘glu (2002, pp. 2–3), however, Bülent Ecevit’s idea of socialism was quite revisionist, emphasizing the willingness to work within the capitalist economy and to reform it. The new ‘left-of-center’ (ortanın solu) CHP aimed to strengthen the economic welfare of the lower stratum of society. Thus, instead of calling for the eradication of capitalism, under Bülent Ecevit, the party wanted to redistribute wealth within the capitalist system by establishing social-security measures for the whole population, unemployment benefits, healthcare benefits, and social policies to provide housewives with social security. Most significantly, Kınıklıo˘glu (2002, p. 9) points out that although the new leftist interpretation of Kemalism acknowledged the existence of social classes, it did not initially seek to encourage any form of class struggle. However, Ecevit re-considered his opinion as the student movement increased its power at the end of the 1960s, stating that class struggle was an inevitable outcome of democracy. Thus, with reference to class struggle, the early Kemalist corporatist-oriented vision does not continue in the current (social democrat) CHP ideology. However, there is another highly influential core ingredient in early Kemalist thought that certainly does have a place in the contemporary ideology of the Republican People’s Party. According to Recep Peker, the success of revolution rests on the premise that it is not enough that people become superficially accustomed to the new ways of life: these new ways have to be internalized and to be intrinsic in the daily lives of citizens. Moreover, the stronger and more widespread the old customs are, the more force is needed to replace them with revolutionary innovation. Hence, it is necessary to repress the forces of reaction (Peker, 1984, p. 18). For Kemalists religion, in this case, Islam represented the ultimate counter-revolutionary force, which Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, another first-generation Kemalist ideologue, makes evident in his influential ˙ book Atatürk Ihtilali: In particular, the thesis that there are no unchanged principles, and that it is unacceptable to surrender, is manifestly true. Even religious doctrines once considered eternal must be abandoned in the face of the changing demands of time…the Old Testament, the Bible,

44

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History as well as the Quran. Even the God who sent these books is transformed. He practically disappears. As Russian communists put it, God vanished into history! Philosophers and sociologists such as Voltaire and Pareto stated that God did not create man: it was a man who created God (Bozkurt, 1995, pp. 140–141).

The discussion thus far sheds light on the Kemalist understanding of the Turkish revolution, based on European revolutionary theories. It is, primarily, a genuine example of ‘freedom revolution,’ grounded on the Western concept of modernity. Second, it manifests one of the most obvious characteristics of modernity, namely change. According to Bozkurt, then, God is now considered merely a product of human intellect. Further, according to Bozkurt (1995, p. 148), revolution is implemented by the intelligentsia with the help of the people, such that the result manifests the highest interest of the nation. Thus, for both Peker and Bozkurt, the freedom revolution implemented in Turkey during the Anatolian Resistance Movement was, in itself, a comprehensive demonstration of the popular will. Once a revolution has been successfully launched, all that is needed is a strong party to safeguard its continuity. There can be no question that the people will, or should, ask for something else. In operations of legitimation such as this, citizens are persuaded to believe that multiparty politics and the widening of political participation could only lead to disunity characterized by humiliation and the loss of Turkey’s independence. Bozkurt further asserts that the aim of revolution is to lead the nation towards advancement in all fields of life. It is thus a project of general progress. Reactionary behavior (irtica), on the other hand, occurs when the nation is guided in the opposite direction. Then he raises a very interesting question: does the nation have the right to choose this irtica, this religious reaction? In his view, it does not, even though the principle of national sovereignty declares that the nation decides. The reason he gives is that advancement and novelty represent life, whereas reactionary movements are synonymous with death. The death of a nation cannot in any way be considered a choice, as one speaks only of the right to live, never to die. According to this argument, the nation does not have the right to make a decision that would enable the Turks to re-establish the sultanate, or even a constitutional monarchy, because it would entail renunciation of the nation’s sovereignty. Bozkurt admits that one might well ask if it is acceptable that individuals and nations cannot use their natural right to decide in whatever way they please. However, he points out that individuals and nations obviously can use their rights, but only in the interests of progress, never to sanction regression or death. His final argument for denying the nation’s right to choose regression is that no generation may make a decision that would leave ‘slavery’ (esaret) as its legacy for the next one (Bozkurt, 1995, pp. 73–75). Thus, reflecting Peker, Bozkurt’s conception of the Anatolian Resistance Struggle, and the revolutionary movement attached to it, presupposes a universal history of mankind heading inevitably toward progress—a conception that could be called ‘the liberal philosophy of history.’ His observations on people’s rights in terms of the direction of the revolution finally bring to the surface one of the most problematic aspects of the Kemalist modernization project, namely the discrepancy between the emancipatory goal of enlightenment and the authoritative method of achieving it, to

3.2 Kemalism Past and Present

45

which I allude above. To put this in a wider context, it is worth pointing out that a similar process characterized the French Revolution—an event that first-generation Kemalists used to back their revolutionary ideal. Moreover, the democratic potential of the French Revolution was soon severely curtailed by the Jacobins—paradoxically in the name of freedom. It is noteworthy that later Kemalist intellectuals rejected any claims suggesting undemocratic practice in Kemalism. In this respect, Ahmet Taner Kı¸slalı articulates the post-Cold-War Kemalist stance most explicitly, noting that the Kemalist Turkish revolution was, more than anything else, an enlightenment revolution implemented in a backward society to change people’s mental structures and to create a new human being, a more rational individual. He goes on to suggest that the French Revolution is the best example of a revolution that was forced to occur as a consequence of major transformations of the social reality. In this case, social realities and the power balance between various social groups had already changed, but the political system had not changed accordingly. On the other hand, a revolution takes a different form in societies that have not experienced any major social transformations: it occurs when men intentionally, using an ideology, try to take advantage of particular historical events to produce social transformations that have not yet occurred. Hence, ideology plays a crucial role in revolutions implemented in underdeveloped countries, generating forces of change that have not emerged through a gradual transformation process. The two main goals of Kemalist revolutionary ideology were independence and modernization (Kı¸slalı, 2000, pp. 62–63). Thus, for its followers, condemning Kemalism for being a reform movement led by the enlightened bureaucracy represented nothing other than a conservative stance defending the continuing presence of the religiously legitimated old social order, inherited from the Ottoman Empire. This brings me to the major idea of legitimate political authority in the Kemalist tradition, currently manifested by the Republican People’s Party. At first, sight, if one looks at the current CHP party program, there seems to be no reason why CHP voters and supporters of the governing AKP should have very different ideas about legitimate political authority. However, the program contains a definition of secularism (laicism) that, on the basis of Recep Peker’s and Mahmut Esat Bozkurt’s ideas, provides the key to this different conception. It is said in the CHP program that laicism means the separation of affairs of the state and affairs of religion. Laicism is also defined as the precondition for and guarantor of various beliefs to be expressed in peace, and as the backbone of freedom of conscience and belief. It is the foundation of the Republic and of democracy, the basic tenet of national unity and internal peace. In addition, the eternally laic character of the state, with its institutions, society, law, and education, is declared as an uncompromising rule. It is stated that laicism makes religion a matter for the private, not the public realm. It is also stated in the party program that the Republican People’s Party shall always oppose those who try to nullify laicism by giving it a new definition (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, 2008, pp. 15– 16). In addition to this reaffirmation of traditional Kemalist laicism, the CHP party program also includes a definition of democracy and of individual human rights. It is noteworthy that the latter includes not only the rule of law, equality, and human rights, but also a mission to liberate the individual in a more specific way:

46

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History Our understanding of the free individual includes not only the legal reforms but also the liberation of the individual, in reality, from all sorts of economic and social repression, economic dependency, pressure from the religious orders, injustices in land ownership, and feudal pressure. It also includes the liberation of women through education and culture (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, 2008, p. 20).

It is also worth noting here how one of the leading left-wing Kemalist ideologues, ˙Ilhan Selçuk, described the Turkish experiment with Kemalism during the 1990s. He stated that the birth of a ‘new human’ (yeni insanı) must be seen as emerging from the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, characterized by the Enlightenment’s motto to evaluate all things within the ‘jurisprudence of reason’ (Selçuk, 2003, pp. 31–32). With regard to Turkey, Selçuk observed that the National Liberation Struggle (Ulusal Kurtulu¸s Sava¸sı) generated the necessary preconditions for Enlightenment, and because Anatolian society lacked the structural preconditions, different methods were used to carry it through then had been applied in Europe. It was obligatory to replace the umma mentality with nationality and to move from the slave to the citizen identity as rapidly as possible. In a country in which only ten percent of the population knew how to read or write, teachers were given the duty to implement the transformation, in other words, to create a ‘new human’ (Selçuk, 2003, pp. 35–37). Selçuk synthesized the social reality of the 1990s in Turkey in the following words: In Turkey, the Enlightenment project is lived between the tides of ‘revolution’ and ‘counterrevolution.’ It is in the post-World-War-II Turkey that the continuation of the Enlightenment reform is tested in the context of a multi-party democracy. Turkey is a model in this respect. If the struggle between the supporters of the Enlightenment and those of the sharia is lost in Anatolia, this model is doomed to lose. As the balance changes in the Islamic world from Asia to Africa, religious fundamentalists with their mission to turn the course of history shall be victorious. Religious violence has increased in recent years and has spread throughout the Islamic world. The danger of religious fundamentalism is now the reality in many countries. This is a struggle between the ‘new human’ and the ‘old human’ (Selçuk, 2003, p. 37).

One could argue that Selçuk’s evaluation from 1997 still neatly expresses, if not in its entirety, then at least to a significant extent, the position taken by secularist circles in Turkey. One could also argue that many members of this constituency still aim to legitimize the Republican principles using the same arguments that formed the essence of the Kemalist legitimation effort from the 1930s until the 1980s. This narrative has been forced into a defensive position during the last 15 years, however. On the other hand, its marginalization has pushed many of its proponents toward militant secular nationalism, even more vehemently than before. As Halil M. Karaveli observed in 2010: ‘Having once charted a course that led it in a different direction than Western secularism, Turkish secularism does not show any signs of evolving along liberal lines. On the contrary, Kemalism has during the last decade dug itself even deeper behind the walls of xenophobic nationalism, animated by hostility toward a Western world that is perceived to be scheming to partition Turkey’ (Karaveli, 2010, p. 88). In the view of CHP voters, bringing religious values into the political arena—even in the context of normally functioning democratic procedures—is an unjustified act.

3.2 Kemalism Past and Present

47

The reason, in short, is that the AKP regime fails to continue the promotion of the new human. Thus, the CHP voters perceive it as illegitimate, even though it rules based on the will of the majority. Running through the Kemalist texts analyzed above is a certain red thread signifying a powerful line of political argumentation. First, as Bozkurt found, the principle of the sovereignty of the people, which functions as the fundamental ideal of the Turkish revolution, does not give the Turkish people the right to make a decision that would, in the end, limit that sovereignty. According to this view, communal life based on religious values is an expression of reactionism (irtica), leading to intellectual slavery (esaret) under God’s commands, and thus limiting the absolute sovereignty of the people. Hence, it cannot be accepted even when willed by the majority. Second, the CHP’s party program defines individual liberty as including the emancipation of the individual from all kinds of pressure, including the manipulation of religious brotherhoods. This is very similar to, if not the same, the mission of emancipation described above by ˙Ilhan Selçuk in an effort to create a new human being—understood in Kemalist discourse as the promise of the Turkish revolution. From this perspective, it is not necessary for the AKP regime to re-establish theocracy (obviously, it does not have such a mission) in Turkey to make it unacceptable in the eyes of secularists voting for the CHP: the abandonment of attempts to create a new human being is enough. On the other hand, such abandonment is going on all the time as the AKP brings conservative-religious values into the public arena through its popular mandate. One could argue that there are three main social cleavages in contemporary Turkey, namely the secularism-Islam divide, the ethnic cleavage between Turks and Kurds, and the economic cleavage between the have-lots and have-nots. With respect to the first one, it has been convincingly demonstrated that attitudes towards religion still play a crucial role in explaining voter behavior in Turkey. Within Turkish society is a Kulturkampf between the conservative-religious components and the more secular center, and ‘contrary to previous observations… religiosity keeps influencing voters despite their formal education and economic status’ (Guida & Tuna, 2009, p. 135). It has been observed that CHP voters represent a political movement that generally comprises non-practicing Muslims, fearing that the AKP is threatening Kemal Atatürk’s secular reforms and is attempting to bring Turkey back to the dark years of the Middle Ages. Thus, writing in 2009, Guida and Tuna could not avoid concluding that ‘today the political debates and polemics between the AKP and the main opposition party CHP are still mainly on secularism and the abuse of religion’ (Guida & Tuna, 2009, p. 137). These observations thus imply that the modernization (urbanization, economic development, and increasing level of education) in contemporary Turkey is not contributing to the elimination of at least the first-mentioned social dichotomy. One could also argue that resolving the latter two—even permanently—would not have an effect on the first one. In any case, as Guida and Tuna suggest, the point is that educational level does not explain the difference between AKP and CHP voters. One could even argue that increasing the educational level has exacerbated the first dichotomy as the religiously oriented counter-elite are becoming ever more highly

48

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

educated, prosperous, and self-assured. The future scenario emerging from this sociological portrait is thus of a nation comprising a wealthy, educated and self-assured, religiously oriented majority willing to see its worldview and conservative values expressed in public, and a secularist minority perceiving its most fundamental values as being increasingly threatened by the ruling majority. What, then, are the consequences of the Kemalist understanding of legitimate political authority for contemporary Turkish democracy? Given that all this concerns basic worldviews and identities, the social polarization described above is hardly a short-term ‘digestive problem’ faced by a country in transition. The Kemalist understanding of legitimate political authority has been internalized by generations of Turkey’s secular middle classes. One of the basic teachings in studies of democracy (such as Robert A. Dahl’s) is that a democratic political regime based on competition cannot survive in the context of fundamental social dichotomies. This presupposes a severe lack in those societies of common basic values upon which reciprocal toleration could be grounded. Thus, as long as the Kemalist-minded minority and the religiously oriented majority perceive the nature of legitimate political authority very differently, the Turkish political system will be—if not in crisis—at least under constant pressure due to the fundamentally conflicting values in the major (ideological) social groups. Kemalist ideology is no longer the dominant ideological formation in Turkey. The religiously inspired ‘Turkish-Islamic synthesis’ became the most influential ideological current in the 1980s. Its fundamental presuppositions are largely grounded on a postmodern political philosophy originally developed in the West, which afterward crucially delegitimized the Enlightenment-inspired modernization project (Kemalism) in Turkey. As Ragip Ege was able to demonstrate during the 1990s, postmodern political philosophy implies that science has no authority to judge other forms of knowledge, such as religious knowledge. In Ege’s word’s: ‘at the time when the most influential Western thinkers emphasize the contextuality, relativity, and repressiveness of universal scientific truths, this leaves the Kemalists—who ground their ideology solely on the Enlightenment originated scientific discourse—in total intellectual bankruptcy’ (Ege, 2003, p. 82). In this context, the idea of disillusionment, encirclement, and ‘losing the cause’ that is observable in Kemalist-oriented constituencies should be seen not as exaggeration and paranoia, but as the genuine concerns of a social group perceiving that its most fundamental values are under attack. The recently witnessed vehemently anti-Western and nationalist tendency within Kemalism should also be understood in relation to this anxiety.

3.3 Turkey in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization One way of challenging the post-Kemalist paradigm attributing the cause of Turkey’s troubled democracy mainly to the reproduction of Kemalist authoritarianism throughout the decades is to analyze its notorious military interventions. Of the five (1960, 1971, 1980, 1997, and 2016), in only two of them can it be said that a

3.3 Turkey in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization

49

Kemalist or secularist component played a significant role, albeit in a different way. The first one, in 1960, could indeed be called a Kemalist coup, in that the army ousted a conservative government and allowed a group of left-leaning Kemalist intellectuals to draw up a new constitution (Daldal, 2004, pp. 75–76). The 1997 ‘e-coup’, on the other hand, should perhaps be labeled Neo-Kemalist because the relationship with secularism (and the concomitant fear of irtica) that was allegedly defended by the intervening army was a reformulation of the Turkish version (laicism) at a time when there was indisputably a new kind of radical Islamist agitation in the country. This was also when an Islamist party tried to stretch the limits of the Islamist political agenda within the government, rather than in the margins of political power, as in previous decades. Referring to ‘Neo-Kemalism’ in the 1997 intervention is justified given that the Turkish-Islamic synthesis adopted after the 1980 military intervention severed the traditional connection between the central state and Kemalist ideology. In this sense, the emphasis on secularism and fighting religious radicalism was about re-invoking the Kemalist imaginary in the new context of the 1990s. However, it is highly problematic to argue that a staunchly secular/Kemalist army conducted the two military interventions of the Cold-War era—and blatantly false in the case of the 1980 coup, which opened the doors for Islamic resurgence by legitimizing the public use of Islamic discourses with the Turkish-Islamic synthesis as the official ideology. On the other hand, the 1971 coup was more of a non-ideological intervention organized by officers who wanted to withdraw some of the political freedoms and pluralist concepts inherent in the 1961 constitution. In addition, the military soon started to harass many well-known left-wing Kemalists such as Mümtaz Soysal and ˙Ilhan Selçuk (Akıncı, 2014, p. 68). In its overall tone and purposes, it reflected issues that had very little to do with safeguarding secularism or defending Kemalist ideology. The 2016 coup attempt was, to a large extent, an intra-Islamic affair between previous allies, the AKP, and the Gülen movement. It is hard to deny the prevalent view of the main developments in Turkey’s foreign policy since the 1980s, according to which the major structural transformation brought about by the end of the Cold War and the emergence of American unipolarity at the beginning of the 1990s required a thorough rethinking of Turkish foreign policy. The systemic change challenged long-held conceptions among the elite about Turkey’s place in the world. The atmosphere at the time was a combination of excited anticipation of acquiring more maneuvering space and concern that Turkey might lose its relevance to NATO now that the alliance’s common, existential enemy had disappeared. However, before going into more detail about the post-1990 era, I should point out that the limitations of the foreign-policy experiment within the bipolar system (1945–1990) should not be overstated. On two occasions, first during the 1950s under the conservative-populist Democrat Party (Demokrat Partisi, DP), and subsequently during the 1980s under the conservative-liberal Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP), Turkey deviated from its cautious, non-interventionist republican strategic stance and embarked on a more active and even adventurist foreign policy. In the 1950s, the experiment—entitled ‘Active Americanism’ in Turkey—was closely attached to DP leader Adnan Menderes, who envisioned Turkey as a close American

50

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

ally in the Middle East, a conservative and Western-friendly force actively taking a stance against Soviet-supported secular and leftist regimes (Balcı, 2013, pp. 79–82). Although in principle supportive, the US ultimately downplayed these ideas because an assertive Turkey intervening in the internal affairs of its Middle Eastern neighbors could have easily drawn the US into an unnecessary and unpredictable confrontation with the Soviets. ANAP leader Turgut Özal envisioned an altogether new political and cultural domestic project in the 1980s. It included an attempt to replace the cautious, Westernfocused foreign policy by re-invigorating Turkey’s Ottoman heritage and incorporating this civilizational approach into the ongoing neoliberal economic restructuring. This project was preceded by the 1980 military intervention during which the junta, led by Kenan Evren (who subsequently became President), shut down all existing parties and established tightly governed draconian rule under which hundreds of thousands of citizens were detained and imprisoned. Leftist parties were crushed, and all left-leaning voices in academia were silenced (Bora & Ta¸skın, 2002, pp. 540–541). In light of the alleged liberal international order upheld by a benevolent American hegemon, it is noteworthy that Kenan Evren and his brutal military comrades, and the whole 1980 coup raised very few concerns in the internal memos of the CIA, the coup leaders even being described as ‘our guys’ by the Americans. In other words, the perpetrators of the military coup were perceived as strongly anti-Left and eager to support free markets (Yetkin, 2015). The US reaction is indeed a telling example of how the celebratory narrative of the liberal international order brushes away too much of this murky history when the promotion of democracy and human rights was often compromised to safeguard broader American strategic interests. The objective of the 1980 military intervention was to nullify the post-1960 democratic political system. The main goal of General Evren and his associates was to make the political system stable while retaining a façade of democracy. During the 1970s and 1980s, the military regime perceived Turkey as being under serious threat from internal communist plotters encouraged by the Soviet Union. According to the military junta, the way forward in this situation of internal weakness was to strengthen the state by creating a regime in which the executive branch reigned supreme under the command of a President who would act in accordance with the ‘collective interest’. Under the 1982 constitution, political parties were put under strict control of the state agencies. One of the most striking innovations in the new constitution was the addition of compulsory religious and moral education under the supervision and control of the State, in both elementary and secondary schools (Kalaycio˘glu, 2005, pp. 127–131). Thus, during the 1980s, the military junta determined the structures within which civilian politics were possible, and Prime Minister Turgut Özal made the most of this space, attempting to implement his own vision in the absence of any major opposition leaders. Özal’s vision was to combine the export-driven economic model based on the new Anatolian middle class with the new ideological synthesis uniting Islam and the republican modernizing credo based on secularism, which thus far had been perceived as irreconcilable. The aim was to find a recipe for the emergence of a specifically ‘Turkish modernity’. This opened Turkey’s strategic horizon, and the country’s foreign policy began to conceive of the

3.3 Turkey in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization

51

Middle East as a natural field of economic and political activism. During the 1980s, the government allowed a wide array of Islamic ideas and material to be published and broadcast. A new generation of Islamic intellectuals grew up, whose ideas started to attract members of the professional middle class, students, and intellectuals, who were now increasingly questioning Kemalism and secular nationalism. The idea of specifically Turkish modernity could, in retrospect, be conceptualized as both the apex and the beginning of the end of Turkey’s Westernization project and its close ideological attachment to the Western historical trajectory. Under Özal, with his policies promoting economic liberalization, the country successfully finalized all its Western-oriented reforms and thus no longer needed the West as a role model. Now was the time to build genuine Turkish modernity, that would move beyond the previous state-led modernization project. According to White (2008, p. 369), Islamic intellectuals close to Özal started to re-evaluate the basic tenets of the Enlightenment tradition, namely rationalism, universalism, modernity, and the inevitability of human progress along a normative trajectory set by the West. What White refers to as the ‘inevitability of human progress along a normative trajectory set by the West’ is identical to what I previously defined as the ‘enlightenment idea of history’ at the core of liberalism, and subsequently, the so-called liberal international order, which also animated the Kemalist modernization project in theory, if not in practice. One could argue that as soon as this shared narrative storyline is replaced by narrative distinction, the gate is open for a differentiating historical trajectory on which Turkey is no longer part of the West. Turgut Özal’s new domestic project combining neoliberal economic policies and conservative values was implemented under the restrictive bipolar system, which was abolished with the break up of the Soviet Union. Consequently, Turkey’s political leadership started to look at its neighboring areas with new eyes at the beginning of the 1990s. Central Asia was the first geographical area to fire the imagination of many Turkish politicians. There were now five independent Turkic republics in a vast territory reaching from Azerbaijan to East Turkestan (Sinkiang) in China, and Turkey wanted to be a key external actor contributing to both state- and nation-building projects. The narrative used in approaching these newly independent countries was based on the idea of common ‘Turkishness’, in other words on ethnic and linguistic affinity. The pan-Turkic political ideal originally developed in the Ottoman Empire in the latter half of the nineteenth century thus became fashionable again, and there were discussions about a vast Turkic world reaching from the Aegean Sea to East Turkistan. However, it soon became clear that Russia still perceived Central-Asian republics as its own backyard, and Turkey would not be allowed to have a leading role. China, for its part, warned against any Turkish foreign-policy activism that would feed separatist ideas among the large Uyghur population of East Turkestan. In addition, Turkey seemed to approach the Turkic republics with a big-brother mentality, which provoked a negative reaction among the region’s political elites and ordinary citizens alike. Thus, after initial euphoria, Turkey scaled down its pan-Turkic schemes. Among the individual countries, neighboring Azerbaijan was the only new state in which it

52

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

ultimately played a crucial role. However, as Turkish companies became economically active in Central Asia, different civil-society groups, such as the Gülen movement, established schools and networks all over the area. More generally, the search for a new role in the post-Cold War world finally also induced secular-nationalist political traditionists to rethink their long-held convictions. The neoliberal economic policies and the emergence of a new conservative middle class with its export-driven companies during the 1980s ushered in an era of political and cultural transformation. This generated identity politics, new religiously oriented media houses, and the increased marketization of social relations. The first new American-style shopping malls (alı¸sverıs merkezi) were erected in Ankara and Istanbul at the beginning of the 1990s. The Kurdish question reached a breaking point with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, PKK) and the Turkish army engaging in full-scale war in southeast Turkey, devastating vast territories. Liberal intellectuals observing their country from the posh cafés on the European side of the Bosporus declared, not wholly unjustifiably, that the whole political regime established in 1923 was in deep crisis, unable to mediate the increasingly differing identities and interests of various constituencies that comprised globalized Turkey on the eve of the new millennium. Together with the new Islamic intellectuals, raised in conservative families but educated in the secularized school system, liberal intellectuals now called for ˙ the establishment of a ‘Second Republic’ (Ikinçi Cumhuriyet) and the abolishment of the ‘Kemalist regime’ based on the idea of a homogenized, state-centric nation state. The end of the 1990s and the first years of the new millennium in Turkey were characterized in many circles by a combination of disappointment and anticipation of a more promising future. On the one hand, for many the nineties seemed a ‘lost decade’, the expectations of the new post-Cold-War world being shattered by domestic troubles such as the dead-end regarding the Kurdish question, widespread corruption, and unfulfilled democratization with the military still in a powerful position. On the other hand, Turkey was formally accepted as an EU candidate in 1999 at the Helsinki EU Council. The new millennium started with a coalition government comprising social democrats, the center-right, and the nationalist far right. The coalition managed to implement first EU-reform legislation packages but was unable to find unity and effective tools in the face of several financial crises that hit Turkey in 2000–2001. In this context, Turkey held a parliamentary election on 3 November 2002, after which the newly founded Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) came to power by winning 34.2 percent of the votes and gaining 363 seats in the 501-member Parliament. This enabled the AKP to form a one-party majority government, which it managed to replicate in every election until 2015. The coming to power of the AKP and its implementation of several EU-reform legislative packages between 2002 and 2008 were widely interpreted as a triumph for liberalism in Turkey. It also seemed to confirm the expectation that the EU, the exemplary European stronghold of liberal democracy, was able to socialize others to its normative order. The AKP seemed to be on its way to building a model of liberal democracy in a Muslim-majority society, and Western liberals enthusiastically

3.3 Turkey in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization

53

used slogans such as ‘Muslim democracy’ and ‘Turkish model’ in references to Turkey under the AKP. In this sense, a similar positively anticipatory atmosphere that characterized EU-Russia relations at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium seemed to be spreading to EU-Turkey relations. Indeed, the prospect of attracting these two major players on the edge of Europe to the liberal international order no doubt consolidated the idea that this order was on its way to becoming truly global. Setting this analysis of Turkish foreign-policy narratives in its relevant sociopolitical context undoubtedly requires consideration of the entire modernization project since the last century of the Ottoman Empire in the discussion about the transformation effected by the AKP government during the last 15 years. However, the more recent point of departure for analyzing the ideological character of the AKP regime is the so-called ‘28 February process’, as the ultimatum delivered by the Turkish Armed Forces to the government in 1997 is referred to in Turkey. According to one general account, on 28 February 1997, the Turkish military presented an ultimatum to the Islamist-dominated coalition government following a meeting of the National Security Council (MGK). The government ousted by the military’s electronic memorandum (hence the sometimes-used concept of e-coup) comprised the Islamist Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) and the center-right Do˘gru Yol Partisi (True Path Party). Any discussion about this event must include an evaluation of the Islamist Party and its policies when in power. As Özipek explicitly states, what took place on 28 February 1997 was the military ousting of a civilian government formed after free and fair elections, and its replacement with a government that promised to govern according to the decisions ˙ established by the military. Irtica (religious fanaticism) is defined in the official documents produced at the time as the greatest internal threat to Turkey. That much is incontrovertible. However, beyond this simple historical fact, the arguments Özipek uses in defining the nature of the 28 February process are controversial, mainly because it is taken as given that the military only used irtica as an excuse to suppress and limit all actors who did not support official secularist ideology. He describes how the military managed to form civil-society partnerships in its fight against conservative Muslims, the result of which was a clear limitation of rights and freedoms imposed by the military and secular civilian elites on those who were considered ‘threatening’ (Özipek, 2005, p. 640). What characterizes this account is that it defines irtica very narrowly as if it was only an irrational fear. In fact, the word has several meanings, and one could just as easily claim that it also applies where it is perceived as highly problematic if a political party has religious references at the core of its agenda in a country in which 99 percent of the population are Muslims. To say the least, all those arguing that there was no serious Islamist indoctrination in Turkey before the military intervention should take more than a precursory look at the writings of previous Prime Minister and AKP ideologue Ahmet Davuto˘glu, for instance, who was a young academic in those days, deeply influenced by political Islam. To give an example, Davuto˘glu claims in one of his publications from 1994 that the ‘Westernized elite’ had disgraced Turkey by annihilating its own civilization and disseminating pornography in the media, even

54

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

letting the famous pop singer Madonna perform in the country. As Behlül Özkan (2015) notes, the purpose of these writings was clearly to show how the ruling elite did not represent the Turkish nation and its Islamic beliefs and was thus illegitimate. Obviously, in raising these issues here I do not intend to claim that what the military did was fine and right. However, its ability to get larger civil-society groups behind its move, and to acquire a degree of popular legitimacy, clearly reflected the fact that political Islamists had become very active by that time, and that there was a real possibility of the Refah party government instituting a general program of Islamization. It is also unsafe to claim that conservative Muslims were not politically represented before the AKP era. Such an argument is astonishing, given that conservative center-right parties were perfectly capable of representing Islamist and conservative constituencies during the 1960s and 1970s. As Ru¸sen Çakır (2005, p. 546) observes, there was no clear ideological difference between Erbakan’s first Islamist party and that of the mainstream conservatives. From this perspective, it is hard to see why and how these groups should have been totally unrepresented or marginalized before the AKP. However, this is how a wide array of Turkish academics depict this issue, especially those who support the AKP. Burhanettin Duran and other members of the ruling block, for example, consistently refer to a ‘normalization process’ in Turkish politics after the AKP came to power. In their view, it was mainly about the ability of Islamist and conservative constituencies to take their legitimate places within Turkey’s political system and to bring their religiously defined and conservative values and lifestyles to the center of the political process (Duran, 2015). A significant number of authors, both Turkish and Western, claim that the era of successive AKP governments represented, for the most part, both normalization and democratization. Thus, one can only conclude that, according to these authors, a significant proportion of what was alleged to be ‘abnormal’ in Turkish politics reflected what they allege was the marginalization of the religious and conservative constituency. Keyman and Gumuscu (2014, p. 48), for example, argue along these lines, underscoring that the AKP represents the periphery demanding a share of power. In this interpretation, the socially conservative periphery had felt politically marginalized until the AKP integrated it into the political system. Based on this, the integration itself could be seen generating greater democratization of the political system. This interpretation thus effectively reproduces the two most dominant assumptions that have guided Turkish social sciences for several decades. First, building a research agenda on the idea of more or less distinct categories of the center and the periphery is a dichotomy that is frequently used to explain almost all significant aspects of Turkey’s twentieth-century political history. Second, and strongly related, is the idea that an omnipotent Kemalist state has been able to rule the country over popularly elected governments. The problem is not that they are completely wrong: it is rather that they tend to be considered too categorically distinct as if they had a straightforward relationship with the external reality. Talk about the center and the periphery, as well as about an omnipotent Kemalist state, is deeply structuralist, easily hiding the fact that underneath these abstractions are intentional political actors, individuals, and groups, who are very unlikely to have been so neatly

3.3 Turkey in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization

55

allocated to distinct institutions, such as the state and civil society. There is ample historical evidence of how religious brotherhoods, various religious and occupational networks, and intellectual circles collaborated during the Democrat Party and Motherland Party eras not only with the executive branch but also with the army and the state bureaucracies (see, for instance, Karpat, 2004, p. 115; White, 2013, pp. 33–38; Atasoy, 2009). It is therefore problematic to depict the political process in Turkey within the strict center-periphery categorization, especially for eras in which there was an enduring majority government of mainstream conservative parties such as the DP, the ANAP, and the AKP. It is also well documented (e.g., McDowall, 2004, pp. 398–401) how both the Kemalist CHP and the conservative Democrat Party absorbed the traditional elite formations and networks in the countryside, especially in the Kurdish southeast, into their organizational structures during the 1950s. In other words, civil society and the state have not been separated as a strict interpretation of the center-periphery model might imply. Further, Turkey has not really had an omnipotent Kemalist state since the end of the one-party regime in 1950. There has been a strong central state, which has often represented interests that are not in line with many of the forces of civil society, but not since 1950 has the strong state been ‘Kemalist’. It has rather been a nationalist-conservative state that, in varying degrees and in different periods, has either emphasized or downplayed the main characteristics of the Kemalist Revolution, secularism in particular, depending on the given socio-political context and the internal power relationships among the executive, the bureaucracy, and the armed forces. Thus, it is unrealistic to claim that the majority of Turkey’s conservative Muslims have not been represented by, or integrated into, the political system since the 1950s. One could argue that this kind of problem was solved when the Democrat Party came to power and started the process—which has gone on without interruption ever since—of paying considerable attention to the values and demands of conservative constituencies. In this sense, one could argue that the discourse of normalization and democratization is based on stronger grounds in terms of ending the political role of the military. This is something that has indeed taken place under AKP governance and, on the understanding that in contemporary liberal democracies at least, the armed forces are under the strict supervision of the elected government, could surely be called normalization. Since the end of the Cold War, the liberal Turkish intelligentsia has been continuously in search of a constituency that could force the retreat of what they perceive as an omnipotent Kemalist state and thus allow the development of a full-blown civil society and liberal democracy. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its centralized, statist economic model, the general assumption, presumably worldwide, has been that economic liberalization is eventually followed by political liberalization and, ultimately, a pluralist democracy. The standard account of the AKP depicts the party as a product of the genuine re-evaluation and renegotiation process within the Milli Görü¸s movement during the 1990s, especially after the military intervention of 28 February 1997. According to this narrative, the new generation, or ‘reformists’ within Erbakan’s party concluded that traditional political Islam could

56

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

not survive in the contemporary circumstances and that a new articulation of the Islamic-conservative constituency was needed, based on the now seemingly almost universal vocabulary of liberal democracy and economic liberalization. A number of AKP deputies publicly claimed that they had unconditionally abandoned their Milli Görü¸s opinions and that they were now advocates of pluralist democracy. Likewise, the AKP’s official program defines the party as conservative democrat and points out the need to establish in Turkey a liberal-democratic regime that guarantees equal political and cultural rights for all citizens, including minorities (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, 2002). This powerful frame of interpretation, within which the AKP represents system normalization, has for a long time helped Turkish social-science research, backed by a majority of Western analysts, to legitimize the AKP as a democratic force. These observations, the adequacy of which now obviously need to be questioned and even rejected, prepared the ground for a positively resonating discourse of a ‘New Turkey’ (White, 2013; Yavuz, 2006). What thus emerged was almost the reverse of what had happened many decades earlier, when Western accounts of republican Turkey depicted it as a success story of Western-inspired modernization and secularization (see, for instance, Frey, 1965). In a sense, in addition to explaining what was happening within Turkey, both clusters reflected the intellectual climate in Western academia during the given periods. They also reflected the stage of the international order, including the levels or manifestations of liberalism within it. From the liberal Western perspective, the AKP regime’s project to build a ‘New Turkey’ now resembles an authoritarian state project repressing the basic freedoms of citizens. In the post 9/11 context, when a powerful narrative of a ‘clash of civilizations’ emerged and there was allegedly confrontation between Islam and the West, Turkey under the AKP was supposed to be an example of the harmonious existence of Western liberal democracy in a Muslim-majority society. It was thus increasingly put forward as a model to follow in the rest of the Middle East. However, it had already become apparent by 2010 that Turkey’s domestic politics had turned into a zero-sum game about possession of the state. First, secularist generals and prosecutors tried to ban the AKP on the pretext that it was becoming a threat to the secular political system installed under the constitution. On the other hand, the AKP and the Gülen movement, which was the AKP’s civil-society partner from 2002 to 2012, tried to clear all state institutions of secular-nationalist actors in dubious court cases. By 2012, this domestic struggle had turned into an AKP-Gülen showdown, culminating in the failed coup attempt on 15 July 2016. Since then, the AKP government has demolished the Gülen movement in Turkey. Increasingly since the 2010 referendum, the constitutional changes, and the successful takeover of all key state institutions, the AKP under Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan’s firm rule has established what could be called an Islamic-conservative state. There is an array of formal and informal projects, such as consolidating Sunni Islam as the core ingredient of official state nationalism. It also includes turning the Diyanet, the Presidency of Religious Affairs, into an ideological state apparatus with a huge budget to spread the new state ideology effectively both at home and among the diaspora. The Islamic-conservative project has further led to a change in regime type from parliamentarian to presidential, during which

3.3 Turkey in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization

57

process the independence of the judiciary, which is one of the basic elements of any liberal-democratic regime, has come under severe political pressure. Furthermore, Turkish society has witnessed a deepening of societal cleavages during the past 15 years. In the early years of its rule, the AKP government was keen to bridge some of the most enduring, such as the urban-agrarian divide, the Left–Right divide, Sunni-Alevi tensions, the secularist-religious cleavage, and Turkish-Kurdish dichotomies. However, under Erdo˘gan it has increasingly been deepening these cleavages since 2008, building its support by strengthening conservative-religious Sunni Turkish nationalist forces to create a collective political actor. These efforts have assumed ever more important as the party loses support, and especially when the main opposition blocs, namely Turkish secular-nationalist center-left constituencies and the Kurdish leftist movement, managed to cooperate as an electoral alliance. The most noteworthy of these cooperative ventures came to light in the 2019 municipal elections, when supporters of the Kurdish-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokrasi Partisi, HDP) in several major cities voted en masse for the candidate from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP). It is also noteworthy that the authoritarian turn in Turkey started at about the same time around 2008 when the financial crisis hit the global economy. Several authors point to 2008 as one of the major turning points in the ongoing global power shift, mainly because the crisis demonstrated the vulnerability of and the internal faults within the Western-led neoliberal global economic system. It is much too early to make pronouncements about these processes or their possible linkages, but it is worth noting that when it came to power in 2002, the Justice and Development Party was strongly supported by both the US and the major European countries. In fact, the ‘Muslim democracy’ movement based on the neoliberal economic model brought together two major processes through which democratization would take root in the Middle East, according to an influential academic line of argumentation. This view could be labeled ‘democratization through market liberalization’: free markets and external capital investments would provide a platform from which a new middle class engaged in private enterprise could escape state control, demand political liberties, and thus enforce the withdrawal of the authoritarian state (Hassan, 2015). In the Middle East setting, this is coincident with the view that increased political inclusion, especially among political Islamist parties, will have a moderating effect and subsequently, especially after acquiring government responsibilities, turn them into defenders of the electoral process and democratic politics (Schwedler, 2013). There is very little doubt that the Turkish AKP, with its roots firmly in the domestic political Islamist movement, was considered the exemplary candidate to demonstrate the applicability of the ‘democratization through market liberalization’ model. The weakness of this model became evident coincidentally with the widespread observation of a global power shift and a weakening of the liberal international order. As is evident even from this short account of post-1980 history, during the past four decades Turkey has witnessed a strange combination of domestic transformation with significant linkages to major global processes. If these global processes were to

58

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

be described with one catchword, it would be neoliberalism, although it is best seen as a highly contested social construction rather than a clear analytical term. From the social-scientific perspective, the term has several meanings. Most relevantly in this chapter, it refers to an epoch, initially starting in the 1970s, characterized by the advance of globalization based on free trade, transnational production, and the free movement of financial capital. Other relevant characteristics include a distinctive set of economic policies intended to extend market forces, including into areas once considered extra-economic, with different instantiations in advanced economies, transitional economies, and emerging markets. These policies have been associated with the so-called Washington Consensus in emerging markets such as Turkey (Jessop, 2012). As I observe below, the policies and their alleged results in terms of democracy, progressivism, liberalism, community values, and religion’s place in public life and within state apparatuses, all constitute a major battleground between different constituencies in Turkey. Here as in many other non-Western regions, the Liberal International Order has found its strongest expression in neoliberal economic policies, thus confirming the interpretation of free trade and financial deregulation as by far the strongest face of the liberal order. The discussion on neoliberal restructuring and its potential to advance democracy and accountable forms of government are ongoing, but four decades of economic opening-up and at least the partial implementation of privatization and deregulation policies have clearly not been sufficient to consolidate democracy in Turkey in the long term. The vast majority of experts on Turkey have long assumed that the fear expressed, often by Kemalist actors, that the AKP was hiding its true intentions for tactical reasons, was ridiculous and only signaled the archaic mentality of the Kemalist constituency. In other words, the liberals who backed the AKP emphasized that the party leadership was serious in claiming that it had left its political Islamist stance behind. Now that an authoritarian Islamist political agenda has clearly been re-established as the party’s official line, of course, these liberal scholars have trouble explaining why it happened. The most common line of reasoning is that AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan has become too power-hungry and that the Arab Spring revolutions, which for a while seemed to bring Muslim Brotherhood forces to power in several countries, induced the AKP to play the card of Islamic solidarity in its foreign policies. Much of this line of argumentation is unsatisfactory, however. First, it presupposes swift ideological transformations back and forth within a period of ten years or so. That is to say if the actors (such as Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, Ahmet Davuto˘glu, Bülent Arınç, and Abdullah Gül) were committed Milli Görü¸s Islamists until the last years of the 1990s, which they undoubtedly were, and if they then completely changed their political beliefs and became genuine democrats, (as liberals have to think for their argument to be inherently logical), then does this not mean that these same actors then again changed their firmly held beliefs after 2010, and are once again espousing political Islam? This does not sound convincing. Firmly held political opinions, which are normally based on a deeply internalized worldview, do not change that rapidly. It is much more plausible to claim that most of the leading actors within the AKP have, in all likelihood, retained many, if not all, of their deeply held political values and

3.3 Turkey in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization

59

assumptions and that whatever changes have occurred, have been tactical moves in uncertain and constrained circumstances. One could further argue that what has taken place in Turkey during the last 15 years has been the consolidation of one specific form of political Islam at the heart of its state structures and that this was achieved, at least partly, through reproducing a narrative implying that significant system normalization and democratization were on their way. In the international context, there is absolutely no doubt that the widespread re-evaluation and even de-legitimization of the basic tenets of classical modernization theory have produced the intellectual backdrop for the rise of Islamic-Conservatism in Turkey. Almost all assumptions in universal emancipation narratives originating from the European Enlightenment since the end of the Cold War have been questioned and discredited. This process was in full swing in Turkey during the 1990s, but its enduring consequences have become apparent only since the turn of the new millennium. There is solid documentation and analytical research evidence of how this mechanism worked to undermine the state-led modernization paradigm in Turkey during the 1990s. In this sense, the postmodernist attack on modernization theory in Western academia is, without doubt, one of the reasons for the emergence of Islamist intellectuals and Islamic-conservative ideology in Turkey since the 1980s (Kadıo˘glu, 1999; ˙Irem, 2007, pp. 114–150). This intellectual milieu has also worked as the grounding philosophy for the post-Kemalist research paradigm.

References Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi. (2002). Parti Programı. https://www.akparti.org.tr/parti/parti-programi/. Akıncı, A. (2014). Türkiye’Nin Darbe Gelene˘gi: 1960 ve 1971 Müdahaleleri. Eski¸sehir Osmangazi ˙ Dergisi, 9(1), 55–72. Üniversitesi I˙IBF Atatürk, M. K. (2006). Nutuk. Kitap Zamanı. Atasoy, Y. (2009). Islam’s marriage with Neoliberalism: State transformation in Turkey. Palgrave MacMillan. Aytürk, ˙I. (2015). Post-post Kemalizm: Yeni bir paradigmayı beklerken. Birikim 319. Bagdonas, Ö. D. (2008). The clash of Kemalisms? reflections on the past and present politics of Kemalism in Turkish political discourse. Turkish Studies, 9(1), 99–114. ˙ Balcı, A. (2013). Türkiye Dı¸s Politikası: Ilkeler, Aktörler ve Uygulamalar. Etkile¸sim. Bila, F. (2003). AKP ve Milli Görü¸s. Milliyet, May 20. https://www.milliyet.com.tr/yazarlar/fikretbila/akp-ve-milli-gorus-311290. Bilâ, H. (2008). CHP 1919–2009. Do˘gan Kitap. Bora, T., & Ta¸skın, Y. (2002). Sa˘g Kemalizm. In A. ˙Insel (Ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Dü¸sünce, Cilt II: Kemalizm (pp. 529–545). ˙Ileti¸sim. ˙ Bozkurt, M. E. (1995). Atatürk Ihtilali. Kaynak Yayınları. Çakır, R. (2005). Millî Görü¸s Hareketi. In T. Bora & M. Gültekingil (Eds.) Modern Türkiye’de ˙ Siyasî Dü¸sünce, Cilt 6: Islâmcılık (pp. 544–575). ˙Ileti¸sim Yayınları. Clark, C. (2010). From 1848 to Christian democracy. In I. Katznelson & G. Stedman Jones (Eds.), Religion and the political imagination (pp. 190–213). Cambridge University Press. Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi. (2018). Millet ˙Için Geliyoruz! Seçim Bildirgesi. http://secim2018.chp. org.tr/files/CHP-SecimBildirgesi-2018-icerik.pdf?v=3. Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi. (2008). Ça˘gda¸s Türkiye ˙Için De˘gi¸sim: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Programı. http://www.chp.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/chpprogram.pdf.

60

3 Turkey and the Liberal Philosophy of History

Da˘gı, ˙I. (2005). Transformation of Islamic political identity in Turkey: Rethinking the west and westernization. Turkish Studies, 6(1), 21–37. Dahl, R. A. (1971). Polyarchy: Participation and opposition. Yale University Press. Dalay, G. (2014). Centre-right, conservatism, Islamism, and Turkey’s European Vocation. Analysis, November 24. The German Marshal Fund of the United States. Daldal, A. (2004). The new middle class as a progressive urban coalition: The 1960 Coup d’ État in Turkey. Turkish Studies, 5(3), 75–102. Davison, A. (2003). Turkey, a ‘secular’ state? The challenge of description. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 102(2/3), 333–350. Duran, B. (2015). Sekülerle¸smenin ‘gücu’ ve AK Parti. Sabah, March 17 http://www.sabah.com. tr/yazarlar/duran/2015/03/17/sekulerlesmenin-gucu-ve-ak-parti. Eccleshall, R. (2003). Liberalism. In R. Eccleshall, A. Finlayson, V. Geoghegan, M. Kenny, M. Lloyd, I. MacKenzie, & R. Wilford (Eds.), Political ideologies: An introduction (pp. 17–46). Routledge. Ege, R. (2003). Modern ˙Islamcılarda Bilim ˙Ile Aklın Sorgulanması. In D. Elkâtip (Ed.), Türkiye’de Aydınlanma Hareketi: Dünü, Bugünü, Sorunlari, 25–26 Nisan 1997 Strasbourg Sempozyumu Server Tanilli’ye Saygı (pp. 72–93). Alkım Yayınevi. Esen, B. (2021). Demokrasimizin önündeki engel gerçekten Kemalizm mi? Poltikyol, August 3. https://www.politikyol.com/demokrasimizin-onundeki-engel-gercekten-kemalizm-mi/. Frey, F. W. (1965). The Turkish political elite. Press. Guida, M., & Tuna, T. (2009). Centre-periphery divide as a key to understand electoral choices in Istanbul. European Journal of Economic and Political Studies, 2(2), 129–143. Güventürk, F. (1964). Gerçek Kemalizm. Okat Yayınevi. Gülalp, H. (2005). Enlightenment by fiat: secularization and Democracy in Turkey. Middle Eastern Studies, 41(3), 351–372. Hassan, O. (2015). Undermining the transatlantic democracy agenda? The Arab Spring and SaudiArabia’s counteracting democracy strategy. Democratization, 22(3), 479–495. ˙Irem, N. (2007). Aydınlanma, Küreselle¸sme ve Postmodernle¸sme Sarmalında Modernite ve Türkiye’de Yerellik Siyaseti. In B. Toprak (Ed.), Aydınlanma Sempozyumu (pp. 114–150). Osmanlı Ar¸siv ve Ara¸stırma Merkezi. Jessop, B. (2012). Neoliberalism. In G. Ritzer (Ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of globalization (Vol. 3, pp. 1513–1521). Wiley-Blackwell. Kadıo˘glu, A. (1999). Republican epistemology and Islamic discourses in Turkey in the 1990s. The Muslim World, 88(1), 1–22. Kalaycio˘glu, E. (2005). Turkish dynamics: Bridge across troubled lands. Palgrave Macmillan. Karaveli, H. M. (2010). An unfulfiled promise of enlightenment: Kemalism and its liberal critics. Turkish Studies, 11(1), 85–102. Karpat, K. H. (2004). Studies on Turkish politics and society: selected articles and essays by Kemal H. Karpat. MA Brill. Keyder, Ç. (1987). State and class in Turkey: A study in capitalist development. Verso. Keyman, E. F. (2010). Modernization, globalization and democratization in Turkey: The AKP experience and its limits. Constellations, 17(2), 312–327. Keyman, E. F., & Gumuscu, S. (2014). Democracy, Identity, and Foreign Policy in Turkey: Hegemony through Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan. Kili, S. (2002). Türk Devrim Tarihi. Türkiye ˙I¸s Bankası Kültür Yayınları. Kınıklıo˘glu, S. (2002). Bülent Ecevit: The Transformation of a Politician. Turkish Studies, 1(2), 1–20. Kı¸slalı, A. T. (2000). Atatürk’e Saldırmanın Dayanılmaz Hafifli˘gi. ˙Imge Kitabevi. Kongar, E. (2006). Atatürk Üzerine. Remzi Kitabevi. Köker, L. (2002). Kemalizm/Atatürkçülük: Modernle¸sme, Devlet ve Demokrasi. In A. ˙Insel (Ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Dü¸sünce Cilt 2; Kemalizm (pp. 97–112). ˙Ileti¸sim. Kansu, A. (2002). Türkiye’de Korporatist Dü¸sünce ve Korporatizm Uygulamaları. In A. ˙Insel (Ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Dü¸sünce Cilt 2: Kemalizm (pp. 253–267). ˙Ileti¸sim.

References

61

Kramer, H. A. (2000). A changing Turkey: The challenge to Europe and the United States. Brookings Institution Press. McDowall, D. (2004). A modern history of the Kurds. I.B. Tauris. Özipek, B. B. (2005). 28 Subat ¸ ve ˙Islamcılar. In T. Bora & M. Gültekingil (Eds.), Modern Türkiye’de ˙ Siyasî Dü¸sünce, Cilt 6: Islâmcılık (pp. 640–651). ˙Ileti¸sim. Özkan, B. (2015). Abdülhamit’in ruhunu beklerken: Restorasyon, medeniyet ve Davuto˘glu. Birikim 309–310. Öztürk, A. E. (2016). Turkey’s Diyanet under AKP rule: From protector to imposer of state ideology? Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 16(4), 619–635. Parla, T., & Davison, A. (2004). Corporatist ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or order? Syracuse University Press. ˙ Peker, R. (1984). Inkılâp Dersleri. ˙Ileti¸sim Yayınları. Reynolds, M. A. (2011). Shattering empires: The clash and collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908–1918. Cambridge University Press. Selçuk, ˙I. (2003). Türkiye Aydınlanması: ‘Yeni ˙Insanı’ Yaratmak. In D. Elkâtip (Ed.), Türkiye’de Aydınlanma Hareketi: Dünü, Bugünü, Sorunları, 25–26 Nisan 1991 Strasbourg Sempozyumu Server Tanilli’ye Saygı (pp. 31–37). Alkım. Schwedler, J. (2013). Islamists in power? Inclusion, moderation and the Arab uprisings. Middle East Development Journal, 5(1), 1350006–135000618. Sim¸ ¸ sek, S. (2005). People’s houses’ as a nationwide project for ideological mobilization in early Republican Turkey. Turkish Studies, 6(1), 71–91. Ta¸skın, Y. (2008). AKP’s move to ‘Conquer’ the center-right: its prospects and possible impacts on the democratization process. Turkish Studies, 9(1), 53–72. Tibi, B. (2008). Political Islam, World politics and Europe: democratic peace and Euro-Islam versus Global Jihad. Routledge. White, J. (2008). Islam and politics in contemporary Turkey. In R. Kasaba (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey Vol. 4: Turkey in the Modern World (pp. 357–380). Cambridge University Press. White, J. (2013). Muslim nationalism and the New Turks. Princeton University Press. Yavuz, M. H. (2006). The emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the AK Parti. University of Utah Press. Yetkin, M. (2015). Turkey’s Kenan Evren: The last of the Cold War coup plotters. Hurriyet Daily News, May 11. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/opinion/murat-yetkin/turkeys-kenan-evrenthe-last-of-the-cold-war-coup-plotters-82208.

Chapter 4

Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

4.1 The Domestic Power Struggle and the Politics of History The main aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how profoundly interpretations of Turkey’s place in global politics are based on differing conceptualizations of the country’s past and, in particular, the meanings given to the state-led modernization project. It also reveals the extent to which different accounts of Turkey’s foreign policy and the ongoing international conflicts in which it is involved shape understandings of its history. I will show how these struggles over national history and their accompanying interpretations of world politics are deeply influenced by a relative weakening of the American-led order. In other words, the ongoing global power shift is transforming the struggle over the meaning of the ‘national’ in Turkey. The discussion in the previous chapter focused on the liberal philosophy of history in the Turkish context and the alleged need to move beyond the post-Kemalist paradigm, highlighting some of the problematic assumptions such as an excessively strict center-periphery model. I recalled how the current Islamic-conservative ideology had its pedigree in the dual processes of weakening the modernization paradigm in the West on the one hand and incorporating Turkey into Western-led neoliberal globalization on the other. The currently dominant Islamic-Conservative ideology espoused by the AKP has been fully compatible with both the global neoliberal free-trade regime and techno-scientific materialism. Thus, the AKP’s Islamism has focused mainly on articulating a morally corrupt, godless, valuerelativist Western world, of which Islamic-conservative Turkey is perceived as a counter-image. The blessings of the modern world in terms of material development, bureaucratic efficiency, commercial and industrial innovation, and capitalist profits have been welcomed, and in this sense, the Islamism advocated in the ‘New Turkey’ of President Erdo˘gan is ‘classical’ in type (Ayubi, 1991). Ayubi describes Islamism as an eclectic assembly of signs, symbols, and practices that are believed to be Islamic by persons, groups, or regimes that describe themselves as such. Within this mechanism, things become Islamic when they are identified as being so, normally © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Alaranta, Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9_4

63

64

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

by way of comparison with a few separate practices that are considered non-Islamic or anti-Islamic, such as drinking alcohol, uncovering the head, and mixing the sexes. Thus, he defines Islamism as the moral counterpart of each of these practices (Ayubi, 1991, p. 230). Thus, according to the AKP leadership, Turkey should not become just another post-industrial, value-pluralist ‘trade regime.’ The claim that the current, Westerncentered world order is unjust and dysfunctional, which is repeatedly made by the Islamic-conservative power bloc, presupposes a Turkey that is different from and superior to the West. The AKP’s ‘New Turkey’ discourse largely builds this distinction on the idea of an Islamic civilization represented by Turkey, a storyline that is present even when President Erdo˘gan emphasizes the merits of cooperation between Turkey and the West (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2021). The perpetual imagination and articulation of a genuine Turkish-Islamic civilization, as expressed in the discourse of ‘our civilization and culture’, has become hegemonic within the AKP. In the most extreme cases, it is a dictum that is used to relativize all nonreligious forms of culture. This was the case in the statement issued by AKP deputy Mahir Ünal in 2016: ‘In our civilization and culture, all books are written to explain the Quran’ (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı Diyanet I¸sleri Ba¸skanlı˘gı, 2016). The building of a New Turkey on these ideological premises requires the articulation of an ideal citizen, and this is produced mainly by narrating the ‘domestic other’ who represents the corrupt Western world within Turkey. This corrupt and immoral domestic other largely comprises Kemalist secularists understood as despicable Westernizers who have illegitimately occupied state apparatuses for almost 80 years. To understand why and how this narrative has become so prominent in contemporary Turkey one needs to consider the experience of secular and Islamic politics from a comparative perspective, with a special emphasis on nationalism in Muslim-majority societies during the twentieth century. Little by little, the ongoing civilizational remaking advocated by the AKP and President Erdo˘gan has also started to produce practical innovations, such as attempts to turn Turkey into a center of Islamic banking (Özdemir & Aslan, 2018). At its core, however, the Islamic version of Turkish nationalism is about building the legitimacy of the state on Islamicconservative premises: the state is functioning and effective when it is perceived as expressing shared identities and interests, or when it has the capacity to act, and it is perceived as legitimate. The battle over defining a shared identity thus allows Islamist politics, with its concentration on specific moral issues, to function as a marker of national identity at the expense of secularist rivals. Turkey’s republican past becomes a very powerful other for the Islamist self in Islamic-conservative ideology. Internal and external aspects frequently dissolve into each other during the process of othering, such that inner, authentic, and in this case religiously defined selfhood is threatened by malevolent forces working both outside and inside the country. Within this narrative, in the domestic sense, its republican history becomes a struggle between alien Kemalist secularists and representatives of the Muslim nation, such that the coming to power of the AKP in 2002 is seen as a reconquest, a final victory against alien forces. All this presupposes a conceptualization of the Anatolian Resistance Struggle of 1919–1922 as a necessary but

4.1 The Domestic Power Struggle and the Politics of History

65

insufficient phase in the process of ‘becoming the true nation’, some unfinished business of national liberation that is finally accomplished almost a hundred years after the initial independence war. In its external relations, the secular and Westernizing Republic is perceived as having been designed by Western imperialist forces in the age-old struggle between Christians and Muslims. Furthermore, all domestic opponents of the Islamic-conservative regime are depicted as having no will of their own. They are mere puppets in the eternal struggle, actors placed there by Western powers to prevent Turkey from becoming the leading power of the Islamic Middle East. An array of metaphors and catchwords has been produced in recent years to create and maintain the image of an authentic self and an alien other. Examples include talking about Turkey now ‘returning to its self’ (öze dönmek), ‘finding its self’ (kendini bulma), which in foreign relations means that the country now re-imagines itself as the true successor of the ‘Ottoman World State’ (Osmanlı Cihan Devleti) in a geography that is inevitable ‘again brought to unity’ (co˘grafya bütünle¸siyor) (Bulut, 2015). The idea of geography rediscovering its unity directly challenges both the Kemalist nation-state paradigm including its domestic order and foreignpolicy orientation, and the Western-led international order established after the First World War. This attempt to redefine Turkey’s role in terms of the Middle East, in particular, replaces the modernization projects long cherished by the West—bringing the Middle East into the redefined, post-nationalist free-trade regime—with Turkey as the leading actor in defining the parameters of this post-nationalist order in the Middle East. Obviously, some periods and historical figures in Turkish history have special significance when it comes to the reconquest narrative. One of these, naturally, is Mustafa Kemal, later Atatürk (1881–1938), the founder and the first President of the Republic. As such, Atatürk is necessarily among the historical figures who occupy a prominent position in all competing versions of the national past. Current President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan has also, in various events and circumstances, delivered speeches aimed at evaluating and (re)defining the meaning of Atatürk to Turkey. One such occasion was the official ceremony organized by the Atatürk Cultural, Linguistic and Historical Supreme Council (Atatürk Kültür, Dil ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu) on 10 November 2014. The main point Erdo˘gan made in his speech was that later generations, in their attempt to justify their political aims, distorted Atatürk’s message and thus wrongly used him in their own political struggle. He strongly pointed out that later generations produced a distorted narrative claiming that ‘there was nothing before Atatürk’. Further, Erdo˘gan made it abundantly clear that the Republic was definitely not the product of one man, it was a step in the agelong process initially started in 1078 when the Turks won the battle of Malazgirt against the Byzantines and started to settle in Anatolia. Likewise, according to Erdo˘gan, the proclamation of the Republic was just one step along the continuum, a stage in the history of Ottoman ‘world power’, which was originally confirmed by the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The proclamation of the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923 was the result of these processes, and the main component was the establishment of a regime

66

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

based on the unrestricted sovereignty of the Turkish nation (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2014). Thus, according to this account, undemocratic forces follow the righteous Mustafa Kemal. They are the villains of the story, who suppressed the all-powerful national will in the name of Atatürk. The very same actors, again by exploiting Atatürk, defended the status quo in Turkey. After this, Erdo˘gan went on to frame his frequently expressed slogan of a ‘New Turkey’ (Yeni Türkiye) with reference to Atatürk, who on many occasions, such as in his famous speech of 1927 (Nutuk), also talked about the need to build a New Turkey. In addition to this, Erdo˘gan noted that those who implemented the military intervention on 27 May 1960 also talked about building a New Turkey. However, in Erdo˘gan’s opinion, only his ‘New Turkey’ could claim legitimacy: The perpetrators of the military intervention of 27 May 1960 also talked about building a New Turkey. However, the 27 May slogan of a New Turkey is nothing but the expression of a desire to build a Turkey ripped off from its roots, democracy, and national sovereignty; theirs was a mission distorting the memory of Atatürk in the name of Atatürk. On the contrary, the New Turkey we are longing for is similar to the one Atatürk aspired to in 1920 (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2014).

There are many aspects to this historical narrative. What is perhaps the most significant is that by framing Atatürk in a positive way, as the successor of a glorious Ottoman-Islamic Empire and as the predecessor of the AKP, supporters of Islamicconservative ideology do not need to attack a national hero, a gazi (victorious military commander), who was able to stop the invading armies of the imperialist West. Quite obviously, as a victorious military commander and heroic national figure, Gazi Mustafa Kemal is widely esteemed in all sections of Turkish society, excluding the nationalist Kurds. In defining the ‘acceptable’ aspects of Atatürk’s career, the Islamicconservative version of Turkish nationalism continues the glorification of a heroic military commander, while at the same time allowing the narrative to attack other aspects of Atatürk’s mission, especially the Westernizing and secularizing projects, not to mention Mustafa Kemal’s notorious habit of drinking alcohol, rakı in particular. The ability to form and maintain a collective actor is crucial in politics, and it is thus almost inevitable that the past becomes the site to be judged through the formation and maintenance of this collective actor in the present. The national past may be highly contested in the context of modernity, within which the most influential collective actor is defined as the nation. This is the case in Turkey. The Ottoman Empire before the era of the Tanzimat Westernization reforms (1839–1876) represents the golden age of national glory for the Islamic-conservative constituency. The historical imagination holds much more than images of the past organized in periods of glory and disgrace, or villains and heroes. Among other things are the explanations and units of history, in other words, what are considered the main forces that move and transform it. It is a question of detecting how a given social group understands time, the relationship between time and space, the ability of man to transform or affect the forces that seem to determine the course of history, and so forth. As such, historical imagination becomes an integral part of the worldview and, ultimately, of ideology.

4.1 The Domestic Power Struggle and the Politics of History

67

The ascendancy of China, the relative weakening of the West, and Turkey’s economic expansion transform the interpretative frame within which the national narrative is represented in Turkey. History is thus seen as comprising different phases characterized by transforming combinations of power and prestige. The present moment in the Islamic-conservative narrative is frequently depicted as an era of major transformation in terms not only of new power configurations but also of the cultural and civilizational foundations of the new order. According to ˙Ibrahim Karagül, longtime editor-in-chief of the feverishly pro-government Yeni S¸ afak newspaper, the new era is defined by the mechanism through which Western states descend into internal conflict and confrontation, at the same time as the rest of the world abandons the ‘Western way of life’. Hence, the civil wars, intra-state confrontations, identity struggles, and social traumas that previously characterized Islamic countries have now become the reality in Western societies. Karagül takes this as a clear sign that the ‘Western order of globalization’ has now been demolished, and is being replaced in an active search for new ordering principles (Karagül, 2021). The assertion that the ‘Western way of life’ is no longer seen as something to run after globally also serves to relativize the modernization narratives espoused in the secular version of Turkish nationalism. The fabulous historical narratives produced during the Kemalist one-party era, from the 1920s to the 1940s, which placed the core ingredients of Turkish national identity in the pre-Ottoman (and pre-Islamic) past, have been well researched and analyzed in Turkey and beyond. There is no doubt that in their hasty attempt to create a new Turkish nation and national identity, the Kemalist cadres embarked on a project of re-writing history that produced extravagant and unbelievable descriptions. The most notable ‘excesses’ in this sense include the so-called Sun-Language Theory, claiming that all existing languages are based on Turkish and that ancient world civilizations, such as those of the Sumerians and Hittites, were actually Turkish (Ersanlı, 2006). In a sense, it was to some extent inevitable that the attempt to produce a new collective national identity based on the idea of Turkishness ended up in the reimagining of the Turks’ pre-Islamic history. There is nothing unique in these Kemalist historical operations because similar nationalist projects all over the world have produced rather similar narratives of ancient national glory, often on a time scale running from prehistory to the present. The Kemalist projects on language and history were clearly a continuation of the Turkish cultural national awakening that started during the latter half of the nineteenth century, as a number of European Turkologists also contributed to the widening awareness of the Turks’ role, living conditions, and states in Central Asia. A more critical attitude towards the Kemalist project developed in tandem with the critical investigation of these early republican historical narratives. Clearly, the ‘cult of Atatürk’ was also critically engaged by Kemalists such as Ecevit (1973, pp. 70–74), Avcıo˘glu (2003, pp. 338–339), and Soysal (1975, p. 18), who all pointed out during the 1960s and 1970s the need to analyze Atatürk and his reforms critically in order to determine their contemporary relevance for Turkey. On a more general level, by the beginning of the 1990s, Turkish social science had reached the stage at which the whole republican experience in general, and Kemalism in particular, were deemed highly problematic, and their impact was described as downright negative. As

68

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

Özkazanç (2005) points out, liberal authors writing during the 1990s, such as Mehmet Altan, Mehmet Barlas, and Cengiz Çandar, defined Kemalism as a ‘Jacobin’ socialengineering project. In this context, they increasingly argued that the republican experience was characterized by its harsh secularist stance towards Islam and that now was the time to soften this policy, calling for a more general ‘reckoning’ with the republican history and ‘peace with the Ottomans.’ Accordingly, they came to see Turkey as a regional superpower in the new world order, reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire. Of these writers, at least Mehmet Barlas still stands firmly in the AKP camp, writing pro-government op-eds in the daily Sabah, obviously defending the highly authoritarian regime and its expansionist, neo-imperial project. The critique of Kemalism has thus developed into a new hegemonic narrative within which national history has again become an effective tool for a particular political project, just as much as it ever was during the Kemalist one-party era. The historical imagination (vision of the past) as it has recently been formulated within Islamic-conservative ideology is thus constructed on several different layers. The first is on the level of discourse, academic or more popularized, that criticizes republican modernization ideology and practices, and that at least during the early decades included highly extravagant glorification of the achievements of pre-Islamic Turks. A concomitant aspect of this Kemalist nation-building project was the attempt to forget the 600 years of Turkish Ottoman-Islamic history. The second layer concerns the reimagining of the Ottoman Empire and the Turks’ central, even leading role as defenders and constructors of Islamic civilization and empire. Critics of Kemalism such as Barlas offer a general justification of the AKP’s current glorification of the Ottomans: coincident with their liberal critique of Kemalism, they pave the way for a highly positive evaluation of the Ottoman legacy, emphasizing its allegedly multi-cultural and tolerant character, for example. Going one step further, if one is to talk about a historical imagination one needs to know how a given ideology or social group conceptualizes certain basic cognitive categories such as continuity, change, rupture, and re-emergence. On the other hand, the way these thought categories have been constructed is perceived either as a product of historical process or as always and everywhere the same, but in any case, they are understood as predisposing individuals and social groups to think about the past in a particular way. Whereas the personal experience of an individual narrating their identity having organized their experiences along a single continuum from the present to individual memories is a rather straightforward process, formulating a collective memory is much more complicated. Although the past that induces or causes a social group to perceive itself as a group in the present is one and indivisible, it is nevertheless experienced in millions of different ways by the individuals comprising the given social group. However, this cacophony of the past needs to be constrained and more or less forcefully packed into a widely internalized pattern for a collective identity to become possible. As a narrative, the common past is organized in a way that establishes the idea of origins and development, as well as challenges overcome by a group of protagonists and individual heroes confronting difficulties and threatening enemies. What is thus created is a narrative defining the boundary between members who share a common

4.1 The Domestic Power Struggle and the Politics of History

69

past and those who do not (Seixas, 2004, pp. 5–6). This is the well-known mechanism through which social actors building collective political identities utilize historical narratives. The contents are nevertheless highly case-specific, taking shape within a political and social context that is defined by past practices and institutions. What matters regarding the ability of the historical narrative to produce the collective actor, then, is its relative ‘credibility’ and effectiveness in any given present. AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan gave a paradigmatic example of such a narrative during his presidential campaign in 2014, when he was speaking at an event organized by a conservative civil-society organization. He made it clear that he considered himself the successor of a political movement previously led by the late Necmettin Erbakan, the unrivaled leader of the Milli Görü¸s. After paying tribute to Erbakan, Erdo˘gan went on to affirm his strong commitment to the same political cause. He pointed out that, even though the AKP was a new party, it was established on the legacy of a specific, rich, civilizational agglomeration expressing a determined tradition of a political cause. On this occasion he stressed the fact that previous generations had lived in very harsh conditions, especially under the oppression of the Kemalist one-party regime during which religion and values were suppressed, and ‘roads to the Quran and the mosque were closed’ (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, 2014b). To be explicitly clear about how emotionally powerful this narrative is, one only needs to look at what Erdo˘gan said at the start of his presidential election campaign in July 2014: For two hundred years, they wanted to separate us from our history. They wanted to separate us from our ancestors. They wanted to separate us from our cause. They wanted us to behave humbly in front of everyone. They wanted to force us into a certain model. They even went so far that they thought they could arrange things in Turkey just by waving their fingers. However, throughout our political career we have always, without fear, posed the question: ‘Who do you think you are? That is right. Who do you think you are? Where did you get the courage to think that you could look down on us? ’We are the people, we are Alparslan, and we are the grandchildren of Süleyman Shah and Osman Gazi. We are the heirs of Mehmed the Conqueror and Yavuz Sultan Selim. We are the ones who carry forward the memory of Gazi Mustafa Kemal, Menderes, Özal, and Erbakan. We are the followers of those martyrs whose blood is writing our epics (Aktif Haber, 2014).

Erdo˘gan’s narrative takes a holistic view of the ‘history of the Turks’. It comes into existence through an act of narration that makes the present meaningful by emphasizing how all great predecessors have contributed to the same cause, whereas other, ‘non-national’ actors and forces have tried to prevent the nation from implementing its ‘manifest destiny’. Thereby, it creates the image of an elitist Westernizing group of former bureaucrats, army commanders, and politicians—the notorious Kemalist state elite—that allegedly humiliated the ‘true nation’ exemplified here by the narrator, presidential candidate Erdo˘gan. The boundary between the nation and the ‘un-nation’ in Turkey is thus established, and this discourse can be reproduced in day-to-day politics whenever it appears to justify a specific cause. With its state-centric nationalism and widely shared threat perceptions, especially from Western powers and the domestic Kurdish political movement, the Islamic-conservative narrative is capable of drawing into its ranks supporters from other nationalist constituencies, at times

70

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

even the Kemalists, especially when downplaying Islamist elements and emphasizing conservative nationalism against the Kurdish threat (Koru, 2020). On a more profound level, the relationship between a social group and the past reflects Kant’s understanding of the relationship between self and object. As Jones (1975, p. 38) expresses Kant’s view, ‘self and object are not independent entities but reciprocal elements in experience. If we start from object, we are led to self; if we begin with self, we are led to object. The experience of either one involves the experience of the other.’ Building on this, one could argue that the group’s (the self’s) relationship with the past is a relationship with an object and that the two experiences involve the existence of both. It is easy to see how the Islamicconservative ideology in present-day Turkey has come to perceive its national history as having been artificially cut to pieces by the Kemalist revolution. For Atatürk and his supporters, the establishment of the Republic in 1923 marked a historical turning point, ‘year zero’, after which a new secular and modern Turkey was to emerge. It is clear from President Erdo˘gan’s public statement, including his framing of Mustafa Kemal as a link in a long chain of Islamic military heroes, that the national history inherent in the Islamic-conservative ideology thoroughly rejects the idea that the establishment of the Republic was a radical break. The ‘New Turkey’ is thus provided with a new national past, incorporating logic of the periodization, nature, and purpose of key national heroes, and redefining the obstacles and adversaries overcome by the true nation. Narratives of Kemalists and Islamic conservatives from previous decades indicate that these groups have never shared a common interpretation of the national past. This is to say that even though the Kemalist/secularist interpretation of the republican experience was widely propagated during the one-party era, it only became the dominant narrative among a specific section of society. On the other hand, the tradition established by Necip Fazıl Kısakürek after the 1950s became the dominant account of the Islamic-conservative constituency. This perspective on the issue is, of course, highly unsatisfactory because the Islamic-conservative constituency is just as much the product of this particular national imagination, widely disseminated since the 1950s by various Islamic and conservative politicians and intellectuals. However, during the last ten years, conflicting nationalist discourses in Turkey have found common ground in uncompromising anti-Westernism. The extreme antiimperialist interpretation developed within the so-called nationalist-left (ulusalcı sol) version of Kemalism in recent decades has succeeded in arousing feelings of xenophobia, self-victimization, and ultra-nationalism among at least one section of the Kemalist-minded constituency (Riexinger, 2010). On the right extreme of the political spectrum, strongly anti-Western Muslim Turkish nationalism is espoused by the racist ülkücüler movement, traditionally attached to the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP). A more Islamist version is propagated by the equally anti-Western and highly anti-Semitic Islamist Milli Görü¸s movement, especially its own section of the Kuvay-I Milliyeci tradition (Kuvay-I Milliye refers to the national resistance organizations formed during the Anatolian Resistance Struggle). This form of Islamist nationalism used to be relatively marginal, actively supported

4.1 The Domestic Power Struggle and the Politics of History

71

only by Necmettin Erbakan’s most loyal followers, but it has become the mainstream form of Turkish nationalism during the last years under AKP rule, advanced by President Erdo˘gan and many leading figures of the ruling block. For a while, at the beginning of the 2000s, it seemed as if the AKP had abandoned this widespread nationalist and anti-Western discourse, but in recent years it has been widely disseminated in the official statements of its leadership, especially current President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan. Thus, after a few years of more internationalist and liberal narratives during the first years of the new millennium, the AKP has fully established a strong anti-Western stance, inherited from the Milli Görü¸s tradition (Alaranta, 2016). An analysis of the now dominant Islamist version of xenophobic anti-Western Turkish nationalism thus requires a more detailed look at the discourse developed within the Milli Görü¸s tradition as it evolved from the 1970s up to the present. According to Ru¸sen Çakır, the social base of the Milli Görü¸s parties from Milli Nizam Partisi (established in 1970) onwards comprised three main groups: (1) a new elite group, whose members came from religious families with an agrarian background but who had received a secular education in republican educational institutions; (2) Religious (dindar) entrepreneurs who worked in agrarian commerce and industry; (3) low-income Sunni believers who earned their living in both the city and the countryside. Even though these groups tended to have different views in ˙ various policy fields, Islamic brotherhood (Islâm karde¸sli˘gi) brought them together. According to Çakır, they joined forces under the guidance of cadres informed about religious observation and a group of Islamic cemaat (religious order) leaders. These cemaat organizations were politically represented through the conservative centerright parties until the beginning of the 1970s. When some Islamic and cemaat actors tried to acquire more power and more central positions within the center-right Adalet Partisi (Justice Party) headed by Süleyman Demirel, they were expelled from it. As a result, Necmettin Erbakan and his closest comrades established a new, more vocally Islamist party, namely Milli Nizam Partisi, in 1970 (Çakır, 2005, p. 545). The most notable aspect of the rise of Islamist parties in Turkey would thus appear to be the competition for leadership within the existing center-right that traditionally represented the pious constituency, rather than some sort of strict ideological disagreement. In other words, the claim that the Turkish political system after the end of the Kemalist one-party era did not represent, or that it even completely excluded and repressed, the ‘religious constituency’ is not credible. Çakır (2005, p. 546) further demonstrates this, asserting that the Turkish Islamist movement was ideologically closely attached to mainstream right-wing parties. Ideological flexibility was the result, and the party’s official program refers to the national and spiritual rights of the Turkish nation that first became manifest in the Ottoman era, and subsequently during the Anatolian Resistance Struggle. Thus, the program articulates a political actor with reference to the glory of the Ottomans, national independence, and God’s order in demonstrating what is right and wrong. Further, according to Çakır (2005, p. 547), the military interventionists of 1971 first banned Milli Nizam Partisi, but the same army commanders soon invited Erbakan to return to Turkey, and they allowed him to establish Milli Selamet Partisi (MSP) in 1972. The MSP first formed a coalition government with the left-of-center CHP, and later,

72

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

after 1975, it was an essential partner in the rightist-conservative Milliyetçi Cephe (Nationalist Front) governments. During this period, the Islamist party did its best to fill the bureaucracy with its own devout followers, thus giving a model that the AKP has followed since 2002. In the worldview of Milli Görü¸s supporters, Atatürk is the national hero and savior who not only prevented the partition of the Muslim fatherland (vatan) but also put an end to the treacherous activity of Jews and Freemasons, whose allegedly treacherous political aspirations had rendered the Ottoman sultans powerless puppets in the hands of Western imperialists. Therefore, the ‘rotten Ottoman tree’ of the Tanzimat and Committee of Union and Progress (Young Turk) era had to be wiped out. Atatürk successfully accomplished this task, after which the glorious OttomanTurkish-Islamic civilization could take its revenge and re-establish its power in the world. According to Milli Görü¸s ideologue Ahmet Akgül, at the root of all evil and degeneration in the Ottoman Empire were the Jews who converted to Islam during the fifteenth century. These converts, known as dönme, never became genuine Muslims, and even tried to denigrate Islam from within. After explaining, with the help of various highly controversial historical examples, how the dönme seemingly inevitably became part of the international Zionist movement, Akgül gives his final verdict in this regard: the aim of Zionists is to conquer Turkey (Akgül, 2006, pp. 31– 32). The following citation demonstrates the way in which Atatürk is framed within the Milli Görü¸s tradition: All great leaders who have implemented useful revolutions regarding their nation and the whole of humanity have allowed some confessions to the power centers of their era and played the game where they have seemingly affirmed the great powers’ designs. This kind of action is about getting to know the enemy’s strengths and policies, so that they can be subsequently used for the benefit of the national goals. There is no doubt that this requires great tactical ability. The actions taken by Atatürk, which seem to be against Islam and the fatherland, need to be evaluated within this context (Akgül, 2006, p. 73).

Thus, according to Akgül, the Anatolian Resistance Struggle was not only about national independence, but it was also a historical battle between two religions: The Independence War was a war between Islam and Christianity. Even after the introduction of the principle of secularism, this religious distinction continued. The reforms were not against Islam; quite the contrary, these were about making a Turkish Islam, this way facilitating the teaching of Islam to the people. Surely, religious schools and saintly shrines were closed. However, the mosques were not. The Independence War was a religious war. In it, Islamdom fought against Christendom. This was the final battle in a war that had lasted 1400 years (Akgül, 2006, p. 79).

This narrative of the ‘founding moment’ and the subsequent interpretations given to it thus demarcate both the shared aspects and the key differences between secular and Islamic-conservative versions of Turkish nationalism. As I demonstrated in Chap. 3, within the secular-nationalist (Kemalist) narrative the Anatolian Resistance Struggle was not only a successful war of liberation against Western imperialist designs, it was also the starting point of the Turkish revolution, understood as

4.1 The Domestic Power Struggle and the Politics of History

73

the Turkish version of the Enlightenment and the implementation of a Europeanoriginating freedom revolution in the non-European world. The same event in the Islamist nationalism of the Milli Görü¸s marked the battle between religious civilizations, liberating the Muslim Anatolian community from Western imperialists to safeguard a religiously defined political community. Further according to Akgül (2006, p. 81), ‘pseudo-Kemalists’ later distorted Atatürk’s true mission to save Turkey as an Islamic power, having repeatedly wrongly claimed that Kemalism represented Westernization. What thus emerges is a historical interpretation that places Atatürk squarely within the Islamist camp. The historical fact that he represented the most consistent attempt to establish the imaginary of radical freedom, which originated in European modernity, in the Islamic context is thus fully rejected. On the other hand, the interpretation of domestic Westernizers as ‘pseudo-Kemalists’, in other words, people who have intentionally distorted Atatürk’s real goals, holds to create the image of a threatening domestic other, as discussed in detail above. Within this narrative, all those attempting to secure the program of radical freedom, which was at the core of Atatürkism, could henceforth be depicted as defenders of an elitist and undemocratic tutelary regime against the genuine Turkish nation. It was indeed this discourse that the AKP leadership utilized during the so-called Republican demonstrations of 2007, as well as in the Gezi protests of 2013, in their attempt to depict the demonstrators as artificial, non-popular but useful idiots, abused by Kemalist-minded army commanders and agitators in the secularist media. The current AKP does not simply represent the continuation of Milli Görü¸s, however, it is also a current manifestation of the conservative center-right. According to Andrew Heywood (2012, p. 68), a number of core themes define modern conservatism as a political ideology, namely, human imperfection, organic society, hierarchy and authority, and property. These core assumptions are expressed in varying forms in different versions of conservatism, but in general, conservative ideology attaches the utmost importance to inherited customs and beliefs and characterizes humans as naturally unequal and incapable of doing good unless forced by the community. In line with its official self-definition, the AKP represents conservative democracy (muhafazakâr demokrat), which is defined in the party’s official political-vision document for 2023 as rejecting all attempts to change society from above, and instead of defending change that takes place through natural, gradual processes. Only this kind of transformation is genuine. Conservative democracy further considers the interruption of socio-economic, cultural, and political life and the destruction of historical institutions and practices, as a negative development. In this sense, conservatism means reflecting historical gains in the present and securing traditional institutions against revolutionary interventions. Thus, radicalism and all attempts at social engineering are rejected. Politics should be about consensus, tolerance, and unity. From this perspective, change must simultaneously involve the safeguarding of certain values reliant on tradition (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, 2013). It is claimed that the AKP has established a politics of ‘system normalization’ (sistemi normalle¸stiren siyaset) in Turkey, based on this self-identification as a conservative democrat party. Turkish political life has long been characterized by

74

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

tensions produced by conflicts between religion and politics, tradition and modernity, religion and the state, and among the state, society, and the individual. These tensions are blamed for limiting the political field and causing many problems. The AKP thus claims that it has the ability to redefine these problematic concepts and to put an end to such tutelary practices by ‘normalizing’ the political system (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, 2013). The secular-nationalist (Kemalist) response to this narrative is equally ideological and already has its own tradition. In other words, especially since the 1960s, the debate on the relationship between Kemalist ça˘gda¸sla¸sma (modernization) and Westernization has fueled the ideological competition. Erol Manisalı, one of the most prominent contemporary Kemalist intellectuals, constantly claims that ‘Westernizing’ (Batıcılık) and Westernism/Europeanism (Batılı˘gı/Avrupalılı˘gı) differ from each other like day and night. In Manisalı’s delicate narrative of balancing, Batıcılık represents submitting to Western patronage, whereas Batılı˘gı/Avrupalılı˘gı is about internalizing modern Enlightenment values and combining them with authentic Turkish culture, thus arriving at a new synthesis. He insists that this was the aim of Atatürk and that he was not a Batıcı. Thus, Manisalı postulates Republican ça˘gda¸sla¸sma (modernization) as a synthesis between European-originated, Enlightenment-based modernity and Turkey’s own culture, in combination producing a modern, secular nation state (Manisalı, 2019a). According to this contemporary Kemalist narrative, the Turkish nation state exists to safeguard the modern political community, against both external threats and internal enemies, the AKP’s Islamists in particular. In contrast, Islamic-conservative ideology and its foreign-policy narratives derive from the dismissal of Kemalism as yabancıla¸stırılması (alienation). Manisalı’s response is to turn the whole perspective the other way round, insisting that what had taken place in Turkey during the previous 15 years under AKP rule was indicative of severe alienation. He describes this as the ‘political Islamist-based alienation of the system’. Its indicator is the estrangement of public and national economic values, which has made Turkey ‘empty from within’ (Manisalı, 2019a). In isolation, this statement is rather enigmatic. However, it is clear from his other publications what he is after. He refers to Turkey’s education system as having become completely politicized during the AKP era, pointing out that the curriculum has moved away from scientific rationalism and positivism: in everyday life, there is a two-tier mechanism whereby opposing lifestyles have been turned into antagonisms; in foreign policy, Turkey has highly problematic relations with all its neighbors and it was experiencing increasing ‘loneliness’ (Manisalı, 2019b). Thus, the mushrooming of religious imam hatip schools in recent years, the increasingly common public demonstrations of piety, and the penetration of religious vocabulary into the political field indicate in the secularist narrative the unacceptable Islamization of society under AKP rule. There are some interesting generalizations to be drawn from all this. The two most influential ideological blocs in contemporary Turkey, the Islamic-conservative and the secular nationalist, both generate Turkish foreign-policy narratives that are very critical of the Liberal International Order (LIO). This is considered in more detail in Chap. 5, but first, let us consider how attempts at legitimation have recently

4.1 The Domestic Power Struggle and the Politics of History

75

converged with foreign policy and the traditional narrative of defensive modernization. This investigation also includes a discussion concerning which analytical perspectives will enhance understanding of nationalist foreign policy in an age of complex interdependence.

4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization The tumultuous effects of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire on the international system in general and the Middle East, in particular, have long been recognized. In recent years, with the region in flames and a brutal, apocalyptic jihadist movement calling itself the Islamic State conquering large swatches of territory within Syria and Iraq, it has become commonplace to argue that all the trouble emanates from the misguided decisions taken during and after the First World War. The conception that all the region’s states are artificial to some degree, simply a product of the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement, is frequently represented as an all-encompassing explanation for the instability of the Middle East. Officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, it was reached in secret by the governments of the United Kingdom and France in defining their proposed spheres of influence and control in the Middle East should the Triple Entente succeed in defeating the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Great War indeed put an end to the Ottoman imperial system in the Islamic Middle East. That system had lasted for 400 years, and although it was often resisted as much as affirmed by the various groups and constituencies under its rule, for the majority of Muslims in the region it had nevertheless signaled the existence of the legitimate domain of Islam in the world. However, simply claiming that national states in the region were doomed to fail from the very beginning is not analytically convincing: such arguments only obstruct detection of the various forces that consolidated modern political centers in almost all of these countries during the twentieth century. Readers of the histories of individual nation states established in the region will quite easily notice several similarities resulting from the common Ottoman legacy. It was common, for example, to base the process of forming the new nation states in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt on previous Ottoman practices and institutions. What is more, they were ruled by administrative officials who owed their important role to their established positions within the Ottoman system, either as local representatives or as the uneasy allies with whom the Ottoman state bureaucracy had been forced to cooperate in order to control the areas that were only nominally under its rule (Provence, 2017). However, it is also understood that the Ottoman imperial system underwent profound changes during the decades preceding the Great War. Two major revolutions had transformed the Islamic Middle East at the beginning of the twentieth century, both within the Ottoman and Persian empires. The Constitutional Revolution in Iran (1905–1911) and the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire in 1908 had profoundly changed ideas, concepts, and dominant

76

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

narratives concerning the status of religion and tradition, the relationship between the state and individuals, and the social imagination through which it was possible to contemplate the future of the society. However, these new ways, which seemed to break with the tradition in an unprecedented manner, also caused an enormous amount of anxiety, anger, and uncertainty that resulted in a conservative countermovement. Clearly, the fact that the imperialist European Great Powers were exerting an ever-increasing amount of foreign pressure made the process of transformation remarkably difficult and complex in many cases. Thus, in none of these countries was the difficult transformation from a traditional to a modern society solely in local hands. In the Republic of Turkey, however, previous dependency on foreign actors was almost completely overcome, which on some fundamental issues put the country in a very different orbit compared to other Middle East societies in which foreign interference persisted. Discussion on the role of Islam and secularism in the narratives about modernization in Turkey should start with the full acknowledgment that it is hardly feasible without a simultaneous discussion about nationalism and its crucial importance in the modern world system. At least in the Turkish case, it makes no sense to speak about political Islam being distinct from nationalism as an overriding ideological component of modern politics. As Maleševi´c (2006, pp. 83–85) points out, nationalism must be seen as the dominant ideological narrative of modernity, and it has remained the essential source and principle facilitator of state legitimacy. Even though one might think that in its emphasis on the universal Islamic umma (community) it is, if not altogether trivial, then at least a secondary concept in the ideology of political Islam. ˙ This is not the case in Turkey, at least. Islamism (Islamcılık) as advocated by the AKP regime in Turkey during the last ten years, in particular, is a powerful synthesis of two highly influential discourses observable in the Islamic Middle East and the Ottoman Empire since the beginning of the nineteenth century, namely Islamic-Conservatism and nationalism. Modern-day political Islam in Turkey is a powerful combination of these two ideological traditions, compounded by a deeply internalized need to adjust to a global free-market regime. The AKP’s political Islam utilizes religious texts, symbols, and traditions as much as the familiar discourse of nationalism. This is a highly significant observation in light of the relationship between Turkish-Islamic movements and the state, and of the authoritarian, state-centric system erected under the Erdo˘gan presidency since 2018 in particular. Rather than trying to eliminate the intervening state apparatuses, the AKP has conquered them and is now using them to consolidate its own power (Somer, 2017). The ability to conquer the state has indeed always been the ultimate goal of Turkish political Islam. This is not to say that the umma has become irrelevant in the political Islam advocated by AKP governments. It is rather that, in delegitimizing Kemalist ideology and its vision of secular Turkish nationalism, the AKP’s Islamic-conservative ideology re-imagines the dominant version of the Turkish national identity as embedded in the concept of the universal Muslim community. In this sense, the ‘New Turkey’ project vigorously advocated by President Erdo˘gan in concrete terms represents a return to the pre-Lausanne era, when the Ottoman universalist horizon had not yet been overshadowed by Anatolian-centered Turkish (secular) nationalism. According

4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization

77

to Volpi, a pragmatic starting point for analyzing political Islam is to posit that in these movements, Islam bases its practical claims to authority on its ability to provide the community and the individual with some sense of order and a place in the world through its normative guidelines. In Volpi’s words ‘an Islamist is one who believes that Islam as a body of faith has something crucial to say about how politics and society should be ordered in the contemporary ummah and who seeks to implement this idea in some fashion as a matter of priority’ (Volpi, 2010, p. 14). Volpi further expresses agreement with Eickelman and Piscatori (1996, p. 5), who saw the emerging Muslim politics as regimes that depended on Islam in a variety of ways for their legitimation and thus became involved in the competition and contest over both the interpretation of symbols and the control of the institutions, both formal and informal, that produced and sustained them. This is a powerful reminder that political Islamist movements, no matter how moderate or transformed they have become, can never be reduced to a simple economic-reductionist account that ignores the crucial element of their subjective understanding of what it is they are doing, and objectively recognizing in how they articulate their approach to the political arena. Hereby, the crucial link between Islamism, nationalism, and legitimacy becomes clear. As a political belief system advocated by a particular social group, the AKP’s ideological narrative does not challenge nationalism per se, it rather challenges a particular version of it, namely Kemalist secular nationalism. In doing so, it reimagines the Turkish nation as the central, and increasingly as the leading, part of the Muslim umma. To do this, and to produce the very definition of the nation and national identity that ultimately legitimizes its own rule, the actors involved in the production and reproduction of Islamic-conservative ideology depend on being able to provide the community and the individual with some sense of order and a place in the world through its normative guidelines. Political ideology is largely about a particular social group aiming to legitimize its rule and state power against alternative articulations of national identity and national interest. As Beetham (1992, p. 103) observed, stories about origins are extremely important in any attempt by a dominant group to provide legitimacy for its rule. Further, this explains why the national past, as well as history syllabi, are so contentious—historical narratives explaining and justifying the existing order are a matter of great concern to anyone wishing to legitimize their rule within a modern nation state. As this book demonstrates in detail, political Islam and nationalism are attached with boundless chains in Turkey under the AKP. The problematic link between nationalism, competing political ideologies, and state legitimacy in the context of modernity is obvious in the context of the role of states in the production of legitimation narratives. A state’s legitimacy is always at least partly dependent on its ability to express a collective identity, yet at the same time as it articulates these identities, it also asserts its responsibility to define and interpret them, and this is how it becomes the author of the very principles or values that justify its power (Barker, 1990, p. 28). The state as essentially the author of the very principles or values through which its power is justified is a foundational issue in modern politics. Consequently, it could be said that in the reproduction of state legitimacy, political Islam and nationalism are the

78

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

fundamental tenets of the AKP’s Islamic-conservative project. For if a state strongly participates in producing the narratives that justify its power, it is, in the deepest sense of the word, ‘explanatory’ in terms of who is able to control its apparatuses and through what kind of narratives its legitimacy is reproduced thereafter. In the final analysis, it is an essentially intertextual process. In other words, the ideological struggle is about different social groups determining their most deeply held values and norms in relation to different, competing clusters of values and norms allegedly held by other social groups. Hence, it is not only the meaning but also the very existence of one specific agglomeration of norms and values that are dependent on its opponents. The values and norms pertaining to the modern nation state held by competing constituencies are also expressed in foreign-policy narratives, which are simultaneously constantly changing in reaction to global power shifts. The circular, dialogical, and ultimately intertextual/internarrative relation inherent in all political struggle is confirmed once it is agreed that the relationship between text and context is complex. The features of context are sometimes thought of as determining or influencing certain elements in the linguistic structure of a text. However, the relationship is circular, or rather reflexive, in that the texts contribute to the constitution of the context (Chilton & Schäffner, 2002, p. 16). If one compares this to what is noted above regarding Barker’s notion of the state as, in a significant sense, the author of the very principles or values by which its power is justified, one can easily observe a similar, circular mechanism at work. The circularity of political legitimacy and the circularity of the relationship between a political text and its context in more general terms is hardly a coincidence. On the contrary, it expresses the circular and self-legitimizing nature of modern politics, making the dual nature of its ideologies—their character as descriptive and normative at the same time—much more understandable. The same circular mechanism is present in ordering narratives espoused to describe the international field, such as that of the present ‘liberal international order.’ As mentioned in the introduction, the position from which any current actor narrates the world is already partly pre-narrated. Ever since the first determined modernization attempts in the Ottoman State during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the debate has raged among the Ottoman and subsequently Republican elites about the conditions and ideal form of the required reforms. The struggle over the preferred form of modernization penetrates almost all political and cultural debates in Turkey. To date, state-led modernization projects and the debates surrounding them have taken place within the context of Western dominance of international relations, and the struggle for a national identity and regime type among various non-Western populations, within the structures and rules established by the modern, capitalist West. This did not fundamentally change even during the Cold-War era when the West had to compete with the Soviet Union, largely because the ideology and modernization drive of the USSR was a variant of the ideational and material transformations whose origins lie in Europe. This is, of course, a Eurocentric perspective. The assumption is that European modernization was entirely an internal affair when the reality is that Europe had

4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization

79

been susceptible to various external influences ever since the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, it was obvious to both Westerners and non-Westerners that the industrial, political, and scientific revolutions paving the way for modernity took place in Western Europe, and that this civilizational entity represented modernity: one only has to consider the concepts used in the late Ottoman State and early Republican Turkey. Three were used to express ‘modernization’ before the establishment of the Republic in 1923: asri  le¸sme, muasırla¸sma, and ça˘gda¸sla¸sma. All these words have the term era/age as their root. Ziya Gökalp and other social thinkers of the prerepublican era used the words interchangeably. All three refer to attempts to make use of all ideational and material possibilities offered to humanity in the given era. Thus, ça˘gda¸sla¸sma (modernization) and its synonyms were used in the OttomanTurkish realm to describe social transformation aimed at modernizing society. It is noteworthy that this ça˘gda¸sla¸sma was also referred to at the time as Avrupalıla¸sma (Europeanization) and Batılıla¸sma (Westernization) (Efe, 2011). Thus, the intellectuals, politicians, bureaucrats, and officers taking the leading role in the Ottoman/Turkish reform movements from 1908 to the 1930s understood perfectly well that their modernization project was, in one form or another, simultaneously a Westernization project (Efe, 2011). This is worth observation because many later (neo) Kemalist commentators argued that the Kemalist modernization project (ça˘gda¸sla¸sma) had nothing to do with Westernization. However, it is also true that Ottoman/Republican modernizers—those implementing inkılap/devrim if they were radical, and those favoring ıslahat if they were conservative—implemented ça˘gda¸sla¸sma to resist Western imperialism. The modernization project in Turkey, and its contested relationship to the Western-originated modern international system, are thus ‘deeply pre-narrated’: in other words, current Turkish writers interpreting their country’s place in the world do so within a specific narrative tradition consisting of several influential sub-narratives. The fact that Atatürk specifically emphasized the nature of the Turkish revolution (Türk Devrimi) as a civilizational (medeni) project makes the denial of Kemalist modernization’s close attachment to Westernization even more implausible. The cultural revolution Atatürk wanted to see in his country was essentially about changing people’s mentality, their way of thinking. There is no doubt that he wanted to see his people internalizing something that he perceived as the Western way of thinking, in contrast to the Eastern mentality (Efe, 2011). In this sense, it is an undisputable historical fact that in his feverish drive to modernize Turkey’s state and society, he was simultaneously intent on Westernizing the country. However, a significant segment of those describing themselves as Kemalists vehemently insists that the Kemalist ça˘gda¸sla¸sma they advocate is very different from Westernization. Why this is the case, and what they mean by ça˘gda¸sla¸sma, are major issues in the Turkish foreign-policy narratives produced within contemporary Kemalist discourse. The discourse also amply demonstrates that the struggle over the meaning of national history is present not only in secularist-Islamist confrontation but also within these competing ideological formations. The legitimation of power within the modern state typically involves a circular and intertextual mechanism. Hence, one way of defining the historical imagination

80

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

produced and disseminated through Islamic-conservative ideology is to read it against its ultimate opponent, the Kemalist interpretation of history. Falıh Rıfkı Atay, one of Mustafa Kemal’s trustees, put forward the following interpretation of the Turkish modernization process in a book originally published in 1966: Ever since the Tanzimat reforms, our Westernist section has been a minority. Those who exploited and misused the general ignorance of the masses have been in the majority. The great ideal of our Westernist minority was to educate the population in secular schools based on positive sciences. We failed to do this. Our new schools educated officers, doctors, and officials. In reality, there were two nations. The majority and those who exploited its ignorance defined us, the minority, as atheists, freemasons, or, as is the case today, as communists (Atay, 2006, p. 20).

According to Atay, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his supporters had learned their lesson from the problems emerging from this mechanism by the time of the Anatolian Resistance Struggle in 1919–1922. The Tanzimat reforms were beneficial but insufficient, having set up a dual system that could not secure a rationalist education for the masses. Atay’s account can be contrasted to the views presented by Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, the esteemed ideologue of Turkish-Islamic Conservatism who claimed that the artificial reforms, as well as the equally artificial heroes, produced since the Tanzimat were the biggest obstacles facing the Islamic cause in Turkey. Kısakürek with his uncompromising anti-Westernism is considered the father figure of Turkey’s own domestic version of Political Islam. Moreover, the religious-conservative stance he represents makes him an influential link between conservatism and Islamism. In the view of Güzel (2006, p. 339), the nationalist-conservative historical imagination in Turkey is, to a significant degree, based on Kısakürek’s writings, especially regarding the idea of a glorious Ottoman-Turkish past. Indeed, Kısakürek produced an influential Islamic-conservative national narrative in which the national heroes and villains are portrayed very differently compared with Kemalist national history. As an example, Sultan Abdülhamid II, the pan-Islamist monarch who suspended the Ottoman Constitution in 1876 and then ruled as an autocrat until the beginning of the Second Constitutional Era in 1908, is described very positively as Ulu Hakan (Great Ruler), whereas among Kemalists he represents the worst example of Ottoman’s religious bigotry. Putting Turkish foreign-policy narratives into an adequate context requires more than detecting their domestic pedigree in competing ideologies. What is also required is sufficient acknowledgment of the frameworks within which states and the whole international system are perceived to be constituted according to various theories and analytical traditions. According to the realist-liberal synthesis in IR scholarship, the current international order is being shaped by the simultaneous forces of power politics and complex interdependence, which may make it hard to understand how the macro level of the international structure that allegedly determines the actions of states on the one hand, and the domestic level comprising individual actions and ideas on the other, could be brought together. Such an understanding is desperately needed. In the case of the Republic of Turkey, it concerns a country that was long perceived as the United States’ number-one ally in the Islamic Middle East, although in the

4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization

81

administration’s internal organization it was moved from the Near East department to that of Europe during the 1970s. However, after being defined as a key strategic partnership during the Cold War, the Turkish-American relationship has recently appeared to be somewhat ambiguous. According to Barkey (2007), the advent of the AKP in 2002 with its roots in the anti-Western (and anti-American) Islamist movement brought new risks and new opportunities to the Turkey-US relationship on the one hand, while on the other hand, the party came to power through the ballot box with promises to advance Turkey’s European vocation and its integration into the EU. This balanced evaluation thus recognizes the AKP’s ideological matrix of anti-Western political Islam, while at the same time revealing how eager the US administration was to see the AKP as a representative of a liberal democratic and Europeanizing force in Turkey. For a long time, the AKP’s self-definition as narrated in the party’s official program raised high hopes among Western policy makers. In this respect, the following statement by the then-presidential candidate and AKP party leader Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan during his election campaign in the summer of 2014 should have been eye-opening to all Western AKP enthusiasts: Once there was a Turkey that was afraid of its own shadow, afraid of its own nation. In terms of international issues, this old Turkey was hiding behind the back of dominant powers. In my view, those who still gather around the markers of that old Turkey cannot be the nation’s representatives, because that does not represent our nation. My ancestors were different; they sent a navy to Aceh because the locals were persecuted… We increased Turkey’s international prestige and we became the voice of the wretched in the world. We became the voice of the oppressed in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Myanmar, and Patani, and we became the hope of the poor in Somalia (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, 2014a).

Statements such as these that underscore Turkey’s active and allegedly valuebased foreign policy have become the defining element of Erdo˘gan’s leadership during the last ten years, and they are being disseminated and further developed on a daily basis in the pro-government media that dominate the domestic field in Turkey. Influential AKP enthusiasts in the pro-government dailies, such as Yusuf Kaplan in Yeni S¸ afak, repeatedly tell the story of the New Turkey being liberated from oppressive Westernizers, who have been fighting against Islam for over a thousand years (Kaplan, 2021). All this feverish anti-Western discourse creates much confusion among Western policy makers. They have a hard time coming to terms with how all the talk about liberating the whole of the Middle East from blood-sucking Western powers aligns with simultaneous expressions by the AKP leadership of its willingness to continue Turkey’s EU bid and democratization, not to mention the fact that Erdo˘gan still occasionally promotes an altogether different version of the thousand-year encounter between Turkey and Europe that has emerged from the ‘shared civilizational basin’ (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2021). It should be obvious by now that the traditional view of Turkey as a key strategic ally of Western powers no longer corresponds with the reality, and one could argue that this is increasingly understood in both Washington and Brussels. The prevailing and frequently false premises on which Turkey is categorized as a political entity explains some of the problems in understanding how anti-Western and pro-EU talk

82

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

can be expressed at the same time. It seems that anti-Western, Islamist talk is nothing more than the artificial rhetoric employed before elections to secure the votes of hardcore Turkish Islamists, whereas the EU bid represents the party’s real, enduring long-term aspiration based on rational calculations and economic requirements. The bitter truth may well be the opposite. The theory of ‘complex interdependence’ and the neoclassical realist approach to Turkish foreign policy under the AKP, in combination, increasingly depict the pan-Islamist stance as the core ingredient in Turkey’s new grand strategy, whereas EU talk only serves as necessary rhetoric to keep international investors and domestic pro-Western industrialists at least somewhat satisfied. Originally developed by Keohane and Nye (1977), and now emerging from a partial synthesis of realism and liberalism in the post-Cold-War context, complex interdependence has become a major component of the neoliberal approach. Indeed, the concept of interdependence is frequently used in the prevalent discourse on globalization to describe a mechanism whereby all actors, not least states, are dependent upon one another, especially in the economic field. On the other hand, this approach easily tempts one to ignore the domestic level of ideas and ideologies and their crucial effect on a state’s foreign policy, as well as the political leaders’ interpretation of the external environment. As Daniel Philpott (2001, pp. 46–47) observed, for example, proponents of the mainstream structuralist approach in IR have frequently dismissed ideas as superficial rhetoric, positing either realist power politics or economic dependency as the ‘real’ driving forces of world politics. According to Philpott, however, there is no valid reason to disregard ideas, which in this context could be approached from two complimentary sides: (1) their role in converting people to assume new identities; and (2) ideas as social power inducing heads of state to pursue new policies. This is often refuted in neorealist accounts of the international system: indeed, Kenneth Waltz emphasizes the systemic pressures that tend to overshadow the intentions of individual states. In Waltz’s (1979, p. 64) words, ‘One cannot infer the condition of international politics from the internal composition of states, nor can one arrive at an understanding of international politics by summing the foreign policies and the external behaviors of states.’ However, the limits of this stance are duly acknowledged in the contemporary neoclassical realist approach. In fact, structural change that is unrelated to the grand-strategic behavior of one or more states is very rare, and in this sense, most structural change should be understood as a reflection of a grand-strategic choice by one or more states that changes the pattern of interaction between them (Kitchen, 2010, p. 142). Thus, arriving at an explanation of the AKP’s foreign policy requires an approach that could identify a critical place for ideas in a country’s foreign-policy choices. In short, the theory of complex interdependence should be combined with a neoclassical realist approach to explaining why Turkey simultaneously engages in large-scale economic integration with the EU and defines Western civilization as a threat. The latter approach emphasizes the potential entwining of external competition with other states, internal competition for control of the state, and the process of national identity politics as significant factors in choices of foreign policy and the assessment of external threats. Further, the entwining of internal competition with identity politics allows trade and conflict to coexist, because the former may encourage nationalism

4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization

83

directed at a potential enemy while simultaneously encouraging economic exchange. The adoption of such an approach could enhance understanding of how two contradictory tendencies can exist within the same political project. For example, the current AKP regime has been keen to integrate Turkey’s economy into the EU, while at the same time the party leadership increasingly conceptualizes the European Union (and the West in general) as a national threat. As Jennifer Sterling-Folker (2009, pp. 107– 108) points out, collective capitalist profits do not constitute a collective identity, and nationalism is not easily reshaped by rational, self-interested capitalist calculations, even when pursued in the name of a collective. Rather than becoming unimportant in an age of complex interdependence, national identity and nationalism continue to play an enduring, foundational role in domestic political struggles and foreign policy in the age of globalization. According to Kitchen (2010), the concept of a grand strategy provides a fruitful conceptual linkage between macro-level analysis of an international system and domestic foreign-policy formulations to explain a given country’s foreign-policy behavior. The grand strategy encompasses not only military means and ends but also the means and ends of politics, economics, and ideology. From this perspective, it represents the level at which systemic and unit-level factors converge, and in this sense, the study of a grand strategy is the study of the state’s attitudes to the international environment. Thus, as Kitchen points out, the structuralrealist approach emphasizing the absolute priority of systemic pressures can only have a constraining, not a determining effect on grand-strategic outcomes. Within the neoclassical realist approach, then, the process of grand-strategy formation is inevitably multiple, constrained by systemic imperatives, and yet determined by ideational factors on the unit level. In conclusion, Kitchen (2010) emphasizes the crucial role of ideas in all this: unit-level variables—in the ideas and perceptions of actors within the state—play a pivotal role in the selection of a grand strategy. Thus, grand strategic change may result from shifts at either the unit or the systemic level. In the present work, ideational factors are operationalized in foreign-policy narratives, which constantly feed each other in an intertextual process. As demonstrated above in terms of competing forms of nationalism, conflict over the meaning of modernization, and domestic fighting over state apparatuses, the combination of complex interdependence and a neoclassical realist emphasis on state-level ideas goes a long way to explaining Turkey’s foreign policy. Gelvin (2016) describes the social and political trajectory established by the increasingly centralized Ottoman Empire during its final decades as ‘defensive developmentalism’. It comprised a modernized army and educational system, revamped legal codes, a constitution, the beginnings of parliamentary governance, improved law and order, and similar reforms. In the case of secular-nationalist foreign-policy narratives, initial observation points to the perceived need to tackle the attacks directed against Kemalism in AKP circles with a rhetorical toolkit that emphasizes the role of secular nationalism as the foremost defender of Turkey’s national interest and the original nation-state project based on the idea of defensive modernization. Barı¸s Doster, writing for the secular-nationalist flagship Cumhuriyet, provides a good example of this. First, he describes how AKP supporters increasingly attack the

84

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

republican foundations of Turkey, such as the Lausanne Treaty, as well as Kemalist founding cadres such as Atatürk, his successor ˙Ismet Inönü, and ideologue Mahmut Esat Bozkurt. He goes on to deplore the fact that the AKP replaced the Lausannebased Turkish foreign-policy tradition with ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ and ‘New Abdulhamitism’, the latter, of course, referring to the pan-Islamist Sultan Abdülhamid II, who is much revered in AKP circles. Doster points out, very correctly in terms of historical facts, that it is foolish to attack Kemalist cadres from the Ottoman perspective, as they were Ottoman bureaucrats and officers from head to toe, the last generation that desperately tried to find solutions and recipes to prevent the state from being partitioned. At the time, it was semi-colonized, on the verge of being destroyed. The answer (modernization) did not originate in the Kemalists: it was launched much earlier by the Ottoman ruling cadres, who had already turned to the West in their attempts to secure the state. Doster, however, insists that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was not a Westernizer, he was a modernizer (Batıcı de˘gildi. Ça˘gda¸sla¸smacı idi), and there is a ‘big difference between the two’ (Doster, 2019). The Islamic-conservative response to these claims is exemplified by Muhittin Ataman, whose evaluation of the AKP’s new foreign policy clearly reflects the attempt to move beyond the defensive modernization paradigm. In Ataman’s words: ‘With the inauguration of the normalization process in Turkish politics by the AKP government, peace has been established regarding the history of the state, civilization and culture.’ After defining the premises of Turkey’s new foreign policy in this normalization project, Ataman (2020) characterizes the new foreign policy, noting that there is both a new discourse and a new mode of behavior, whereby the previous Western-centered approach has been replaced with an independent foreign policy that increasingly engages with Asia and Africa. In the Middle East, Turkey took a stance against various dictatorial regimes and their Western supporters, basing its action on an Ankara-centered approach. The search for an independent, Ankaracentered foreign policy meant that Turkey no longer acted in accordance with Western plans, nor was it just a NATO outpost. In Ataman’s words: ‘In terms of Western states, Turkey has refined its relations, replacing the hierarchical model with a horizontal model based on equality’. The search for an independent foreign policy, he concludes, was the reason why Western countries had recently bad-mouthed Turkey and President Erdo˘gan so often (Ataman, 2020). For the Islamic-conservative supporters of President Erdo˘gan and the AKP, Kemalists’ claim that the secular-nationalist modernization ideology and state philosophy do not represent, and are completely different from Westernization, rings hollow. Kemalists are presented in Islamic-conservative narratives as an alienated, Westernized elite that managed to conquer state institutions after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, and subsequently oppressed the ‘true nation’, in other words, the religious Sunni conservatives who comprise the majority of Turkey’s citizens. However, even those in AKP circles and center-right conservatives cannot but praise the heroic officers and soldiers of the Milli Mücadele (National Independence Struggle) who fought against Western invaders. Most of them also acknowledge that modernization was an essential aspect of Turkey’s history. As hinted above, the quarrel began here, focusing on the question of what, exactly,

4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization

85

was the right way to become modern, and what modernity might mean. As also noted above, modernization was a holistic concept to Atatürk, that required a mental revolution to transfer the Turkish nation from an ‘Eastern mentality’ to a ‘Western mentality’. Islamic-conservative actors find this position completely unacceptable. Their preferred model is Islamic modernization, or alternatively selective modernization whereby Turkey vehemently safeguards its religiously oriented national culture and norms, only implementing material and technological modernization to be able to resist Western incursion into Muslim lands. The Islamic narrative is well known, having been the subject of several studies. However, even though there are many aspects that have repeatedly found a central place in it, the domestic and international context within which it is reproduced has changed considerably in recent decades. Consequently, its core narrative tropes may have quite a different meaning in the current context. In this sense, one should acknowledge that the project of Islamism ‘is still unfolding at various levels, in various forms, and in diverse countries and societies. Hasty attempts to apply any success/failure label are premature, to say the least’ (Hroub, 2010, p. 11). It is not difficult to understand why defensive modernization became the doctrine with which the late Ottoman and early Republican state elites attempted to respond to the obvious challenges and even threats they encountered. However, what does beg an explanation is why views and attitudes that are still clearly attached to this doctrine have prevailed, and indeed even seem to inspire many contemporary actors. There is indeed a very real possibility that the apparent defensive modernization thesis, although also a genuine background conviction, functions in many foreign-policy narratives as a domestic distinction-marking tool. In other words, ideological centerright and, in particular, Islamist narratives do not focus so much on real, very different manifestations of Kemalism in different decades and in very different social circumstances, but instead narrate an unchanging, petrified ‘totem’ Kemalism, which stays essentially the same as the decades pass and society encounters new challenges and, ultimately, responses. In reaction to this essentializing narrative espoused by ideological competitors, secular-nationalist narratives contribute substantially to the story of an unchanged Kemalism, increasingly emphasizing its role as the standard-bearer of Turkish nationalism and state sovereignty in a manner seemingly presupposing that the world of the 2020s is essentially similar to that of the 1920s. Thus, both post-1991 manifestations of the liberal international order that challenge state sovereignty, and the intertextual mechanism within which competing Turkish foreign-policy narratives feed each other’s vigorous nationalism, are working in the same direction. It is also notable that Kemalist narratives initially, and more recently Islamic-conservative narratives under pressure from liberal narratives relativizing state sovereignty, increasingly emphasize sovereignty and ‘full independence’. In states such as Turkey, where the initial modernization-Westernization drive was heavily influenced by external pressure and even a feeling of existential struggle, the current phase of a relative weakening Western-centered international order appears to bring to the surface narrative traditions that underscore distinct experiences and a desire to reconsider the national story from a new, empowered

86

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

position. In the meantime, however, the domestic struggle over the meaning of its national history is increasingly intensified. The contested nature of Kemalist state philosophy and its accompanying foreignpolicy doctrine was exemplified recently in a debate on Turkey’s intervention in the Libyan conflict. Referring to Erdo˘gan’s plans to send Turkish troops to Libya to defend the so-called Libyan Government of National Accordance (GNA), opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaro˘glu rhetorically asked, ‘What business do we have in Libya?’. According to Mehmet Barlas, writing for the pro-government daily Sabah, asking such a question in the twenty-first century could be countered by imagining what would have happened if the Turks’ forefathers in the fifteenth century had asked, ‘What business do we have in Constantinople?’. In addition, as the parties gathered to resolve the Libyan crisis in Berlin, Barlas reminded his readers how European imperialists had once gathered in that very city in 1884–1885, and how the decisions made there had become a kind of symbol of the Ottomans’ forced removal from Europe. At the same time, the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 was the first step in the Europeans’ subsequent conquest and subjugation of Africa. The current Berlin Conference again concerned Africa (Libya), but this time, as Barlas points out, Turkey’s importance was fully registered by all the other players (Barlas, 2020). There is a significant amount of foreign-policy revisionism in Barlas’ statements, although this might not be immediately clear. First, the narrative reproduces the Güçlü Türkiye (Powerful Turkey) theme that was so fundamental in current Islamicconservative government circles. It also rejects—as something outdated—the traditional Kemalist passive, non-interventionist foreign-policy doctrine. In so doing, it also challenges the overall secular-nationalist national narrative and the role and status it defines for Turkey in world politics. Thus, in the Islamic-conservative narrative, Turkey no longer abstains from making its voice heard all over the world, leading to the conviction that its current foreign policy should not be guided by the traditional, passive Republican doctrine and that the country should instead learn to think of itself with reference to the Ottoman State during its days of glory. Within this narrative, the Republic and its traditional foreign-policy approach represent a passive interlude between the empire and the ‘New Turkey’. How does this all relate to Turkey’s new foreign policy and its idealized self-image in the world as imagined by the AKP? Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto˘glu explicitly argued in the 62nd government program published in autumn 2014 that, under the AKP, Turkish foreign policy should be seen as a straightforward continuation of the domestic restoration project. It was based on the same political philosophy, ideals, and sources. Accordingly, foreign policy for the AKP is an extension of domestic policies, such that the Turkish transformation, which in the AKP’s own parlance entails democratization, economic prosperity, and human development, is presented as a model to its neighboring areas. In short, according to the party’s self-glorifying narrative, Turkey now functions as a democratic model in its wider region. The country no longer adjusts its foreign policies to some pre-given international order set by others but is in the frontline in defining the new, allegedly more just, international system. This missionary foreign policy is in the official government program, covered

4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization

87

in a reference to the ability of Turkey to defend ‘oppressed nations’ (mazlum halkları) all over the world (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Ba¸sbakanlık, 2014, p. 167). However, as in all similar cases, self-presentation should not conflict with reality. There is no doubt that the civilizational restoration program, defined by the AKP as ‘our civilizational concept’ (medeniyet tasavvuruz), implies a patronizing and even a hegemony-aspiring project, whereby surrounding ‘oppressed nations’ are considered unqualified to take care of themselves, and thus need Turkey’s protection and guidance. The model image does not necessarily connote such purposes but on the other hand, hegemonic and even neo-imperial designs can easily be expressed through the concept of a model. After all, Davuto˘glu and Erdo˘gan have not shied away from explicitly arguing that Turkey should be the leading country in the Islamic Middle East, from where, as Erdo˘gan once put it, ‘modern-day Lawrences’ (referring to Lawrence of Arabia) should be kept away (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2014). Official government programs are, of course, insufficient to demonstrate how profound role ideas of ‘our civilization’ and its ‘restoration’ play in the AKP’s domestic and foreign policies. It should be understood that the AKP, at least by now, has become thoroughly loyal to its Milli Görü¸s tradition (of Turkish political Islam) and that within this tradition modernity is a cause of major anxiety. Accordingly, for Ahmet Davuto˘glu and indeed for the entire Turkish ‘cultural-turned-political’ Islamic movement, the penetration of Western modernity into Ottoman lands since the end of the eighteenth century has been a devastating process, something that presentday Muslims, in particular, should vehemently oppose. Behlül Özkan has recently analyzed Davuto˘glu’s thoughts in this respect, and because of this analysis, interested parties are now in a better position to understand the motivations and thought patterns that have driven Turkey’s foreign policy thus far in the new millennium. As Özkan (2015) observes, Davuto˘glu’s writings from the 1990s include several accusations of those in Turkey who were defending Western values and their implementation, explicitly claiming that this was akin to betraying the history, civilization, and genuine values of the Turks. Davuto˘glu also presents Western humanism and secularism as completely alien to Turkey, claiming that these false currents had ruined not only Turkey but also the entire Islamic civilization. The deep suspicion of Western secularhumanism runs deep within the Islamic-conservative discourse, and this position also marks the most distinct dividing line between Islamist and secular versions of Turkish nationalism. In other words, although the secularist version is deeply critical of the plans and actions of Western states in the Middle East, it nevertheless identifies with Western secular-humanism. The defensive modernization implemented in Turkey during the Kemalist era was, in fact, based on the idea of establishing an independent Turkish nation state within which the secular-humanist project could be implemented free of external intervention. In conceptualizing a state’s foreign policy, one could argue that the policy formulations and the objectives of a state actor may well be a combination of internal and external factors. In the case of internal factors, the actor draws on sources that are essentially contained within the unit, and include an aggregation of political, social, economic, and cultural values. Among these factors, the legitimation of power is

88

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

the one that is of most concern in this book. Thus, one is forced to ask what role the new proactive and even missionary or neo-imperialist foreign policy pursued by the AKP regime plays in legitimating the internal regime. This way of framing the issue also helps in the building of a conceptual bridge between the external and internal levels in the analysis of Turkey’s new foreign policy: it necessitates investigation of how attempts to produce regime legitimacy through a new foreign policy is inevitably constrained by the international system. In combination, this attempt to use foreign-policy actions for purposes of regime legitimacy together with the concept of a grand strategy explained above—conceived of as crucially defined by internally generated ideas but still constrained by systemic pressures—shed light on the general schemata within which the new Turkish foreign policy is formulated. It should nevertheless be borne in mind that the external international system not only constrains but also enables new foreign-policy initiatives, and one must acknowledge that the AKP government’s increasingly active foreign policy was to a large extent supported by free-market-oriented Western powers during its ‘liberal’ phase from 2002 to around 2010. Continuing this analysis, below I enumerate the main innovations in Turkish foreign policy during the last ten years. First, there is a more flexible conceptualization of its general orientation from a solely Western to a multidimensional vision, within which the relationship with the EU and the US is only one among several aspects. The origins of this go back to the 1990s when the end of the Russian threat enabled Turkey to broaden its foreign-policy agendas. Second, there has been an increasing tendency to use and cultivate Turkey’s historical, cultural, and religious bond with the Islamic Middle East to boost its economy and influence in the Arab world. Third, the AKP leadership perceived the Arab Spring revolutions as a golden opportunity to further the ascendancy of ideologically close Muslim Brotherhood forces in several countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and later also Libya. This was based on the long-enduring foreign-policy vision of the Milli Görü¸s movement, according to which Turkey’s Western orientation was an aberration, and the country’s preferred international position was destined to be as leader of the Islamic world (Çoskun & Yanar, 2020, p. 270). Strongly related to this, heavy and repeated criticism of the State of Israel and accusations of ‘state terrorism’ have become a significant aspect of Turkish foreign policy under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan. Finally, the Western orientation as well as the relationship with the EU and the USA, which was initially only de-emphasized by claiming that Turkey should approach the West on the practical level rather than in terms of ideological commitments, has recently been replaced with strong anti-Westernism rhetoric, and increasing difficulties in finding a common approach to major international issues, not least in the Middle East. It is well recognized that regimes are most likely to use their foreign policy for the purpose of legitimation when they perceive their rule as being under challenge domestically. One could argue that this mechanism works even more explicitly when there is a major attempt to redefine the national identity and widely held political narratives. Both factors have been very much in evidence in Turkey during the last ten years. This does not mean that previous regimes did not use foreign policy as a source of legitimation—narratives of Turkey being surrounded by hostile states have

4.2 Legitimacy, Foreign Policy, and Defensive Modernization

89

circulated widely, and the ability of the current regime to secure the existence of the Turkish nation in a hostile world has been part of governmental discourse on several occasions. However, the attempt to redefine the national community during the AKP era by de-legitimizing the secularizing and Westernizing project of earlier decades— or, to put it more straightforwardly, the denigration of the Kemalist modernization project—has meant that internal regime legitimation no longer requires the anchoring of Turkey to the Western world. Quite the contrary, the current ‘restoration’ project, which goes by the name of ‘New Turkey’, requires internal regime legitimation that problematizes identification of the Turkish nation state with the Western world and makes it difficult to maintain. The new Turkish foreign policy thus derives from several factors, all working to more or less the same end. The new state elite, having acquired its fundamental political beliefs within the Milli Görü¸s movement of political Islam, perceives the international system as very different from the secularists. Both have been inclined to see the world through the prism of Turkish nationalism and state security. Nevertheless, whereas the secularists wanted to establish the Republic of Turkey as part of the Western world, the Islamic conservatives are inclined to see it as culturally and politically different from Islamic Turkey. Second, internal regime legitimation now requires a foreign-policy orientation that de-emphasizes the Western connection and underscores Turkey’s role as leader of the Islamic world. Third, there has been significant change in the international system in recent decades, such that the systemic pressures constraining the formulation of a Turkish grand strategy are very different from the previous era of Cold-War bipolarity. A further change took place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war, which put Turkish-US relations under strain due to the Kurdish autonomous region on the one hand, but on the other hand, underlined Turkey’s key strategic significance as the only Muslim-majority NATO country. Americans in the post 9/11 world increasingly wanted to see it as a Muslim democracy ruled by a government representing moderate Islam. These mechanisms in the international system gave Turkey the opportunity to conceive of new role positions, such as a bridge between the West and the Islamic world, and as an actor formulating an Alliance of Civilizations. In a sense, the Islamic-conservative foreign-policy narrative both perpetuates and rejects the defensive modernization thesis that was crucial to earlier generations of Republican political leaders. On the one hand, writers such as Yusuf Kaplan, Mehmet Barlas, ˙Ibrahim Karagül, Hilal Kaplan, Burhanettin Duran, and Abdurrahman Dilipak repeatedly point out how Western imperialist countries aimed to occupy Muslim and Turkish lands, how they tried to impose their perverse, immoral, and secularist culture on Turkey, and how their Turkish apprentices (Kemalists) so eagerly accepted this foreign, secularist project. At the same time, they realize that resisting the West required the transfer of Western-originated sciences, technology, and organizational principles to Turkey. Political parties representing Milli Görü¸s, the most vocal anti-Western, Islamist political movement in Turkey, from which the AKP emerged, had a program that combined an emphasis on material and technological development with an Islamist social and political agenda. On the other hand, as the international system has witnessed the first indicators of a relative weakening of

90

4 Nationalism and the Meaning of Modernization

the West during the last ten years, and as Turkey’s economy and domestic industrial production, in terms of military equipment, for instance, have been growing, Islamicconservative ideology and foreign-policy narratives have increasingly challenged the traditional defensive orientation.

References Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi. (2013). AK Parti 2023 Siyasi Vizyonu. Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi. (2014b). Özgürlünün önünü açtık. Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi. (2014a). Ba¸sbakan Erdo˘gan’ın 9 Temmuz Tarihli Tokat Mitingi Konu¸smasının Tam Metni. Akgül, A. (2006). Bizim Atatürk. Bilge Karınca. Alaranta, T. (2016). Turkish Islamism and nationalism before and after the failed coup attempt. Turkey Analyst. https://turkeyanalyst.org/publications/turkey-analyst-articles/item/569-turkishislamism-and-nationalism-before-and-after-the-failed-coup-attempt.html Ataman, M. (2020). 19. Yılında AK Parti’nin Dı¸s Politka Stratejisi. Sabah. https://www.sabah.com. tr/yazarlar/perspektif/muhittinataman/2020/08/15/19-yilinda-ak-partinin-dis-politika-stratejisi Atay, F. R. (2006). Atatürkçülük Nedir? Positif Yayınları. Avcıo˘glu, D. (2003). Türkiye’nin Düzeni (Dün, Bugün, Yarın). Tekin. Ayubi, N. N. (1991). Political Islam: Religion and politics in the Arab world. Routledge. Barker, R. (1990). Political Legitimacy and the State. Clarendon Press. Barkey, H. J. (2007). The push and pull of strategic cooperation: The US relationship with Turkey in the Middle East. In D. W. Lesch & M. L. Haas (Eds.), The Middle East and the United States: History, politics, and ideologies (pp. 446–461). Westview Press. Barlas, M. (2020). Korsan General Hafter akıllı olsaydı Cumhurba¸skanı Erdo˘gan’ı anlamaya calı¸sırdı. Sabah. https://www.sabah.com.tr/yazarlar/barlas/2020/01/20/korsan-general-hafter-aki lli-olsaydi-cumhurbaskani-erdogani-anlamaya-calisirdi Beetham, D. (1992). The legitimation of power. MacMillan. Bulut, Y. (2015). Türkiye Nereye Gidiyor? Star Gazetesi. Çakır, R. (2005). Millî Görü¸s Hareketi. In T. Bora & M. Gültekingil (Eds.) Modern Türkiye de Siyasî Dü¸sünce, Cilt 6:Îslâmcılık (pp. 544–575). Îleti¸sim Yayınları. Chilton, P. A., & Schäffner, C. (2002). Introduction: Themes and principles in the analysis of political discourse. In P. A. Chilton & C. Schäffner (Eds.), Politics as text and talk: Analytic approaches to political discourse (pp. 1–41). John Benjamins Publishing Company. Co¸skun, C., & Yanar, E. (2020). Milli Görü¸s ve Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi: Süreklilikler ve ˙ süm Dergisi, 5(2), 266–280. Kopu¸slar. Akademik Izdü¸ Doster, B. (2019). Cumhuriyet Kar¸sıtlı˘gıve Yeni Osmanlıcılık. Cumhuriyet. http://www.cumhur iyet.com.tr/koseyazisi/1710667/cumhuriyet-karsitligi-ve-yeni-osmanlicilik.html Ecevit, B. (1973). Atatürk ve Devrimçilik. Tekin. Efe, A. (2011). Erken Dönem Cumhuriyet’te Ça˘gda¸sla¸sma/Modernle¸sme Çabaları. Türk Yurdu, 100(292). https://www.turkyurdu.com.tr/yazar-yazi.php?id=1787 Eickelman, D., & Piscatori, J. (1996). Muslim politics. Princeton University Press. ˙ Ersanlı, B. (2006). Iktidar ve Tarih: Türkiye’de ’Resmi Tarih’ Tezinin Olu¸sumu (1929–1927). ˙Ileti¸sim. Gelvin, J. (2016). The modern Middle East: A history. Oxford University Press. Güzel, M. (2006). Necip Fazıl Kısakürek. In T. Bora & M. Gültekingil (Eds.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Dü¸sünce, Cilt 5: Muhafazakârlık (pp. 334–341). ˙Ileti¸sim. Aktif Haber. (2014). ˙I¸ste Erdo˘gan’ın Kö¸sk Adaylı˘gı Konu¸sması. http://www.aktifhaber.com/isteerdoganin-kosk-adayligi-konusmasi-1009564h.html

References

91

Hroub, K. (2010). Introduction. In K. Hroub (Ed.), Political Islam: Context versus ideology (pp. 9– 19). SAQI in association with London Middle East Institute SOAS. Jones, W. T. (1975). A history of Western philosophy: Kant and the nineteenth century. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Kaplan, Y. (2021). ˙Insanlı˘gın kökünü kazıma konusunda kimse Batı’yla yarı¸samaz! Yeni S¸ afak. https://www.yenisafak.com/yazarlar/yusuf-kaplan/insanligin-kokunu-kazima-kon usunda-kimse-batiyla-yarisamaz-2058308 Karagül, ˙I. (2021). Çatı¸sma ˙Istanbul’da, Kahire’de de˘gil, Paris, New York sokaklarında olacak. Yeni S¸ afak. https://www.yenisafak.com/yazarlar/ibrahim-karagul/catisma-istanbulda-kahirede-degilparis-new-york-sokaklarinda-olacak-2057481 Keohane, R. O., & Nye, J. S. (1977). Power and interdependence: World politics in transition. Little & Brown. Kitchen, N. (2010). Systemic pressures and domestic ideas: A neoclassical realist model of grand strategy formation. Review of International Studies, 36(1), 117–143. Koru, S. (2020). Erdo˘gan’s Turkey and the problem of the 30 million. War on the Rocks. https://war ontherocks.com/2020/06/erdogans-turkey-and-the-problem-of-the-30-million/ Maleševi´c, S. (2006). Identity as ideology: Understanding ethnicity and nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan. Manisalı, E. (2019a). Düzenin Yabancıla¸stırılması ve Türkiye’nin hali. Cumhuriyet. http://www. cumhuriyet.com.tr/koseyazisi/1707237/duzenin-yabancilastirilmasi-ve-turkiyenin-hali.html Manisalı, E. (2019b). Siyasal ˙Islam, ulusallık ve kutupla¸sma kapı¸sması. Cumhuriyet. http://www. cumhuriyet.com.tr/koseyazisi/1704260/siyasal-islam-ulusallik-ve-kutuplasma-kapismasi.html Özdemir, M., & Aslan, H. (2018). The political economy of the transformation of Islamic Finance in Turkey. SETA Yayınları. Özkan, B. (2015). Abdülhamit’in ruhunu beklerken: Restorasyon, medeniyet ve Davuto˘glu. Birikim 309–310. Özkazanç, A. (2005). Türkiye’nin Neoliberal Dönü¸sümü ve Liberal Dü¸sünce. In M. Yılmaz (Ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Dü¸sünce, Cilt 7: Liberalizm (pp. 634–657). ˙Ileti¸sim. Philpott, D. (2001). Revolutions in sovereignty: How ideas shaped modern international relations. Princeton University Press. Provence, M. (2017). The last Ottoman generation and the making of the modern Middle East. Cambridge University Press. Riexinger, M. (2010). Turkey, completely independent! contemporary Turkish left-wing nationalism (Ulusal Sol/Ulusalcılık): Its predecessors, objectives and enemies. Oriente Moderno, 90(2), 359– 395. Seixas, P. (2004). Introduction. In P. Seixas (Ed.), Theorizing historical consciousness (pp. 3–20). Toronto University Press. Somer, M. (2017). Conquering versus democratizing the state: Political Islamists and fourth wave democratization in Turkey and Tunisia. Democratization, 24(6), 1025–1043. Soysal, M. (1975). Güzel Huzursuzluk. Bilgi. Sterling-Folker, J. (2009). Neoclassical realism and identity: Peril despite profit across the Taiwan Strait. In S. E. Lobell, N. M. Ripsman, & J. W. Taliaferro (Eds.), Neoclassical realism, the state and foreign policy (pp. 99–138). Cambridge University Press. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Ba¸sbakanlık. (2014). 62. Hükümet programi. http://www.basbakanlik.gov.tr/ Forms/_Global/_Government/pg_GovernmentProgram.aspx Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı Diyanet I¸sleri Ba¸skanlı˘gı. (2016). Kuran E˘gitim Merkezi Açıldı (11.4.2016). https://kahramanmaras.diyanet.gov.tr/Sayfalar/contentdetail.aspx?MenuCa tegory=Kurumsal&contentid=96 Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gi. (2021). Avrupa Birli˘gi Ülkeleri Büyükelçileri ile Toplantıda Yaptıkları Konu¸sma (12.1.2021). https://www.tccb.gov.tr/konusmalar/353/123549/ avrupa-birligi-ulkeleri-buyukelcileri-ile-toplantida-yaptiklari-konusma Volpi, F. (2010). Political Islam observed. Hurst. Waltz, K. (1979). Theory of international politics. McGraw-Hill.

Chapter 5

Interpreting the Liberal International Order

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order As the Middle East came under pressure from Western powers, modern political ideologies also increasingly penetrated Ottoman lands. Political ideology can do many things. It could provide legitimacy for a given socio-political order, for example, or challenge it by depicting the existing order as unjust and illegitimate. There are no individual ideologies, just as there can be no individual languages. An ideology is a belief system shared by a social group. It is meaningful to speak of a social group only if there are other, different social groups that exist within a given political entity. The same is true of ideologies—there are always several ideologies around at the same time, even though one of them may become dominant, aspiring for hegemony. Such an aspiration, however, can never be fully fulfilled (Lloyd, 2003, p. 230). Today’s Turkish foreign policy narratives are produced within a historically determined situation. Prevalent and competing ideologies provide the basic building blocks, a more or less hierarchical order of key concepts, for these pre-narrated situations. The ideologies themselves are ideational conglomerations at the heart of the modernizing state. These states, on the other hand, are constructed in close relationship with the international states system and its fundamental premises in the context of modernity. This chapter first scrutinizes the long-term transformations taking place in the Middle East in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, with the aim of outlining Turkey’s experience in the context of other regional states. This is followed by an investigation on how different Turkish writers understand the current transformation and how they narrate the nature of the Liberal International Order and its meaning for Turkey. Modern political ideologies started to have an impact on traditional societies in the Islamic Middle East during the last decades of the eighteenth century. European domination throughout the Islamic world resulted in the construction of centralized bureaucratic states. As was the case with previous empires, religions, and civilizations during the modern era, Europe challenged existing elites, forcing them to define their own versions of modernization (Lapidus, 2002, pp. 455–456). This process of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Alaranta, Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9_5

93

94

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

exploiting and producing local interpretations of modernity’s political ideologies has been present ever since. Of the more influential, nationalism and liberalism tend to be most prominent, but conservatism and various versions of corporatism also have their supporters. In addition, political Islam emerged as a powerful ideology during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909), which from the very beginning emphasized the pan-Islamist vision (Berkes, 1998; Gülalp, 2002). According to Lawrence Davidson (2003, pp. 10–11), late nineteenth-century Islamic societies produced three responses to Western expansion. First, proWestern elites pushed for policies of reform and secularization. Second, Islamic Modernists suggested borrowing Western organizational structures and technologies and imbuing them with Islamic values. Third, conservative ulama (religious scholars) wished to maintain their authoritative position as interpreters of Islamic law and custom. Moreover, the proponents of Islamic modernism proved unable to communicate with the uneducated and semi-literate masses who made up the bulk of the population. In the Turkish case, the Westernizing and secularizing tendencies advocated by Ottoman bureaucrats soon created a fertile ground for religious reactionism, and reformists were held responsible for the destruction of both din (religion) and devlet (state). Consequently, a religiously oriented, anti-Western movement that opposed Western-inspired reform policies became a significant strand running through the whole history of the Ottoman transformation, soon spreading to all Muslim societies, and appearing in the nineteenth century in the ideology of panIslamism, in particular (Berkes, 1998, p. 52). There was thus a pre-republican Islamic tradition in terms of responding to the Western-led international order, which was basically a religiously oriented version of the defensive modernization approach. Some aspects inherent in major political ideologies, and presupposed in Turkish foreign-policy narratives, seem to be strongly influential in the formation and organization of material and categories to support a particular version of the national identity and interest. Among them are historical interpretations on the one hand, and descriptive-normative accounts of the ideal nation and its internal adversaries on the other. Further, as national states and their dominant versions of identity and interests are necessarily constructed in relation to other similar state entities, the imagined ideal society also upholds specific conceptions of proper relations with the international system. This relationship has the potential to stimulate further responses within the given state entity, and in this sense, a reflexive mechanism is clearly observable. Even though there were also significant discontinuities, it would be advisable to acknowledge at the beginning of this analysis of the various interpretations of the Liberal International Order in present-day Turkey that the Young Turk constitutional revolution of 1908 and the Kemalist revolution from 1919 onwards constituted a revolutionary process. It was during this process that the Ottoman-Islamic sociopolitical system was abandoned through two successive mechanisms, the first in an attempt to thoroughly remake it, and the second by thoroughly rejecting it. What was crucially different in Turkey’s case compared to Iran, for instance, was the existence of a strong central state. As Abrahamian notes, the most characteristic aspect of the Iranian constitutional revolution (1905–1911) was the absence of state institutions powerful enough to implement any kind of radical reform. Accordingly, the relative

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

95

ease with which the revolution was first made and subsequently unmade was linked to the lack of a viable central state. In other words, the revolution initially succeeded because the regime lacked the tools to crush opposition, and it eventually failed largely because the state lacked the required machinery to consolidate power or to implement radical reforms (Abrahamian, 2008, p. 35). Unlike in Iran, a central state could be used in the Ottoman Empire and later the Republic of Turkey to implement a radical revolution, although only in the largest cities and only among one section of the population. In this case, it was precisely the state functionaries, and sometimes the sultans themselves, who had become thoroughly educated in new Western-type institutions by the end of the nineteenth century. They were thus powerful enough to challenge the existing order and to overcome the conservatism of the religious establishment and landowning class— at least up to a certain point. As Ahmad (1993, p. 54) points out, the tragedy of Turkey is that the liberal opposition had to rely on the same Islamic discourse as the conservatives in their attempt to find a popular vocabulary for doing politics. This use of Islam by political opponents made the Kemalist revolutionary cadre abandon attempts to accommodate Islam in the new state. Islam was thus neutralized by state intervention. However, what seems to characterize all modernizing states in the Middle East is the way in which the often newly established and initially unpopular constitutional government institutions became a battleground for two elite groups, namely the new class of educated bureaucrats and the conservative class of large landowners. One could argue that Turkey was no different from its Arab or Persian neighbors in this sense because, although the most successful, the more radical modernization drive was significantly obstructed by the more conservative sections (Esen, 2014, p. 605). Thus, the strong central state, a structural factor that many contemporary Turkish social scientists writing within the post-Kemalist paradigm perceived as the main barrier to democratization, was in many ways the very cause of the relative success of Turkish modernization attempts, compared with Iran, for example. Had there not been a strong central state of which the Kemalist cadre could have made use in its radical modernization attempt, it is likely that that the reform movement would have had the same fate as in Iran. Thus, from 1919 onwards during its Kemalist phase, the Turkish revolution was all about the ability of the Kemalist revolutionary cadre to win the battle over the prevailing state institutions, to marginalize conservative forces eager to retain the Ottoman caliphate and to launch a radical modernization and secularization project in urban centers. This included the successful implementation of the republican form of government and dissolution of the material basis of the religious establishment, which concerned not only official institutions such as ulama and medrese, but also unofficial organizations in the form of Islamic brotherhoods and Sufi lodges. The Kemalist one-party regime barely managed to maintain this order until 1950, after which it was renegotiated. It has become commonplace to argue that Kemalism was a Turkish variant of right-wing nationalism with strong corporatist leanings and even fascist aspects (Parla & Davison, 2004), and that, this being the case, the Kemalist

96

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

secularist state elite was only concerned with securing its own status in society, and was not really trying to disseminate enlightenment or progressivism. The argument is, in brief, that the Kemalist call to make Turkey a member of modern civilization was nothing other than a legitimation tool for the state elite. The permanent discourse of enlightenment (aydınlanma) has undoubtedly been used as a legitimation narrative (Herzog, 2009; Karaveli, 2010). However, at the same time, this attempt to bring enlightenment to Turkey meant the implementation of several indisputably progressive and democratizing policies, such as the emancipation of women through judicial equality, universal scientific education, the liberation of individuals from the restrictions of traditional, religiously sanctioned communities. Had the Kemalists only wanted to establish a right-wing dictatorship—as many Turkish liberals claimed—why would they have embarked on a hugely unpopular project of government-led secularization? The argument that they needed to do so because they wished to establish an efficient bureaucracy and powerful armed forces does not hold, because the secularization reforms implemented by Ottoman Westernizers during the nineteenth century had already secured all this. Kemalists went much further in their aspiration to create a ‘new human being’ in Turkey. To a lesser degree, and with far less success, newly emerging bureaucracies in countries such Iran, Iraq, and Egypt followed the same reformist agenda. Of course, as in Turkey, these representatives of bureaucratic reformism were not democrats or liberals in the sense that they would have allowed all sections of society to participate freely and with equal opportunity in the formulation of national policies. However, the elitism that this attitude no doubt reflects does not make cadres such as the Kemalists in Turkey representatives of political illiberalism. European liberalism was, historically, deeply elitist, advocated by educated men (rarely women) who thought, quite legitimately one could argue, that they had acquired the knowledge and skills not yet acquired by their less educated, often agrarian fellow citizens (Alaranta, 2014). The purpose, in Europe as well as in Middle Eastern reforming states, was to spread scientific education to the masses, so that one day they, too, would be well-enough informed to participate in national decision-making. This has been the great liberal agenda, which should be kept in mind in any assessment of the possible merits and faults of Middle Eastern modernizing states. Further, in all these cases, whether it be Egypt, Iran, Iraq, or Turkey, the promise of mass politics and polls, of universal suffrage and popular representation, soon created enormous pressure on the political system, as the elites were (often justifiably) accused of simply serving their own narrow interests in the name of the national interest. Obviously, the more the reformist state managed to educate its citizens, the more these citizens began not only to reproduce the states’ legitimation narratives, but also and at least as often to challenge them by increasing their demands, in terms of both political participation and material benefits. Clearly, from the very beginning there were groups that challenged the Western-inspired reform agendas of the modernizing elites, many of them attached to and stemming from more traditional elite formations such as religious scholarly bodies and Islamic networks, and actors. The populist Islamist movement, observable in all Middle Eastern countries, has been re-invigorated in the form of political articulation first established

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

97

by Sultan Abdülhamid II in the Ottoman realm during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, the Islamist movement of the twentieth century, often described as a direct product of modernization and subsequently even of globalization (Sluglett, 2019, p. 6), is better described as a combination of long-enduring, traditional responses and forms of political articulation, and the more recent attempt to turn common religious discourse into a mobilization tool in a modern political system characterized by highly authoritarian states. The Egyptian example amply demonstrates why full national independence is crucial to any reformist movement. At the same time as the Turkish nationalist movement was fighting against Western powers also eager to partition the Anatolian territories of the Ottoman Empire, the British government reluctantly issued a declaration of Egyptian independence in 1922. A caretaker cabinet was formed to organize general elections, and a constituent committee began its work on the Egyptian constitution. The nationalist movement, previously organized as the Wafd to resist British occupation, was now split in two, those opposing Wafd leader Saad Zaghul having formed their own party, the Liberal Constitutionalists (al-Ahrar al-Dusturiyyun) (AlSayyid Marsot, 2007, p. 98). However, whereas the nationalist movement in Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, later Atatürk, managed to establish real independence, Egypt remained trapped within a tripartite and highly antagonistic power struggle, in which the popularly elected Wafd party, the King supported by the British, and the British High Commissioner undermined one another and thus prevented the development of a workable governing model. Compounded with a severe economic crisis, by the 1930s this had fostered general disillusionment with the newly established constitutional government as well as with the existing political parties, including the Wafd. It was in this context that Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, started to propagate his message according to which ‘Islam is the answer.’ Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood offered an alternative political force. They opened associations and schools, teaching traditional Muslim learning instead of secular education taught in the government schools. The organization also generated self-help jobs for youngsters and embraced women by offering them new associations that made them more capable to overcome the alienation from new unfamiliar milieu. All action was nevertheless tightly guided by the Supreme Guide, Hasan al-Banna, who tolerated no dissidents (Al-Sayyid Marsot, 2007, pp. 106–107). Thus, the restricted independence in Egypt and its inability and unwillingness to implement economic policies to enable the creation of domestic industry, lay the ground for a populist, authoritarian Islamist movement that challenged the legitimacy and effectiveness of any secular social contract that was desperately needed to build a functioning democracy. This example demonstrates more clearly the fragility of the reformist elite’s position when it was simultaneously undermined by accusations of elitism and self-interest among the masses, constrained by foreign interventions, and challenged by a populist Islamist movement that defined all secular innovation as alien and degenerating. All these forces were also present in Turkey during the early stages of the Anatolian Resistance Struggle and the Kemalist revolution. The great success of that revolution—now so often debunked by Turkish and Western liberal

98

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

scholars—was to annihilate all these factors for long enough to lay the foundations for a controlled secular democracy. In other words, only in Turkey was the reformist movement able to secure full national independence, through state intervention to create the initial means of domestic capital accumulation and industrialization, to suppress the liberal opposition behind which all those wishing to re-establish the Caliphate were gathering, and finally to educate in the new secular institutions a large enough middle-class constituency that was willing to defend the republican order and its modernization drive. In all this, the Kemalist leadership managed to utilize the state apparatus and to silence and repress the reactionary counter-revolutionary forces operating in the country. However, they simultaneously silenced all liberal voices. Following this controversial success, for three decades the Kemalists have been accused of being representatives of elitism and authoritarianism, both by the ruling AKP and by the liberal intellectuals who had forged an alliance with the Islamic-conservative block by the beginning of the 2000s. In addition, from the liberal perspective, the Kemalist authoritarian secularization and top-down modernization project have blocked Turkey’s full-fledged accommodation with the liberal world order. This discussion about the formative years of modern nation states in the Middle East, and Turkey, in particular, reinforces the impression that the major ideological and structural mechanisms within which current Turkish foreign-policy narratives are produced are always pre-narrated, part of long-term, competing narrative traditions regarding the modernization process. Current interpretations of the so-called Liberal International Order in various narratives of Turkish foreign policy reproduce, reformulate, and challenge this pre-narrated reality. Indeed, Turkish foreign-policy narratives are not short of implicit views on the Liberal International Order (LIO). On the other hand, explicit reference to this concept is rare, even marginal. The post-1991 international order established in Turkey is usually called Yeni Dünya Düzeni (The New World Order). My aim in the following is thoroughly to investigate how different commentators from various ideological backgrounds interpret the LIO. One of the main tasks in this endeavor is to build a map showing the similarities in the different foreign-policy narratives in their understanding of Yeni Dunya Düzeni (YDD), and the extent to which, by using a concept other than Western LIO, they reject the claim that such a (positive) order has existed. As I will demonstrate, the YDD of the Turkish foreign-policy narratives indeed seems to be something very different from the Western LIO. A related issue concerns the way in which the narratives depict Turkey’s place in the existing order, the extent to which they present liberalism as a meaningful concept in the analysis of Turkish politics, and what they present as the key functioning logic of the current system. The question of how these narratives depict the alleged ongoing system transformation is also addressed. First, I should point out that the terms ‘liberalism’ and ‘liberal’ have a specific place in the Turkish political tradition. Thus, as a concept, the ‘Liberal International Order’ seems to be disadvantaged from the outset in the Turkish context. In brief, liberal is a curse word to the majority of people speaking about politics in Turkey (Bora, 2005, p. 13). The word libo¸s is frequently used in this context, referring to

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

99

a ‘liberal’ person whose liberalism has made him or her a value-relativist, ignoring all morality and decency in the pursuit of economic wealth (A¸sut, 2020). The roots go back in time to the first comprehensive modernization reforms in the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat era (1839–1876). The reformers at the time looked to Europe in their search for a remedy to the malfunctioning and weakening of the state. The Ottoman Empire had become a producer of raw materials for the expanding global capitalism project dominated by European Great Powers, but the reforms established in accordance with liberal economic views were unhelpful to the Ottoman State, which was unable to compete with the industrialized West. In this context, economic liberalism became widely perceived as a road to destruction, obstructing the development of domestic industries (Karpat, 2012, pp. 53–54). It is also worth analyzing the overall political processes and movements that came to challenge the despotic rule in the late Ottoman Empire. Whatever liberals the Ottoman-Turkish state elite included in its ranks were initially necessarily part of the Young Turk movement that opposed the authoritarian rule of Abdülhamid II (ruled 1876–1908). Indeed, the first known Turkish liberal thinker Mehmed Sabahaddin (1877–1948) started to propagate French liberal views, especially concerning a freemarket economy, as an active member of the Young Turks. The successful Young Turk revolution of 1908 re-established constitutional parliamentarianism in the Ottoman State, but Mehmed Sabahaddin concluded that it had remained superficial and that there was an urgent need to spread the idea of personal entrepreneurship and thereby create a domestic middle class. In his view, this required de-centralized government. At least on occasions, Sabahaddin’s views came close to mainstream contemporary liberalism, such as in advocating limited state intervention and prioritizing individual autonomy (Özavcı, 2011, pp. 142–145). However, the Young Turk movement was split in two from early on. The majority believed in the need for a strong centralized state that would implement new legislation and gather the scarce resources to push forward the badly needed comprehensive modernization of state and society. Mehmed Sabahaddin and other like-minded people who advocated de-centralization and the idea of free individuals generating the required transformation were a clear minority. The Kemalist ideology that, in the course of time, became the official ideology of the state was one of national development and modernization. In this context, economic liberalism was considered an obstacle to national industrialization, and to general development projects. Further, it was often perceived as the ideology that accompanied Western imperialism, and thus something to be fought against. Political liberalism has never occupied a central place within the ideologies of the major parties, either. Turkey’s political life until the 1960s was fully dominated by the Kemalist Republican People’s Party and its center-right, conservative competitor, the Democrat Party (Demokrat Partisi, DP). The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923 on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Turks view the years preceding this, 1919 to 1922, as the period of their struggle for national liberation (Milli Mücadele), which resulted in the rebuilding of the Turkish state (devlet) in a totally new form, as a republic. The Ottoman Empire had fought the First World War in alliance with Germany, and the allies were prepared to split the Ottoman territories among them.

100

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

Ultimately, this scheme came to nothing because the Anatolian Resistance Movement managed to thwart the Allies’ designs. After an embryonic phase, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), later known as Atatürk, assumed leadership of the Anatolian Resistance Movement. His years in power (1922–1938) witnessed tremendous reform and modernizing efforts in Turkey. Kemalism, an official state ideology, developed into the self-standing modernizing ideology of the Turkish Republic during the single-party regime of the Republican People’s Party (1922–1945). In fact, Kemalist ideology was crystallized in the Republican People’s Party program of 1931, incorporating the six main principles, or ‘arrows’ of republicanism, national solidarism, nationalism, laicism, statism, and reformism. The formative years of Kemalism were from 1927 to 1937. This ten-year period began with the so-called six-day speech of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and ended with the total incorporation of party and state, including the constitutionalization of the six arrows of Kemalism. The CHP then took a center-left position, while the conservative parties continuing to implement the DP’s agenda were able to establish themselves as the dominant player, usually gaining the majority of votes in elections. The analysis in Chap. 3 highlighted the ‘liberal philosophy of history’ as implied in Kemalist modernization, also noting how the practice of ruling nevertheless concentrated on the consolidation of state and nation instead of emphasizing individual liberties. On the other hand, the DP adopted liberal concepts, its agenda initially being based on political liberalization, but this current was compromised during the latter part of the 1950s in the face of growing popular dissatisfaction and the strengthening of the opposition. The liberal conceptualization of politics in Turkey has been squeezed into a narrow corridor on the margins of the center-left and center-right mainstream. Its traces are evident only as adjacent concepts surrounding the more central combinations of either secular nationalism or conservative nationalism. Thus the Liberal International Order (LIO) is hardly used at all in Turkish debates and is often referred to instead as The New World Order (Yeni Dünya Düzeni, YDD). At least some Turkish authors acknowledge that their definition of the Liberal International Order, namely The New World Order, was in fact a catchword used by US President George W. Bush in 1991 with reference to the Persian Gulf War (Kancı, 2020). In that context, President Bush spoke of the war as being about ‘more than one small country; it is a big idea; a new world order’ (Nye, 1992). President Bush used the same phrase previously in a speech given to a joint session of the United States Congress in Washington on 11 September 1990. He made several references to a liberal mission, to building a multilateral system characterized by the spread of liberal democracy and rule-based international relations (Bush, 1990). The secular nationalist and Islamic-conservative ideological blocs both underline the value of defensive modernization as a necessary project to resist Western imperialism. However, such a concept opened the gate to conflict regarding the ideal content of modernization. Further, a major cleavage erupted in terms of Turkish foreign-policy narratives when it came to the post-1991 phase of the Liberal International Order, during which the US and other leading Western states moved beyond the Westphalia-based understanding of sovereignty and started to speak about, and implement policies of humanitarian intervention (Hurrell, 2007, pp. 156–166). Secular-nationalist narratives go

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

101

against this new LIO/YDD in terms of both content and form, whereas the Islamicconservative narrative rejects the Western LIO, but when it comes to the ideal form of foreign policy, brings to the table a very similar, value-based, and interventionist approach. In other words, the AKP has defined its own foreign-policy doctrine as ‘valuebased’ and insists that its rationale reflects the Turkish domestic restoration project (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2018). What is even more interesting, the Islamic-conservative narrative heavily utilized liberal language in its criticism of the Kemalist regime when it came to power, and when forced to undo secular-nationalist practices and mentalities in the state institutions to consolidate its own powerbase. Thus, at the beginning of the new millennium, when the LIO was allegedly experiencing its last golden years before the downturn, both as a process and as a narrative, the relatively widespread liberal discourse provided the AKP and the Islamicconservative constituency with a new vocabulary to attack Kemalism. Interestingly, something similar had happened in the period 1908–1930, when the younger generation of Ottoman/Turkish bureaucrats and officers readily absorbed the Western doctrines of scientific rationality, modernism, and secularism, and they attacked the traditions of the Ottoman- Islamic civilization from which the state had until then found its legitimacy. Thus, the Islamic-conservative foreign-policy narrative does not approve of the content of the LIO/YDD. Several Islamist writers close to the ruling block, including Yusuf Kaplan, ˙Ibrahim Karagül, and Abdurrahman Dilipak, perceive this as completely perverse, and yet their narrative and the ‘moral’ (vicdanlı) foreignpolicy vision repeatedly emphasized by President Erdo˘gan represents the same kind of ‘missionary’ spirit as the post-1991 Western LIO narratives. However, citing Jahn (2018), I have already pointed out that the weakening of the LIO since around 2008 probably had something to do with its intrinsic characteristics, and ultimately with liberalism. Further, a close reading of Jahn might even uncover elements that sound conspicuously familiar from some of the main arguments advanced in Erol Manisalı’s Kemalist critique of both LIO and Turkey’s Islamic conservatives (see Chap. 3). To begin with, the Western world and its recent experiments with the liberal tradition have produced two highly problematic reformulations or ideological revisions of liberalism since the 1980s. The first is the kind of marriage between economic (hyper) liberalism and conservatism espoused by Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in Britain, for example. The second is the interventionist approach advocated by the LIO in the post-1991 world. As noted in Chap. 2, the liberalism-conservatism synthesis of the 1980s emerged in Turkey as a combination of Western ideological imports and an attempt by domestic Islamic intellectuals to forge a new religious-conservative national identity. The result was the thorough transformation of the Turkish ideological landscape after the 1980 military intervention. Let us now consider the issues of external intervention and historical liberalism, which demonstrate the inherent problems of the evolving liberal internationalist agenda, and give some insights into the thought patterns behind the LIO critique that is prevalent in Turkish narratives. As Jahn (2018) points out, there is a fundamental

102

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

distinction between the domestic and the international in classical liberalism as advocated by Locke and Mill. This, somewhat paradoxically, provokes the observation that liberalism, on which the liberal theory of international relations is based, in fact, promotes a realist view of the world. John Locke, one of the key liberalist thinkers, understood individual freedom as of the utmost value, and available only to those who own property. The three core principles on which Lockean liberal thought is based are the right to own private property, individual freedom, and government by consent. This liberal vision is essentially about domestic politics. The international aspect comes into the theory through the idea that the external world is the sphere through which those belonging to the rule-based domestic order but who do not possess property are able to acquire it. In Jahn’s (2018, p. 50) words, ‘the establishment of liberalism thus required policies of colonialism, which Locke’s writings—political and theoretical—consistently advocate and defend’. Thus, from Locke onwards liberal theory has envisioned a rules-based and civilized domestic sphere under government by consent, surrounded by an external world in which anarchy prevails, and where power-political competition is inevitable. On the other hand, classical liberal theory explicitly supports non-interventionism. According to John Stuart Mill, the other leading liberalist thinker, the justification for non-intervention was that it would be irresponsible to intervene in the internal affairs of a state to impose a liberal form of government. If the people had not developed the political sophistication to decide on, or the ability to create such a governmental form, they would not be able to sustain it without suppressing the opposition, thereby undermining the very principles that were being introduced. A minority liberal government would either fall or require continuous reinforcement from outside powers (Haines, 2000). These two themes recur repeatedly in Turkish foreign-policy narratives and their critique of the liberal international order. Having observed these key convictions in historical liberalism, I will focus more closely on what the major narratives of Turkish foreign policy state about the domestic order, nationalism, and Turkey’s place in the LIO/YDD. It is indeed noteworthy that many authors within the secular-nationalist tradition seem to advocate a domestic order–international order binary opposition, whereby state sovereignty is an inalienable right of the national community, and the international field comprises competing but also cooperating political communities aiming to advance their national interests. These secular-nationalist foreign-policy narratives also systematically condemn the interventionist ‘value-based’ foreign policy implemented by AKP governments. The Islamic-conservative foreign policy narratives, on the other hand, repeatedly affirm the sovereignty-based order in reference to Turkey, but the ‘value-based’ orientation and the idea of the ‘New Turkey’ (Yeni Türkiye) advocated by the AKP leadership, led to the conviction that Turkey needed to extend its domestic restoration project to its foreign relations. The post-1991 LIO narrative with its missionary agenda is thus remarkably similar to the AKP-centered activist and even aggressive orientation in Turkey’s foreign-policy narrative. Obviously, the foreign policies implemented by Turkey during the last 15 years have constantly provided new reference points to the authors producing the narratives, while the authors simultaneously help to create a

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

103

narrative framework within which to rationalize and justify the policies. The most explicit examples of this are the military interventions in Syria and Libya. On 24 January 2020, for instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Turkey to have discussions with President Erdo˘gan concerning the Libyan conflict, Syria and Syrian refugees, Iran, and geopolitical issues in the Eastern Mediterranean. According to Burhanettin Duran, a columnist in the pro-government newspaper Sabah and an analyst in the government-sponsored SETA think-tank, Merkel, in contrast to French President Emanuel Macron, was a realist and a rational politician who understood the value of Turkey to Europe. Duran further observes that the changing role of the US in global politics, Brexit, and the overall global power shift, forced European leaders to rethink Europe’s place in the world. This entailed increasing cooperation with major key players in Europe’s immediate neighborhood, in particular Turkey and Russia. As Duran points out, the first weeks of the new decade had made Merkel realize that Turkey was a key player in a large geographical area extending from Iran to North Africa, playing a crucial stabilizing role in all the conflicts raging in this vast area and bringing order to the chaotic landscape (Duran, 2020). In the context of Turkey-Europe relations, Burhanettin Duran thus prefers to emphasize ‘stability’ and Turkey’s significant regional power as the key themes defining the given relations. On the other hand, just a few days after meeting with Chancellor Merkel, President Erdo˘gan visited several sub-Saharan countries, accompanied by a large crowd of businesspersons and journalists. According to Okan Müderriso˘glu, a columnist writing for the same pro-government daily Sabah, Turkey was in Africa promising a win–win (kazan-kazan) game for both partners. He further refers to the concept of ‘people diplomacy’ (insanı diplomasisi): not only did the Turkish delegation have face-to-face discussions with African leaders it also visited various neighborhoods, meeting community leaders and entrepreneurs (Müderriso˘glu, 2020). One way of analyzing the conceptual repertoires of Turkish foreign-policy narratives employed with reference to different foreign events is to consider some of the core concepts used by incumbent AKP leaders in their official statements. Many of these statements have their theoretical precedents in Ahmet Davutoglu’s academic writings, and many of the concepts relate strongly to the civilizational approach to international relations of the AKP’s leaders. The AKP-centered foreign-policy narratives are rich with concepts and catchwords expressing Turkey’s new central role as a regional heavyweight and pivotal actor in global politics. Concepts such as ‘central state’ (merkez ülke), ‘leading actor’ (ba¸s aktör) and ‘order-producing country’ (düzen kurucu aktör) have become the main ingredients in Islamic-conservative foreignpolicy narratives, and thus form the first layer of what could be called categorizing concepts. They are used to frame and give meaning to day-to-day international events and processes in a manner that emphasizes Turkey’s role as an actor actively shaping these events, either as one of their generators or as one of the key actors who shape the outcomes. The ongoing global power shift is usually depicted as the outcome of several interlinked mechanisms and processes, of which Turkey obviously produces very few. However, when these narratives are framed within actor-emphasizing concepts, and in particular when associated with the concept of ‘order-producing’,

104

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

they strongly convey the impression that Turkey is actively involved in determining what new arrangements and power constellations are developing in various regions around the globe. An ‘order’ (düzen) as a concept bridges the domestic and the external in Islamicconservative foreign-policy narratives. The ‘old’ domestic order in Turkey, which was established in the 1920s by the Westernizing (Kemalist) state elite, has been replaced with the ‘New Turkey’ where the ‘oppressed’ (mazlum), religious-conservative constituencies, which in this narrative include President Erdo˘gan, have defeated the state elite and are implementing the required corrective moves in the political sphere as well as in culture and society as a whole. What is of interest here is that the secular-nationalist variant of the Turkish foreign-policy narrative has this same mazlum concept in its vocabulary to mark non-Western nations in the ‘third world’ that attempted to liberate themselves from the imperialist yoke, and for which the Kemalist revolution seemed to function as significant role model and a source of inspiration. The Liberal International Order narrative is premised on the idea of a domestic liberal order characterized by individual rights and liberties, the rule of law, private property, parliamentary democracy, and the idea of progress. The order is thus assumed to have spread to international relations after World War II through the coming together of like-minded nations under the benevolent American hegemon. The existing order in the more explicitly Islamist variant of the Islamicconservative foreign-policy narratives, however, is considered rotten not only because of the West but also due to the false policies in some of the central Muslim-majority states. Ahmet Ta¸sgetiren describes how the AKP came to power by redefining the Middle East as Turkey’s spiritual geography, where the country could build its strategic force by utilizing common historic and civilizational bonds. However, this potential was still underutilized. The main problem, he notes, citing another Islamist writer Yasin Aktay, was that the ‘key places of the Islamic world were under occupation’. Hence, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in the front row were seen to serve the interests of external powers rather than of the Muslim umma (Ta¸sgetiren, 2020). Islamist and strictly secular nationalist, not to mention neo-nationalist, narratives formulate Turkey’s domestic ideal order in opposite ways. Nevertheless, foreignpolicy narratives that compete which each other in terms of which one is more deeply grounded in opposing the West emerge from this conflicting matrix. According to the Islamist narrative, the Cold-War system and the dominant position of a strict secularist state elite that was firmly embedded in the bureaucracy, the army, and the judiciary demonized all domestic religious movements, traditional and reformist religious brotherhoods, and ultimately religion itself. In this context, religious and conservative constituencies overwhelmingly placed themselves within rightist parties, often forming a nationalist-conservative union. According to Ergun Yıldırım, the religious and conservative constituencies voting for center-right parties represented the large democratic force in the country against the repressive secularist regime. This account reproduces Küçükömer’s classic conservative-rightist claim according to which the Left in Turkey was authoritarian, and the Right was democratic and progressive. Yıldırım targets secularist writers, arguing that the Islamist movement that formed the backbone of the strongly anti-communist rightist parties during the Cold War was

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

105

the result of a ‘Nato project’ in Turkey. He acknowledges that US-led NATO was indeed inclined to use religion in its anti-Soviet operations, but he strongly rejects the idea that the rise of the Islamist movement in Turkey since the 1970s is the result of American initiatives. On the contrary, the emergence of the Islamic movement was a highly natural phenomenon, Islam being a fundamental component of the collective mentality in the geographical landscape of Turkey (Yıldırım, 2020). Turkey’s domestic quarrels over the country’s relationship with the West, in particular during the Cold War, constitute a starting point from which to investigate the multi-faceted relationship between the benevolent American hegemon, in particular the liberal construction of the international order since the 1980s, and the possible roots of Turkey’s authoritarian turn after a short period of democratic consolidation between 2001 and 2008. In other words, the heyday of Turkey’s recent democratic advancement was in an era that also saw the climax of the alleged liberal order. This indeed seems to prove the claim, made by liberal internationalists, that free markets, multilateral institutions, active democracy-promotion policies, and socializing international institutions significantly contributed to the consolidation of democracy in the world. It would then also prove, now that the liberal West was no longer committed to liberal principles at home or abroad, that a country like Turkey was also degenerating in terms of democracy as well as liberal principles and attitudes. However, the Islamic-conservative, and in particular the Islamist variant of Turkish nationalism is firmly based on the idea of distinct civilizations. As noted, civilization (medeniyet) as a concept plays a crucial role in both secular-nationalist and Islamic-conservative/Islamist foreign-policy narratives. In the view of Tutar (2020), a columnist writing for the pro-government Yeni S¸ afak, Western civilization has lost its place as the reference point for knowledge, technology, and global markets. In this sense, Tutar understands the decline of the West as a holistic process that empowers the marginalized and repressed cultures from which it has prospered like a parasite. By then, several studies had been published investigating how the spread of neoliberal market principles and economic restructuring allowed the emergence of the Islamic movement in Turkey from the beginning of the 1980s. From this perspective, the success of the free-market component of the liberal order was indeed effective in transforming the Turkish economy, society, and politics. As Yıldırım hints, the leftleaning intellectuals advocating secular nationalism see the rise of political Islam in close relationship with the spread of the liberal international order, first during the Cold War, and more forcefully during the ‘liberal momentum’ after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. There is no doubt of a linkage connecting economic liberalization, the fight against domestic leftist groups by the 1980 military junta, the TurkishIslamic Synthesis it advocated, and the civilizational political project espoused by the Islamic-conservative/Islamist movement. The crucial question is how strong this linkage is, and to what extent the era of democratic consolidation of 2001–2008 and the subsequent authoritarian Islamic-conservative project led by President Erdo˘gan have their immediate matrix in the (relative) success of the liberal order since the 1980s. The fact that both the democratization drive and the authoritarian Islamicconservative project evolved from the same neoliberal restructuring in Turkey, which

106

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

was strongly favored by the West, leads one to the initial conclusion, advocated by realist IR scholars in particular, that the liberal order is, in itself, highly complex and internally contradictory. To begin with, its foundational element is the strong emphasis in liberalism on human rationality and progress. These aspects, on the other hand, are indisputably the product of scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, and they are thus strongly connected to secularization processes. From this perspective, the Kemalist (secular nationalist) variant of Turkish foreign-policy narratives that emphasize the ‘universal civilization of modernity’ (ça˘gda¸s medeniyet) is a liberal narrative par excellence. Accordingly, the Islamic-conservative narrative of a distinctively Islamic civilization now liberating itself from the chains of Western material and ideological domination (the ‘liberal international order’ in this narrative), which emphasizes religiously grounded civilizational actorness, is obviously a narrative rejection of the liberal project as described in the liberal metanarrative. Liberalism’s at-best adjacent status is at play in the characterizations of the Liberal International Order in the Turkish foreign-policy narratives. ˙Ibrahim Karagül, one of the most vocal supporters of the ruling AKP writing for the Yeni S¸ afak newspaper, recently defined YDD (the LIO in Turkish). The article he wrote in April 2017 begins with a quotation from Russian FM Sergey Lavrov’s comments about today’s world lacking any common rules. Thus, what the Western world called LIO, and many in Turkey YDD, bears no resemblance to order, but rather reflects a world lacking in rules, in Karagül’s (2017) words a ‘bandit’s world order’ (haydut dünya düzeni). He goes on to describe how Western countries had for a long time defined certain other countries as ‘rogue states’, but now the very international relations had become rogue, and the founding states of the international order had opened the gates to let in a ‘norules-based’ world. The worst example of this, in Karagül’s view, was the provision of money and weapons by the US to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), while the EU countries allowed themselves to become a platform for PKK propaganda. The view that the West was stabbing its ally Turkey in the back by being soft on the PKK, or even cooperating with it as the US did in the exceptional circumstances of the Syrian conflict, is common to most if not all Turkish foreign-policy narratives. The storyline is firmly backed by the original core principles of United Nationscentered international law and norms. In other words, the Westphalian concept of state sovereignty still forms the basis of the Liberal International Order. However, even some aspects of the traditionally conceived, UN-focused international system based on official treaties and protocols are susceptible to critique in Islamic-conservative foreign-policy narratives. The Lausanne Peace Treaty, which was signed on 24 July 1923, obliged Turkey to give up all claims to the remainder of the Ottoman Empire and, in return, the allies recognized Turkish sovereignty within its new borders. From the perspective of republican historiography, the Lausanne Treaty represents international recognition of the secular republic within the territories defended in the Anatolian Resistance Struggle against the European Great Powers. In this sense, it has always represented independence and modernization to Kemalist and secularist constituencies. As I observed in the previous chapter, interpretation of the past is at the core of any attempt to form and maintain a collective

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

107

political actor. Similarly, forming such a collective actor always requires a counterimage, a group, or a constituency understood as the ultimate other of the idealized self. Not surprisingly, this mechanism draws contested interpretations of the past and present formulations of a counter-image into a multidimensional relationship. In other words, an influential interpretation of the past serves to mark the other in the present. The Lausanne Peace Treaty is seldom explicitly attacked in Islamic-conservative ideology. After all, it signaled victory in the Turkish national struggle against invading Western powers. However, beyond this common symbolism, its significance is thoroughly contested by contemporary Islamist authors. Yusuf Kaplan, an influential contributor writing in the AKP’s flagship daily Yeni S¸ afak, recently expressed the most direct condemnation of the treaty in Turkey thus far. According to Kaplan (2019), there is nothing in it that any Muslim should be proud of. On the contrary, it symbolizes the awkward process within which Turkey abandoned its own culture and identity and replaced it with disastrous emulation of the West. Thus, in Kaplan’s view, Lausanne marked the beginning of the horrific process during which Turkey cut all its ties with Islam and the Ottoman legacy. In this sense, the independence allegedly attached to the treaty was actually about Turkey perversely becoming ‘independent’ of its authentic self, of Islam and the Ottoman tradition, and instead becoming dependent on the Western world. Consequently, the West was unable physically to annex Turkey, but it was able to put it in spiritual and intellectual slavery. In other words, by abandoning its own Islamic culture, Turkey became the servant of a global system thoroughly dominated by Western powers. Here the initial signifier of the ideological ‘other’ is amply established. First, it is crucial to challenge the opposing historical interpretation, to turn it upside down, and then to claim that those who have defined themselves as representatives of national independence and modernization are in effect nothing but despicable compradors, eager to abandon their own culture and religion to become Western. This is, of course, one of the foundational arguments of political Islam. It is based on a totalizing concept of cultural and religious authenticity, within which attempts to separate religious beliefs and practices from political articulation are perceived as unacceptable surrender and cultural degeneration. The process of othering by Islamic-conservative ideology is closely related to its essentialism, anti-Westernism, and its inherent, specifically Islamic branch of anti-imperialism. According to Kaplan (2019), imperialism works through poisoning the minds of local elites, inducing them to establish educational institutions within which a belief system is established that serves the imperialists. This new educational system, which is designed to put the local population under serfdom, is deceivingly defined as ‘modernization’, ‘progress’, and so on. Western disciplines such as sociology and anthropology were established to promote secularization, which in turn became the main ingredient of imperialist discourse. Following this line of argumentation, Kaplan points out that core ingredients of the modern project such as secularism and rationalism are, in fact, degenerative isms that endanger cultural autonomy in Turkey. These views, perhaps surprisingly, relate rather ambiguously to liberal internationalism as it has developed during the last two centuries. According to Ikenberry (2020,

108

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

pp. 144–145), several propositions regarding cultural diversity are detectable in the liberal internationalist view. First, liberal internationalism was based on Westphalian logic, and it thus pushed consideration of cultural differences toward civil society and beyond the formal rules and institutions of the global order. However, at later stage, it adopted an approach characterized by patience and waiting for the long-term processes of modernization and globalization to work, eroding cultural differences through the gradual universal embracing of shared ideals and values. When Kaplan attacks the Kemalist Westernization project, which in his view was symbolized in the Lausanne Treaty as the foundational international document of the new Republic of Turkey, he also attacks the elements implied in one influential sub-narrative of the Liberal International Order, namely that the long-term processes of modernization bring with it cultural similarities, such as secularization and scientific rationalism that work to undermine civilizational particularisms. On a deeper level, the historical interpretations produced and disseminated within Islamic-conservative ideology seem to presuppose the existence of what could be called ‘hermeneutically sealed civilizations.’ Inherent in the idea that Turkey’s ‘manifest destiny’ is to re-establish itself at the center and as leader of Islamic civilization is the assumption that there are other, different civilizations, and that they are clearly distinct from each other. In that sense, such civilizations should be understood as actors in history, as long-enduring and, in the final analysis, unchanging sociopolitical entities defined by their essential characteristics. For several years now, the building of the collective Islamic-conservative actor as the basis of the AKP’s mass support has implied recurrent discursive attacks against the West. For example, President Erdo˘gan recently proclaimed, in a speech addressed to the audience of the Conference of Islamic: ‘Believe me, the West does not like us, and wants to see our children dead’ (Hürriyet Daily News, 2014). It is difficult to imagine more antagonizing rhetoric, or a more conscious attempt to draw a clear demarcation line between us (the Muslims) and them (the West). Obviously, argumentation such as this presupposes and reproduces the idea of a world divided into clearly defined civilizational units that confront each other as competitors, even as adversaries. For several years, daily, the pro-government media has featured similar narratives underscoring the incompatibility of and differences between the Islamic civilization and the West. As explicitly declared in the AKP government program from the autumn of 2014, Turkish foreign policy under the party has become an extension of its domestic mission. Narrating Turkey as the leading country of the Islamic civilization has become a prevalent theme of its foreign-policy identity, at the same time as the New Turkey is internally re-imagined through the vocabulary of political Islam. This is inevitable if the party seeks to produce an internally coherent political narrative because the recurrent attacks on the secularist and Westernizing constituency are ultimately credible only if backed by pan-Islamist foreign policy. Accusations that the current international order is illegitimate and unjust, and that, in the Middle East at least, all trouble stems from the unacceptable dominance of Western powers in the region, have become commonplace in President Erdo˘gan’s vocabulary. Turkey’s current claim of regional leadership differs in two significant ways from the previous

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

109

Arab socialist narrative calling for a pan-Arab union against Western imperialism. First, the call to unite the region against the West is based on Islamic unity rather than socialist anti-imperialism and hence is similar to Islamist movements; and second, given that Turkey is not an Arab power, its ascendancy in the region has come to be likened to foreign infiltration by its Arab regimes (Idiz, 2020). Furthermore, Turkey’s new ascendancy in the Middle East has inevitably assumed the characteristics of a neo-imperialist project—talk about its grandiose geopolitical and geo-cultural presence in the region is highly indicative in this sense. The AKP’s domestic restoration project and the new aggressive foreign policy are closely linked and, in practice, two sides of the same coin. Contrary to what has been claimed in more recent accounts of (in particular) constructivist IR theories, the inevitable linkage between foreign and domestic levels of analysis was fully acknowledged at the beginning of the 1970s. This was two decades before the end of the Cold War—an event in the real world that is frequently credited with forcing IR as a discipline to abandon its strictly structuralist research agenda. The internal processes and ideational currents within nation states have always been perceived as a key element in accounts purporting to explain the foreign policies of various countries. Of course, as Hanrieder (1971, 108) observed, there was more or less a clear distinction regarding which of the levels was emphasized: one group of scholars tended to analyze a state’s foreign policy with reference to its internal dynamics, such as its political culture or value system, whereas another group explained the same phenomena in terms of the external determinants of foreign-policy formulation. Well before Kenneth Waltz’s structuralist (neorealist) agenda-setting in his Theory of International Politics, and two decades before the advent of any explicit constructivist IR research perspective, Hanrieder, writing in 1971, was already fully aware of the mutually constitutive nature of the internal and the external in international politics. According to him, goals cannot be meaningfully talked about without recognizing value preferences of the actors. At the same time, the analysts must at least implicitly consider the external environment of the actor. The environment is the target toward which the actor’s efforts are directed, and in this sense, one cannot talk about his or her goals without talking about the environment, but the actor’s past and present perception of the outer world is instrumental for the very formulation of his objectives. The two-way flow between the actor’s cognition, evaluation, and manipulation of the environment, and the environment itself, resembles two confronting mirrors with their infinitely reflected images (Hanrieder, 1971, pp. 109–110). The significance of the above is that to understand Turkish transformed foreign policy it is necessary not only to consider the general objectives that guided it before the AKP era but also to realize how the new foreign policy reflects its image of the outer world, as traditionally perceived among opposing political forces in Turkey. Further, one needs to trace the changes in the international system during the last two decades to understand the external environment toward which Turkey’s new foreign-policy goals are directed: it is clearly different from the environment during the Kemalist foreign-policy era, as well as from the one perceived by previous Islamist parties operating during the 1967s, 1980s, and 1990s. In this sense, Erdo˘gan’s

110

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

Islamist-leaning outbursts attacking the West follow the common and shared tradition of previous Islamist movements, both Turkey’s own Milli Görü¸s and foreign variants, but the global context within which it is used has changed substantially. Rather than simply stating that the narratives of Erdo˘gan and his staunch supporters simply reflect old-fashioned anti-Westernism, they should be understood as genuine interpretations of today’s world. Hence, there is a need to scrutinize the LIO from the perspective of Turkish YDD, as suggested by Barlas (2017), a columnist in the pro-AKP media and formerly one of the leading ‘second republicans.’ Barlas has described the most recent phase of global politics as no longer representing the New World order (Yeni Dünya Düzeni), but as the ‘newest world order’ (en yeni dünya düzeni) in which the coercive practices of the US and the subjugation of other actors to this coercion, no longer apply. He mentions countries such as Turkey, the Philippines, and Venezuela, which now resist American power, in the new situation in which Russia and China have become balancing actors. Not only is the implicit critique of Barlas’ article made explicit, it is also expressed in very strong words by Yusuf Kaplan, writing for Yeni S¸ afak. In Kaplan’s view, what Westerners have called the Atlantic Alliance, representing it as an ordering mechanism based on liberalism and maintained by military, economic, diplomatic, and strategic ordering, is nothing but lawless, unjustified rule by the powerful, ultimately a ‘Darwinist’ and surreal order. Thus, what is perceived as a liberal international order maintained by a benign American hegemon is, for Kaplan, a perverse and coercive system kept in place at the behest of Western states. As he argues (Kaplan, 2018a), it is now a false approach to see the old world as coercively ruled by the Atlantic Alliance and repeatedly to worry about what would happen to Turkey-US relations. The right approach would be to ask, ‘Where is the world heading, what is happening next?’. Moreover, in addition to being a ‘Darwinist’ and coercive system, what Westerners called a liberal international order was also an era of postcolonialism, during which the Islamic world unwisely played with ‘mad’ foreign ideologies such as socialism and nationalism. A new era was emerging, which stunned the international system in the way in which the Islamic world was heading toward the intellectual, social, cultural, and political rediscovery of Islamic discourse. In Kaplan’s view, Turkey played a pivotal role in this new power configuration. As a state, it was now purified from within, cleansed from the mentality that had bowed to Western interests, and even further, multiplying its options by establishing strategic relations with Russia and China. Here, then is the key assumption of the contemporary Turkish Islamist variant of the nationalist narrative, which understands the current world as already transformed, in other words, that its functioning logics are no longer determined by US or Western superiority. In this sense, unlike the Islamist narratives of the last generation, the new discourse narrates the West-Islam confrontation from the perspective of at least partial success. Thus, the ascendency of China and Russia, and the alleged rise of Turkey as a powerful civilizational actor restoring its authentic culture, indicate the decline of the West and the emergence of new multipolarity whereby Turkey will take a much more active and powerful role.

5.1 Islamic-Conservative Views on the New World Order

111

As Ikenberry (2020, p. 139) points out, a significant strand in the narrative of a liberal international order moves, either explicitly or implicitly, beyond mere geographical and civilizational particularism to claim that, ultimately, modernity and modernization, as they took place in the Western world, embrace all of humanity. In other words, according to this narrative, other countries and civilizations are capable of becoming as advanced and modern as the Western world if and only if the process of liberal globalization reaches its conclusion and ultimately embraces the globe in its entirety. Given that liberalism and both the scientifically- and rationally-oriented liberal order are firmly grounded in the secularization process, this vision of a globalized world seems to assume that different religions play no prominent role in such a world order. In the view of Yusuf Kaplan, these aspects of the liberal narrative are indicative of grave arrogance and injustice. He sees the YDD as nothing more than an extension of a Modern European Order that turned not only against God but also against nature and humanity. He further suggests that the degenerated order generated by one-dimensional modernity is being replaced by a new world order established on Islamic civilization, which unlike European civilization has not purported to subjugate other cultures and religions (Kaplan, 2018b). Kaplan’s interpretation of LIO/YDD is firmly based on the writings of TurkishIslamic intellectuals such as Rasim Özdenören and Ali Bulaç. As such, it represents an Islamist variant of Turkish YDD narratives, in contrast to centrist and secular-nationalist interpretations that do not condemn modernity as a scientificallyrationally-oriented process as such, only what is seen as American and European imperialism, or at least military and economic coercion. Quite an extensive body of current literature scrutinizes what it refers to as Turkey’s ontological insecurity (Bagdonas, 2008), which is a major part of its strategic culture, or long-term foreign and security policy. The origins lie in the expansion of Western (and Russian) interests to Ottoman territories, the anxiety felt by the last generation of Ottoman bureaucrats and officers that the state was slipping out of its hands (devlet elden gidiyour), and the partition plans of Ottoman Anatolia in the Treaty of Sèvres. The worry—referred to as the Sèvres syndrome—that Western powers still harbor plans to divide Turkey is not expressed more clearly other than with reference to the Kurdish question and in any talk of Kurdish autonomy. In fact, the YDD framing of twentieth-century history and Turkey’s place in the world is an extremely powerful and widely shared narrative—its fundamentals spread among otherwise irreconcilable secular-nationalist and Islamic nationalist manifestations of Turkish nationalism: what requires the most explanation is the existence of a liberal-oriented Turkish foreign-policy narrative that does not share.

5.2 Secular-Liberal Alternatives The main explanation for the existence of limited yet clearly observable space for a Turkish foreign-policy narrative in the overall secular-nationalist discourse that comes close to the Western LIO narrative lies in the inherent contradictions within

112

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

the Kemalist narrative. As Sedat Ergin, who writes for the daily Hürriyet, points out, Turkey is part of the Western world. The strongest institution that guaranteed this on both sides was its long-standing NATO membership, which assumed more importance than ever when Turkey’s other main institutional bond with the Western world, namely its EU candidate status, was at its weakest (Ergin, 2019). On a more general level, the liberal variant of Turkish foreign-policy narratives interprets Turkey’s democratic experience during the twentieth century as closely related to the Liberal International Order. Ertu˘grul Özkök, writing for Hürriyet newspaper, describes how Turkey as a state entity has been built in cooperation, with strong institutional ties to Western institutions. The clearest example of this, he argues, is that even when the Turkish Armed Forces directly intervened in politics, there was never a mention of Turkey without NATO membership and its Western orientation. Among other things, this has forced the army to secure a return to civilian politics relatively quickly after all interventions. According to Özkök, President Erdo˘gan’s coming to power in Turkey was a direct result of the democratic elections and, ultimately, Turkey’s institutional relations with the Western world. Moreover, the army’s desire to stay within NATO is as strong now as it has always been, and this is the message that Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar has been sending to Western leaders during the Turkey-US crisis over the Syrian Kurds (Özkök, 2019). Thus, the liberal variant of the Turkish foreign-policy narrative reproduces the Western LIO narrative, explicitly arguing that Turkey’s democratic institutions, and its belonging to the Western club of nations, largely resulted from the expansion of Western-originated institutions and values in the post-1945 era. On the other hand, other Turkish commentators representing the broadly defined liberal approach are also ready to point out what they believe are the internal weaknesses of the LIO. Soli Özel, writing for the T24 internet magazine on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, noted that an increasingly wide gap had emerged between reality and the great hopes of those cheerful days in Berlin 30 years previously. However, the weaknesses he detects do not concern the basic internal contradictions pinpointed in academic research by Jahn (2018), among others, but are just unnecessary hubris. According to Özel, what then appeared to be the victory of civil society over authoritarian regimes, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, has turned into a comeback of the old elites, and liberal dreams have crumbled under the demands of powerful nationalism and sovereignty. However, much in this account reflects, first, the moving of the most skillful and cosmopolitan constituencies to West European countries and their replacement with inward-looking nationalists, and second, the financial and refugee crises shaking European societies in 2008 and 2015, generating strong nationalist and illiberal responses in Eastern European countries. Having made his diagnosis, Özel proceeds to narrate the history of the Soviet bloc, describing its economic and moral impasse and the widespread demand for a liberal and democratic future among the populations of countries in Central and East Europe. He acknowledges that the rise of authoritarian populism and exclusive nationalism during the previous ten years was fueled by the unevenly distributed fruits of globalization, which had created a relatively large segment of discontents among European citizens (Özel, 2019). Thus, what remains is a relatively modest

5.2 Secular-Liberal Alternatives

113

critique of LIO and its celebration of economic and political globalization. The main diagnosed problem is the gap between the winners and the losers, a stance that most reasonable economists favoring globalization are now ready to admit. In sum, this approach seems not to criticize globalization per se, nor does it seem to refute the narrative of the liberal international order: it simply calls for a minor corrective operation so that the fruits of globalization could be distributed more evenly. However, Soli Özel takes a much more critical approach to the liberal international order in other articles. He takes into account the inherent illiberalism and selective form of democracy promotion, traits that, as I explain in Chap. 2, occupy a central position in Patrick Porter’s critical analysis of the real, as opposed to idealized, post-World-War-II international order. Thus, first, he recalls how Western Europe and American Asian allies were brought to the US side via US-sponsored security arrangements and programs for financial recovery. Meanwhile, the US was also responsible for providing ‘public goods’ such as securing free markets and open seas, all set against the very real threat posed by the USSR. It should nevertheless be remembered that, in its determination to defend the ‘free world’, the American hegemon brutally suppressed popular leftist movements, especially in Latin America, while simultaneously supporting all sorts of right-wing dictators. Accordingly, in Özel’s view, the ‘liberal word order’ that was built on these contradictory premises has subsequently been strengthened by increasing economic interdependence (Özel, 2018). Doubts about the liberal international order expressed by a Turkish author situated within the confines of a broad liberal-secular approach rise to a more serious level in Fikret Bila’s writing. He also writes for the Hürriyet newspaper, and in February 2017 he lamented President Barack Obama’s foreign policy since 2010 regarding the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. He claimed that President Obama falsely interpreted the events taking place in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria as demand for liberal democracy from young generations, thus the Obama administration falsely expected young people to crush the authoritarian regimes and establish liberal democracy with American help, blind to the fact that radical Islamist organizations would replace these regimes. The American demand that ‘Assad must go’ did nothing to help establish a liberal democracy in Syria in particular, but instead produced an opportunity for radical groups, especially the Islamic State. The most effective opposition comprised fundamentalists who wanted to replace Assad with their own authoritarian rule (Bila, 2017). Leading internationally esteemed Turkish journalists such as Fehim Ta¸stekin and Nuray Mert (2015), it must be noted, shared this stance. From what I have observed thus far, a few general conclusions could be drawn regarding the interpretation of the LIO in (broadly defined) liberal Turkish foreignpolicy narratives. Ertu˘grul Özkök argued that, to the extent that Turkey had managed to consolidate some key liberal institutions such as free and fair elections, it was due to its close relationship with the Western world and, ultimately, to the successful expansion of the liberal international order after the Second World War. From this perspective, one could argue that Özkök, at least implicitly, confirmed the view of Western LIO supporters that the recent authoritarian turn in Turkey and elsewhere

114

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

was attributable to the overall weakening of the once-blossoming liberal international order. In addition to what could be defined as the pro-LIO approach expressed by longstanding liberal Turkish authors, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), at least under its current leadership, could also be described as a Liberal Left party that shares some of its basic assumptions with the LIO narrative. Although the CHP has traditionally had a strong nationalist component that is highly inclined to frame LIO as YDD and thus to see it mostly in a negative light, in its official program, election manifestos, and statements by its foreign-policy experts it accepts the existence of the liberal international order. Before going into more detail about how this takes place on the level of individual texts, I will briefly comment on the CHP’s stance on Turkey’s place in the world. The founding myth of modern Turkey it has reproduced includes two distinct, contradictory narrative tropes: (1) Abolishing the Islamic regime, transforming Turkey’s civilizational identity from the ‘East’ to the ‘West’ and establishing a modern secular nation state that reaches the level of contemporary civilization as manifested in Europe; and (2) Fighting together and with the help of Bolshevik Russia against Western imperialism, thus becoming a beacon of hope for all oppressed ‘nations of the East’. This ambiguity towards the West has remained part of the secular-nationalist political discourse. The burning question thus concerns which of these two is dominant in different historical contexts. For the most part, the Westernization narrative has had the upper hand, albeit being seriously challenged at times by the anti-imperialist and sometimes even anti-Western current (Alaranta, 2019, p. 4). As Turkey’s oldest party, founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the CHP faces a constant stream of polemics concerning the party line and ideology, as several competing blocks want it to take their favored approach. The polemics notwithstanding, its pro-European stance has always been confirmed in the official party program—as expressed in 2008: From the very beginning, the CHP has supported Turkey’s accession to the European Union. As a policy goal, full membership in the EU reflects Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s modernization project and the Turkish revolution. EU membership thus represents the natural next step in this social transformation. We have only one qualification: full EU membership with equal criteria for all members, and respect for the fundamental principles of the Republic of Turkey. The Republican People’s Party accepts no other alternatives (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, 2008, p. 124).

During these recent years of increasing ‘Presidential authoritarianism’, the CHP has purported to present itself as the platform for democratic restoration. Its rhetoric and political style are much more inclusive, best exemplified by its ‘radical love’ message during the 2019 municipal elections. This new style has abandoned the vocabulary of antagonism and has tried to embrace all, including religious conservatives. Turkey’s democratization is conceptualized in the election manifestos of recent years as advanced in relation to European countries and the EU. Further, official party publications and the statements of several key party figures have declared that Turkey’s future is with Western countries, even as the country continues to embrace a more multidimensional foreign policy.

5.2 Secular-Liberal Alternatives

115

It is also worth pointing out that the official program of the incumbent AKP, published in 2002 and still in place, begins with almost the same words, describing how the party desires to function as a platform through which Turkey could establish contemporary democratic values. It is steeped in liberal terminology with its emphasis on individual rights and a pluralist understanding of a state society. With reference to these democratic principles, the program emphasizes that Turkey is part of the civilized world (medeni dünyanın parçası olan Türkiye), and its citizens rightly expect democratic values to be implemented. It goes on to enumerate some of the core documents of liberal-democratic regimes, such as the Helsinki Final Act and the European Human Rights Agreement. A few sentences further on it describes the party view of a free press as one of the key elements of a contemporary democratic state (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi Programı, 2002). A section on foreign policy follows, prioritizing relations with the EU, although giving relatively ample space to describe how Turkey needs to develop a multi-vector foreign-policy approach in the post-Cold-War world (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi Programı, 2002). Much of what is written in the foreign-policy section could be rather easily described as confirming the liberal international order. However, there are also elements that, if so desired, could be interpreted as implying that Turkey increasingly sees the world from its own perspective and that this does not always or necessarily converge with the perspectives of its Western allies. Thus, what is stated in the official AKP program of 2002 about the international system and Turkey’s close relationship with the Western world could not be much further away from the constant rhetorical attacks against the West and the allegedly perverse international system it has created under American hegemony that pervade the foreign-policy narratives produced by the Islamic-conservative media of the 2020s. With regard to the liberal narrative, a certain circle has closed during the longer period spanning the 1990s to the present. Some liberals loosely belonging to the ‘second republicans’ in the 1990s envisioned a New Turkey that would make peace with its multi-ethnic/multi-sect population in general, and with Islamic conservatives in particular. This also included a call to embrace its Ottoman history. In terms of a foreign-policy vision, inherent in this narrative is the idea of Turkey becoming a regional powerhouse by activating its Ottoman heritage, perceived as a governance model and a basis for regional solidarity and cooperation. When the AKP came to power with its reformist agenda, many of these liberals eagerly supported it. However, all this fundamentally changed after 2011 when the active-foreign-policy approach had transformed into a highly adventurous, sectarian, and contradictory Middle East policy culminating in Turkey’s backing of various al-Qaeda affiliated militants in Syria and allowing the Islamic State to use its territory for recruitment and maintenance purposes. Fikret Bila, representing the leftist edge of the liberal current, now calls for a domestic return to democracy and the rule of law, as well as a return to the foreign policy of the ‘old Turkey’. He recalls that the AKP abandoned traditional Turkish foreign-policy doctrine as part of the ‘old Turkey’ it wanted to abolish, espousing a neutral, non-aligned stance in terms of both state-state rivalry and civil war. Rejecting this has ended in contradiction whereby Turkey insists that the territorial sovereignty

116

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

of its neighbors Syria and Iraq must be safeguarded, while simultaneously intervening in Syria along sectarian lines. Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty matter to Turkey most of all because it wants to safeguard its own territorial integrity. Syria and Iraq have been in the process of dissolution along ethnic and sectarian lines, and similar ethnic and sectarian cleavages are evident in Turkey. However, although Turkey insists on keeping Syria and Iraq together, its foreign policy is based on taking sides in the Syrian civil war. In doing so, it has given external actors wishing to take a similar ethnic and sectarian stance towards Turkey the opportunity to do so (Bila, 2020). I have pointed out some of the similarities between the post-1991 interventionist Liberal International Order narrative and that of the AKP’s foreign policy. The ‘missionary’ element in both reveals the extent to which they are mutually constitutive. When the AKP came to power following the 2002 election, it initially needed to adjust its policies to the constraints and expectations of both external and domestic actors. Within Turkey, it needed a balancing act to accommodate the party’s novel initiatives to the secular and ideologically Western-oriented outlook of the existing state institutions. One innovation was the ‘Alliance of Civilizations’ concept through which the AKP leadership attempted to carve out a space for a more activist foreign-policy approach without simultaneously antagonizing the established consensus regarding Turkey’s place in the world. This tactic had much to do with the lessons learned from the 1990s when the AKP’s predecessor Islamic parties of the Milli Görü¸s movement tried to implement their strongly anti-Western, panIslamic foreign policy, having assumed governmental responsibilities. This ended in the so-called ‘Postmodern coup’ of 28 February 1997, when the military published an ultimatum that, in practice, demanded the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan’s government. This process led to the internal split between Erbakan’s Rehaf party and what is usually called ‘reformists’ (yenilikçiler) that finally established the AKP in 2001. According to Balcı and Mi¸s (2008, p. 388), these events also induced the reformist faction to engage in self-criticism and new thinking about the West. The ‘Alliance of Civilization’ as a concept emerged from this new perspective on the Turkey-West relationship adopted among the reformist Islamist movement. The new ‘Alliance of Civilizations’ was largely the brainchild of two Islamicoriented academics, Ahmet Davuto˘glu and Mustafa Aydın. Davuto˘glu could be considered the ideologue of the AKP’s foreign policy, and his magnum opus Stratejik Derinlik (Strategic Depth, published in 2001) has been read and analyzed by a whole generation of Turkish politicians, academics, and personnel working in government institutions and think tanks. Thus, the concept of civilization (medeniyet) has become one of the cornerstones of Turkish foreign policy since the AKP came to power. The conceptual basis of this new approach is medeniyet (civilization), which is also the root of words such as medeni and medenile¸stirme (civilized, civilizing). Mustafa Kemal Atatürk frequently used the word medeni with reference to his attempt to modernize Turkey along the lines of the Europe-originated rational-scientific culture of modernity. However, following the Milli Görü¸s tradition, the Ottoman Empire and subsequently the Republic of Turkey represent a unique Ottoman-Islamic civilization that is conceptually distinct from Western civilization. The very thought of

5.2 Secular-Liberal Alternatives

117

Turkey being socially, politically, and culturally different from the West traditionally espoused by Turkish political Islamists presupposes the notion of Islamic and Western civilizations as two, irreconcilable entities. The novelty of the ‘Alliance of Civilizations’, according to Balcı and Mi¸s (2008), was precisely that it intentionally downplayed the exclusive characteristic, emphasizing instead the inclusive aspects of civilization. The ‘alliance’, then, was about fostering peaceful encounters between Western and Islamic civilizations to absorb each other’s best characteristics. All this raises tricky questions about the ‘Alliance of Civilizations’ in relation to the Liberal International Order. On the one hand, the idea of increasing interdependence, the perceived need to foster international and multilateral institutions to safeguard peace and the global order, and the assumption that with its new ‘synthesis-making’ approach the AKP would be able to consolidate democracy at home, obviously point towards convergence rather than a conflicting narrative. On the other hand, the emphasis on several ‘civilizations of modernity’ stems from the deep conviction that the notion of European modernity as the sole foundation and manifestation of the global order is unjustified and in need of correction. As a concept, the ‘Alliance of Civilizations’ is very similar to the AKP’s ideal foreign policy as presented in its 2002 party program, in the sense that both allow rather different and even contradictory interpretations. One could thus argue that, on the surface level, the ‘Alliance of Civilizations’ seems like a perfect match to the Liberal International Order narrative in the post 9/11 world, once perceived in many quarters as characterized by a ‘clash of civilizations’. On the deeper level, however, the idea of distinct civilizations with different norms and value systems obviously challenges the Liberal International Order and its premises, in particular, the conviction that at the end of the globalization process is a world in which the ordering principles that originated in European modernity have become universally accepted. One could also make the argument that the ‘Alliance of Civilization’ is already an indication of just how thoroughly the Liberal International Order has been internalized in Turkey. In other words, it is reasonable to suppose that the need perceived by the reformist cadre of the Turkish political Islamist movement to accommodate its ideology and political agenda to the existing system, not only in Turkey but also in an international system dominated by the West proves, more than anything else, the power of the Liberal International Order narrative. Nevertheless, from a current perspective, this does not seem to be a credible line of thinking. The ‘Alliance of Civilizations’ narrative is indeed a survival mechanism in part, allowing new initiatives in Turkish foreign policy without risking rejection from the traditional foreign-policy establishment, but it is also a tactical move to advance Turkey’s own national interest in the American-dominated system with an approach and vocabulary that seem to bargain only for a slight soft-tuning or reform within the existing system. This highly critical stance toward the LIO turns to YDD framing in terms of American post-Cold-War Middle East policies. This will probably surprise no one given that the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was also considered a disaster in the West. However, as Porter (2018) and other realists point out, the Iraqi invasion took place precisely when the LIO was supposed to be enjoying its golden days, long before Trump, the 2008 financial crisis, Russia’s new assertiveness, and the ascendency

118

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

of China and the BRICs. How this debate is articulated in Turkey is evident, for instance, in the way Fehmi Koru, writing for the pro-government Star newspaper in early 2014, described the new dangers Turkey was facing at the time when the Islamic State terror group swept through Iraq, conquering large swatches of land. Koru recalled that the dizzying speed of IS terrorist expansion was attributable to the US decision to wipe out the Iraqi army completely and demolish all state institutions associated with the Saddam Hussein regime. This unwise policy was not a total failure, but it rather exemplified a pattern that followed same course wherever the Americans invaded militarily: US invasion was followed by chaos, not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Koru, 2014). As Turkey’s foreign policy has become increasingly fluid in the context of the Syrian civil war, in particular, the country has implemented what many see as a dangerous, haphazard balancing act between the US and Russia. In this context, analysts taking a pro-government line have attempted to theorize these problematic policies by breaking down the traditional frameworks of Turkish analyses of foreign policy. For example, Aslan (2020) argues that the traditional Westernist and Eurasianist ideologies established during the Cold War have become anachronistic and deficient in terms of guiding or explaining Turkey’s role in contemporary world politics. Hence, Westernism and Eurasianism are ultimately harmful, as they convey the image of enduring friends and foes in a world that increasingly requires flexible foreign policies and changing tactical alliances to secure Turkey’s national interest. According to Aslan, both ideologies espouse the view that securing Turkey’s national interest and security requires the adjusting of Turkish foreign policy to these inflexible blocs. He has no problem with the fact that Turkey has these ideological camps, or that the representatives of these tight blocks participated in domestic debates on foreign policy. Nor is it out of the question to see Turkey cooperating with different states in Western and Eurasian alliances, as long as such cooperation is generated by Turkey’s own needs and implemented in a flexible, non-dogmatic manner (Aslan, 2020). These views could thus be considered a theoretical justification of Turkey’s recent ‘multi-vector’ and more independent, allegedly Turkey-centered, foreignpolicy doctrine. Although Aslan does not give an explicit evaluation of the Liberal International Order, in his conceptualization of international relations in general and of Turkey’s preferred (or ideal) foreign-policy doctrine he does imply a critical relativization. In other words, the argument that Turkey implements its very own, Turkey-centered foreign-policy without any ideological commitment to Westernism or Eurasianism, calls into question the relevance of any allegedly universal international order based on liberal principles and Western leadership. The confrontation with the LIO implicit in Aslan’s narrative is made explicit in his earlier writings. Turkey recently applied legislation that allows its radio and TV watchdog (RTÜK) to censor streaming sites such as Netflix. As Aslan puts it, this ‘might seem odd at first sight’. He describes how the sanctification of the individual that is inherent in liberal ideology had become hegemonic since the 1990s, and how traditional and state-based authorities were marginalized by the emergence of individualism and the absolute value of civil society. He suggests that these processes

5.2 Secular-Liberal Alternatives

119

lead to what could be called a post-state political system. This mechanism or process has generally been labeled globalization since the 1990s, and it was presented as the preferred modern developmental ideal producing economic and cultural spheres freed from the authority of the state, a path along which one would secure the emancipation of the individual: the result was glorified as the emergence of a new free world (Aslan, 2019). Aslan also engages in a historical-theoretical analysis of the internal Western critique of modern society and its individualism, quoting examples from the Frankfurt School to current postmodern theory. He observes in these evaluations alleged individual emancipation attributable to the dominance of liberalism, bringing to the surface an array of increasingly grim and negative aspects, and putting liberalism’s claims under severe doubt. All these mechanisms and contradictions were globalized during the era of Western dormancy. In conclusion, Aslan comments that it is not adequate, therefore, to interpret the current situation as ‘authoritarianism versus freedom’: it is rather a struggle between individuals and various constellations of power that have attempted to shape the dominant order of social and political life (Aslan, 2019). All these examples justify the claim that the increasingly activist and interventionist Turkish foreign-policy stance is narrated in close relationship with current understanding of the Western interventionist approach, especially since 1991. The missionary spirit in the new Islamic-conservative Turkish foreign-policy approach seems to convey an awareness of the internal contradictions of the Western LIO, as many writers either explicitly or implicitly refer to its internal contradictions while evaluating Turkey’s new, more active foreign policies. The missionary spirit, the repeated call for Turkey to become the leading actor of the Islamic World, and the ultimatum that its values and interests need to be better accommodated to the international system, recycle the missionary spirit of the Western LIO if not in content, then at least in form. On the other hand, as G. John Ikenberry, a leading scholar in the liberal camp, recently pointed out, the once prevalent view among many liberal internationalists that globalization was on its way to producing a global triumph of liberal modernity might have been mistaken. Thus, it was now conceivable that liberal international order is really a Western project, and that if this was the case, it was so because liberal order requires a strong sense of shared ‘social purposes’, something that is unlikely to exist at the global level (Ikenberry, 2020, pp. 139–140). The Turkish foreignpolicy narratives analyzed in this chapter seem to point in the direction anticipated by Ikenberry. The bulk of views expressed within what could be loosely defined as secular nationalist and Islamic-conservative narratives are highly critical of the Liberal International order, although not in the same way. Both narrative traditions tend to delegitimize the LIO, but they do it from different positions. The secularnational narratives do not reject the order on cultural-religious terms, but because it appears largely to serve the interests of Western elites at the expense of others. On the other hand, the Islamic-conservative narratives offer a strong culturalist critique, the argument being that the LIO is based on Western cultural ideas that have been illegitimately forced on others, in particular, threatening Turkey’s Islamic civilization and its values, which are considered more humane than and superior to Western values.

120

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

Nevertheless, Turkish liberal narratives emphasize the close alliance of Turkey’s republican history with the Western world. Finally, the fact that the Ottoman Empire and subsequently—in a more determined way—the Republic of Turkey were guided by the state elites to absorb and socialize into the Western-originated modernization project strongly influenced its political institutions and democratic experiences.

References Abrahamian, E. (2008). A history of modern Iran. Cambridge University Press. Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi. (2002). Parti Programı. https://www.akparti.org.tr/parti/parti-programi/ Ahmad, F. (1993). The making of modern Turkey. Routledge. Alaranta, T. (2019). Turkey’s Republican People’s Party and the EU: Preconditions for EU–Turkey relations in the secular-nationalist vision. FIIA working paper 112. The Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Alaranta, T. (2014). Contemporary Kemalism: From universal secular-humanism to extreme Turkish nationalism. Routledge. Al-Sayyid-Marsot, A. L. (2007). A history of Egypt: From the Arab conquest to the present. Cambridge University Press. Aslan, A. (2019). Liberal Tahakküm. Kriter 4(38). https://kriterdergi.com/aliaslan/liberal-tahakkum Aslan, A. (2020). Dı¸s Politikada Batıcılık ve Avrasyacılık Sorunu. Kriter 4(44). https://kriterdergi. com/dis-politika/dis-politikada-baticilik-ve-avrasyacilik-sorunu A¸sut, A. (2020). Liberalden libo¸sa. BirGün. Bagdonas, Ö. D. (2008). The clash of Kemalisms? Reflections on the past and present politics of Kemalism in Turkish political discourse. Turkish Studies, 9(1), 99–114. Balcı, A., & Mi¸s, N. (2008). Turkey’s role in the alliance of civilizations: A new perspective in Turkish foreign policy? Turkish Studies, 9(3), 387–406. Barlas, M. (2017). En yeni dünya düzeni’nde geçmi¸s hatalardan kaçınalım. A Haber. https:// www.ahaber.com.tr/yazarlar/mehmet-barlas/2017/08/09/en-yeni-dunya-duzeninde-gecmis-hat alardan-kacinalim Berkes, N. (1998). The development of secularism in Turkey. Routledge. Bila, F. (2017). Obama’nın yanılgısı. Hürriyet. https://www.gazeteoku.com/yazar/fikret-bila/oba manin-yanilgisi/172992 Bila, F. (2020). Yeni Türkiye’nin çeli¸skileri. T24 Ba˘gımsız Internet Gazetesi. https://t24.com.tr/yaz arlar/fikret-bila/yeni-turkiye-nin-celiskileri,25150 Bora, T. (2005). Sunu¸s. In M. Yılmaz (Ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Dü¸sünce, Cilt 7, Liberalizm (pp. 13–22). ˙Ileti¸sim. Bush, G. H. W. (1990). Address before a joint session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf crisis and the Federal budget deficit, Washington D.C. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Address_Before_a_J oint_Session_of_the_Congress_on_the_Persian_Gulf_Crisis_and_the_Federal_Budget_Deficit Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi. (2008). Ça˘gda¸s Türkiye ˙Için De˘gi¸sim: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Programı. http://www.chp.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/chpprogram.pdf Davison, A. (2003). Turkey, a ‘secular’ state? The challenge of description. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 102(2/3), 333–350. Duran, B. (2020). Angela Merkel’in Acil Misyonu. Sabah. https://www.sabah.com.tr/yazarlar/ duran/2020/01/25/merkelin-acil-misyonu Ergin, S. (2019). NATO zirvesi Türkiye için ne anlama geliyor? Hürriyet. http://www.hurriyet.com. tr/yazarlar/sedat-ergin/nato-zirvesi-turkiye-icin-ne-anlama-geliyor-41387899 Esen, B. (2014). Nation-building, party-strength, and regime consolidation: Kemalism in comparative perspective. Turkish Studies, 15(4), 600–620. Gülalp, H. (2002). Using Islam as political ideology. Cultural Dynamics, 14(1), 21–39.

References

121

Haines, S. (2000). Military intervention and international law. In T. C. Salmon (Ed.), Issues in international relations (pp. 100–130). Routledge. Hanrieder, W. F. (1971). Actor objectives and international value system. In W. F. Hanrieder (Ed.), Comparative foreign policy: Theoretical essays (pp. 108–131). David McKay Company. Herzog, C. (2009). Enlightenment and the Kemalist Republic: A predicament. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30(1), 21–37. Hurrell, A. (2007). On global order: Power, values, and the constitution of international society. Oxford University. Hürriyet Daily News. (2014). Foreigners don’t like Muslims, only their money: Turkish President Erdo˘gan. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/foreigners-dont-like-muslims-only-their-moneyturkish-president-erdogan-74893 Idiz, S. (2020). Turkey more diplomatically isolated than ever in Arab world. Al Monitor. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/09/turkey-israel-uae-deal-ankara-becamebane-of-arab-regimes.html Ikenberry, G. J. (2020). Liberal internationalism and cultural diversity. In A. Phillips & C. Reus-Smit (Eds.), Culture and order in world politics (pp. 137–158). Cambridge University Press. Jahn, B. (2018). Liberal internationalism: Historical trajectory and current prospects. International Affairs, 94(1), 43–61. Kancı, M. A. (2020). Yeni salgın düzeni ve Türkiye. Anadolu Ajansi. https://www.aa.com.tr/tr/ana liz/yeni-salgin-duzeni-ve-turkiye/1822733 Kaplan, Y. (2018a). Asya ça˘gı’na do˘gru: Batı ekseni için sonun ba¸slangıcı. Yeni S¸ afak. https://www. yenisafak.com/yazarlar/yusufkaplan/asya-cagina-dogru-bati-ekseni-icin-sonun-baslangici-204 6645 Kaplan, Y. (2018b). Eski dünyanın çökü¸sü, yeni bir dünyanın habercisidir. Yeni S¸ afak. https://www. yenisafak.com/yazarlar/yusufkaplan/eski-dunyanin-cokusu-yeni-bir-dunyanin-habercisidir-204 8413 Kaplan, Y. (2019). Lozan’la emperyalistlerin önündeki en büyük engel bertaraf edildi! Yeni S¸ afak. https://www.yenisafak.com/yazarlar/yusuf-kaplan/lozanla-emperyalistlerin-onundeki-enbuyuk-engel-bertaraf-edildi-2052184 Karagül, ˙I. (2017). ‘Haydut dünya düzeni’ ve en acil mesele: O duvar yıkılmalı! Yeni S¸ afak. https://www.yenisafak.com/yazarlar/ibrahimkaragul/haydut-dunya-duzeni-ve-enacil-mesele-o-duvar-yikilmali-2037589 Karaveli, H. M. (2010). An unfulfiled promise of enlightenment: Kemalism and its liberal critics. Turkish Studies, 11(1), 85–102. Karpat, K. H. (2012). Kısa Türkiye Tarihi (1800–2012). Timas. Koru, F. (2014). Türkiye’ye ’yeni’ tehdit. Star Gazetesi. https://www.star.com.tr/yazar/turkiyeyeyeni-tehdit-yazi-895327/ Lapidus, I. (2002). A history of Islamic societies. Cambridge University Press. Lloyd, M. (2003). The end of ideology? In R. Eccleshall, A. Finlayson, V. Geoghegan, M. Kenny, M. Lloyd, I. MacKenzie, & R. Wilford (Eds.), Political ideologies: An introduction (pp. 217–235). Routledge. Mert, N. (2015). Suriye: ‘Bir ˙Insanlık Sucu’. Cumhuriyet. https://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/ nuray-mert/suriye-bir-insanlik-sucu-377105 Müderriso˘glu, O. (2020). Afrika izlenimleri… Türk i¸s insanında de˘gi¸smesi gerekenler. Sabah. https://www.sabah.com.tr/yazarlar/muderrisoglu/2020/01/28/afrika-izlenimleri-turk-isinsaninda-degismesi-gerekenler Nye, J. S. (1992). What new world order? Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ 1992-03-01/what-new-world-order Özavcı, O. (2011). Dü¸sünce Tarihi Merce˘ginden: Türkiye’de Liberalizm. Do˘gu-Batı, 57, 137–174. Özel, S. (2018). ABD’nin yolu. HaberTürk. https://www.haberturk.com/yazarlar/soli-ozel/201 7798-abdnin-yolu Özel, S. (2019). Liberal hülyalar, Orta ve Do˘gu Avrupa ülkelerindeki güçlü egemenlik ve milliyetçilik duvarlarına çarptı. T24 Ba˘gımsız Internet Gazetesi. https://t24.com.tr/yazarlar/soli-

122

5 Interpreting the Liberal International Order

ozel-t-24/liberal-hulyalar-orta-ve-dogu-avrupa-ulkelerindeki-guclu-egemenlik-ve-milliyetcilikduvarlarina-carpti,24430 Özkök, E. (2019). NATO’nun beyin ölümü mü demode Türk solcusunun mu. Hürriyet. http:// www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/ertugrul-ozkok/natonun-beyin-olumu-mu-demode-turk-solcus unun-mu-41389820 Parla, T., & Davison, A. (2004). Corporatist ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or order? Syracuse University Press. Porter, P. (2018). A world imagined: Nostalgia and liberal order. Cato Institute: Policy Analysis 843. Sluglett, P. (2019). Introduction: Violent non-state actors in the Arab world—Some general considerations. In P. Sluglett, & V. Kattan (Eds.), Violent radical movements in the Arab world: The ideology and politics of non-state actors (pp. 1–24). I. B. Tauris. Ta¸sgetiren, A. (2020). Gönül co˘grafyamızda Stratejik kaymaları görmek. Karar. https://www.karar. com/yazarlar/ahmet-tasgetiren/gonul-cografyamizda-stratejik-kaymalari-gormek-12681 Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı. (2018). AK Parti Grup Toplantısı’nda Yaptıkları Konu¸sma (24.4.2018). https://www.tccb.gov.tr/konusmalar/353/92474/ak-parti-grup-toplantisinda-yaptik lari-konusma Tutar, B. (2020). Dünyayı Batılıla¸stırma projesinin iflasi. Sabah. https://www.sabah.com.tr/yazarlar/ bercan-tutar/2020/02/16/dunyayi-batililastirma-projesinin-iflasi Yıldırım, E. (2020). ˙Islami Hareketler bir NATO projesi de˘gildir. Yeni S¸ afak. https://www.yenisa fak.com/yazarlar/ergunyildirim/islami-hareketler-bir-nato-projesi-degildir-2054290

Chapter 6

Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

6.1 Turkey and China in the New World Order The widely shared view in Turkey that the international system is transforming and that the transformation is something that Turkey should actively facilitate raises the question of Turkey’s real and ideal relations with the actors and processes that are driving the change. However, as was demonstrated in the previous chapter, there are rather different takes on the desirability of the predicted change and in terms of to what extent, and under what kind of domestic order, Turkey can hope to shape the functioning logics of the still relatively ambiguous emerging multipolar or multiplex world. Especially those narratives—whether Islamic-conservative or secular nationalist—that are highly critical of the Western-led order, should at least hypothetically include evaluations about what would a more ‘Non-Western’ international system look like, and to what extent Turkey can really advance its position and independent foreign policy in such a new system. There are few direct answers to these questions available, but the issue can be indirectly analyzed by looking at how Turkish foreignpolicy narratives interpret the country’s relations with the two powerful non-Western states, China and Russia. The purpose here is not to investigate as thoroughly as possible all the nuances of different accounts about Russo-Turkish and ChineseTurkish relations, but to detect some of the key issues and then ponder how these relate to the larger debate of power shift and Turkey’s role in facilitating a new, more multipolar order. The premise of current Turkish foreign-policy narratives focusing on China is the conviction that they will both play a defining role in building a new world order. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect is that this conviction seems to be equally present in pro-government, Islamic-conservative, and secular-nationalist narratives. Another shared element is that even though much of the alleged ‘transformative’ turn in global politics is attributed to the ascendance of China, relatively few Turkish foreign-policy narratives focus on China as opposed to other issues, the West in particular. This is already significant, as it indicates that the problematic relationship with the Western world still characterizes Turkish foreign-policy debates in the age of a global power © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Alaranta, Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9_6

123

124

6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

shift. It also demonstrates how the recurrent underlining of rising non-Western states is ultimately about the call in Turkish foreign-policy narratives for a new bargain with the West, rather than producing a coherent vision of China-centric world order. According to President Erdo˘gan, both Turkey and China were heirs of ancient civilizations on both edges of Asia. The re-establishment of the ancient Silk Road in the contemporary context (China’s Belt and Road Initiative) is seen as the key concrete link bringing the two countries together in a mutually beneficial way. According to Erdo˘gan, Turkey and China shared a vision of a multipolar world in which both countries could prosper, and this was possible if both of these ancient civilizations played key roles in the establishment of new world order (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı ˙Ileti¸sim Ba¸skanlı˘gı, 2019). This reflects the official statement given by the Turkish President primarily to Chinese officials but also to the domestic audience. Nevertheless, and significantly in terms of the domestic power struggle, the basic tone seems to pervade a large majority of Turkish foreign-policy narratives both in the pro-government, Islamic-conservative camp and among otherwise highly critical secular-nationalist commentators. The determined search for an independent foreign policy, which has been a constant theme for three decades, clearly signifies that Turkey would prefer to see the emergence of alternative economic and political centers with which it could cooperate in addition to the traditional Western powers. This undoubtedly reflects the key background conviction in Turkish foreign-policy narratives regarding both Russia and China. However, beyond this uncontroversial stance, advanced views, such as on political cooperation, are already being significantly contested. During the last ten years in particular this has resulted in more frequent contact and stronger cooperation with Russia and China. Neither of these actors is unproblematic partners, however, which is rather well understood along the political spectrum. As a matter of fact, only one Turkish political group, the Fatherland Party (Vatan Partisi), consistently pushes for a Eurasianist foreign-policy orientation that would altogether replace Turkey’s ties with the West rather than complementing them. According to Çolako˘glu (2012), there have been distinct phases in the TurkishChinese relationship since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1971. The 1980s witnessed increased activity as Turkey was keen to develop its economic engagement with China, having been rejected by the European Economic Community (EEC). Turkey experimented with a more proactive foreign policy in general under Turgut Özal’s premiership and was interested in fostering economic and technological cooperation with China. In return, it expected Chinese support of its position in the United Nations on matters such as the Cyprus conflict and the never-ending disputes with Greece over maritime boundaries in the Aegean Sea. This was followed by a more strained bilateral relationship during the 1990s, mainly because Turkey’s openness to newly founded Turkic Republics in Central Asian caused alarm in China, where it was believed that this pan-Turkist approach would incite Uyghur separatism in Sinkiang (East Turkestan). However, after its initial enthusiasm, Turkey scaled back its grandiose Central-Asian plans and signaled more willingness to cooperate with Russia and China in the region, rather than acting alone. Turkish-Chinese cooperation had started to strengthen again by the early 2000s, such that when China

6.1 Turkey and China in the New World Order

125

introduced its Belt and Road mega connectivity project in 2013, Turkey immediately expressed its willingness to participate. According to Özdemir (2019), writing for the pro-government Sabah newspaper, one key element in Turkey’s increasing openness towards China during the 2000s was the AKP government’s desire to diversify Turkey’s exporting and sources of foreign investments, in line with its overall multi-vector foreign-policy doctrine. In addition, as the economic center of gravity was increasingly moving from the West to Asia, Turkey naturally wished to strengthen its connections with Asian countries. China had already become its largest importing country by 2019. However, Turkish exports to China were not reaching desirable levels, and there were great expectations that the Belt and Road project would also give them a boost. Turkey had now moved beyond the phase when foreign investments alone were sufficient, and the country increasingly wished to sign contracts transferring high-tech production agreements and know-how, and thus to develop a more genuine win–win situation in Turkish-Chinese cooperation (Özdemir, 2019). The widespread talk of changing world order and of Turkey’s significant role in building a new ‘post-Western’ and multipolar system created expectations regarding the country’s expanding capacity to forge mutually beneficial relationships with influential non-Western actors, specifically China. It is easy to find at least implicit statements that this was not yet the case, however. Öney (2021), for example, writing for the independent news website Platform24, discusses Turkey’s desire to establish a ‘strategic partnership’ with China, similar to the one it had with the US, most recently expressed by Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavu¸so˘glu during the visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Turkey in March 2021. Given that the pro-government foreignpolicy narratives published daily in newspapers such as Sabah and Yeni S¸ afak criticize and even feverishly attack the current, Western-led order, one gets the impression that these accounts have relatively little to say about the concrete ways in which the rise of China actually advances Turkey’s role. In other words, it is the existence of China as an economic giant and the widely shared discourse of power shift that constitute the overall interpretative basis of these narratives. This is evident if one reads the English-language versions of the main pro-government newspapers such as The Daily Sabah, which mainly target Western audiences. According to Muhammet Ali Güler, Turkey and China share the conviction that ‘a revolution is needed in the current rules-based world order if it is to evolve into a more comprehensive system. The countries’ rational moves reveal that they both are against hegemonic powers and policies’ (Güler, 2021). O˘guz Çelikkol, long-time Turkish diplomat and contributor to the centrist newspaper Hürriyet, reports on a new foreign-policy initiative known as ‘New Asia’ that Turkey’s Foreign Ministry launched in autumn 2019. Introducing this initiative, Foreign Minister Çavu¸so˘glu strongly pointed out that it did not mean an ‘axis shift’ in Turkish foreign policy, but rather reflected the general acknowledgment that Asian countries had become more important and that Western countries had launched similar initiatives. Çelikkol further points out that there is nothing new in Turkey’s attempt to look beyond its immediate neighborhood or its traditional North Atlantic connections: the Far East, Africa, and even South American countries had

126

6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

long been targets of Turkish foreign-policy activism. In fact, Turkey had become such a powerful actor in terms of its economy and its hard and soft power, that its logical current orientation was towards a ‘multidimensional foreign policy’ (çok yönlü bir dı¸s politika), facilitated on the systemic level as the world was increasingly moving to a multipolar order, and Asia was obviously one of the leading regions of this new system (Çelikkol, 2019). All in all, there seems to be a significant consensus among Islamic-conservative, secular nationalist, and even liberal narratives that China is a natural and even, to some extent, inevitable partner for Turkey, mainly because of its economic weight. The officially declared policy initiatives, the news stories accounting for the bilateral diplomatic encounters, and the foreign-policy articles evaluating global developments published in numerous newspapers all drum to the same beat, pointing out that Turkey and China need to reinforce their relationship in the newly emerging multipolar world. However, excluding the rather radical Fatherland Party, for which the Eurasianist foreign policy and thus alliance with Russia and China is an ideological doctrine, the relationship with China is narrated for the most part as a practical and economic issue that does not, in itself, indicate a significant ‘axis change’ in Turkey’s grand strategy. However, the explicit antipathy towards the Western world that is indisputably present in many of the Islamic-conservative narratives makes China a key factor in terms of the internal story-world, including the plot and the actors. In other words, much of what is stated within Islamic-conservative foreignpolicy narratives about the Liberal International Order (as Yeni Dünya Düzeni), being a ‘bandits’ order’ and illegitimate, which I analyzed in detail in the previous chapter, necessitates a group of actors and mechanisms that make the story-world of the narrative rationally plausible and emotionally convincing. They could achieve this by describing the rise of China and the rest of the non-Western world as a force that is capable of undoing the rotten Western order, and of allowing the ‘collective us’ of the story—Turkey—to increase its autonomy and become more independent of the traditional centers of political, military and economic power. There is often an accompanying historical grand narrative that accounts for how the West was only able to achieve its hegemony in the first place by inhumanely exploiting other countries and civilizations, both Islamic and Asian. The theme of Chinese ascendency, then, is used as an example of a moral victory, of the Asian civilization as the previous underdog and current hero of the story, confronting its long-time oppressor and achieving prestige and status. China becomes the actor in this account, facilitating the rise of Turkey as another prominent non-Western state. The vast majority of Turkish accounts about Turkish-Chinese relations, whether they be academic studies, think-tank briefings, official government declarations, or foreign-policy articles in various newspapers, concentrate on the Belt and Road initiative, and the related projects Turkey launched as complementary mechanisms, such as the so-called orta koridor. The orta koridor (middle corridor) is a transit route starting from Turkey, running through the Caucasus and the Dead Sea, subsequently reaching Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and finally China (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı, 2021). From this perspective, Turkey’s attempt to increase cooperation with China and invest, at least to some extent, in shared connectivity projects

6.1 Turkey and China in the New World Order

127

aimed at encouraging trade and business, as well as creating regional economic regimes and rules, was the logical next steps in its long-term aim of finding markets and making investments in a wide Eurasian region, launched during Turgut Özal’s premiership in the 1980s. This economy-driven policy is basically shared by all Turkish constituencies, although some people argue, of course, that all this should be done in a manner that does not give China too much power, specifically in its internal affairs and relations with other states and actors and regarding repression of the Uyghurs of East Turkestan. Before the sudden change of policy in 2016, President Erdo˘gan issued public statements condemning China for its treatment of the Uyghur minority. As a matter of fact, in 2009 Erdogan referred to Chinese repression of the Uyghurs as ‘genocide,’ incurring the wrath of Beijing and boosting his reputation as a defiant Muslim leader willing to protect Muslims all over the world (Altay, 2021). From today’s perspective, these rough words seem distant. According to the most recent reports, not only has the Turkish government stopped bringing up the Uyghur question in its official talks with China, but it has also started to expel Uyghur opposition activists to China (Ullah, 2020). This is generally explained in Western media as a straightforward utility calculation by President Erdo˘gan in a situation in which Turkey’s economy desperately needs foreign loans and direct investments from China (see, for instance, Alemdaro˘glu & Tepe, 2021). A strong feeling of solidarity and ethnic brotherhood with Turkic peoples all over the Caucasus and Central Asia is, in one form or another, a component of all Turkish political parties, from Left to Right, from the secular to the Islamic. It is for this reason that the need to support Turkic brothers has always been an issue in domestic power struggles, such that political opponents tend to issue accusations that some parties or political leaders have abandoned or failed to support their Turkic brothers. On the other hand, what happens to the idea of solidarity with ethnic brothers when the overall political agenda strongly contradicts it is obvious from the narratives produced within the Fatherland Party (Vatan Partisi). The party espouses Eurasianist ideology and the advancement of a foreign-policy doctrine whereby Turkey forges a close alliance with Russia and China to confront the hostile West. In March 2019 its flagship newspaper Aydınlık, with Russian Eurasianist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin as one of its permanent contributors, published an article entitled ‘A ten-point list of Uyghur Lies and the Reality’. The article first states that a committee of Fatherland Party members visited the Uyghur Autonomous Region in Sinkiang in February 2019, confirming on the ground that everything that was reported about Chinese officials oppressing the Uyghurs was nothing but ‘American lies’. It goes on to argue that the CIA intentionally spread the false narrative of Uyghur repression, and found a responsive audience in Turkey as well, its aim being to poison the increasingly consistent cooperation between China and Turkey (Bursalı, 2019). Thus, the Uyghur question is presented within the Fatherland Party’s conspiracy-oriented narrative as a non-question, a propaganda attempt the ultimate cause of which being the US government’s goal to prevent Turkey from becoming a powerful actor in cooperation with its new main adversary, namely China.

128

6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

Rahmi Turan, writing for the secular opposition newspaper Sözcü expresses the directly opposite view: the oppression and harassment of Uyghur Turks (Uygur Türkleri) in East Turkestan were consistently followed by Western media and politicians, and the EU had even imposed sanctions on Chinese officials held responsible for the treatment of the Uyghur minority. This was in sharp contrast to what was happening in the Turkish media in which, sad to say, the issue was hardly discussed. Turan also raises the issue of possible legislation being under preparation that would oblige Turkey to expel Uyghurs wanted by China. To him, it was inconceivable that Turkey would engage in such an inhumane practice, expelling people who had come to Turkey to seek protection from repression (Turan, 2021). Opinions on the Uyghur question seem to be divided roughly according to whether one is in the political opposition or the government coalition. Thus, pro-government writers have commented on the issue conspicuously little recently, whereas opposition newspapers raise it much more frequently. It is thus possible to draw a line stretching from the Eurasianist Fatherland Party at one extreme to Western-oriented realists at the other. Among the latter is longterm diplomat Tan (2021), warning about Turkey’s possible future dependency on China at a time when a new Cold War was in the making, this time setting the US and Europe against China and Russia. According to Tan, the coming era will see increasing conflicts, proxy wars, and regional instability threatening the global system. The key players in the conflict-ridden New World Order, in addition to US and China, are likely to be India, Brazil, Japan, Turkey, Indonesia, Israel, and perhaps even Pakistan. Hence, the new hegemonic war between the US and China will inevitably force smaller actors, including Turkey, to take sides. Other players such as Russia, Iran, and Pakistan seem to have made their decision, throwing their lot behind China. Europe, on the contrary, has been on side of the US, and the two have already given joint statements that seemingly place Turkey in the opposite camp. Tan (2021) concedes that this mechanism is very troubling for Turkey. In the middle is a large bulk of Islamic-conservative and secular-nationalist groupings, both leftist and rightist, emphasizing the importance of China in Turkey’s new multidimensional foreignpolicy approach. Mehmet Ali Güller, writing for the staunchly secular-nationalist Cumhuriyet, makes a similar observation: the US had thus far allied with regional middle powers to contain China, but because this did not work it was now intent on convincing bigger actors, mainly the EU and India, to be on its side in the coming showdown. In this context, Güller points out how in a joint meeting between a top US security official and EU leaders both sides were urged to work together so as to contain troublemakers such as China and Turkey. On the other hand, US policy on Turkey is observable in a statement made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressing the need to keep the country in the Western camp and urging it to halt its current alignment with Russia and China. Hence, US policy towards Turkey is a combination, a three-part carrot-stick-anchoring tactic (Güller, 2021). Excluding the Uyghur question, one could argue that Turkish foreign-policy narratives overwhelmingly represent a neutral orientation towards China. To a large extent, this is based on the lack of any historical encounter between the two. As Akda˘g (2019) points out, the West dominated Turkey’s external relations, and the Ottoman Empire’s

6.1 Turkey and China in the New World Order

129

before that. Western states dominated the international system when the Republic was established in 1923, and Turkey’s involvement in that system as an independent nation state required confirmation by Western actors, which was accomplished in the Lausanne Peace Treaty. From these premises, Turkey’s strategic culture is oriented towards the West and the systemic status quo. This obviously led to a situation that kept China and other Asian states on the outer circles of Turkey’s foreign policy for a long time. As it clearly demonstrates, the potential for a whole new foreignpolicy paradigm is implicit in many of the foreign-policy narratives, but it remains to be further developed. Nevertheless, the existence of a much more powerful China facilitates the further questioning, or at least acknowledgment, of previous forms of strategic thinking that used to take a Western orientation as its baseline. From this perspective, the attempt to engage further with China implies much more than the practical diversification of market areas, the implementation of infrastructure projects to improve trade routes or the search for investment and technology transfer. As stated in the introduction of this book, the ascendency of China and the relative weakening of the West are not only ‘real-life’ processes taking place in the world but have also generated a powerful interpretative frame within which Turkish foreign-policy narratives reimagine Turkey’s national history and its place and role in modern international relations. Even though the projects and strengthening cooperation between China and Turkey are no doubt important, it may be that the narrative of transformation and the reimagining of Turkey’s status in the international system will have even more profound long-term consequences. There has been a partial relativization of the grand narrative of Turkey’s defensive modernization, with secular and Islamic forms of nationalism competing within the overall modernization project and in the face of the Western-centered international system. Whether or not such predictions become the reality in the future is naturally uncertain. However, the perception of a transformative system is a force in itself, especially if it produces a credible story-world from an emotional response. On the other hand, as exemplified in Namık Tan’s vision of a world politics being reduced to two antagonistic blocks, in forcing smaller states to choose a side, the new ‘transformative’ of world politics also potentially points to a much gloomier narrative, such that many aspects that are considered opportunities can suddenly turn into threats.

6.2 Narrating Russo-Turkish Rapprochement In the modern world, which is structured to a great extent by institutions and practices that originated in Western Europe, Russia, and Turkey represent both the successes and limits of Europe’s ability to project its politico-cultural model in its ambiguously defined neighborhood. The state identities, or more accurately the changing versions of the dominant collective identity narratives, of both Russia and Turkey have developed as a strained encounter between European and non-European traditions. Frequently uneasy, this encounter has a long history and a narrative tradition that penetrates the many levels of discussion within these states regarding their

130

6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

past and future role in the international system. As something that always seems to be beyond the reach of textual representation, this feeling of being both in and out of Europe is present most vibrantly in the giant cities, not only Moscow and Istanbul but also Saint Petersburg and Ankara. Foreign-policy narratives are also about emotional ‘gut feeling’, about states having and developing personal qualities. The emotions expressed, such as being humiliated and deprived of autonomy and self-esteem, produce a psychological need to be distanced from the power structures that are deemed responsible for them and the concomitant experiences. This leads to a search for alternative relationships of the kind that could allow one to move beyond the feeling of not being treated properly. However, alternative relations do not necessarily provide anything other than a mechanism for alleviating present troubles. One could argue that, beyond the practical issues of trade, energy, and tourism, the Russo-Turkish rapprochement of the last two decades has shown such characteristics. The present purpose is to outline in a very concise way the main features of Turkish foreign-policy narratives focusing on Russo-Turkish relations in recent years. The factors drawing these two actors into cooperation comprise both long-term strategic visions followed by the respective regimes and short-term attempts at crisis management. Likewise, there are significant forces and interests constantly pulling Turkey and Russia apart. The relationship between them during the post-Cold War era was characterized not only by an increase in high-level meetings and economic exchange but also by expanding connections between ordinary citizens, not least through tourism and marriage (Koçak, 2017, p. 8). Such people-to-people encounters do not seem to be fostering strong feelings of brotherhood among ordinary citizens, however. Having analyzed recent survey results, Baev (2021) concludes that the high-level talk about a strategic partnership between Turkey and Russia is not reflected on a societal level: positive opinions about Turkey among Russians are in decline, as is a positive opinion about Russia among the Turks. In Baev’s words, ‘the reservoir of mutual sympathy is not deep—and is growing shallower’ (Baev, 2021, p. 10). The aim, then, is to consider some of the underlying arguments and convictions in different Russia-related Turkish foreign-policy narratives in terms of how they express some of the key differences and shared aspects of the competing foreignpolicy traditions. Since the end of the Cold War, Turkey has developed multi-level cooperation with Russia, characterized by stronger economic ties and high-level meetings. Related to this, debate among both Turkish and Western commentators has for many years focused on the ‘inevitable limits’ of Russo-Turkish cooperation, based on the agelong historical rivalries and current disagreements over many key conflict zones, from Ukraine to Syria, and from Nagorno-Karabakh to Libya. However, there is an alternative way of framing the bilateral relationship in the modern era, such that the Cold-War antagonism and the positioning in opposing military alliances are perceived as interludes preceded and followed by periods of cooperation and even partnership. During the years of Anatolian Resistance (1919–1922), for example, the young Soviet regime provided key military assistance to the Ankara-based nationalists, who fought against both Western imperialists and the Sultanic regime under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal. From these premises, one could argue against the

6.2 Narrating Russo-Turkish Rapprochement

131

presupposition of any historically determined limits beyond which Russo-Turkish relations could develop. Instead, one could conceptualize the Republican era as one with both positive and negative trajectories in the relationship, the future thus being open in the sense that both will likely play a part in Turkey’s approach to Russia in different circumstances. If the domestic regimes evolve in a suitable direction, and if the system-level pressures and incentives also work in a manner that consolidates cooperation, even age-old adversaries may turn to cooperation. European integration is the most powerful example of this. The relationship between Turkey and Russia in the post-Cold War era has been characterized by an increase in high-level meetings and economic exchange. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavu¸so˘glu, visiting Russia in 2018, described the country as a ‘strategic partner’ (stratejik ortak), stating that cooperation and frequent contacts underscored the friendly relations between them (Hacıo˘glu, 2018). However, two years later, Hasan Kösebalaban, writing for the centrist-liberal Karar newspaper, observed that the recent cooperation and high-level meetings notwithstanding, RussoTurkish relations were full of contradictions that indeed seemed to highlight the agelong mechanism of confrontation. Kösebalaban also referred to the explicit statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Russia had never declared Turkey to be a strategic partner, just a partner. Thus, following the Syrian war and the Libyan conflict, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict demonstrated that the two were finding it ever more difficult to manage their conflictual agendas in regional politics. On the other hand, the same factor that was increasingly poisoning US-Turkey relations—the PKK—was also present in relations with Russia, which declined even to designate it as a terrorist organization but, as did the Americans, developed a rather close relationship with the PKK in Syria. Furthermore, Russia was in the process of designating Turkey’s close ally the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, thereby taking a position much closer to that of Israel and Egypt (Kösebalaban, 2020). The meteoric rise in Russo-Turkish cooperation during the new millennium, according to Aktürk (2014) stating the realist perspective, could be attributed mainly to the changing power balance between the two countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As soon as Russia ceased to be an immediate military threat, Turkey’s political elite was free to regard the country not only as a competitor but also as a potential partner in their shared region, and this concerned trade and energy in particular. Aktürk situates one of the turning points in the early phase of RussoTurkish rapprochement in 1998, when PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan fled from Syria to Russia, applied for political asylum there, but was refused by then Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Öcalan was thus forced out of Russia and was captured in Kenya in 1999. This move was taken by Turkey as a sign that Russia would respect Turkey’s territorial integrity. Aktürk then finds more significant common ground in their condemnation of the US-led Iraq War in 2003. This war led to a significant bout of anti-Americanism in Turkey, and from then onwards there have been everincreasing objections to American unilateralism, which until recently characterized post-Cold-War international relations. According to Aktürk’s narrative, this deeply

132

6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

felt doubt about the American-led order is the most significant element drawing Turkey and Russia closer, all major disputes notwithstanding (Aktürk, 2014). It is reasonable to argue that the majority of Turkish foreign-policy narratives in recent years acknowledge, in one form or another, the obvious difficulties in attempts to forge a more coherent partnership with Russia. However, it is obvious from the accounts of numerous pro-government Islamic-conservative narratives written during the second decade of the 2000s that there have been consistent attempts to strengthen Russo-Turkish cooperation and to see Russia as a significant actor balancing Turkey’s long-term relationship with the West. Further, the assumption that the West would see further Russo-Turkish cooperation as a threat is often welcomed and even cherished by Turkish commentators on foreign policy. This line of reasoning is evident in ˙Ibrahim Karagül’s article from 2014, for instance, in which he argues that the increasingly consistent Russo-Turkish cooperation and their new active role in Middle Eastern international politics, in particular, have aroused deep anxiety in Western states (Karagül, 2014). However, one needs to understand what different Turkish political parties and ideological currents mean when they refer to a RussoTurkish partnership. Two concepts characterizing these positions in both academic studies and policy debates—Eurasianism (Avrasyacılık) and Neo-Ottomanism (Yeni Osmanlıcılık)—constitute a good starting point. Through the analysis of what these currents stand for and how they contribute to foreign-policy debates, one might hope to enhance understanding of how different constituencies perceive the recent cooperation with Russia. The Turkish version of Eurasianism is a form of foreign-policy thinking with ideational roots reaching back to the 1990s and the emergence of Neo-Eurasianism in Russia. As mentioned earlier with reference to China, as a coherent set of foreignpolicy principles this current is espoused in Turkey only by Do˘gu Perinçek’s Fatherland Party (previously known as ˙I¸sçi Partisi). Perinçek is known to be a close friend of Aleksandr Dugin, the ideologue of Russian Neo-Eurasianism. Beyond this, the Eurasianist doctrine has never been part of the official programs of Turkish mainstream parties. The Neo-Eurasian doctrine espoused by Dugin is also a rather peculiar current in Russia, distinct from the officially maintained foreign policy. It espouses a combination of New Right thinking originally produced in the West and classical geopolitical concepts, yet it also claims that Russia has never been part of the Atlantic-centered international system but rather constitutes a Eurasian power and web of alliances with post-soviet states and Iran. In the case of Turkey, one could argue that Perinçek’s party excluded, these thoughts have had some influence on certain individual actors, mainly within the military. According to Er¸sen (2020), the idea of Turkey forging closer strategic cooperation with Russia, China, and perhaps India became more observable on a general level simultaneously with the increasing cooperation between Turkey and Russia during the 2000s under the AKP governments, quite independently of Perinçek’s party and the doctrinaire Eurasianism it espouses. It is within this larger context that one should understand the polemics recently observable in Turkey about the so-called Atlanticists (Atlantikçiler) against Eurasianists (Avrasyacılar) within the Turkish Armed Forces. It is worth pointing out,

6.2 Narrating Russo-Turkish Rapprochement

133

however, that nobody has a ‘club card’ in their pockets showing membership in these groupings, which represent very loose conglomerations of views rather than strict, well-defined doctrines regarding Turkey’s proper role in the international system in general and vis-à-vis the West and Russia in particular. As the story goes, the first significant public statement advocating the Eurasianist view by a high-level military official of the Turkish Armed Forces was the speech given by General Tunçer Kılınç, Secretary of the National Security Council, at the symposium organized by the Istanbul Military Academy in March 2002. According to General Kılınç, Turkey had not received any help from the EU and should instead form an alternative alliance with Russia and Iran. The fact that a long-time NATO officer suddenly suggested a complete change in Turkey’s alliance policy caused a real shock in the country. It was later revealed, by Wikileaks, that according to a report produced by the US embassy in Ankara in 2003, the Americans perceived the Turkish Chief of Staff as being divided among three rival factions: Atlanticists (Atlantikçiler), Nationalists (Ulusalcılar), and Eurasianists (Avrasyacılar). At the time, the Nationalists and the Eurasianists were in alliance. On the level of individuals, the report listed Ya¸sar Büyükanıt, Aytaç Yalman, Çetin Do˘gan, Fevzi Türkeri, Tuncer Kılınç, Sener ¸ Eruygur and Köksal Karabay as members of the Nationalist-Eurasianist block (Birdal, 2016). The careers of several allegedly Eurasianist officers have since been fluctuating between purging and reappointment. First, during the period 2008–2014, the AKPGülen block, whose members staffed the police and judiciary, launched the so-called Ergenekon and Sledgehammer court cases accusing some of the Eurasianist and Kemalist officers of planning to overthrow the AKP government. However, Erdo˘gan made peace with some of the Eurasianists after the AKP-Gülen intra-Islamic fight erupted seriously in 2013, and they were again given high-level positions in the army. Further investigation into the various elements inherent in Turkish foreign-policy narratives leads one to the conclusion that neither Eurasianism as a coherent ideology, nor Eurasianist-inspired foreign-policy decisions constitute the central theme. There is a recurrent theme in the foreign-policy narratives of the ruling Islamic-conservative bloc that could be defined as Neo-Ottomanism. As Torbakov (2017) explains, Turkish party formation took place when all issues of relevance concerned how to save the empire. The Kemalist project subsequently abandoned its imperial vision in favor of a strict nation-state paradigm, but the imperial tradition always had its supporters, and it animated the Milli Görü¸s movement’s vision of Turkey as the leading power in a reunited Islamic world. This vision has made a powerful comeback since 2002, during the AKP era, and the specifically Islamist reading of this sub-tradition became dominant after 2011. As I explain in Chap. 3, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis of the 1980s established the foundations of the imperial tradition within the state apparatus, although Özal’s foreign-policy activism remained limited in political-cultural terms compared to economic expansion. Closely resembling Russian Eurasianism, Turkey’s Neo-Ottomanism in its currently hegemonic Islamist version is founded on the thorough rejection of the US-led international system. Consequently, even though Turkey’s rapprochement with Russia is not based on any Eurasianist vision, it shares the same conviction regarding the illegitimacy of the so-called Liberal International Order.

134

6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

After several crises in Russo-Turkish relations, the most dramatic being the downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkey in November 2015, and the Russian Air Force’s fatal shooting of over 30 Turkish troops in Syria’s Idlib province in February 2020, the Islamic-conservative narrative remains the same in terms of Turkey balancing between the West and Russia. This stance is explicit in Mehmet Barlas’ arguments regarding Ukraine. According to Barlas (2021), Turkey cooperated with both Ukraine and Russia, maintaining the principle that Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty should be respected. However, Turkey did not see a military solution to the crisis, unlike the US, which according to Barlas incited war against Russia using the Ukraine crisis as a pretext. In his words: ‘As long as Turkey supports Ukraine, we would never wish for a war between Turkey and Russia’ (Barlas, 2021). Bülent Erandaç, analyst in the Stratejik Dü¸sünce Derne˘gi that claims to be nothing less than the ‘think tank of the New Turkey’, offered an even more explicit manifestation of the pro-government, Islamic-conservative nationalist narrative in 2018: he suggested that the Turks should be grateful to President Trump because his administration facilitated the dissolution of the American-led order by pushing the US and the EU further apart. This was in Turkey’s interest, as it promoted the establishment of a new world order in which an independent Turkey could become a regional power under Erdo˘gan’s leadership. Imperialist powers such as the US and Europe were thus in decline while Asia was on the rise (Erandaç, 2018). Thus, if there is any reasoning behind the positively oriented Turkish foreign-policy narratives about Russo-Turkish rapprochement, it is based on a similar mechanism that characterized Chinese-Turkish cooperation: rather than being an alternative to Turkey’s traditional Western allies, Russia is at least implicitly conceptualized as a powerful state actor relativizing the power of the West and thus facilitating Turkey’s ever-present search for strategic autonomy. The conflicting interests in Syria, in particular, seem to have downscaled the most optimistic evaluations of a closer Russo-Turkish alliance. In 2014, before Russia started its own military campaign in Syria on the side of the Syrian regime, analysts in both Turkey and Russia emphasized the positive trend and predicted that it would develop further in the near future. For example, Süleyman Sensoy, ¸ director of the Turkish TASAM think tank, pointed out the strong personal connection between Presidents Putin and Erdo˘gan, which was clearly reflected in the bilateral relationship. In Sensoy’s ¸ view regarding the balance between the East and the West, Turkey was of strategic importance to Russia, and the Russo-Turkish relationship would be defined by an increasingly significant ‘strategic dimension’. However, he did not believe that Turkey would participate in wider Eurasian political integration. Sensoy ¸ concluded with an argument that seems to be widely shared among Turkish political analysts: the increasing competition between the East and the West, and its concomitant repercussions in the Middle East, Ukraine, and the Caucasus, would intensify from a historical perspective, and emphasize the importance of the RussoTurkish bilateral relationship (Sputnik, 2014). Russian analysts such as Stanislav Tarasov shared the same kind of interpretation that puts the current Russo-Turkish rapprochement in the context of an alleged confrontation between the East and the West, being in no doubt that the present Russo-Turkish relationship was based on

6.2 Narrating Russo-Turkish Rapprochement

135

mutual, pragmatic economic interests. Given these economic ties, both partners have confirmed their willingness to increase the level of political dialogue, on both regional and global issues. According to Tarasov, it was no coincidence that Turkish President Erdo˘gan had criticized the habit of the EU and the US to ignore Russia while they were designing policies for tackling global and regional problems. In addition, regarding the Ukraine crisis, Turkey has made it clear that it is not willing to position itself against Russia and with the Western powers. On the other hand, unlike the West, Russia has acknowledged Turkey’s legitimate role as one of the instigators of the new international order in the Middle East. In short, ‘the relationship between Russia and Turkey has become a strategic alliance’ (Tarasov, 2015). Various accounts of Russo-Turkish relations share some basic narrative elements that frame the overall discussion. These are evident in an article written as early as in 2005 during the early stages of Russo-Turkish rapprochement: the author is Professor Enver Hasano˘glu, an analyst in Stratejik Ara¸stırmalar Merkezi. One of these elements is what could be termed historical framing, which highlights the constant ups and downs that have characterized the relationship. Thus, according to Hasano˘glu, almost all the processes within which Russo-Turkish relations developed have been defined by conflict, even seeing each other as a threat. A strange cycle of cooperation and conflict characterized their relations during the era of the Soviet Union. Bilateral cooperation started in 1921 with the Turkey-Soviet Friendship Agreement and continued until the German-Soviet agreement came into force, which resulted in more antagonistic Russo-Turkish relations that lasted until the death of Stalin. Both parties then sought more friendly relations, but this only became possible after major structural changes and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 2004 visit of President Putin to Ankara finally marked the ending of historically adversarial Russo-Turkish relations and the beginning of an era of growing cooperation and friendship. This historical view demonstrates that foreign-policy choices made by the Russians largely defined the potential for a cooperative bilateral relationship (Hasano˘glu, 2005). One could argue that Hasano˘glu’s (2005) historical interpretative framework has been constantly repeated in Turkish foreign-policy narratives describing the everchanging Russo-Turkish relations. The actors (Turkey and Russia) in the story-world that are most clearly observable in these narratives maintain their relationship in cycles of cooperation and conflict, which reflect the nature of Russia’s actions, in particular, its relative power compared to Turkey. Thus, Russo-Turkish cooperation has flourished when the Russian regime has been unable to threaten Turkey, as was the case in the 1920s with the young Soviet regime, and again in post-Cold-War Russia. The expansion of Turkey’s economic and military power during the early 2000s was also conducive to cooperation, but the cyclical mechanism remains, pushing the relationship into conflict whenever Russia starts to threaten Turkey’s key national interests. In conclusion, there have been signs of disillusionment in the Islamic-conservative and secular-nationalist mainstream of Turkish foreign-policy narratives in recent years. The forging of a closer political alliance with Russia is advocated only by hardcore Eurasianists, whereas a large group of authors within other ideological blocks

136

6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

look upon Russia (and China) as powerful states with which Turkey is wise to develop economic cooperation and as cordial bilateral relations as possible. It is acknowledged, however, that in the cases of both Russia and China there are issues that may hinder the cooperation at any point, all good efforts notwithstanding. Nevertheless, as long as these issues do not become overwhelming, Turkey’s profound desire to strengthen its foreign-policy autonomy and room for maneuver, independently of its traditional Western allies, repeatedly leads to the conceptualization of Russia, and also increasingly China, in the narratives as significant state actors in Turkey’s multi-vector foreign-policy doctrine that pushes for multipolarity in the international system. Excluding the ideological Eurasianists, contributors to Turkish foreign-policy narratives join forces to produce very similar characterizations of Russo-Turkish and Chinse-Turkish relations. Mainstream secular nationalist and Islamic-conservative narratives converge in their treatment of Russia in particular, emphasizing its role as a regional partner with which Turkey should always seek cooperation. In this sense, Russia and China, together with Iran, are perceived in Turkish strategic thinking more broadly as influential non-Western states with which Turkey may be in conflict as well as in partnership, but which nevertheless are crucial elements in the country’s search for autonomy. Thus, the defining element emerging from the foreign-policy narratives related to Russia and China is the profound need for Turkey to determine its relationship with these states independently of Western policies. The country’s stubborn insistence not to back down from the deal with Russia concerning the S400 missile defense system in the face of severe American pressure highlights this mentality in concrete terms. It is safe to claim, based on the materials analyzed here, that irrespective of which coalition is in power, the insistence on formulating its policies towards Russia and China independently of the US will be one of the main elements of Turkish foreign policy in the foreseeable future. There is a wide consensus on this, and there is no narrative tradition that would allow withdrawal from this stance. This is perhaps the most decisive ideational factor demonstrating that irrespective of the name of its President or the ideological orientation of the ruling bloc, Turkey is not going to return to any kind of ‘pro-Western’ foreign policy that could be interpreted as abandoning the Ankara-centered conceptualization of the current international system. Hence, any Western attempt to force Turkey into such a policy will only lead to further deterioration of its relationship with the West. Turkey has increasingly followed the policy of decompartmentalization in its relationship with Russia and China, which has resulted in enduring cooperation irrespective of serious political disagreements. The relationship is based on interest calculation rather than trust, and on the balancing of various powers relative to each other. This same trend is very likely to characterize future Turkey-West relations. The large body of narratives focusing on Turkish foreign policy point in that direction, and they are increasingly complementary in this respect, irrespective of otherwise serious disagreements. In sum, even if narratives produced by advocates of ideological competition frequently emphasize the rise of the East in world politics, they do not entertain the idea of Turkey joining any kind of Eurasian political union.

References

137

References Akda˘g, Z. (2019). Türkiye-Çin ˙Ili¸skilerinin Tarihsel Geli¸simi. Uluslararası Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 1(1), 40–57. Aktürk, S. ¸ (2014). Toward a Turkish-Russian axis? Conflicts in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine, and cooperation over nuclear energy. Insight Turkey, 16(4), 13–22. Alemdaro˘glu, A., & Tepe, S. (2021). Erdogan is turning Turkey into a Chinese client state. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/16/erdogan-is-turning-turkey-into-a-chineseclient-state/ Altay, K. (2021). Why Erdogan has abandoned the Uyghurs. Foreign Policy. Baev, P. (2021). Russia and Turkey. Strategic partners and rivals. Notes de l’Ifri, Reports No. 35. Barlas, M. (2021). Amerika Birle¸sik Devletleri s¸imdi de Ukrayna ile Rusya sava¸ssınlar diye u˘gra¸sıyor. Sabah. https://www.sabah.com.tr/yazarlar/barlas/2021/04/12/amerika-birlesik-devlet leri-simdi-de-ukrayna-ile-rusya-savassinlar-diye-ugrasiyor Birdal, S. (2016). Avrasyacıların zaferi. Gazete Duvar. https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/yazarlar/ 2016/12/22/avrasyacilarin-zaferi Bursalı, Ö. (2019). 10 Maddede Uygur Yalanları ve Gerçekler. Aydınlık. https://www.aydinlik.com. tr/10-maddede-uygur-yalanlari-ve-gercekler-dunya-mart-2019-2 Çelikkol, O. (2019). Yeniden Asya. Hürriyet. https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/oguz-celikkol/ yeniden-asya-41300737 Çolako˘glu, S. (2012). Türkiye-Çin ˙Ili¸skileri: Tek Taraflı A¸sk Mı? Orta Do˘gu Analiz, 4(45), 53–66. Erandaç, B. (2018). Emperyalist Batı’ya Kar¸sı Türkiye’nin Alternatifleri. Stratejik Dü¸sünce Derne˘gi. https://www.sde.org.tr/bulent-erandac/genel/emperyalist-batiya-karsi-turkiyenin-altern atifleri-kose-yazisi-6935 Er¸sen, E. (2020). Avrasyacılık Ba˘glamında Türkiye-Rusya ˙Ili¸skileri. Perspektif . https://www.per spektif.online/avrasyacilik-baglaminda-turkiye-rusya-iliskileri/ Güler, M. A. (2021). Sino-Turkish ties: Uyghurs and the new world order. Daily Sabah. https:// www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/sino-turkish-ties-uyghurs-and-the-new-world-order Güller, M. A. (2021). ABD ile AB’nin Çin ve Türkiye endi¸sesi. Cumhuriyet. https://www.cumhur iyet.com.tr/yazarlar/mehmet-ali-guller/abd-ile-abnin-cin-ve-turkiye-endisesi-1809987 Hacıo˘glu, N. (2018). ’Rusya stratejik ortak’ vurgusu. Hürriyet. https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gun dem/rusya-stratejik-ortak-vurgusu-40936512 Hasano˘glu, E. (2005). Yeniden Biçimlenen Dünyada Türkiye-Rusya ˙Ili¸skileri. https://web.archive. org/web/20140517010604/http://www.aso.org.tr/kurumsal/media/kaynak/TUR/asomedya/sub at2005/buyutec_subat2005.html ˙ (2014). Erdo˘gan ve Putin kimleri korkuttu! Yeni S¸ afak. Karagül, I. ˙ skileri. Analiz, Sayı: 201. Siyaset, Ekonomi ve Toplum Koçak, M. (2017). Türkiye-Rusya Ili¸ Ara¸stırmaları Vakfı (SETA). Kösebalaban, H. (2020). Rusya, stratejik ortak mı? Karar. https://www.karar.com/yazarlar/hasankosebalaban/rusya-stratejik-ortak-mi-1587410 Sputnik News. (2014). Türk uzman: Rus-Türk ili¸skileri yeni stratejik seviyeye çıkabilir. http://tr. sputniknews.com/turkish.ruvr.ru/2014_08_14/Turk-usmani-rus-Turk-ilishkileri/ Öney, H. G. (2021). Çin’in 2021’deki dönüm noktaları: Türkiye ile ili¸skiler. Platform24. http://pla tform24.org/yazarlar/4795/cin-in-2021-deki-donum-noktalari--turkiye-ile-iliskiler Özdemir, B. Z. (2019). Potansiyelini Arayan Türkiye-Çin ˙Ili¸skileri. Sabah. https://www.sabah. com.tr/yazarlar/perspektif/busra-zeynep-ozdemir/2019/07/06/potansiyelini-arayan-turkiye-ciniliskileri Tan, N. (2021). Yeni So˘guk Sava¸s: Türkiye için de karar zamanı. Yetkin Report. https://yetkinrep ort.com/2021/05/06/yeni-soguk-savas-turkiye-icin-de-karar-zamani/ Tarasov, S. (2015). Türkiye ve Rusya, stratejik ittifak kuruyor. Sputnik News. https://tr.sputniknews. com/analiz/201501121013408602/ Torbakov, I. (2017). Neo-Ottomanism versus Neo-Eurasianism? Nationalism and symbolic geography in Postimperial Turkey and Russia. Mediterranean Quarterly, 28(2), 135–145.

138

6 Approaching the Non-west: China and Russia

Turan, R. (2021). Türkiye, karde¸slerini ölüme göndermez! Sözcü. https://www.sozcu.com.tr/2021/ yazarlar/rahmi-turan/turkiye-kardeslerini-olume-gondermez-6335813/ Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı ˙Ileti¸sim Ba¸skanlı˘gı. (2019). Türkiye ve Çin: Ortak gelecek vizyonu payla¸san iki ülke (1.7.2019). https://www.iletisim.gov.tr/turkce/cumhurbaskanimizin_ kaleminden/detay/turkiye-ve-cin-ortak-gelecek-vizyonu-paylasan-iki-ulke-huanqiu-shibao-glo bal-times Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı. (2021). Türkiye’nin Çok Taraflı Ula¸stırma Politikası. https://www.mfa.gov.tr/turkiye_nin-cok-tarafli-ulastirma-politikasi.tr.mfa Ullah, A. (2020). Turkey accused of deporting Uighurs back to China via third countries. Middle East Eye. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uighurs-china-turkey-accused-deportingthird-countries

Chapter 7

Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War Of all the international crises during the last ten years, the Syrian conflict has played a dominant role in Turkish foreign policy, from the initial negotiations with the Syrian leadership in 2011 to the current military occupation of a large chunk of territory. Indeed, there are reasons to claim that few other countries have played as significant a role. Moreover, Turkey has been by far the most consequential of the external actors in the anti-Assad block. I do not aim in this chapter to scrutinize in detail the way in which various Turkish commentators have accounted for their country’s position in the Syrian conflict throughout the ten years of war—this would probably consume all the pages allotted to the present book. Instead, I concentrate on foreign-policy narratives dealing with the most recent phases, from approximately 2017 onwards. Turkey had significant numbers of its regular military units stationed in Syria at the time and tried to manage the crisis in cooperation with Russia and, to a lesser extent, the United States. This analysis is followed by an investigation of how both the Western and Turkish commentators have reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic. The narratives of war and pandemic are conceptualized as immediate foreign-policy issues generating narrative responses that express the many fears and hopes regarding the future of international relations in Turkey. The period before 2011 was one of the least hostile eras in the common history of Turkey and Syria, and it could be said that their relations were almost friendly around 2010. However, a conflict-ridden trajectory had been prevalent for much of the time. From a present-day perspective, the most significant mechanism affecting relations between the two countries was set in motion shortly after the 1980 military intervention in Turkey. It has long been assumed that relations started seriously to deteriorate in the latter half of the 1980s when Syrian President Hafez al-Assad decided to grant the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) a safe haven in Syrian territory as a reaction to water disputes with Turkey. However, new issues have surfaced recently that force a reconsideration of this prevalent conviction. As Özkan (2020a) discovered, there is evidence from the analysis of events and documents that the Turkish military © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Alaranta, Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9_7

139

140

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

started to use the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine the Syrian Baathist government at the beginning of the 1980s. Bulut Gurpinar supports these views, having gathered interesting information about connections between the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s Islamists since the 1950s. The next step was the translation of key brotherhood publications into Turkish. Contacts between the Syrian branch of the brotherhood and Turkey’s authorities were already so intense by the 1970s that some members of Demirel’s government, including Seyfi Öztürk, hinted that the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (M˙IT) and CIA were arming and training brotherhood members in Turkey to fight against the Syrian government (Gurpinar, 2015, p. 24). Özkan’s and Gurpinar’s findings also include significant new details about the insurgency against the Baath regime from 1976 to 1982. The brutal final phase of the uprising—the Hama massacre—is well documented, but as Brynjar (2016, p. 1) notes, ‘The Islamist Uprising in Syria from 1976 to 1982 remains one of the least studied Islamist insurgencies in the Middle East.’ The most consequential event before the Hama massacre was the slaughter of 35 Alawi officers on 16 June 1979 at the Aleppo Artillery Academy. A Sunni officer belonging to a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group called ‘Fighting Vanguards’ carried out the killings with his accomplices. The Alawis were separated from the Sunnis before the shooting so that the latter would not be shot. In the words of Nikolaos van Dam, the massacre at the Aleppo Artillery Academy, like earlier assassinations of Alawis by Sunni Islamists, left an ineffaceable mark on the relations between the two, the influence of which was still clearly present more than three decades later during the Syrian revolution and civil war (van Dam, 2017, p. 39). Turkey and Syria were briefly on the verge of war in 1998 over PKK activities conducted from Syrian territory. However, this crisis was resolved when Syria agreed to banish PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. It was followed by the rapid normalization of ties during ˙Ismail Cem’s time as Turkey’s Foreign Minister, which was further consolidated when the AKP came to power in 2002. Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad rose to power in Syria after his father’s death in 2000. As a concrete example of better relations, Turkey and Syria signed a free-trade agreement in 2004, and the value of trade between the countries had reached 2500 million dollars by 2010. Cooperation between the two countries was expanding to cover joint economic initiatives and military cooperation, for instance. This rapprochement was formalized in 2009 when Turkey and Syria established a High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council. Regarding these formalized ties, Turkey’s then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto˘glu went as far as referring to ‘two states, one government’ (Ça˘glar, 2014, p. 1). Turkey’s leadership first tried to maintain a balanced position when the popular rebellions that originated in Tunisia in 2010 reached Syria in March 2011, emphasizing both the continuity of al-Assad’s rule as well as the need for political reform and restraint in the government’s crackdown on the demonstrations. However, then Prime Minister Erdo˘gan declared in May 2011 that, in his view, the events taking place in Syria were Turkey’s domestic business and not a foreign-policy issue. His argument was that Turkey and Syria shared an 850-km border, and they were more like

7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War

141

relatives. Further, according to Erdo˘gan, the Syrian government’s violent response was not justified because the opposition was entirely peaceful (Milliyet, 2011). Arguably, Erdo˘gan’s assertion that the opposition was entirely non-violent in April–May 2011 does not completely correspond with the known facts. There is no doubt that a clear majority of demonstrations in the early phases were peaceful, and the participants expressed pluralistic and tolerant messages in an attempt to unite people from very different backgrounds to forge a large democratic platform. It is also true that Syrian government forces used excessive violence against these peaceful demonstrators (Daher, 2019). However, armed factions had already emerged by spring 2011, whose members reportedly fired at Syrian government troops. There were armed men among the protestors in Deraa, for instance. According to former Dutch ambassador and Syria scholar Nikolaos van Dam, early reports of a massacre of Syrian troops by armed men at Jisr al-Shughur were also true, although they were dismissed by government opponents as the killing of army deserters by the regime (Frisk, 2017). The Western media reported the incident in Jisr al-Shughur, too, but the overall tone was to cast doubt on the perpetrators, citing opposition activists who claimed that the real gunmen were Syrian government troops. The report also pointed out that the Assad regime attempted to use the incident to justify its brutal counterinsurgency measures (see e.g., Sly, 2011). Nevertheless, reports of early violent attacks against government forces are hard to deny. According to an opposition-run Violations Documentation Centre (VDC), for instance, the regime had already lost over 500 combatants by the end of August 2011 (Phillips, 2016, p. 84). It is difficult to imagine how these 500 regime soldiers could have been killed without an armed insurgency already being in place in the summer of 2011. After the initial, failed attempt to persuade al-Assad to introduce political reforms, Turkey’s policy goal in Syria has been to bring about a regime change, and there are grounds to believe that this was still the case in 2021 (see, e.g., Erdo˘gan, 2021). Such a policy is unprecedented in the Republic’s history, and essentially contradicts the long-held non-interventionist foreign-policy doctrine espoused by Turkey. The regime-change project is incomprehensible without a profound understanding of the ideational and practical presuppositions. I have already touched on several of these, hence it would be useful here to draw together certain basic assumptions espoused by the AKP leadership, which may now be defined after a full decade of war in Syria. The ‘New Turkey’ (Yeni Türkiye) propagated by the Erdo˘gan regime is an ideologically driven, revisionist state pushing for regional-leader status. There is a specific focus on territories once part of, or in a close relationship with, the Ottoman Empire, but the ‘New Turkey’s foreign-policy activity is by no means restricted to them. All this activism has required a decoupling from the previous Westernism, but it has not made Turkey a ‘Eurasian’ state in the sense of forging an alliance with Russia. Given the known facts, it is safe to assume that whatever Turkey desires to do, it wants to do it alone, as far as possible: it has not been possible in several international conflicts, nor will it be. Instead, Turkey has forged temporary transactional relations with the US, Russia, or certain minor players. Turkey’s dual involvement in the Syrian civil war comprised arming proxies and subsequent direct military intervention and occupation. The country has had boots on

142

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

the ground in northern Syria since 2016. The Turkish Armed Forces began a declared direct military intervention in Syria on 24 August. Its main target was the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia with an organic link to the Turkish PKK (see, e.g., Kaya & Lowe, 2017), which also constitutes the core fighting corps of the US-sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the main US local ally in the fight against the Islamic State (Wimmen, 2017). In the wake of the major military advances that Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led SDF made against jihadists during the Northern Aleppo offensive in February 2016, Ankara called for a safe zone and a ‘No-fly zone’. This proved futile, however, and Turkey launched its military operation with the Turkish Land Forces attacking the town of Jarablus. The immediate purpose was to push both Islamic State and Kurdish YPG forces away from areas near Turkey’s border. The main rationale for this first operation, known as Operation Euphrates Shield, and its subsequent extensions (Operation Olive Branch in 2018, and Operation Peace Spring in 2019) was to prevent the founding of a Kurdish PYD-governed autonomous region in northern Syria. In addition to these anti-PKK moves, Turkey launched a military operation in the Idlib province in 2017, establishing 12 military observation posts: this was in accordance with Russia and with the approval of Idlib’s main jihadi faction, the al-Qaeda breakaway group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The following analysis summarizes Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian conflict. Its first reaction was similar to its initial response to the Libyan civil war, namely to support the status quo while encouraging political reform. This policy was abandoned in the summer of 2011, and Turkey started to arm and provide logistical help and refuge to the armed opposition groups that now, in practice, comprised Sunni insurgents. Turkey cooperated with the US in the early stages to bring various armed opposition groups under the unified command, of the FSA (Free Syrian Army), while the main political wing of the opposition, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, organized its meetings in Istanbul (Hassan, 2013). The FSA’s training and arming operations were based in Turkey’s Hatay province, neighboring Syria. Turkey’s rebelassistance policy was a joint effort of sorts, involving the American-funded ‘Timber Sycamore’ program, a CIA-led secret venture aimed at arming and training Syrian ‘moderate rebels’ (Hasan, 2019). As is well known, the policy goal of the US-led international coalition from 2012 to January 2017, when the Trump administration ended the rebel-arming program, was to assist the Sunni rebels to oust the Assad regime violently. However, it was also expected that these ‘moderate’ FSA groups would violently demolish the various jihadi factions that had been increasingly prominent in Syria since late 2011. In October 2015, Gareth Bayley, the UK’s Special Representative for Syria and thus representing the official UK position of supporting the Syrian moderate opposition, gave a typical statement expressing this policy line. He claimed that the moderate opposition groups wanted a safe and unified homeland that offered Syria a future in which all Syrians, regardless of ethnic or religious background would be respected, represented, and protected. In Bayley’s words, ‘All of the main groups, including those who are more conservative, have agreed to act against Al-Qaida, and to the protection of minority and women’s rights, political pluralism, representation, free

7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War

143

elections and the rule of law. Contrary to the regime’s narrative, these groups are pragmatic and understand how their values, some more conservative than others, fit in into a context of a democratic, civil state’ (Bayley, 2015). However, in September 2014 the US officials still seemed to have a very different view of what could legitimately be said about the rebels and their possible characteristics. Thus, it was reported in The New York Times of 11 September 2014 that current and former American officials acknowledged the government’s lack of deep knowledge about the rebels. ‘We need to do everything we can to figure out who the non-ISIS opposition is,’ said Ryan C. Crocker, former US ambassador to Iraq and Syria. ‘Frankly, we don’t have a clue’ (Hubbard et al., 2014). Aron Lund, one of the leading experts on Syrian jihadi factions, also fundamentally challenged Gareth Bayley’s statement regarding the Syrian rebels. Interviewed by the same The New York Times reporters who spoke to Ryan C. Crocker, Lund assessed the situation in 2014 as follows: ‘Even the groups that the U.S. has trained tend to show up in the same trenches as the Nusra Front eventually because they need them and they are fighting the same battles’ (Hubbard et al., 2014). In addition, he pointed out as early as September 2012 that the jihadi groups were assuming a rapidly growing role in Syria. In his opinion, the ‘Islamization’ of the Syrian conflict was primarily driven by two factors. First, the descent into sectarian conflict pitted Sunni Muslims against supporters of the secular, Alawite-dominated regime of Bashar al-Assad. This polarization benefited the jihadis by creating a demand for their brand of violent Sunni chauvinism. The second factor was the foreign support pouring in from regional governments and non-state organizations, which was disproportionately empowering Islamist groups (Lund, 2012, p. 5). Indeed, it has been revealed recently that Qatar, for instance, was, together with Turkey, the most determined supporter of Sunni insurgency, and funneled ‘millions of dollars’ to the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist organization in Syria (Norfolk, 2021). Any expert account describing the realities on the ground in Syria also makes it very clear that the politically motivated narrative of a well-organized moderate FSA army that is clearly distinct from jihadi factions was nothing other than a useful piece of fiction disseminated by both Turkish and Western political leaders. Lund (2012, pp. 24–25) describes the ongoing FSA-jihadi cooperation, noting how on the ground, within villages and clans, various political factions tented to cooperate without difficulty, sharing not only equipment but also members, regardless of ideological differences. Joint operations that included both jihadi and non-jihadi Sunni Islamist groups were common and it was not unusual that many families had members in different factions. Typical example provided by Lund is Abdelaziz el-Salama, leader of the FSA’s Tawhid Division in Aleppo, whose cousin was a Jabhat al-Nusra commander. Numerous journalists with a more objective take on the conflict have also documented the close cooperation, both ideological and operational, between various FSA and jihadi factions. To give an example, Mahmood and Black (2013), writing for The Guardian, described the issue in May 2013 by noting how Syria’s armed coalition, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), was constantly losing both fighters and arms to Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamist organization with links to Al-Qaida and which had become as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

144

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

However, the inevitable conclusion is that the overwhelming majority of Western media coverage has for years been perpetuating the narrative according to which there is a large, non-Islamist rebel fighting force in Syria called the FSA, which is capable of conducting significant military operations. As noted above, US officials were still, in 2014, desperately trying to figure out who these moderate rebel fighters were, although the Western media seemed to have no problem identifying them in 2015. As headlined in The Telegraph of October 2, 2015, ‘Russia kills US-backed Syrian rebels in second day of airstrikes as Iran prepares for ground offensive.’ Confusingly, however, it is asserted in the same article that ‘The Russians continued their aerial bombardment on Thursday. Targets included Jisr al-Shughour and Jabal al-Zawiya, areas under the control of Jaish al-Fatah, the Army of Conquest, an alliance of Islamist groups which have won significant victories against the regime this year’ (Akkoc & Oliphant, 2015). Thus, the groups the Russians were bombing, described by The Telegraph as ‘US-backed rebels’, were, in fact, Jaish al-Fatah, an umbrella Islamist coalition funded by Turkey, Qatar, and the Saudis; it was dominated by jihadi factions such as al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, a group defined in scholarly research as ‘Syria’s Taliban’ (Steinberg, 2016). Investigative journalist Fehim Ta¸stekin described the situation in 2015 by noting how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed with Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud in their Riyadh meeting, that the new addresses for weapons assistance were al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Army of Conquest (Jaish alFateh), led by Ahrar al-Sham, set up by former al-Qaeda affiliates. After the shipment of weapons via Turkey, the Army of Conquest captured Idlib, Jisr al-Shughur, Ariha, and Mastume. The Syrian army also lost some locations in the south. In the latest development, the 52nd Brigade, which was 100 km (62 miles) south of Damascus, had to abandon its base. On the northern front, the objective of the Army of Conquest is to capture Aleppo and Latakia after Idlib and then move toward Damascus (Ta¸stekin, 2015). One could thus conclude from all this information that, by autumn 2015, the jihadi coalition Jaish al-Fateh was preparing to conquer key areas of Syrian governance, including the capital Damascus. Back in 2012, Aron Lund described Jabhat al-Nusra as ‘clearly seen by most of the global salafi-jihadi community as “their” group in Syria’ (Lund, 2012, p. 25), and Ahrar al-Sham as ‘a network of jihadi groups spread over several Syrian provinces… likely to be Syria’s largest jihadi organization in numerical terms, and ranks among the most important rebel factions in Syria’ (Lund, 2012, p. 31). Thus, what The Telegraph report in the summer of 2015 described as ‘US-backed rebels’ was overwhelmingly a coalition of Syria’s best-organized jihadi factions with strong support from the international salafi-jihadi network. The increasingly realistic prospect that the jihadi coalition would advance further into government-held areas forced Syria to call for direct military intervention by Russia. As is now well known, this was secured via the mediation of the late Qasim Soleimani, head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. It is also worth pointing out the remarkable similarity between the Western media coverage of the Syrian conflict and the official line of Turkey’s government. For both, the war is a simple black-and-white issue, a battle between good and evil.

7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War

145

There were three actors in the mainstream narrative following the emergence of the Islamic State (Daesh) terror organization, namely the heroic moderate rebels fighting both the evil Assad regime and the jihadis of the Islamic State. There is already a body of serious scholarly work focusing on the propagandistic nature of the Western mainstream media coverage of the Syrian war. According to Simons (2020, p. 446), there was a concerted propaganda campaign at the beginning that was intended to script the conflict (establish the ‘orthodoxy’ of accepted knowledge), establish the brands and reputations of the primary actors (expectation management), and make other interpretations difficult to communicate (as they would be rejected or the messenger labeled an ‘Assadist’ or ‘Stooge of Putin/Iran’). Only occasionally have Western journalists shown an interest in the characteristics, goals, and actions of the large array of Islamist and jihadi factions that have fought against the Syrian government. The Erdo˘gan government has also completely denied all accusations of having funded extremists, even after it became obvious to reasonable observers that the overwhelming majority of foreign jihadis came to Syria and Iraq through Turkey, via the infamous ‘jihadi highway’ that, in practice, was sanctioned by the Turkish authorities on the Turkey-Syria border (Uslu, 2016). Behind the simplistic slogans and politically motivated misrepresentations, the Syrian conflict is a multi-faceted civil war turned into a proxy war, which also has a substantial class aspect. Landis (2012), director of the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Middle East Studies described in 2012 how the country folk that had been at the heart of the rebellion were waiting for a ‘Tahrir Square moment’. They waited for the city people to rise up and come to their aid, which never happened in larger numbers. This drove the revolutionaries to take the revolution to the cities. They insisted that the cities could not be allowed to sit out the revolt or otherwise the regime would win. Amn wa Istiqrar, security, and stability, Landis underscored, had been the mantra of the regime for 40 years. The revolution could not allow it to continue. By taking the fight to the city centers, the wealthier urbanites were denied the security and safety they had always been willing to settle for. In this sense, the conflict had a notable class element, it was not only about sect and religion. For the rural Syrians making up so much of the militias destroying the city centers, it was a price they were willing to pay to set the city folk on fire. Indeed, those engaging in objective analysis rather than endlessly repeating the most simplistic jargon claiming that the solution is to send more arms and ammunition to the rebels, picture Syria as a land in which no freedom-loving heroic fighters are to be found. In the words of Gram Slattery, writing for the Harvard Political Review in October 2012: ‘Though Western media rely disproportionately on rebel rumors, it should come as no surprise that these roving gangs of young Islamists are hardly more disciplined than the pro-regime forces’ (Slattery, 2012). Turkey has been one of the primary actors promoting the continuance of war, and one could argue that the official Turkish narrative on the Syrian conflict was largely enabled and confirmed by Western media coverage. The AKP leadership has always interpreted the Syrian conflict within the much larger framework of the declared ‘New Turkey’, understood as a historical mission. In the narrative espoused by President Erdo˘gan, the Republic of Turkey represents the direct continuation of and the

146

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

most recent phase in a historical journey lasting thousands of years. Either explicitly or implicitly, this narrative expresses the idea that Turkey’s current borders are both sacred and relativized: no one could challenge the integrity and territorial totality of the state. However, the idea of the Republic as just the current form of the Turks’ political community implies the existence of a historical, civilizational-religious community that extends much further both spatially and temporally (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2016). The conquering of the state institutions by the AKP during the 15 years of uninterrupted one-party majority governments is narrated as an extensive restoration (büyük restorasyon) project that has healed the state-society relationship and has enabled Turkey to achieve regional and even global prominence. The declared need for large-scale restoration in this narrative covers both the international system in general, and the Middle East in particular, and Turkey is seen as playing a central role (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı, 2013). According to President Erdo˘gan, the long rule of the AKP has indeed transformed Turkey profoundly, so that it is now a self-confident nation, taking its strength from its past, a country in which the ideals of the state and the nation are united (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2019). The idea of a ‘New Turkey’ under the AKP representing much more than the territorial nation state is explicit in the following recent statement by President Erdo˘gan: Turkey is not only its 81 provinces or its 82 million inhabitants… One of our greatest achievements has been to provide our nation with a new connection to our past, and a new vision with great goals. Nowadays, nobody talking about Turkey restricts it to our state’s formal boundaries, as our spiritual boundaries embrace almost the entire world (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2019).

This overall national narrative largely provides President Erdo˘gan and the AKP leadership with the mental map according to which Turkey’s foreign policy is approached and implemented. Territories that were once part of the Ottoman Empire are assigned special importance within this overall ‘extended Turkey’ narrative. Quarrels about the extent to which Turkey’s newly assertive foreign policy should or should not be labeled ‘Neo-Ottoman’ are not very fruitful, in that foreign policy in practice is always a combination of ideational and practical factors. What should be understood are the repeated references to the meaning, value, and importance of the Ottoman State and the Islamic civilization in the foreign-policy discourse of the ruling Islamic-conservative power bloc. Thus, in addition to the continuing demands to restructure the international order from post-Western premises, and the overall critique of the domestic Kemalist nation-state project, conceptualization of the Ottoman Empire and its civilizational-religious order as the key reference point for present-day Turkey is an influential narrative trope that has repeatedly resurfaced during the last ten years. In the words of President Erdo˘gan: Dear brothers and sister, wherever you go today within the Ottoman geography, when you tell people you are Turkish, you are responded by locals with love and respect. Even those who were hostile at the time when these lands were taken from us, now receive us with strong affection. Within this vast geography, a ‘Turk’ is not an ethnic definition, but the name of a civilization (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2019).

7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War

147

This is the narrative framework within which President Erdo˘gan discussed Turkey’s military operation (Spring Shield) in Syria, launched in December 2019. Although explicitly arguing that Turkey has a historically grounded right to operate outside its current borders, it nevertheless claims that the only justification for such operations is the legitimate right to fight against terrorism, namely the PKK. Erdo˘gan conceptualizes the PKK and the Islamic State as similar terror organizations in his speeches, supported either directly or indirectly by the West. The story also points out that Turkey is not acting alone—on the contrary, it is operating in cooperation with the Syrian National Army (Suriye Milli Ordusu) (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2019). The conglomeration of previous FSA fighters, other Sunni Islamists and jihadis, which is organized, funded, and armed directly by Turkey, thus seems to be a military version of the locals who, according to Erdo˘gan, do not perceive Turkish forces as foreigners but as representatives of an authentic civilization that once governed the whole of the Middle East, and Syria in particular. President Erdo˘gan’s narrative of Syria and the Turkish military intervention is thus a clear example of the wider Islamic foreign-policy narrative analyzed in detail in previous chapters. On the other hand, all the quarrels between Islamists and secular nationalists are attributed in liberal-oriented Turkish foreign-policy narratives to ideological naivety, which has rather little real value in the realpolitik game played in an age of global power struggles. The writing of Murat Yetkin, a leading liberal-oriented, pro-European foreign-policy analyst, is a good example of this. In February 2020, Yetkin observed that Turkish foreign minister Çavu¸so˘glu met first with American and British officials who were either directly or indirectly responsible for their respective countries’ Syria policy, trying to secure American backing against Russia and Syria in Idlib without sanctions simultaneously being imposed on Turkey by the Americans for acquiring the Russian S-400 missile defense system. Immediately after this, Çavu¸so˘glu met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, carefully presenting a scenario in which Turkey’s enduring backing of anti-regime forces in Syria’s Idlib would not be allowed to jeopardize the long-built Turco-Russian strategic partnership. However, there was a novel development in the situation emerging in midFebruary 2020, when the Russians were helping Assad’s forces to retake parts of Idlib province where Turkey had established its military observation posts, namely regarding Turkey’s tactics. With regard to Syria, Turkey’s leadership had now chosen to form a new alliance with the Americans and other NATO countries, in contrast to earlier policy that had concentrated on cooperating with the Russians. The Americans were willing to listen to Turkey in this new context, eager to utilize the opportunity to shake the Turco-Russian alliance for their own benefit. The theme of the Munich security conference of 2020 was, after all, ‘Westless World’ (Yetkin, 2020a). According to Yetkin, the Munich Conference report painted a picture of the West as facing an increasingly threatening array of domestic and external adversaries. He also pointed out how the theme of the conference was reflected in the fact that, while Turkey’s Foreign Minister was engaged in the Munich discussions with other NATO members, President Erdo˘gan and Defense Minister Akar were in Islamabad to negotiate a new defense pact with Pakistan. This, in itself, demonstrated that the

148

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

foreign-policy alternatives of various countries were no longer necessarily Westerncentric. The way in which the West was being defined in the Munich report was also notable: commitment to liberal democracy and human rights, a market economy, and international cooperation based on international organizations. This, in turn, immediately raised the question of whether the world had become less Western or was it that the West was no longer Western. Be that as it may, the essential point was that what seemed to unite Trump, Putin, Xi, Johnson, Orban, Modi, and Erdo˘gan was that they all opposed globalization. The West was indeed challenged from the inside and the outside. Regarding Turkey, President Erdo˘gan was among those who demanded a renegotiation of the governing practices, specifically in repeating the slogan ‘the world is bigger than five’ with reference to the United Nations’ Security Council. His ultimate argument was that the Islamic world should unite and have a much bigger say in world politics. Yetkin wondered whether, even if it was the case that the West was in decline, this meant that the ‘East’ was on the rise? Not necessarily, he concluded (Yetkin, 2020b). Fehim Ta¸stekin, writing for the independent news portal Gazete Duvar on 20 February 2020, when Turkey seemed to be on the verge of starting a full-scale war with Syrian government forces in Idlib province, briefly recalls what he had witnessed in Syria during his many visits to the war-torn country. He points out how difficult it was for many Turks who only received their government’s messages about Syria to comprehend how bad Turkey’s reputation was among many Syrians. In his words: ‘As the northwest Aleppo countryside was finally taken back from the Turkishbacked armed groups, there was a party in Aleppo lasting until the early morning’. He recounts a story from his 2015 trip to Aleppo. He had a discussion with a local named Basil Nasri, who owned a chemical factory in Aleppo’s Leyramun district with around 100 employees. The lives of Nasri and his staff had been directly affected by Erdo˘gan’s Syria policy. Ta¸stekin quotes Nasri: ‘I have no idea what happened to the factory. At times, I look at Google satellite images to see it. When this terror ends, one day, I will rebuild it from the start. We all share this tenacity’. Ta¸stekin observes that a large number of factories in Aleppo province were frequently looted by armed opposition groups describing themselves as revolutionaries. Ta¸stekin replies: ‘At the time, I walked through the streets of Seyh ¸ Neccar industrial district. I saw the condition of the pillaged factories. They were all part of the same story. Armed groups had taken all the machinery and valuable items and then transported them through the Bab el Heva-Cilvegözü border gate, subsequently selling them in Turkey’ (Ta¸stekin, 2020). The general point here is that there is a major dividing line between the two ‘schools of thought’ regarding what went wrong with the Western states’ Syria policy, and this controversy has direct implications for how the Liberal International Order is interpreted. Many Western liberals insist that the problem was not the early statements demanding Assad’s immediate and unconditional removal, but rather the lack of follow-up with an equally determined policy to force him out. The claim that the moderate opposition did not have sufficient support usually accompanies this argument. On the other hand, according to another school of thought, it was precisely the early, unrealistic demand for Assad’s unconditional removal that

7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War

149

opened the gate for an externally funded civil war. Furthermore, the program that supported armed opposition simultaneously enabled the salafi-jihad groups to make use of the power vacuum and interregnum, especially as it soon became evident that not only did the CIA-funded opposition cooperate with al-Qaeda factions, it also delivered Western-supplied weapons to them (Warrick, 2021, pp. 524–525). Thus, to the extent that Fehim Ta¸stekin’s argumentation could be situated within the second school of thought regarding Syria, as I believe it should, it appears to continue the line of reasoning identified in Soli Özel’s writing on the ‘hubris’ in the narrative of the Western Liberal International Order discussed in the previous chapter. It also, at least implicitly, incorporates the idea that those who cherish this narrative also think that the cause justifies the means, in other words, that in this case, the increasing ease with which al-Qaeda was able to operate in Syria and Iraq was a lamentable but ultimately acceptable side effect of the more serious and ‘principled’ attempt to demolish Assad’s dictatorship. Of course, Western liberals taking the line that the West did too little completely reject the idea that Western support of Syrian armed opposition strengthened al-Qaeda. In their narrative, it is Assad who supports al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and the armed opposition would have defeated both Assad and the jihadis if only ‘we’ had armed and funded them much more vigorously. Obviously, several prominent Turkish investigative journalists do not buy this version of the Syrian conflict. Further, they seem to suggest that the hubris and the working logic of the American-led liberal order share the responsibility for the current carnage in Syria and Iraq. It is thus noteworthy that the same Western liberal commentators who strongly criticize President Erdo˘gan and emphasize the need to defend critical journalism in Turkey are, in practice, in full accordance with the official views of Turkey’s government about the Syrian conflict, and therefore oppose the views expressed by independent journalists such as Ta¸stekin. On these premises, it is hard to escape the conclusion that, for many secular-minded, loosely Western-oriented Turkish commentators, the repeated US-led military operations in the Middle East—Iraq, Libya, and Syria in particular—exemplify how the post1991 liberal internationalism and its pro-interventionist approach are doing more harm than good. According to Orhan Bursalı, writing for the secular-nationalist (Kemalist) flagship Cumhuriyet, the AKP leadership is right in one thing: under the AKP, Turkey’s foreign policy has become a mere extension of the domestic Islamic-conservative project. He does not doubt that the essence of Erdo˘gan’s project is to undo the secular Republic founded by Kemal Atatürk. Turkey’s foreign policy now reflects this core mission. Thus, President Erdo˘gan and his supporters directly attack the main pillars of the republican system, such as the Lausanne Peace Treaty. The Islamic conservatives constantly accuse the founders of the republic of selling the country in Lausanne, and of abandoning core Ottoman territories such as Iraq and Syria. Moreover, it is obvious that President Erdo˘gan and his supporters hated the Republican regime and perceived it as a kind of ‘commercial break’ between the Ottoman era and their own rule. Indeed, the concept of the ‘New Turkey’ endlessly used by Erdo˘gan symbolizes the whole project of undoing the Republic, despite the fact that neither the ongoing attempt to increase religious content in school curricula, nor the construction of a

150

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

new presidential palace with 1000 rooms, nor the political transformation from a parliamentarian to a presidential regime had yet accomplished this task. Thus, the remaining tool with which to ‘surpass Atatürk’ is the conquest of foreign lands in Syria. In other words, according to Bursalı’s narrative, Turkey’s military operations in Syria and Libya were most of all about removing Atatürk by military conquest, which has been the essence of Turkey’s Syria policy since 2011. Ahmet Davuto˘glu laid down the theoretical basis. His writings, Bursalı concludes, had in fact ‘naturalized’ this new foreign policy by depicting Turkey as an organic, spiritual-historical continuation of the Ottoman Empire (Bursalı, 2020). The more conservative—and less Islamist—edge of the Islamic-conservative foreign-policy narrative tends to escape the straitjacket of the foundational civilizational undercurrent in its interpretations of day-to-day foreign-policy issues. To give an example, Okan Müderriso˘glu, writing for the pro-government Sabah newspaper, describes the US-Turkey-Russia triangle from a purely interest-based perspective. In terms of the Syrian crisis, as it stood in February 2020, the Americans vehemently emphasized Turkey’s role as an American NATO ally and saw the employment of Turkish troops in Idlib province as a useful counter to Russian and Iranian influence. Expressing approval, Müderriso˘glu refers to the American view of Turkey’s military presence in Syria as a stabilizing element bringing security and order to the region. Further, the Americans were of the opinion that Turco-Russian relations would be increasingly strained in the near future, which of course was in the interest of the US. The problem is that the Americans have not changed their views regarding Kurdish PKK-related YPG forces, nor were they involved in any attempt to classify Fethullah Gülen’s organization as an international terrorist network, as demanded by Turkey (Müderriso˘glu, 2020a). The overall impression one gets from all this is that, in Müderriso˘glu’s view, Turkey has been successful in its foreign policy under Erdo˘gan’s rule. Having more space for maneuver and a more independent status are widely shared desires running through the Turkish foreign-policy narratives, strongly advocated in the two most vocal currents, namely those of the Islamic conservatives and the secular nationalists. This increased space for maneuver and successful balancing between major powers are seen in the former narrative to result from Turkey’s new foreign-policy activism and its growing ability to shape global events. Arslan Bulut expresses views on Idlib that sharply contrast with those held by Müderriso˘glu. Writing for the Yeniça˘g newspaper, which tends to support the socalled ülkücü version of the Turkish nationalist (pan-Turkish) movement, he exposes the Turkish dead-end in Syria. He recalls that Turkey and Russia explicitly agreed to safeguard Syria’s territorial integrity and its centralized structure. They also agreed, that as a core ingredient of the so-called Sochi agreement, Turkey had promised to separate jihadist armed groups from those of the ‘moderate opposition’. According to Bulut, Turkey had done nothing of the kind but had in effect allowed the Al-Qaedaaffiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham organization to conquer nearly all of Idlib province, despite being classified as a terrorist group by the United Nations and thus also by Turkey. Russia and the Syrian forces actively fought the jihadis in Idlib, and now Turkey had in effect declared that it would increasingly use its own military to halt this attack. This put Turkey in a very odd position, as it was also in its interest to

7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War

151

safeguard Syrian territorial integrity and to get rid of terrorist organizations in its border areas. However, it did the exact opposite, which led Bulut to ask in whose name Turkey was conducting its military operations in Syria: such operations only served the strategic interest of the US, which wanted to deter a Russian presence in Syria and block the government’s plan to retake all Syrian territories (Bulut, 2020). Thus, at least for some representatives of ülkücü nationalism, the AKP government’s Syria policy of allegedly increasing Turkey’s global power, in fact, did the exact opposite, allowing Turkey to become a tool in the hands of the Americans in the Middle East. Taha Akyol, writing for the conservative Karar newspaper, analyzes the other major aspect of Turkey’s Syria policy, namely its relationship with Russia. According to him, Turkey had fought terrorists in Syria until 2020, meaning the Islamic State and the PKK-affiliated YPG forces. Thus, he seems altogether to ignore the obvious fact that Turkey’s initial aim was to generate a regime change in Syria by overthrowing Assad and arming and training the Sunni insurgency. He further refers to the fact that Russia and the Syrian Baath regime had been strategic allies since the Soviet era, and that the Soviets had educated the Syrian Arab Army. Ever since 2015, when Syria invited Russia to intervene on its behalf, Russian leadership had made it very clear that it was there to preserve the Assad regime and to consolidate its military presence in the Middle East. The idea that President Putin, and thus Russia, would be Turkey’s ‘friend’ was absurd in this context. Thus, in Akyol’s view, the idea of forging a Russo-Turkish strategic alliance made little sense. In fact, there was an acute need to return to the traditional foreign policy that Turkey’s governments had followed all through its republican history (Akyol, 2020). Mustafa Balbay, writing for the secular-nationalist Cumhuriyet newspaper, interprets Turkey’s Syria policy as an example of how, under President Erdo˘gan, the country has been fooled by both the US and Russia. He argues that Erdo˘gan’s stubborn insistence on removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power mainly served the interests of two states, namely Israel and the US. It was also detrimental to Turkey’s relations with Russia. The point in following the Atatürkist foreign-policy ideal of ‘peace at home, peace in the world’ was to secure peace all over the world, and in this sense, the Idlib ceasefire agreed with Russia was warmly welcomed. However, Russia was playing its own games, martyring 34 Turkish soldiers in one strike. The proper response would be to adopt a truly Ankara-centered foreign policy rather than one that was American- or Russian-oriented (Balbay, 2020). It is clear from this that the demand by many secular nationalists for Turkey to return immediately to its traditional non-interventionist foreign policy does not mean a return to the alleged Western-centered posture of the Cold War years, but rather implies reverting to a strictly neutral policy based solely on Turkey’s own interests. Unsurprisingly, interpretations of Turkey’s involvement in Syria by authors echoing the official government policy are based on very different reasoning. According to Ömer Özkıcılzık, Turkey is in Idlib to safeguard a permanent ceasefire, to end the movement of refugees towards Turkey, to secure the border regions, and to establish conditions for the refugees to return to Syria. Accordingly, Turkey calls for the establishment

152

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

of a safe zone in the Idlib province. The military operation and the further deployment of Turkish forces to the region are considered necessary to accomplish these objectives. According to Özkıcılzık (2020), Operation ‘Spring Shield’, implemented in March 2020, accomplished this task. On the other hand, in the view of Metin Gurcan, writing for the respected Al Monitor news website, the Idlib question imposed on Turkey’s leadership a highly problematic and complex foreign-policy task, the course of which would most likely have long-term consequences regarding Turkey’s strategic outlook and international alliances. He refers to three schools of thought on how to proceed. First, Turkey should break up the Russia-Iran axis to get US and Israeli backing for a permanent military occupation of Idlib, a course that would also alleviate its increasingly weak position vis-à-vis Russia. Second, close cooperation with Russia and Iran should continue: the US still supported the PKK-affiliated Kurdish groups in northern Syria, and thus Turkey should not trust it. Third, Turkey should increasingly seek a balance between the two poles and use its own military power to ensure its security interests in the short term, and a strong position in future political negotiations (Gurcan, 2020). Finally, liberal Turkish foreign-policy narratives show an awareness of the danger posed by international jihadi factions settled in Syria’s ˙Idlib province. Ergin (2020), among others, quotes the report published by the International Crisis Group, which interviewed Abu Muhammed Al-Julani, leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The group controlled around 90% of Idlib province in 2020, accompanied by many other jihad factions in Idlib. One of these was the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), comprising Uighur fighters, which occupied the town of Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib province. Ergin is concerned that this jihadi-led town is only 25 km from Yaylada˘gı town center in Turkey’s Hatay province bordering Syria. He specifically mentions Julani’s description of the TIP as a group of fighters who had come to Syria to fight a global jihad, and who had nowhere else to go from there. It is therefore not wrong to conclude that the Uighur jihadis are likely to remain Turkey’s close neighbors on a permanent basis. Ergin recalls how the TIP jihadis came to Syria in 2012, gathered more recently in Idlib, and were now settled on land defined by Turkey and Russia as part of the ‘security corridor’ along the M4 highway that connects Aleppo city to Latakia. The crucial question, then, is whether this group, among other jihadi factions, is at all interested in implementing the RussoTurkish ceasefire agreement. According to Ergin, there is no doubt that the mixture of displaced people, children unable to have any education, and the presence of armed jihadi organizations next to Turkey will be a major security concern in the long run. In conclusion, there seem to be several conflicting, as well as converging views on the Syrian war and Turkey’s involvement in the various narratives of Turkish foreign policy. The official government narratives obviously depict the Syria policy as a success story, increasing Turkey’s power and its ability to shape events in its region. As pointed out, these narratives are essentially shaped by the overall narrative of restoration, which ultimately goes back to the political legacy of the Milli Görü¸s movement, now updated in the context of Turkey’s increased economic and military weight. On the other hand, the secular-nationalist narratives depict Turkey’s Syria

7.1 Contextualizing Turkish Narratives of the Syrian War

153

policy as a hazardous attempt to undo the Republican project by means of military conquest, which has led to unacceptable flirting with jihadis and has sacrificed Turkey’s key national interest to the designs of the great powers. Liberal and leftliberal independent analysts have traced the highly problematic stances of all parties involved, including the US, whose Middle East policy they describe as contradictory and self-defeating.

7.2 The Pandemic and Turkish Visions of the Post-Pandemic World The Covid-19 virus infection, which started in China’s Wuhan province in December 2019 and become a global pandemic by March 2020, has had a significant effect worldwide, including in Turkey. The analysis in this section covers the way in which different Turkish foreign-policy narratives framed the pandemic and used it to give meaning to international politics and Turkey’s place in the world, and how these stories evaluated the future of international affairs. Both Western and Turkish media were steeped in narratives about Covid-19 and its consequences. The pandemic required major restrictions and lockdowns, as well as the re-organization of life, the labor force, and modes of production and service. Such measures generated seemingly endless speculation, forecasts, and interpretations among newspaper columnists in Turkey. Their writings manifested their various fears and hope about the expected ‘new world order’ after the crisis. I believe that the nature of these fears and hopes reveal a great deal about the Turkish foreign-policy narratives and the ideological formations on which they were built. My aim is thus to enhance understanding of Turkey’s strategic culture and of the overall foreign-policy landscape. The future scenario is unpredictable: Covid-19 could soon become a distant memory, or it could continue, forcing the world and its inhabitants to rethink their deepest convictions and practices. What matters, then, is not so much the effects of the pandemic on the international system but the way in which these effects were anticipated and are interpreted by Turkish writers and constituencies. The reader should thus keep in mind, as far as possible, what has been revealed so far about Turkey’s different foreign-policy narratives, and the views expressed about its national interests (and identity), modernization, the so-called Liberal International Order, and the Syrian conflict. The repertoires of concepts and narrative traditions utilized by different actors to interpret and explain all these issues also provide a basis on which to build the various interpretations of the pandemic and what it means to international relations and Turkey’s place in the world. One could think of it as a sudden and threatening event that, for a shorter or longer period, crushes the seemingly slowlymoving edifice of global political and economic structures, as a negative window of opportunity that forces people to critically rethink many issues and mechanisms that are taken for granted. As I demonstrate, this is exactly how many Turkish writers

154

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

and commentators responded to the pandemic, each one of them then narrating its overall meaning and consequences from their own perspective. Dramatic events such as these reflect one of the key assumptions running through the present work, namely that the micro-level act of interpreting and narrating international events and processes may, in certain specific circumstances, have causal power on the macro level: through narrative, action is generated that directly changes the policy and self-identification of state actors. Further, as I also explain in the introduction, foreign-policy narratives—broadly understood—could be described as the mechanism by which macro-level events and processes are mediated through different conceptual apparatuses, to the level of individual writers and readers. Although Covid-19 and the pandemic it has caused are new phenomena, there are studies that analyze the large-scale effects on global politics of relatively similar, highly infectious diseases, in particular influenza, to which it has been compared as the outbreak evolved. Both viruses cause respiratory disease and thus have similar presentations, and both are transmitted by contact, droplets, and fomites (World Health Organization, 2020). In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared pandemic influenza ‘the most feared security threat’ because of its ability to spread easily between humans, the difficulty in controlling it, and the number of fatalities inflicted by previous outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics (World Health Organization, 2007, 45). According to Kamradt-Scott (2020, 5), since the end of the Cold War, various government-based entities, in the US in particular, have produced reports underscoring the menace posed by emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in an increasingly interconnected, globalized world. With the release of the inaugural influenza guidelines in 1999, several key global governance institutions, such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the UN, progressively joined the WHO in advising governments to strengthen their pandemic preparedness (Kamradt-Scott, 2020, p. 5). Thus, ‘level of preparedness’ seems to be one element in national security strategies, but one could still argue that the Covid-19 pandemic caught many governments unawares. Its ‘level of preparedness’ could thus be taken as one indicator of a state’s relative power and ability to defend its key national interests in a globalized world. Moreover, the pandemic has generated a phenomenon one could call ‘virus diplomacy’, which seems to have both positive and negative aspects. First, many states engaged in sending life-saving materials and even medical staff to other countries with high infection rates. On the other hand, there was an evident negative blame game, primarily between the US and China. There was even evidence of a large-scale social media campaign aimed at spreading disinformation about Covid-19 and how governments were allegedly unable to deal with, and worst of all, even conspiracy theories claiming that the virus was intentionally created in laboratories. In addition, once the vaccination production had successfully started, a not-so-civilized competition immediately flared up the determine which states could buy them, often at the expense of other states. Several prominent commentators around the world predicted early on that the pandemic would have large-scale effects on the economy, on societies, and ultimately on international relations in their entirety. Joschka Fischer, former German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998 to 2005 were among those who outlined

7.2 The Pandemic and Turkish Visions of the Post-Pandemic World

155

the consequences of the pandemic in terms of two scenarios, negative and positive. The negative scenario depicted the pandemic as being much more devastating than the 2008 economic crisis, putting enormous pressure on domestic political systems in matured liberal democracies, for example. On the positive side, the common crisis could induce practices of solidarity. In any case, referring to highly infected countries, Fischer saw the immediate short-term consequences as including the comeback of ‘big government’. In other words, the pandemic would bring about a fundamental change in the relationship between the economy and the state. As Fischer wrote: ‘The COVID-19 crisis has shown that it isn’t really possible to privatize health care. In fact, public health is a basic public good, and a critical factor in strategic security’ (Fischer, 2020). Thus, the neoliberal orthodoxy, within which all imaginable fields of public life are ideally arranged through market logic, could not survive intact as the guiding principle of state policies. Simon Tisdall, writing for the Guardian newspaper, assesses the global consequences of the pandemic from a similar starting point. Like Fischer, he presents two scenarios, one pointing toward ever-increasing rivalry between various states, and the other depicting a truly ‘better word’. In Tisdall’s words, the pandemic could have a transformative effect: ‘Is this one of those historic moments when the world changes permanently, when the balance of political and economic power shifts decisively, and when, for most people, in most countries, life is never quite the same again?’ (Tisdall, 2020). As I explain in the introduction and in Chap. 2, the 2008 economic crisis is understood as a recent key turning point intensifying the alleged weakening of the liberal international order (LIO). To the extent that the Covid-19 pandemic is perceived as a major global crisis, calling into question the neoliberal orthodoxy inherent in the LIO in its current form, then one is justified in expecting it to have a profound effect on the LIO. Interpretations of the LIO and Turkey’s place in the world, including its national interest, which is inherent in the competing foreignpolicy narratives, are thus present in evaluations of the pandemic. As Erdo˘gan (2020) explains, Turkey confronted the pandemic in an era when there was significant social polarization, a result of the highly polarizing policies implemented under President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan. Turkey is thus an interesting case regarding the varying abilities of democratic and authoritarian states to tackle the crisis caused by the virus. On the other hand, public perceptions of its ability to control the pandemic under President Erdo˘gan have been shaped by competing for foreign-policy narratives comparing Turkey to other states, in particular in the West. Turkey also engaged in significant ‘virus diplomacy’, sending medical aid, particularly personal protective equipment, to over 80 countries, including its Western NATO partners the UK, Italy, and Spain. At the same time, the virus was spreading rapidly throughout Turkey, and the country’s medical authorities warned of a probable shortage of critical medical equipment at home. As Gürsoy (2020) convincingly argued, it is clear that Erdo˘gan’s government wanted to promote Turkey’s international image through virus diplomacy and acts of international compassion. The country’s foreign policy, its relations with Western countries, in particular, had been deteriorating for a long time, and the virus diplomacy was part of a campaign to promote a positive image. Moreover, Islamic-conservative Turkish foreign policy

156

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

strongly purports to underscore Turkey-centered Muslim international actorness, repeatedly emphasizing the opportunity to demonstrate how the dominant Western countries need Turkey. The sending of medical supplies in a crisis to powerful Western countries was thus an opportunity for the AKP regime to point out how the power balance between the West and the Islamic world was changing, and how Turkey as the leading Islamic power was becoming more and more relevant in global politics. Turkey has been actively promoting its ‘soft power’ through aid and development assistance in other Muslim-majority societies during the last ten years, and now it is using this tactic with its NATO allies. Rhodes (2020), former deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama, interpreted the pandemic as the final end for the ‘war on terror’ foreign-policy doctrine implemented by the US since the 9/11 attacks perpetrated by al-Qaeda. It concretely manifested the need to move beyond a security doctrine that constantly drew the US into never-ending wars in the Middle East. Most of all, it was a clear sign that the existing thinking in the security establishment was much too narrow: what was needed was a comprehensive strategy that prioritized an array of domestic issues, global healthcare institutions, and climate change. The Trump administration, which had ridden the wave of the popular demand to end the forever wars, had not resolved any of these crucial issues but instead engaged in populist politics by blaming minorities, refugees, and liberals for all problems. However, several analysts have rejected the idea that the pandemic will significantly change domestic and international politics. Well-known political economist Rodrik (2020), for instance, argues that the crisis is much more likely to strengthen many of the pre-pandemic tendencies so that neoliberalism will continue its slow death. Populist autocrats will become even more authoritarian and hyperglobalization will remain on the defensive as nation-states reclaim policy space. China and the US will continue on their collision course, and the battle within nation states among oligarchs, authoritarian populists, and liberal internationalists is only likely to intensify, while the left struggles to devise a program that appeals to a majority of voters. Even though most observers acknowledge that it was almost impossible to predict the specific outcomes of the pandemic, certain mechanisms were at play. One of them was the desire of governments to maintain some of the restrictions imposed during the crisis. In the words of political economist Milanovic (2020): ‘There will also be a not unreasonable fear that depending entirely on the kindness of strangers in conditions of national emergency is not necessarily the best policy. This will undermine globalization as well.’ He also points out that if not confronted by any new major crisis, states are likely to return to globalization in the coming years, but what could become a more permanent feature is the unwillingness of strong and authoritarian leaders to roll back the concentration of power required during eras of national emergency (Milanovic, 2020). These words reveal how the pandemic immediately began to reflect not only fears but also long-held hopes and dreams of a brighter future, regarding both domestic society and global politics. Nevertheless, it is highly likely that these hopes will remain unfulfilled, which in turn will give different actors even more reason to feel

7.2 The Pandemic and Turkish Visions of the Post-Pandemic World

157

disappointed and frustrated. From this perspective, the increasing tendency among the ruling block in Turkey to reimagine the nation and state through the Islamist version of Turkish nationalism, and the further consolidation of the domestic authoritarian system, will only be reinforced by the pandemic. Another key debate directly related to the measures required to prevent the spread of the virus concerns socio-economic status and class. The ‘social distancing’ measures—ultimately meaning staying home as much as possible—obviously affected different socio-economic groups and professions very differently. For members of the intellectual or ‘creative class’, to borrow the concept from the theory of ‘creative industries’, it was much easier to stay at home and to work remotely, given that the vast majority of work in these professions involves sitting in front of a laptop reading, writing, and designing. Members of a wide variety of other groups could not do their jobs remotely, however. In addition, as several analysts point out, ‘social distancing’ and increased hand washing are much easier for wealthy people who live in spacious single-family or even single-person apartments with constant clean running water at their disposal. Millions of poor people around the world do not enjoy such luxuries. In other words, practicing social distancing in overcrowded neighborhoods is often impossible (Ayyub, 2020). All these issues combined provided the context within which Turkish writers also interpreted and narrated the pandemic, and they relate directly to the functioning logic of the global economic and political system. Alkin (2020), writing for the pro-government Sabah newspaper, describes the Covid-19 pandemic as the biggest human crisis since the Second World War, after which the global system was forced to change. The pandemic initiated a profound learning process, encompassing individual lives, companies, states, and even the international system and all its institutions, calling their operations into question. It was, most of all, a major test for the capitalist economy operating on neoliberal logic. According to Alkin, it was especially challenging to the leaders of ‘wild capitalism’, namely the UK and the US, whose public healthcare systems were unable to provide care for the majority of citizens. China’s authoritarian state capitalist model could not be praised either and was rather blamed for the damage done. Müderriso˘glu (2020b), also contributing to Sabah, offers similar argumentation. He suggests that the era of states perceiving every issue in terms of markets has gone. However, the pandemic also demonstrated that the idea of international solidarity was just a dream in times of crisis. The value of local and national (yerli ve milli) production has become clear, and the importance of national unity is no longer just a slogan, it is the reality. Müderriso˘glu describes the pandemic as a global crisis that Turkey tackled relying on its national strength. It brought to light the crucial importance of family values as the core of Turkey’s existence, and it showed how important it is to foster healthy parent–child relationships and public endorsement of good connections with neighbors and relatives. The idea that the pandemic calls into question the very foundations of capitalist society is also present in Öztürk’s (2020) column, published in the fiercely proErdo˘gan Yeni S¸ afak newspaper. According to Öztürk, the virus challenged forms of production and consumption, even the nature of ownership in terms of production.

158

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

Accordingly, it called into question the globalization process and showed that the fight against the virus was the domain of nation states. In his view, the outcome of the pandemic that has ravaged the globe will be a brand-new world and, it is to be hoped, a more humane world. Evaluations regarding the consequences of the pandemic are strikingly similar at the opposite end of the Turkish political spectrum. In the view of Kozano˘glu (2020), writing for the leftist BirGün newspaper, the pandemic severely questioned the idea of a market society once crystallized in Margaret Thatcher’s dictum, ‘there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals’. The crisis was undoubtedly changing hierarchies in the division of labor, increasing demands for the more egalitarian distribution of national wealth, and calling into question currently dominant ideologies. In support of his argument, Kozano˘glu recalls what happened after the Second World War, the previous global crisis. Women were brought into the workforce en masse, labor unions became highly consequential social forces, and the living standards of the working masses increased significantly. However, this was followed in the 1980s by the neoliberal doctrine. The resurgence of classic leftist values such as collective labor rights, solidarity, equality, and democratic planning is likely after the pandemic. However, he concludes, the pandemic is also very likely to provoke governmental attempts to strengthen control over citizens. Governments will probably be inclined to keep the surveillance technology and practices implemented during the pandemic at their disposal after the crisis. If so, citizens need vigorously to protect their democratic rights, especially in not allowing civil-society organizations to be weakened. The secular-liberal narratives also emphasize how the pandemic will affect the entire international system. However, Bacık (2020) also advises his readers to look at the issue in terms of how it could strengthen the secular drive in the Islamic world. Covid-19 struck when young people, in particular, were becoming frustrated with political Islam in their home countries. In Bacık’s view, the array of medical professionals on TV all day long explaining the virus and the action required from governments, combined with discourse emphasizing that it was now necessary to take all ‘actions required by science’ that was spreading from the public sphere to private lives, had started to affect people’s behavior and ways of life. Duran (2020), writing for the Sabah newspaper, considers the pandemic from the perspective of international relations, specifically in terms of great power competition and the propaganda efforts of the major actors. The first Covid-related narratives were about the kind of regimes that were best prepared to tackle the virus, and the internal organizational procedures and healthcare systems that were most effective in handling an enduring crisis. On the international level, China was first accused of spreading the virus and concealing vital data, the behavior described as an expected consequence of its authoritarian and non-transparent governance. However, as the virus spread all over the world and several European countries faced serious problems in tackling the epidemic, China managed to portray itself as a compassionate and responsible global actor, sending medical supplies and doctors to help other countries in trouble. According to Duran, the pandemic thus became another expression of the power struggle over and the race for global leadership between the US and China: it

7.2 The Pandemic and Turkish Visions of the Post-Pandemic World

159

seemed to strengthen the mechanism set in motion during the 2008 financial crisis, whereby the US was noticeably losing its position as leader of the world. Doster (2020a), writing for the secular-nationalist Cumhuriyet, interprets Turkey’s response to the pandemic from the perspective of the Republican progressive modernization ideal. The early (Kemalist) republican regime had tried hard to establish a domestic educational, scientific, and industrial infrastructure, that would soon support the production of vaccines against infectious diseases, for example. He complains about the AKP’s Islamic-conservative ideologues who constantly accuse the Kemalist regime of representing a ‘commercial break’, a ‘parenthesis’, the ‘era of repression’, of ‘generating a trauma’, and who insults the Republic in saying it was founded by two drunkards (referring to Atatürk and ˙Inönü). Doster also suggests that the Covid pandemic will change many aspects of international relations, although not necessarily immediately: ‘Obviously, capitalism will not die overnight. Certainly, the whole world is not going to turn to the left instantly. However, those engaging in the glorification of the US and NATO, and those who have declared Cuba a failed state, are now shocked.’ He goes on to accuse all Turkish mainstream parties of abandoning the defense of the orthodox nation-state paradigm and its accompanying welfare-state ideal, and of instead engaging in discourse legitimizing the neoliberal regime and the triumph of globalization. He moves on from this position in his next column (Doster 2020b), discussing the pandemic from the perspective of social and economic inequality. Indeed, this theme also started to appear in Western media when it became obvious that the social-distancing practices deemed necessary to slow down the spread of the infection were much easier for representatives of intellectual professions to follow than for manual laborers and the underclasses. According to Doster, the pandemic has had very much to do with social class. Indeed, celebrities, directors, and leading politicians have been among the infected and have been treated, but the poor do not receive equal treatment. Kohen (2020), writing for the Milliyet newspaper, wonders if the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to soften interstate relations, or if is it more likely to aggravate existing animosities. At first glance, it would be reasonable to assume that as a global threat it would induce countries to focus on solidary and cooperation. The United Nations and several civil-society organizations have also called for this kind of international coordinated action. The explicit expectation in such calls is that the global crisis will trigger the first steps of new, better, and fairer world order. Unfortunately, as Kohen observes, this seems not to be the case, the reality rather being defined by a strained atmosphere. Some countries have sent medical supplies and required healthcare equipment to other states, but behind these ‘humane acts’ is continuing international rivalry over economic gains, power, and prestige, in short, the traditional anarchical structure poised to produce conflict. In terms of the long-term economic and political consequences, analysts in the government-funded SETA Türkiye think tank expect significant changes. The pandemic has led to acute shortages in many fields of production, and it is thus likely that international firms will devise altogether new investment and production strategies. This could mean that factories currently established in China and other parts of Southeast Asia will be relocated to other regions of the globe. On the other hand,

160

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

Western companies may now be more willing to bring their manufacturing processes back to their home countries, where the need to keep production costs and salaries as low as possible could spark a much more determined attempt to maximize the use of robotics. In other sectors, practices adopted during the pandemic, such as flexible hours and remote working, are likely to become permanent features (Ye¸silta¸s et al., 2020). The pandemic is also likely to have significant effects on the existing international system. According to SETA analysts, the system comprises three major dynamic forces, namely actors (states), international institutions, and international regimes. In the positive scenario, the pandemic would have been under control by the end of 2020, in which case, the existing mechanisms connecting actors, institutions and regimes would have continued in more or less the same way. However, should it continue to spread among populations for a longer time, it will seriously call into question the current international order and further challenge the already weakened American global leadership. In that scenario, China and other emerging powers will probably be even more determined than now to remake the global system. All this would considerably change existing manifestations of globalization, supply chains in particular. Regarding possible immediate consequences in the Middle East, SETA analysts list strained state finances due to plummeting oil prices during the pandemic, as well as the overall economic and political challenges it caused, such that many of the region’s nations are already on the verge of becoming ‘failed states’ (Ye¸silta¸s et al., 2020). Erandaç (2020a), an analyst in the pro-government Stratejik Dü¸sünce Enstitüsü think tank, refers to the Covid-19 pandemic as the most serious global threat since the Second World War. It is generally understood the world will not be the same again, and that the international system with its existing structure, balance of power, and economic and political dimensions will be transformed. Most significantly, the existing world order is characterized by a structure in which those on one side live a life of luxury and wealth while those on the other live in poverty, need and ignorance cannot prevail. The last two centuries have been dominated by Western nations that occupied other countries, endlessly chasing profits, perpetrating massacres, and engaging in self-deceit through narratives of democracy. These were, ultimately, the acts of Western civilization. Now it is crushed because of the virus. Having expressed these views, Erandaç takes up an odd mixture of themes, from anti-Semitic outbursts to warnings that highly developed bioelectronic technologies are utilized to control all the actions of individuals. He suggests that Western countries will try to rebuild their hegemony after the pandemic, which he believes must be stopped, and a new world order must be founded on more humane and fair principles. He quotes President Erdo˘gan’s famous slogan ‘the world is bigger than five’—a criticism of the permanent members of the UN Security Council—and stresses how Turkey under Erdo˘gan’s leadership was emerging from the crisis as the dominant power of the Islamic civilization, now ready to put an end to the highly unequal and oppressive order representing Western civilization (Erandaç, 2020a). Turkey is also among the actors who strongly emphasized the country’s own capabilities of dealing with the pandemic on its own terms. President Erdo˘gan crystallized

7.2 The Pandemic and Turkish Visions of the Post-Pandemic World

161

this self-assured position in the slogan Biz bize yeteriz, roughly translated as ‘we’re enough for ourselves’. Erandaç (2020b) points out the deeply meaningful history of this slogan: it reminds the Turks of their successful defense struggle in the First World War and in the subsequent War of Independence (1919–1922) when they abandoned the foreign mandate and trusted solely in their own capabilities. This same spirit is needed now to fight the virus. In making a historical reference to the War of Independence, during which Western powers tried to implement the partition of Ottoman Anatolia and divide its territories, Erandaç manages to turn his article about Covid-19 into an attack on Western civilization. He sees the pandemic as the starting point for post-Western world order. The existing order was characterized by the illegal occupation of other countries by the US, and its attempts to change regimes violently wherever it wanted to. However, Covid-19 has now made the US and Europe ‘naked kings’. For instance, France which once established its violent repressive rule over Africa is now doomed; Italy, a key member of the European Union, received the urgent help it needed not from other European countries but from Russia and China; Bulgarians shouted that they only received help from Turkey and China. All this once again proves the accuracy of President Erdo˘gan’s motto, ‘The world is bigger than five’, and thus demonstrates the immediate requirement to replace existing power structures in the international system. Regarding Turkey’s own position, Erandaç emphasizes its willingness to help others, praising President Erdo˘gan’s long-term strategy to boost ‘domestic and national’ (yerli ve milli) production volumes. Now, he concludes, this strategy has proved vital for Turkey’s success. The idea of the pandemic as historical purgatory of a kind, after which a new world order will emerge, which Erandaç elaborates to some extent, is explicit in Yusuf Kaplan’s work. Writing for the feverishly pro-Erdo˘gan Yeni S¸ afak newspaper, Kaplan (2020) argues that of all humans, Muslims are best equipped to endure crisis of all kinds because they are used to a life of constant balancing between good and bad. Muslims know that there is something good in every bad thing, and vice versa. The pandemic resulted in global lockdown, and the scene was dystopian. However, the world was a hell hole before the virus, turned into a living hell by the global capitalist system dominated by the West. Many of Kaplan’s views are extreme, and his narration is notorious for spreading conspiracy theories and hatred. Nevertheless, his extremism and outrageous claims should not prevent one from acknowledging that some of the threats, hopes, and expectations inherent in his writing are shared among a large segment of the ruling Islamic-conservative block. One key theme is the profound conviction that the current world order is deeply illegitimate. The Islamic civilization is both suppressed and in a state of humiliation. It needs to find unity, ideological resurrection, and then in one form or another become a leading civilizational force in the world, or at least among Muslim-majority societies. At first glance, such an evaluation seems astonishing in seemingly bringing the attitudes of Turkish AKP constituencies in close alignment with the views espoused by hardcore Islamist groups such as alQaeda. Such an interpretation would be rather radical in itself, however, as there is a widely held conception that the AKP represents the moderate and pragmatic

162

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

re-invention of a form of religion-oriented politics that even in its original version was moderate political Islam of the Milli Görü¸s movement. Using terms such as ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’, and any talk aiming to place specific thoughts or actions in a hierarchy of intensity, violence, or any such characterization, is perhaps not the most useful approach here. The point is to recognize the deeply ingrained tradition of thinking of the world in terms of religion-centered civilizations, and of utilizing such a conviction in political action and as a reservoir of building blocks for utopian discourse. Desiring a better world—one that differs in some essential way from the existing one—is best understood as a permanent human condition. The overall Islamic-conservative ideology within the AKP provides its supporters and leadership alike with concepts and interpretations whereby the crisis produced by the pandemic is looked upon as an opportunity to fulfill fundamental cross-generational hopes, which in this case are closely attached to the idea of Islamic civilization. Thus, although radical and often inconceivable, Yusuf Kaplan’s interpretation of the pandemic as purgatory of a kind aimed at cleaning the world of the sickness caused by Western dominance stems from this widely shared common Islamist repertoire of fears and hopes. It is from these premises, which constitute the ideological background of President Erdo˘gan’s ‘New Turkey’, that ˙Ibrahim Karagül also interpreted the pandemic as universal confirmation of Turkey’s wise strategy emphasizing ‘national and local’ solutions. It also explains the celebratory tone of Karagül’s account of the ‘shattering image’ of the US and the European Union. He exclaims in triumph, ‘The Western or Atlantic world order exists no more!’. Thus, he concludes, new world order is being erected, one in which states prioritize national production and, in particular, make sure that all strategic items and goods are produced domestically. This ‘new world arising’ is characterized by the strengthening demand for economic autarky and the persistent questioning of the ‘Western way of life’. In Karagül’s words, it is now futile to ask whether the world is about to change as ‘it has already changed’ (Karagül, 2020). Uzgel (2020), who contributes to Gazete Duvar, one of the leading independent news sites in Turkey, directly contradicts Yusuf Kaplan’s Islamist narrative in his own analysis. He also refers to the Covid-19 pandemic as the biggest crisis since the Second World War, mainly because it is truly global and affects an enormous range of issues from the micro to the macro level, from the availability of macaroni at the local grocery store to global geopolitics. It has forced all interested parties to analyze with a critical eye what it means to the existing global order, defined by Anglo-American scholars in particular as the ‘liberal international order’ (liberal uluslararası düzen). It emerged around the beginning of the 1990s, and its main tenets were political liberalism, economic neoliberalism, and both ideological and cultural relativism. According to Uzgel, the fact that individual states responded mainly on the national level to a crisis that was profoundly global, and that they thus failed to employ the global governance methods deemed essential in all predictions of globalization theories, demonstrates that history took a different turn than was expected. Moreover, the states and the common mechanisms they had created to

7.2 The Pandemic and Turkish Visions of the Post-Pandemic World

163

address such a crisis had failed, thus the pandemic fostered competition and mutual blaming instead of the effective cooperation that was urgently needed. It is noteworthy that Uzgel explicitly refers to the liberal international order, and even translates this into Turkish as liberal uluslararası düzen, simultaneously pointing out that it emerged at the beginning of 1990. Using the Turkish translation instead of YDD as Yeni Dünya Düzeni (The New World Order) really strays from the text as it is so rare in Turkish narratives. Uzgel uses it here specifically to give his readers an analytical view of how the Western world has been accustomed to characterizing global governance since the 1990s. Özkan (2020b), Assistant Professor of International Relations at Marmara University in Istanbul, also continues the debate about state-centric reactions to what was an essentially global phenomenon. After observing that globalization was now being obstructed by the imposition of walls and restrictions, three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Özkan points out that borders have been an essential aspect of political life. Liberal discourse expressed anxiety regarding the rise of nationalism and newly built barriers to trade. However, borders and demarcation lines also exist within states, not only between them. The attempt to restrict and control the free movement of ideas and people was a noteworthy aspiration among several organizations and groups, from specific ‘security zones’ to criminal gangs, from religious congregations to private companies, all of which introduced practices of inclusion and exclusion. Full control of circulation is impossible, however. Özkan refers to Francis Fukuyama, who once predicted that history had ended in the sense that democracy and capitalism had become the only game in town, and called for social democracy and the Nordic-style welfare state as a future model to follow globally. The future, Özkan concludes, is not about a cosmopolitan state encompassing the globe. Instead, nation states and borders will be significant in the organization of political life, but such borders should be flexible and facilitate further global cooperation. Cooperation is inevitable, as no wall is high enough to save the world from climate change, pandemics, and the turmoil caused by the highly uneven distribution of wealth. In sum, it is clear that almost all Turkish foreign-policy narratives share a fundamental conviction beneath the heated struggle among various ideological groups over the meaning of national history and values. According to such a narrative, the existing order, defined by Western liberals as LIO, needs to change profoundly, and the pandemic is a major driver of change, transforming the current status quo. The tone in the Islamic-conservative narratives is often celebratory, thereby emphasizing the recalcitrant Islamist narrative of overcoming the alleged alienation caused by the need to emulate the West at the expense of authentic Islamic civilizations. The secular-nationalist and left-liberal narratives are also highly critical of the LIO, emphasizing, in particular, its problematic effects, especially in the global south, in other words, the non-Western world. The pandemic is thus also perceived in these narratives as an indication that a profound change is—or at least should be coming. Notably, pro-government publications seem to convey quite a different message when they address Western audiences through their English versions. O˘guzlu (2020), writing in Daily Sabah, provides a typical example. According to him, Western powers should understand that while Turkey is emerging as a powerful regional actor

164

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

keen to see a re-distribution of capabilities and its values and interests better secured in global politics, its alleged challenge to the current international order should be seen as a challenge from within the Western block. In his words: ‘Similar to many traditional middle powers, Turkey does not challenge the fundamental norms and values of the current international order built by Western powers in the immediate aftermath of World War II.’ All these themes recur in President Erdo˘gan’s own speeches made since the outbreak of the pandemic. The global crisis emphasizes even more strongly Turkey’s ability and willingness to take a much more active role in global politics. This new activism is strongly related to its role as a successor state of the Ottoman Empire. Erdo˘gan’s statement after a cabinet session on 14 July 2020 is a typical example: On every platform, we will continue to repeat our outcry that the ‘world is bigger than five’ and in dire need of a more just order. We strongly believe this trait characterizing Turkey is a responsibility bestowed on our nation by history. Our ancestors fulfilled their duties in past centuries, and we will continue to do so until our last breath (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı, 2020).

This statement reveals Erdo˘gan’s deeply felt conviction that Turkey under his presidency is destined to become a global power that will help to establish, as he defines it, a more just world order. It is worth pointing out that controversial policies ranging from the occupation of northern Syria and further intervention in Iraqi territories, intervention in Libya, playing the ‘spoiler’ in East Mediterranean multinational gas exploration, and the endless quarrel with Western NATO allies and the EU, to the difficult relationship of conflict and cooperation with states such as Russia and China, should all be considered within this framework of ‘global actorness’. If there is one underlying theme in these narratives, it is the conviction that the existing (liberal international) order was dysfunctional and unjust before the pandemic and has become increasingly so after it. In addition, recent initiatives such as turning the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque, and withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention against domestic violence, could be interpreted, at least to some extent, as moves to challenge or deny the legitimacy of the current international order. The Covid-19 foreign-policy narratives analyzed here point to three major conclusions. First, Turkish narratives about the international order for the post-pandemic world repeatedly underscore the profoundly problematic nature of the so-called liberal international order, which is constantly accused of oppressing non-Western countries. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the problems, even for populations in the leading Western states. Second, it is claimed that the remedy lies in opening up some of the key institutional arrangements of power distribution, such as the UN Security Council, and bringing in values and norms represented by Turkey as the allegedly leading country of the Islamic civilization. Third, the almost celebratory tone depicting the crushing of the Western world and its accompanying order is significantly softened by diplomatic gestures, Turkey’s firm commitment to NATO and the EU, and emphasizing Turkey’s rise within, rather than against, the Western world. Previous studies have made a rough distinction between revisionism regarding both the distribution of resources (influence, wealth, markets, ideology, and power)

7.2 The Pandemic and Turkish Visions of the Post-Pandemic World

165

and the norms and rules that help to constitute the status quo in the international order. This implies the need to choose one of these two meanings, which is unhelpful. According to Ward (2017, p. 1–2), one way of alleviating this would be to conceptualize the status quo, at any particular time and place, as consisting of both the distribution of resources and a set of norms, rules, and institutions that produce order by constituting actors with different statuses and bundles of rights, providing the basis for legitimate action in international politics. Nevertheless, Ward (2017, pp. 16–17) points out that distributive and normative dissatisfaction are analytically distinct, and they result in different behaviors by the revisionist state. Ambitions for an enhanced status might lead to demands for the reform of international institutions to accommodate claims for a stronger voice of the state in global governance, for instance. According to Ward, this should not be confused with evidence of fundamental opposition to the norms, rules, and institutions that produce the existing order. The first option (distributive dissatisfaction) could, in fact, signal the acceptance and even confirmation of existing norms and values. On the other hand, normative dissatisfaction runs deeper and pushes for policies that deny rather than marginal reforms under existing institutions, and that challenge the legitimacy of or aim at overthrowing the norms, rules, and institutions that constitute the status quo. This kind of radical normative revisionism may drive states to take courses of action such as attempting to destroy the existing order altogether and refusing to participate in or withdraw from status-quo institutions. What, then, could be said about Turkey’s revisionism regarding its increasing dissatisfaction with the existing international order? There are obviously elements of deep, normative dissatisfaction in the foreign-policy narratives analyzed. At the same time, there are constant claims—as well as institutional attachments—signaling that Turkey represents distributive revisionism, willing most of all to re-negotiate the distribution of wealth and status within the existing order. Two mechanisms largely explain the double signaling. First, accusations of Western brutality help to remake Turkey’s role within the existing order in underscoring its acute need to better accommodate non-Western actors participating in upholding the existing order. Second, it reflects the internal contradictions of Turkey’s strategic culture within which the West is a security provider yet at the same time a cultural-civilizational challenge, if not an outright threat. Finally, this latter aspect relates directly to the somewhat problematic tendency in Western IR scholarship to conceptualize assertive non-Western actors as revisionists in a narrative that typically associates order and the status quo with the leading Western states (Turner & Nymalm, 2019, p. 409). It is safe to say that, while Turkey remains loosely attached to its commitment to defending the existing order, it increasingly expresses its dissatisfaction within that order, sometimes pushing it to the limits, taking action that could even be defined as normative, or radical, revisionism.

166

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

References Akkoc, R., & Oliphant, R. (2015). Russia kills US-backed Syrian rebels in second day of air strikes as Iran prepares for ground offensive. The Telegraph. Akyol, T. (2020). Putin ‘dost’ mu? Karar. https://www.karar.com/putin-dost-mu-1547310 Alkin, K. (2020). Korona: Kapitalizmin ’en a˘gır’ sınavı. Sabah. https://www.sabah.com.tr/yazarlar/ kerem-alkin/2020/03/23/baslarken-turkiye-icin-sorumluluklarimiz Ayyub, R. (2020). Social distancing is a privilege: Pandemic highlights India’s class divide as 1.3 billion lock down. Democracy Now!. https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/2/rana_ayyub_i ndia_coronavirus Bacık, G. (2020). Korona sonrası ˙Islam dünyası: Dip seküler dalga güçlenecek. Ahvalnews. https:// ahvalnews.com/tr/koronavirus/korona-sonrasi-islam-dunyasi-dip-sekuler-dalga-guclenecek Balbay, M. (2020). Hem ABD hem Rusya! Cumhuriyet. https://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/ mustafa-balbay/hem-abd-hem-rusya-1726366 Bayley, G. (2015). Who are the moderate opposition in Syria? Huffington Post. https://www.huffin gtonpost.co.uk/gareth-bayley/syria-crisis-opposition_b_8358910.html?guccounter=1 Brynjar, L. (2016). The Islamist uprising in Syria, 1976–82: The history and legacy of a failed revolt. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2016.1139442 Bulut, A. (2020). Türkiye ˙Idlib’de kim adına sava¸sacak? Yeniça˘g. Bursalı, O. (2020). Suriye - ˙Idlib: Atatürk’ü a¸sma ve ‘Yeni Türkiye’ ile ili¸skisi. Cumhuriyet. https://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/orhan-bursali/suriye-idlib-ataturku-asmave-yeni-turkiye-ile-iliskisi-1721103 ˙ skileri ve Suriye-Türkiye Krizi. TÜBITAK ˙ Ça˘glar, M. T. (2014). 2011 Sonrası Türkiye-Suriye Ili¸ 1001 Projesi Proje No. 112K172. Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararası ˙Ili¸skiler Doktora Programı. Daher, J. (2019). Pluralism lost in Syria’s uprising: How the opposition strayed from its inclusive roots. The Century Foundation. https://tcf.org/content/report/pluralism-lost-syrias-uprising/?agr eed=1 Doster, B. (2020a). Koronavirüs salgını ve alınacak dersler. Cumhuriyet. https://www.cumhuriyet. com.tr/yazarlar/baris-doster/koronavirus-salgini-ve-alinacak-dersler-1729295 Doster, B. (2020b). Salgın hastalık ve sınıfsal gerçeklik. Cumhuriyet. https://www.cumhuriyet.com. tr/yazarlar/baris-doster/salgin-hastalik-ve-sinifsal-gerceklik-1729906 Duran, B. (2020). Koronavirüs ve ideolojik kapı¸sma. Sabah, 20.3.2020. https://www.sabah.com.tr/ yazarlar/duran/2020/03/20/koronavirus-ve-ideolojik-kapisma Erandaç, B. (2020a). Quo Vadis Dünya. Stratejik Dü¸sünce Enstitüsü. https://www.sde.org.tr/bulenterandac/genel/quo-vadis-dunya-kose-yazisi-16530 Erandaç, B. (2020b). Biz bize yeteriz. A Haber. https://www.ahaber.com.tr/yazarlar/bulent-erandac/ 2020/04/01/biz-bize-yeteriz Erdo˘gan, E. (2020). The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on polarization in Turkey. The German Marshall Fund of the United States. http://www.gmfus.org/publications/impact-coronavirus-pan demic-polarization-turkey#utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social Erdo˘gan, R. T. (2021). The west should help Turkey end Syria’s civil war. Bloomberg. https://www. bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-15/erdogan-the-west-should-help-turkey-end-syria-scivil-war Ergin, S. (2020). Heyet Tahrir E¸s Sam ¸ (HTS) ¸ Sorunu (4): Cihatçıların gidecek ba¸ska yeri kalmayınca. Hürriyet. https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/sedat-ergin/heyet-tahrir-es-sam-hts-sorunu-4-cih atcilarin-gidecek-baska-yeri-kalmayinca-41477134 Fischer, J. (2020). The politics of pandemic. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-syndicate.org/ commentary/european-union-covid19-politics-by-joschka-fischer-2020-04 Frisk, R. (2017). When did protest against the Assad government turn to war in Syria? Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-civil-war-rebellion-isis-assad-western-int ervention-arms-a7921526.html

References

167

Gurcan, M. (2020). Turkey’s geostrategic orientation at crossroads amid Idlib tangle. Al Monitor. https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/03/turkey-syria-russia-idlib-dealnato-orientation-crossroads.html Gurpinar, B. (2015). Turkey and the Muslim brotherhood: Crossing roads in Syria. Eurasian Journal of Social Sciences, 3(4), 22–36. Gürsoy, Y. (2020). Turkey is facing its own coronavirus crisis—So why is it sending medical supplies to the UK? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/turkey-is-facing-its-own-coronaviruscrisis-so-why-is-it-sending-medical-supplies-to-the-uk-136784 Hasan, M. (2019). Everyone is denouncing the Syrian rebels now slaughtering Kurds. But didn’t the U.S. once support some of them? The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2019/10/26/syrianrebels-turkey-kurds-accountability/?comments=1 Hassan, H. (2013). How the Muslim brotherhood Hijacked Syria’s revolution. Foreign Policy. https:// foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/13/how-the-muslim-brotherhood-hijacked-syrias-revolution/ Hubbard, B., Schmitt, E., & Mazzetti, M. (2014). U.S. Pins Hope on Syrian Rebels With Loyalties All Over the Map. The New York Times, September 11. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/ world/middleeast/us-pins-hope-on-syrian-rebels-with-loyalties-all-over-the-map.html. Kamradt-Scott, A. (2020). The politics of pandemic influenza preparedness. In C. McInnes, K. Lee, & J. Youde (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of global health politics. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190456818.001.0001/oxf ordhb-9780190456818-e-32?print=pdf Kaplan, Y. (2020). Yeni bir dünya kurulacak, burada ˙Islâm kilit rol oynayacak. Yeni S¸ afak. https://www.yenisafak.com/yazarlar/yusufkaplan/yeni-bir-dunya-kurulacak-burada-islmkilit-rol-oynayacak-2054750 Karagül, ˙I. (2020). Türkiye’nin hazırlık yaptı˘gı her s¸ey dünya gerçe˘gi oldu. Yeni S¸ afak. Kaya, Z., & Lowe, R. (2017). The curious question of the PYD–PKK relationship. In G. Stansfield & M. Shareef (Eds.), The Kurdish question revisited (pp. 275–287). Hurst. Kohen, S. (2020). Korona dı¸s ili¸skileri nasıl etkileyecek? Milliyet. https://www.milliyet.com.tr/yaz arlar/sami-kohen/korona-dis-iliskileri-nasil-etkileyecek-6175035 Kozano˘glu, H. (2020). Bizi salgın sonrası nasıl bir dünya bekliyor? BirGün. https://www.birgun. net/haber/bizi-salgin-sonrasi-nasil-bir-dunya-bekliyor-292987 Landis, J. (2012). Car bombs rip apart Saadallah al-Jabiri square in Aleppo. Syria Comment. https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/car-bombs-ripe-apart-saadallah-square-in-aleppo/ Lund, A. (2012). Syrian Jihadism. UI Brief No. 13, September 14. Swedish Institute of International Affairs. Mahmood, M., & Black, I. (2013). Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat alNusra. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/08/free-syrian-army-reb els-defect-islamist-group Milanovic, B. (2020). The world after corona. Global Inequality Blog. https://glineq.blogspot.com/ 2020/03/the-world-after-corona.html Milliyet. (2011). Ba¸sbakan Erdo˘gan: Devlette yeni bir yapılanmaya gidiyoruz. https://www.mil liyet.com.tr/siyaset/basbakan-erdogan-devlette-yeni-bir-yapilanmaya-gidiyoruz-1388299 Müderriso˘glu, O. (2020a). Türkiye-ABD-Rusya durum raporu. Sabah. https://www.sabah.com.tr/ yazarlar/muderrisoglu/2020/02/14/turkiye-abd-rusya-durum-raporu Müderriso˘glu, O. (2020b). Küresel salgın: Türkiye’nin farkı ve ailenin de˘geri. Sabah. https:// www.sabah.com.tr/yazarlar/muderrisoglu/2020/03/24/kuresel-salgin-turkiyenin-farki-ve-ail enin-degeri Norfolk, A. (2021). Qatar funnelled millions of dollars to Nusra Front terrorists in Syria. The Times. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/qatar-funnelled-millions-of-dollars-to-nusra-front-ter rorists-in-syria-x5rnbsr3l O˘guzlu, T. (2020). The West should understand that Turkey is different from other rising powers. Daily Sabah. https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/the-west-should-understandthat-turkey-is-different-from-other-rising-powers

168

7 Narratives of the Syrian War and the Pandemic

Özkan, B. (2020a). A thriller-like Syria and Muslim brotherhood story. Yetkin Report. https://yet kinreport.com/en/2020/03/02/a-thriller-like-syria-and-muslim-brotherhood-story/ Özkan, B. (2020b). Küreselle¸sme ve korona: co˘grafyanın sonu mu? Yetkin Report. https://yetkinrep ort.com/2020/04/07/kuresellesme-ve-korona-cografyanin-sonu-mu/ ˙ Özkıcılzık, Ö. (2020). Idlib’de Ate¸skes Sonrası Yol Haritası. SETA Analiz Sayı 314. Siyaset, Ekonomi ve Toplum Ara¸stırmalar Vakfı. Öztürk, H. (2020). Koronavirüs üzerinden yeni bir dünya kurulacaksa. Yeni S¸ afak. https://www.yen isafak.com/yazarlar/hasan-ozturk/koronavirus-uzerinden-yeni-bir-dunya-kurulacaksa-2054575 Phillips, C. (2016). The battle for Syria: International rivalry in the new Middle East. Yale University Press. Rhodes, B. (2020). The 9/11 era is over. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/ 2020/04/its-not-september-12-anymore/609502/ Rodrik, D. (2020). Will covid-19 remake the world? Project Syndicate. https://www.project-syn dicate.org/commentary/will-covid19-remake-the-world-by-dani-rodrik-2020-04?barrier=access paylog Simons, G. (2020). Syria: Propaganda as a tool in the arsenal on information warfare. In P. Baines, N. O’Shaughnessy, & N. Snow (Eds.), The Sage handbook of propaganda (pp. 441–460). Sage. Slattery, G. (2012). The gangs of Syria. Harvard Political Review. http://harvardpolitics.com/world/ the-gangs-of-syria/ Sly, L. (2011). Syria says protesters killed 120 soldiers. The Washington Post. https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/syria-claims-security-forces-killed-by-protesters/2011/06/06/AGJ uYNKH_story.html Steinberg, G. (2016). Ahrar al-Sham: the Syrian Taliban—Al-Nusra ally seeks partnership with West. SWP Comments 27, Stiftung Wissenchaft und Politik. https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/pub lication/ahrar-al-sham-the-syrian-taliban/ Ta¸stekin, F. (2015). The future of Turkey’s Syria policy. Al Monitor. https://www.al-monitor.com/ pulse/originals/2015/06/turkey-qatar-syria-saudi-arabia-remain-alone-in-syria.html#ixzz3zfSc IHdO Ta¸stekin, F. (2020). Halep’in co¸skusu ˙Idlib’e ne söylüyor? Gazete Duvar. https://www.gazeteduvar. com.tr/yazarlar/2020/02/20/halepin-coskusu-idlibe-ne-soyluyor/ Tisdall, S. (2020). Power, equality, nationalism: How the pandemic will reshape the world. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/power-equality-nationalismhow-the-pandemic-will-reshape-the-world Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı. (2016). Türkiye’nin Yeni Güvenlik Konsepti Konferansinda Yaptıkları Konu¸sma (22.11.2016). https://www.tccb.gov.tr/konusmalar/353/61114/turkiy enin-yeni-guvenlik-konsepti-konferansinda-yaptiklari-konusma Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı. (2019). AK Parti Grup Toplantısı’nda Yaptıkları Konu¸sma (30.10.2019). https://www.tccb.gov.tr/konusmalar/353/112501/ak-parti-grup-toplantis inda-yaptiklari-konusma Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurba¸skanlı˘gı. (2020). Kabine Toplantısının Ardından Yaptıkları Konu¸sma (14.7.2020). https://www.tccb.gov.tr/konusmalar/353/120644/kabine-toplantisinin-ard indan-yaptiklari-konusma Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı. (2013). Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanı Sayın Ahmet Davuto˘glu’nun Diyarbakır Dicle Üniversitesinde Verdi˘gi ‘Büyük Restorasyon: Kadim’den Küreselle¸smeye Yeni Siyaset Anlayı¸sımız’ Konulu Konferans, 15 Mart 2013, Diyarbakır. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/ disisleri-bakani-ahmet-davutoglu_nun-diyarbakir-dicle-universitesinde-verdigi-_buyuk-restor asyon_-kadim_den-kuresellesmeye-yeni.tr.mfa Turner, O., & Nymalm, N. (2019). Morality and progress: IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32(4), 407–428. Uslu, E. (2016). Jihadist highway to Jihadist heaven: Turkey’s Jihadi policies and western security. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 39(9), 781–802. Uzgel, ˙I. (2020). Bir jeopolitik aktör olarak virüs. Gazete Duvar. https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/ yazarlar/2020/03/25/bir-jeopolitik-aktor-olarak-virus/

References

169

Van Dam, N. (2017). Destroying a nation: The civil war in Syria. I. B. Tauris. Ward, S. (2017). Status and the challenge of rising powers. Cambridge University Press. Warrick, J. (2021). Red line: The Unraveling of Syria and America’s race to destroy the most dangerous arsenal in the world. Doubleday. Wimmen, H. (2017). The US joins the Turkey-PKK fight in northern Syria. Middle East Eye. https:// www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-joins-turkey-pkk-fight-northern-syria World Health Organization. (2007). Pandemic influenza risk management. WHO/WHE/IHM/GIP/2017.1. World Health Organization. World Health Organization. (2020). Q &A: Similarities and differences—COVID-19 and influenza. https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-similarities-and-differences-covid-19and-influenza Ye¸silta¸s, M., Gür, N., & Acun, C. (2020). 5 Soru: Koronavirüs Salgını Küresel Sistemi Nasıl Etkileyecek? Siyaset, Ekonomi ve Toplum Ara¸stırmalar Vakfı (SETA). https://www.setav.org/5soru-koronavirus-salgini-kuresel-sistemi-nasil-etkileyecek/ Yetkin, M. (2020a). Münih manevrası: Rusya’dan ABD’ye dönen Suriye rüzgârı. Yetkin Report. https://yetkinreport.com/2020/02/16/munih-manevrasi-rusyadan-abdye-donen-suriye-ruzgari/ Yetkin, M. (2020b). ‘Batısızlık: Batının yeni Küresel riski ve Türkiye. Yetkin Report. https://yetkin report.com/2020/02/13/batisizlik-batinin-yeni-kuresel-riski-ve-turkiye/

Chapter 8

Conclusion

Stories focusing on Turkey’s place in the world, and on its actual and ideal responses to opportunities, challenges, and threats in the international arena, seem to take place first and foremost in the context of the ongoing transformation of relative power in the international state system. The current stage—the ascendency of China and the relative weakening of the West—hypothetically at least has the potential to cause a true paradigm shift in Turkey. For the first time since the beginning of the nineteenth century, a master narrative depicting Turkey as implementing its defensive modernization project with secular and religious forms of nationalism competing with each other in the face of Western dominance is relativized, and its hegemonic position as the (dualistic) articulation of Turkey’s place in the world is challenged. Providing the necessary context for the investigation of current narratives required the taking of a long view, detecting the various narrative layers and ideological traditions spanning the entire history of the Republican and even of the late Ottoman period. The approach taken in this study rests on the assumption that, in the main, Turkish foreign-policy narratives comprise four core aspects: first, they are produced in historical situations that are pre-narrated to some degree; second, they have their own traditions and intertextual networks, which could explain their relative power in the present even if in contradiction with the external phenomena; third, when conceptualized as such, major changes in global power relations facilitate radical reformulation in foreign-policy narratives and the abandonment of certain long-held convictions; and fourth, this tendency may well be undermined by the dominant strategic culture that defines the ‘absolute presuppositions’ of the state’s status and orientation in international politics. Together these mechanisms constitute structural idealism, accompanied by an understanding of individual narratives as micro-level constructions of macro-level processes in global politics. A strategic culture, understood here as comprising several subcultures, has been generated in Turkey as an interplay of external and domestic processes and narratives. According to the prevalent view of the country’s history over the past three decades, the Young Turk and Kemalist eras (1908–1950) were the sources of authoritarianism and anti-liberalism. I have challenged this view to present a more nuanced © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Alaranta, Turkey’s Foreign Policy Narratives, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92648-9_8

171

172

8 Conclusion

perspective on the interplay between the external and domestic factors generating the dominant subcultures of Turkey’s strategic culture. The liberal philosophy of history that animated both liberalism and the so-called Liberal International Order in several phases also animated early republican Kemalist state ideology. However, this general ideological assumption was accompanied by and compromised by the centralizing state, strong nationalism, and doubt about the intentions of the major Western powers. Secular, nationalist foreign-policy narratives have emphasized Turkey’s modernization as a European-originated emancipation project ever since the establishment of the Republic while rejecting all unipolar arrangements characterizing several phases of the American-led ordering of the international system. I believe that challenging the post-Kemalist paradigm was an appropriate analytical approach in this work to better grasp both the endurance and the transformation of Turkish strategic choices as observed in current foreign-policy narratives. As I have observed throughout this work, there has been a radical change in the official narrative of Turkey’s national history. The most salient aspect of this new standardized account concerns the nature of the Westernization and modernization projects implemented in the Ottoman Empire, and subsequently in the Republic of Turkey. These projects were deemed necessary and beneficial to Turkey before the AKP era, although the debate concerning the possible negative and corruptive aspects of Western methods and principles ran through several political streams, from left-wing Kemalism to center-right conservatism and Islamism. However, with some oversimplification, one could argue that only the Islamist movement clearly abandoned and rejected Westernization tendencies in their totality. Turkish foreign policy under the AKP has become an extension of its domestic mission. Narrating Turkey as the leading country of the Islamic civilization has become a prevalent theme in Turkish foreign policy, simultaneously with the construction of the ‘New Turkey’ that re-imagines the nation through the vocabulary of political Islam. This is inevitable if the party purports to produce an internally coherent political narrative because a recurrent attack on the domestic secularist and Westernizing constituency is ultimately credible only when backed by a pan-Islamist foreign policy. Claiming that the current international order is illegitimate and unjust and that all trouble in the Middle East, in particular, stems from the unacceptable dominance of Western powers in the region, has become commonplace in President Erdo˘gan’s vocabulary. Turkey’s current claim for leadership in the region differs in two significant senses from the Arab socialist narrative calling for a pan-Arab union against Western imperialism, which was prevalent during the 1960s. First, the call to unite the region against the West is based on the idea of Islamic unity and civilization, not on socialist anti-imperialism. Civilizations are conceptualized as actors in world politics, and the Islamic civilization and its values should play a much larger role in defining the normative basis of new post-Western world order. Second, Arab regimes could see the ascendancy of Turkey in the region as foreign infiltration because it is not in itself an Arab power. This mechanism obviously creates tension within the AKP’s foreign-policy narrative, and the negative reaction of the Arab regimes to Turkey’s occupation of Syrian territories is a telling example. In this context,

8 Conclusion

173

the AKP’s civilizational narrative is more of a domestic legitimation tool, used in particular to create a collective political actor. The need to reproduce a collective political identity also animates the secularnationalist foreign-policy narratives. One could argue that the anti-Western stance recently adopted by one section of the loosely defined Kemalist constituency is based on rather shallow foundations. The reasoning behind this claim is that proponents of such a vision are forced to support Atatürk’s anti-imperialist struggle to the very end, while at the same time ‘ideological gymnastics’ is required to refute the obvious fact that, in its drive for radical modernization—a program historically advocated by early European liberalism—Kemalism clearly set Turkey on the same historical orbit as the Western world. In this sense, one could justifiably argue that the contemporary, strongly anti-Western reading of Atatürk (ism) has only succeeded in extending the original tension between modernization and nationalism. In comparison, the Islamic-conservative version of anti-Westernism currently encouraged by the AKP seems, at first sight, to be built on firmer ground. There is no need to advance highly problematic readings in terms of one’s own ideological tradition given that Islamic-conservative ideology, which has its roots in the arguments of conservative-religious scholars opposing Ottoman reform movements, has been straightforwardly anti-Western ever since Necip Fazıl Kısakürek first formulated the republican-era version during the 1950s. Here the domestic and the external become attached to each other by ever-expanding chains, making it explicit that the foreign-policy formulations of the secularists and the Islamic conservatives, although both nationalist, are based on very different traditions in terms of understanding the external environment. There is also no doubt that as far as the secular constituency was concerned, Western-oriented foreign policy, although practically inevitable due to the significant external threat from Russian expansionism and communism, was not that difficult to match with the secular-national, Western-oriented attempt to build a new identity. On the other hand, Kısakürek and the Islamic-Conservative movement strongly inspired by him, have always perceived the modernization and Westernization reforms implemented since the last decade of the eighteenth century as something forced by the international system, a project demanding the eradication of the allegedly morally superior Islamic socio-political order allegedly upheld by the Ottomans. Nevertheless, at least in its mainstream version running from the early Islamic modernizers to present-day AKP, Islamic-conservative ideology has always advocated material and scientific progress. With a view to safeguarding traditions and alleged civilizational authenticity simultaneously, a distinction has been made between science and material progress as universal, and values and culture as particular. Given that life in its complexity can rarely be separated in such neat boxes, tension runs throughout Islamic-conservative ideology. Currently, as the global power shift has altered the agelong centrality of the West in Turkish social and political thinking—for the first time during the modern era—the tension features strongly in the foreign-policy narratives. The transformation, and in particular the way it

174

8 Conclusion

is conceptualized and narrated, has significantly relativized the traditional defensive modernization narrative, which is being replaced in Islamic-conservative narratives by a missionary and expansionist Islamic agenda that replicates the missionary characteristics of the Western Liberal International Order. As Turkey’s new, proactive foreign policy has increasingly turned into revisionism, analysts have highlighted how international interdependence would, eventually, force the country back to a cooperative, non-ideological foreign policy. The main argument in this line of reasoning has always been Turkey’s economic interdependence with the existing global order, thus highlighting the alleged fact that it cannot, in the long run, disregard its economic dependence on the Western world in general, and the EU in particular. Although there is much truth in these evaluations, they should not be taken to mean that interdependence necessarily leads a country like Turkey to abandon its revisionist foreign policy. Neither should one assume that measures increasing joint gains would be free of conflict, mainly because governments will strive to increase their shares of any gains from transactions, even if all sides profit enormously from the interdependent relationship. The domestic politics of foreign policy is at least as important as a mechanism through which to create a collective political actor and foster popular mobilization and support. The profoundly nationalist logic of the domestic power struggle requires identification narratives that tend to underscore the malevolence of historically hegemonic external powers, thus reproducing a constant imaginary adversary in both Islamic-conservative and secular-nationalist foreign-policy thinking. During the alleged heyday of the Liberal International Order at the beginning of the new millennium, the incumbent AKP utilized the widespread liberal notions of individual freedoms, rights, and civil society in its critique of Kemalism and the secular-nationalist version of Turkish identity. However, by 2010 this new approach had been transformed into increasingly harsh rhetoric against the Western-led international order and thus, at least implicitly, liberalism. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the Islamic-conservative narrative espoused by the AKP was premised from the very beginning on a civilizational approach that was uneasily related to the Western narratives of universal modernity inherent in the most dominant version of the LIO. The secular-nationalist narratives, on the other hand, have produced two versions of a shared Kemalist tradition during the last ten years, namely the (ulusalcı) neo-nationalist current attacking the West, and the social-democratic version envisioning Turkey’s traditional Western orientation as a meaningful path on which to counter the increasingly authoritarian system erected under President Erdo˘gan. In combination, the Turkish foreign-policy narratives create a shared story-world within which the international system in the age of globalization is depicted as problematic and in need of a thorough makeover. The highly nationalist undercurrent of this story-world should be perceived not as mere negative, narrow-minded particularistic neo-nationalism, but also as a domestic and widely shared longing for solidarity and a common purpose. In this sense, these narratives reflect and come to express some of the internal contradictions of liberal individualism in general, and of the Liberal International Order in particular. The revisionist thread running strongly through both the Islamic-conservative and the secular-nationalist Turkish

8 Conclusion

175

foreign-policy narratives is, at least in part, a tool for bringing these contradictions into the open, and further for making explicit the often implicit Western-centered power relations. Strong nationalism could be understood as a familiar yet changing narrative tradition with various competing versions that challenge the Western Liberal International Order and make the call for new bargaining. The ongoing global power shift and the relative weakening of the West have had a profound effect on Turkish foreign-policy narratives. The current version of the long-held basic assumption in Turkish strategic culture and the main narrative trope— defensive modernization—serve to express how the perceived power shift has come to transform the narratives. One influential version of the secular-nationalist narrative still builds on this familiar trope, yet it is increasingly questioning some long-held convictions such as that Atatürk’s modernization project was in some essential way a simultaneous Westernization project. On the other hand, Islamic-conservative narratives emphasizing Turkey’s new power have abandoned the defensive modernization trope to some extent, replacing it with a missionary approach in which Turkey emerges as an order-producing country. Analyzed through the prism of competing narratives of Turkish foreign policy, the Western Liberal International Order narrative seems to be thoroughly challenged. However, abandoning the idealized version and acknowledging that inherent in the empirical reality are several challenges and repeated renegotiations, make the overall scenery much less dramatic. Realist readings of the Western LIO are increasingly rejecting this idealized version, pointing to repeated instances of brute force, violence, and internal contradictions inflicted by the allegedly self-restraining American hegemon since 1945. These views do not imply that the order established after 1945 was devoid of liberal aspects, but they do pinpoint how such aspects were often compromised, and that the imperial nature of any ordering mechanisms, American ones included, inevitably sits uneasily with liberal ideals. One could argue that this factual, as opposed to idealistic, reading of the LIO is explicit in Turkish foreignpolicy narratives. Nevertheless, the call for a new order is largely a narrative on a generalized, abstract level. One can hardly find detailed and concrete proposals concerning how the new international system should be established, nor is there a coherent vision of how Turkey should cooperate with other major non-Western powers such as Russia and China to bring that new order into being. Set against the realist reading, the conceptualization of the LIO in the Turkish foreign-policy narratives as the (much more problematic) YDD (New World Order) seems less dramatic. Nevertheless, there are elements in both the Islamic-conservative and the secular-nationalist narratives that apparently express deep normative dissatisfaction with the existing international status quo. Such elements could be interpreted as part of the domestic power struggle in a country constantly fighting for a national identity and state legitimacy—a fight that from the outset has been deeply influenced by the penetration of the Western capitalist system into the Ottoman Empire, and subsequently, by Turkey’s uneasy adaptation to the modern state system. This encounter generated a collective search for a rescue plan and, ultimately, highly contradictory understandings of modernity and the ideal form of the modernization project. Underneath the common nationalist metanarrative, this struggle is more

176

8 Conclusion

explicit now than ever before. One could also argue that the current global shift further exacerbates this domestic struggle. One of the main rationales for writing this book was to paint a large ‘foreign-policy landscape’. The fragments that portray this landscape belong to narrative traditions that are constantly being reinterpreted in the face of changing international politics and domestic power struggles. The profound contestation over the national identity strongly influences the foreign-policy narratives, providing the general framework within which various foreign-policy issues are interpreted. These points of narrative contestation concern both domestic politics and the international order. The vast majority of the narratives analyzed in this book contest the Western LIO narrative, thus pointing to a strategic vision that is very different from the one held by major Western powers. To the extent that the ongoing global power shift is being characterized by an ever-more-frequent confrontation between the West and China, Turkey is doing its best to avoid taking sides.