Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IDandTFP (‘The world is bigger than five’: Identity, discourse, and the transformation of Turkey’s foreign policy since 2011 (IDandTFP))
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-09-01 al 2024-08-31
This project studies Turkey’s foreign policy transformation under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule between 2011 and 2022. From the mid-2000s onwards, once the AKP consolidated its dominance in Turkish politics, it initiated a process to transform Turkey’s established foreign policy orientation shaped by more than 80 years of secular republican nationalism. The AKP developed the ‘Zero Problems with Neighbours’ foreign policy in 2007, guided by the logic of increasing Turkey’s effectiveness, strength and activism in its neighbourhood and beyond and characterised by political dialogue, economic interdependence and cultural coexistence. However, the fast-paced developments in the Middle East, particularly connected to the conflicts unleashed by the Arab Spring protests, and the growing domestic opposition to the AKP’s conservatism and neoliberal economic policies have meant that the ‘zero problems with neighbours’ foreign policy was increasingly perceived as unrealistic and unachievable. The AKP responded by incorporating elements from Islamist discourse, particularly in its foreign policy towards Syria and Egypt. This move, however, did not generate the expected outcome that the AKP decision-makers hoped for, with the party losing its parliamentary majority at the general election on 7 June 2015. As a response, the AKP set in motion the process of reconstituting its political bloc around Turkish nationalism by forming alliances and incorporating the political demands associated with Turkish nationalists. Since 2015, the AKP has been constructing a foreign policy guided by the objective of transforming Turkey into a central power in the international system characterized by power politics and multipolarity, which has led to closer political and military cooperation between Turkey and Russia, increased Turkey’s military presence abroad, intensified the exploration of oil and gas in the Eastern Mediterranean outside Turkey’s territorial waters, has been portraying Turkey as the leader of the Muslim World, championing Palestinian rights, and calling for the reform of the international order.
The project’s main objective is to explain why and how the AKP governments succeeded at changing Turkey’s foreign policy reorientation in this period. It critically evaluates foreign policy's role in the AKP governments’ efforts to reinscribe a specific domestic order to extend its hegemony over Turkish politics. It studies the emergence and dominance of the AKP’s ‘National Foreign Policy in the “Century of Türkiye” since 2015, its re-articulation of Turkish identity, the AKP government’s instrumentalization of foreign policy in domestic politics and why the government’s foreign policy practice appeals to its religious-nationalist voter base.
The project’s main objective is to explain why and how the AKP governments succeeded at changing Turkey’s foreign policy reorientation in this period. It critically evaluates foreign policy's role in the AKP governments’ efforts to reinscribe a specific domestic order to extend its hegemony over Turkish politics. It studies the emergence and dominance of the AKP’s ‘National Foreign Policy in the “Century of Türkiye” since 2015, its re-articulation of Turkish identity, the AKP government’s instrumentalization of foreign policy in domestic politics and why the government’s foreign policy practice appeals to its religious-nationalist voter base.
I have completed all main research steps of literature reviews, primary data collection and analysis, and writing conference papers and article drafts. I reviewed two sets of literature: poststructuralist and discourse analytical literature on foreign policy and Turkish foreign policy under the AKP. My critical review of the existing literature has identified three main gaps. Firstly, the existing accounts do not explain instances of change characterised by a broad transformation of foreign policy. Secondly, they do not address why political actors construct specific conceptions of domestic social order in foreign policy discourses. Finally, they do not adequately address the domestic impacts of Turkey’s foreign policy practice. I applied the poststructuralist discourse theory and insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis to analyse the AKP’s National Foreign Policy discourse to develop a new empirical account of how it constructs a new conception of Turkish identity, how foreign policy practice has been used by the government to inscribe a new domestic social order and the strategies it has pursued to generate wider appeal for the National Foreign Policy. I have used the analysis of the Turkish case to address the questions of why a state’s foreign policy transforms and why political actors construct specific conceptions of identity and domestic social order within their foreign policy discourse.
The project advances the state of the art in the poststructuralist and discourse analytical approaches to foreign policy and Turkish foreign policy in three respects. 1) Existing research has examined cases of foreign policy change, but they draw from cases of ‘change within continuity’. This project advances the state of the art by developing an account of change characterized by a broader transformation of foreign policy involving a resignification of a state’s orientation, identity and domestic social order and carried out as part of a political project to transform a state’s core values and norms. 2) Although discursive accounts highlight the key role that foreign policy plays in the construction of state identity and domestic social order, they neglect to answer the question of why political actors articulate specific constructions of identity and domestic social order in their foreign policy discourses. This project addresses this question through a focus on political actors’ construction of foreign policy discourses that highlight the role of the wider political and structural changes and their political struggles for hegemony over the construction of the domestic social order. 3) Several scholars of Turkish foreign policy have identified identity as a factor behind foreign policy change and highlighted the domestic concerns behind the AKP’s foreign policy practices. Through a closer focus on the construction of a new conception of Turkish identity in foreign policy discourse and connecting domestic and regional political developments with foreign policy change, this project elucidates the AKP’s instrumentalization of foreign policy in domestic politics and the role it plays in the inscription and stabilization of the conservative nationalist domestic order that it has built since the mid-2010s.