Constructing Turkey's "Western" Identity during the Cold War: Discourses of the Intellectuals of Statecraft

Abstract

Constructing Turkey's "western" identity during the Cold War Discourses of the intellectuals of statecraft Throughout the republican era, membership in Euro-Atlantic institutions has provided Turkey's policymakers with the opportunity to assert the country's "western" identity. Indeed, Turkey's "westernness" has been expressed, not only through the adoption of ideas and manners from the west (as happened in Ottoman times), but also through joining western institutions, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This is one of the reasons why the US project of promoting democracy in the greater Middle East is received with enthusiasm by some in Ankara. Notwithstanding the concerns of those who worry that taking an active part in this project would undermine the carefully constructed role Islam plays in shaping political processes in Turkey, others seem to consider this scheme an opportunity to entrench Turkey's position within NATO and (re)assert its western identity.1 Eylem Yilmaz holds an MA in international relations from Bilkent University. Pinar Bilgin is assistant professor of international relations at Bilkent University in Ankara. The authors would like to acknowledge financial support provided by the department of international relations at Bilkent University and to thank Umit Cizre and Bilge Crissfor their helpful comments.

Fifty Years of EU-Turkey Relations

“…Such symbolic use of NATO membership helped to reaffirm Turkey's 'Westernness'. 36 NATO membership in particular and Turkey's Western-oriented policies in general helped to address specific and non-specific, military and non-military threats to its sovereign statehood. By the early 1990s, Turkey's security culture was one that sought to address issues of both high and low politics through resort to the symbolic or actual use of the military instrument through frequent invocation of the language of 'security'.…”

The ‘take off’ of the Czech IR discipline

“…Over the years, Turkey's IR scholars have also found for themselves a place in this disciplinary division of labour (Bilgin 2005). Scholars working in/on the developing world are often assigned the role of 'area experts'.…”

“…For, during this period, scholarly study of Turkey's concerns in general and relations with NATO in particular did not merely describe Ankara's Cold War foreign policy but also contributed to the production and reproduction of its state identity as 'Western' (Bag˘cı 1991;Yılmaz and Bilgin 2005). For Turkey's claim to belong to the 'West' might not have allowed scholars to acknowledge its concerns stemming from its character as a developing country or the inadequacy of 'Western' concepts in accounting for such concerns.…”

Turkey’s quest for NATO membership: the institutionalization of the Turkish–American alliance

“…In general, Turkey's NATO membership has been analyzed primarily at the systemic level and by focusing on external dynamics at the outset of the Cold War (Kuniholm 1980;Leffler 1985;Athanassopoulou 1999;Yesilbursa 1999;Smith 2000). There are also some interesting recent studies focusing on the historic perspective through the utilization of Dan Reiters' learning theory (Reiter 1994;Criss 2012) and some others analyzing the relevance of the domestic dimension (Yılmaz 2001;Kayaoğlu 2009), as well as the role of identity in this process (Yılmaz and Bilgin 2005;Bilgin 2009;Yanık 2012).…”