Panel Proposal for 49th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, November 21-24, 2015, Denver, Colorado
Name of the Panel:
"Turkey in the First Two Decades of the 21st Century"
Purpose of the Panel:
During the first two decades of the 21st century, Turkey's modernization, politics, economy, foreign policy as well as literature have begun to undergo significant changes. Since 2002, the Justice and Development Party (JDP) governments adopted the policy of partially replacing the French and American models of modernity by means of a cultural movement referred to as "Ottomania" by the recent literature. Major changes in Turkish politics have turned out to be a further democratization in several areas, on the one hand, and the growing tendency of Recep Tayyip Erdoaan to concentrate all executive powers in his own hands, and govern as he sees fit without regard for the restraints of constitutional and legal norms, on the other hand. During those two decades, Turkish economy, too, have had its sucesses abd failures. With a policy of paradigm of "social and regulatory neo-liberalism" and "controlled populism," a sustained and socially inclusive growth has been achieved. Yet, in the last few years, economic momentum has declined. Some structural factors such as the reliance on construction-led growth and the adverse effect of the EU membership negotiations on investor confidence have led to the decline of the economic momentum. Turkey's foreign policy under the JDP has been more confident, activist, and diversified than before. One of the primary tenets of that policy was "Zero Problems with Neighbors," which was initially encouraged by Western powers. Later, however, Turkish foreign policy has encountered a number of setbacks, particularly in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. In the event, the country's relations with both Europe and the United States greatly deteriorated. It is well known that artistic representations may hibernate or develop in dynamic new directions, in spite or because of political and economic dynamics in a given country. Indeed, both within film and literature, important one witnessed important new developments occurred, one example being Orhan Pamuk's receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006. In the five papers planned to be submitted in the present panel, the authors will elaborate upon the developments mentioned here. They will also try to predict the likely developments in the foreseeable future. A discussant will share his views on the papers presented.
The Organizer
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Prof. Metin Heper
Since 2002, the year the Justice and Development Party won the elections, formed a majority government, and stayed in power until today, there has been a great deal of tension between the secularists and the pious. All along the secularists have had the fear that the secular Republic was under a grave threat. That the fear in question has stemmed from some Islamists’ covering themselves is well known. Also well known is the assumption that covering is an indication of being “backward” and “ignorant”. This particular state of affairs in Turkey leads to some critical questions” (1) Why is such a cause-and-effect relationship entertained between outer appearance on the one hand and backwardness and ignorance on the other? (2) Could one reason for this particular thinking pattern be the way Atatürkism has been taken, not as a cognitive revolution but as outer appearance? (3) Whether as a result the normative approach has turned out to be a far more widespread mentality than the analytical one among some people in Turkey? (4) If this is what indeed has turned out to be the case in Turkey, what could have been the most important result of the over emphasis on the normative approach at the expense of analytical approach – an inability on the part of many to conduct a diaogical debate, i.e., a debate in which parties to the debate may in the end agree at least with one of the arguments that the others come up with. This paper responds to all of these questions in the positive. The paper goes on to suggest that the basic story behind the stories above is the fact that while in the West, the analytical have shaped the normative, in Turkey the normative have left hardly any ground for the analytical.
The paper points out that the Turkish case is an outcome of the fact that the country had gone through an induced transformation, i.e. a transformation brought about from above rather than an organic one, i.e. a transformation being the end result of societal dynamics. The induced transformation targeted in Turkey was total Westernization. The total Westernization in turn led to a process of mimicry. In this sense, Turkey has differed from Japan that had opted for selective Westernization. For mimicry has not required a pragmatic approach, i.e. an analytical exercise, of what may be readily adopted and what may not be adopted.
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Starting from the late 19th century into the 1930s the Turkish modernization project was modeled after France and took the French notion of civilization as the universal path to modernity. In the 1950s France was replaced by the United States and Turkish modernization took industrialism and capitalism of the United States as the model to follow. In the 1980s, Turkish modernization took yet another turn to model itself after the globalizing neoliberal policies of top Western countries, but adding to the mix a touch of the local. After briefly reviewing how Turkish modernity shifted gears through the 1930s, 50s and 80s, this paper focuses on public culture to trace how the politics of Turkish modernization was played out in the 2000s, which took a sharp turn towards a search for the true “roots” of the Turkish nation. Under the AKP government, this pursuit towards restoring Turkey’s ‘true culture and identity’ took the Ottoman as the ideal model to be followed. Possibly under the influence of the AKPs vision for Turkey as the cradle of “Ottoman-Islamic civilization,” a cultural movement started, referred to as “Ottomania” by recent literature, where elements symbolic of the Ottoman times started to proliferate in the public sphere from TV series, such as the “Magnificent Century,” to restaurants that are increasingly introducing selections from Ottoman cuisine or to fashion, furniture design and architecture that all take the Ottoman as the role model for Turkish modernization. Examining various elements of this new cultural movement, this paper argues that in the 2000s the trajectory of Turkish modernization took a sharp turn to move away from the century-long dream to “catch up with the West” to the projection of the Ottoman as the ideal to be modeled after. However, as with all projects that seek to transform society toward an ideal goal, the AKP project to restore Turkey to its Ottoman roots is also met with resistances, controversies and subversions both within and outside of Islamic circles. Even if bringing back the Ottoman has become quite a popular trend in public culture, what exactly the Ottoman is, and which elements of the Ottoman are going to be embraced and celebrated as representative of Turkey’s true heredity has become one of the key points of contention in Turkish politics, where different political groups and movements are articulating their ideological differences through contending images of the Ottoman.
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Dr. Paul Kubicek
Turkey under the AKP has pursued a more confident, activist, and diversified foreign policy. In the first decade of the new century, one of its primary tenets was “Zero Problems with Neighbors,” which featured constructive engagement in the Middle East, Balkans, and the post-Soviet space and was designed to complement Turkey’s longstanding pro-Western orientation. Indeed, Western powers initially encouraged this venture and the emergence of Turkish “soft power” to foster regional cooperation. In the 2010s, however, Turkish foreign policy has encountered a number of setbacks, particularly in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and relations with both Europe and the United States have sunk to new lows. This paper takes Turkey’s rise and more independent foreign policy orientation as a starting point, and assesses how far it goes, specifically with respect to adopting a revisionist stance that challenges the regional order. It will be grounded by a brief consideration of the historical context and motivations of Turkey’s traditional foreign policy orientation and the literature in international relations on “rising powers.” It focuses primary attention on relations with the United States, important regional actors in the Middle East (Egypt, Israel, and Iraq), and Russia, the country that has most assertively challenged the West. It critically assesses the argument, made by some Turkish scholars, that although Turkey is adopting a more independent course, its policies remain fundamentally constrained by or “nested” within its ties with the West. It argues that while part of Turkey’s apparent realignment may be explained by frustration with its Western allies, there are other factors involved, including domestic political ones that question decades-old positions of Westernization, that justify a more sober and pessimistic view about Turkey’s Western orientation.
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Selin Akyuz
Since the Syrian regime’s violent suppression of democratic protests, millions of people were forced to leave their homes and search for shelter in neighboring countries. Transformation of civil unrest into a civil war with an ever-increasing violence fueled the rise of radical Islamist groups, which in turn deepened the humanitarian crisis in Syria. As a result of this crisis, according to UNHCR data, approximately 4.1 million refugees have fled from Syria to neighboring countries Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. On the fourth anniversary of the crisis, 25 protection centres reside approximately 265.000 out of 1.673.000 registered Syrians in Turkey. Upon this background, this research aims to analyze Syrian conundrum with an intersectionalist perspective, i.e. considering multiple identity constructions based on age, gender, ethnicity, on Turkey’s international migration regime. It investigates the way Turkey responds to this international crisis that has been allegedly the largest migration flow of refugees in the 21st century. The framing of refugee defined by laws, regulations and resultant discourses of policy makers are of decisive importance as they are shaping the main contours of policies on how to ‘deal’ with them. A re-reading of those documents and a critical analysis of discourses by focusing on the interaction of multiple identities would enable researchers to reveal how the framing of refugee limits to expose various refugee experiences. Being critical on the analyses end up on reducing the refugee to a matter of ‘homogenized’ victim and/or threat, this research traces Turkey’s “open door policy”, established for Syrians, with a need to recognize refugees’ intersectional identities. In this framework, this research tries to substantiate that an intersectionalist engagement with refugee law and discourses would reveal the limits of normativity on refugee regime and enable readers to capture multifaceted dynamics within.
