What role, if any, do non-material sources of legitimacy such as ideology play in foreign policy shifts that accompany increased domestic repression? To answer this question, I compare the evolution of nationalist policies as a regime survival strategy in Saudi Arabia and Turkey since 2015. I argue that increasingly assertive foreign policies in both cases alongside more visible repression are legitimation strategies in response to ontological challenges faced by both the Saudi and Turkish regimes since respective protest movements in 2011 and 2013. Previous work on the causal effect of regime type on aggressive foreign policy has argued that those with revolutionary ideologies, such as Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi, are more likely to initiate military conflicts. Yet, states engaging in greater use of force abroad in recent years tend not to be regimes with cohesive ideologies of any sort. Rather than couching foreign aggression in the desire to export revolutionary ideologies such as Communism or pan-Arabism, a number of regimes have come to use foreign policy itself as a building block to define themselves in the absence of clear ideologies. At the time of their ascendance to power, Erdogan and Muhammad bin Salman were both touted by the West as modernizing reformers of ideologically and economically stagnant regimes: moving away from rigid ideologies of Wahhabism and Kemalism. This paper shows how, despite differences in regime type, the struggle to construct an overarching ideological legitimation has led to increased use of force abroad. In Saudi Arabia, this has manifest itself in increased foreign aggression in Bahrain and Yemen since the Arab Spring. After its own bouts of domestic legitimacy challenges in the form of protests, a coup attempt, and electoral losses, Turkey intervened against Kurdish forces in Syria and sent troops to Libya. In my research, I rely on systematic process tracing, archival research, as well as interviews with diplomats, activists, journalists, and policy analysts. I build from theories of ontological security and regime survival strategies to argue that the substance of a regime’s ideology is less important than its strength. Following the trajectory of the ideological weakening of the AKP and the Saudi monarchy in the years leading up to these pivotal events, I show that the foreign policy component in each case is a diversionary response to the underlying ontological and structural weakness of both regimes’ ruling ideologies.

This study examines the role of religion in Turkish and Israeli nationalism and national identities. It studies whether religion is an important factor in foundation and sustainment of Turkish and Israeli nationalisms. Although many works of nationalism studies have focused on Turkish and Israeli nationalism, there is not an emphasis on religious nationalism, which is an emerging literature criticizing the secular attempts to define a nation. Religious nationalism literature argues that religious and national identities are fused together in the nation-state, where the state is the primary actor mobilizing these identities. Therefore, I do not refer to ethnic and religious minority movements but I take official ideology and foundational moments of the nation-state as "religious nationalism". The study focuses on two time periods: the foundation of the new nation-states as Turkish Republic in 1923 and state of Israel in 1948; and the period after the turn of the 21st century. First, it examines how religion manifests itself in the foundational moment of the new nation-states: as "the heroic Muslim Turk" against "the occupier Christian identity" during the World War I and the Independence War in Anatolia, as well as the migrations to the lands of Palestine have contributed to a distinctly religious understanding of the Israeli national identity. Secondly, both states have maintained religious versions of their national identities and fostered them especially in the 21st century. The Justice and Development Party government in Turkey, and the Likud Party in Israel have contributed to religious understandings of what it means to be a national citizen in their states through political discourse, socio-economic investments and education policies. The study provides a challenge to mainstream modernization and secularization theories dominating theory of social sciences, especially in the field of nationalism studies.

This paper discusses the revival and public re-invention of long suppressed Alevi-Bektasi tradition during the second half of the twentieth century in Turkey and looks into the construction of Topcu Baba tradition as a recent instance of this process. This manuscript is be based on secondary and primary sources and field work completed in Turkey and argues that festive culture has facilitated the recovery of some aspects of the outlawed popular-religion practices and suppressed Alevi identity in new, festive forms. Alevis are a minority constituting at least 15 percent of the population in Turkey. Alevi faith is often presented as a heterodox Shiite tradition with diverse characteristics. Alevis due to their persecution and discrimination have developed an underground culture during the Ottoman era and have kept a low profile during the Republican era. The start of the Hacibektas Festival in 1959 and the opening of the tomb of Haji Bektash Veli and the Bektashi lodge to public visits as museums mark the beginning of a historical process that transformed the saintly Bektashi tombs and Alevi shrines into desacralized spaces, but also initiated the reinvention of Alevi-rite as a public culture. It also has become a model for the “coming-out” of Alevi-Bektashi communities all around Turkey. Topcu Baba tradition is a good example of this recent trend. The tomb of Topcu Baba, in Topcular village of Kirkareli, has become the beginning point for the development of a public Alevi- Bektashi tradition. Topcular is a part of the Amucalar community that has been following the Bektashi and Bedreddini traditions, and has been commemorating Topcu Baba privately. The foundation of the Commemoration of Topcu Baba Culture and Art Association in 1997 started the construction of Topcu Baba as a public,” invented tradition.” The association organized the first public commemoration of Topcu Baba in the summer of the same year. Since then the association has been publicizing the annual commemoration, and Topcular of 85 residents has been hosting about five to six thousand people during the commemoration. The festival also has become a public stage for important Alevi-Bektashi cultural signifiers, such as the singing of Alevi-Bektashi hyms and “sema.” The association is building a “cemevi” in Kirklareli as a center for the Alevi-Bektashi community as well as the general population. The commemoration of Topcu Baba plays a central role in the revival of the Alevi-Bektashi culture in the region.

This presentation will explore how the Kemalist Turkish nationalists, and the exiled Kurdish nationalists coming from Turkey responded to the debate over internationalism during the late 1920s and 1930s. Both the founding cadre of the Kemalist Turkish Republic, and the Kurdish nationalist elites living in exile had come of age in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the late-Ottoman Empire. They, however, adopted the prevailing ideology of ethnic nationalism after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and dedicated themselves to forging ethnically defined Turkish and Kurdish national identities. Despite the ever-increasing number of studies on the Kemalist Turkish and Kurdish nationalist movements, these two rival nationalist movements’ responses to the internationalism debate of the interwar years continues to be a neglected topic. Thus, I want to compare former Ottoman Kurdish and Turkish nationalists’ responses to fading but still existing calls for internationalism for world peace in the late 1920s and 1930s. I will make use of primary sources in Turkish and Kurdish from the late 1920s and the 1930s published in Kemalist Turkey and in Syria under the French mandate. My sources include writings and statements by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the Kurdish Bedirkhan brothers.