This study sets out to explain the general characteristics of current Turkish foreign policy where it examines the interplay between important world events and emergent novel ideas at four different levels of analysis (conceptual setting, micro‐setting, domestic macro‐setting, and external macro‐setting). The new Turkish foreign policy vision and its normative strategy, derived from Davutoglu's Strategic Depth, have been blended with five new principles: balance between security and freedom; zero problems with neighbors; multidimensional and multi‐track policies; a new diplomatic discourse based on firm flexibility; and rhythmic diplomacy.

A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy: Transition and Challenges

http://yoksis.bilkent.edu.tr/pdf/files/5143.pdf

Constructing Turkish “exceptionalism”: Discourses of liminality and hybridity in post-Cold War Turkish foreign policy

Two geographers specializing in Turkey's international relations examine the reframing of foreign policy issues under the country's Justice and Development Party (JDP; also known by its Turkish acronym AKP), in power since 2002. After first locating the JDP within Turkey's current political landscape, the authors investigate how notions of civilizational geopolitics have led to a "new geographic imagination" under JDP that has influenced foreign policy thinking. The authors argue that JDP foreign policy exhibits some continuity with that of earlier governments in terms of activist policies toward Central Eurasia (comprising the Middle East, Central Asia, and Transcaucasia), but are based on a new conceptual foundation that views Turkey not as part of Western civilization but as the emerging leader of its own "civilizational basin" (consisting of the former Ottoman territories plus adjoining regions inhabited by Muslim and Turkic peoples). They then explore the implications for Turkey's future relations wi...

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Turkey's "New" Foreign Policy toward Eurasia

In fall of 1961, the Berlin Wall was erected and West Germany, the Bundesrepublik, initiated a guest worker program with Turkey. These two events would dramatically reshape Berlin, as many immigrants settled just west of the Berlin Wall— especially in the boroughs of Wedding, Kreuzberg, and Neukölln—transforming, augmenting, and adapting to local cultural life. Among these transformations, new sonic cultures emerged, with Islam, in all its diversity, playing a crucial role in that process. The Islamic acoustics that continues to thrive today in Berlin raises significant questions about the nature of sound in Islamic practice: How does Islam sound? In what ways does sound articulate and generate difference both between Muslims and non-Muslims, but also among different Muslim communities? How can an acoustics of Islam help elucidate the workings of a metropolis like Berlin, and vice-versa? Turning to Islamic thought as a theoretical framework, I consider how indigenous notions of pathways enunciate these sonic processes and their material manifestations. After sketching a brief sonic history of Turkish Berlin, I attempt to sonically map some of these Islamic pathways through the city. Charting a route through these major diasporic neighborhoods, I focus on a single religious community, or pathway, in each chapter, along with a particular material aspect of sound as a sacred articulation of difference. I begin with an exploration of the voice in Cerrahi Sufi zikr ceremonies in Wedding, where reciting God’s names becomes an act of tasting (Chapter 1). Then in Kreuzberg, I consider the relationship of bodies (especially

Pathways to God: The Islamic Acoustics of Turkish Berlin

In contemporary Turkey, a growing interest in Ottoman history represents a change in both the official state discourse and popular culture. This nostalgia appropriates, reinterprets, decontextualizes, and juxtaposes formerly distinct symbols, ideas, objects, and histories in unprecedented ways. In this paper, we distinguish between state-led neo-Ottomanism and popular cultural Ottomania, focusing on the ways in which people in Turkey are interpellated by these two different yet interrelated discourses, depending on their social positions. As the boundary between highbrow and popular culture erodes, popular cultural representations come to reinterpret and rehabilitate the Ottoman past while also inventing new insecurities centering on historical “truth.” Utilizing in-depth interviews, we show that individuals juxtapose the popular television series Muhtesem Yuzyil (The Magnificent Century) with what they deem “proper” history, in the process rendering popular culture a “false” version. We also identify four particular interpretive clusters among the consumers of Ottomania: for some, the Ottoman Empire was the epitome of tolerance, where different groups lived peacefully; for others, the imperial past represents Turkish and/or Islamic identities; and finally, critics see the empire as a burden on contemporary Turkey.

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Between neo-Ottomanism and Ottomania: navigating state-led and popular cultural representations of the past

Given the boost provided by a promise of admission to the European Union on 17 December 2004, the regional standing of Turkey is bound to increase in the coming decades. This new stature will affec...

Alexander Murinson

Papers

The strategic depth doctrine of Turkish foreign policy