Ali Balci

Turkey’s Role in the Alliance of Civilizations: A New Perspective in Turkish Foreign Policy?

Abstract Since its foundation, Turkey’s foreign policymakers have declined to undertake any pioneering roles in global initiatives, such as assuming the position of the spokesperson of the Islamic world, on international platforms. Given this, the Alliance of Civilizations initiative presents not only a challenge to the traditional parameters of Turkish foreign policy but also a new perspective for Turkish foreign policy. This essay examines the roots of this change, the rise of the notion of the Alliance of Civilizations, and Turkey’s role in this initiative. It also analyzes the impact of Turkey’s role in the initiative on other foreign‐policy issues, such as European Union membership.

Inter-societal security trilemma in Turkey: understanding the failure of the 2009 Kurdish Opening

ABSTRACT This article examines the inter-societal security trilemma among political Islamists, Kurdish actors, and the state in Turkey with a special reference to the failures in the Kurdish Opening that was initiated in 2009. While the Kurdish question is undoubtedly a long-standing multi-state and multi-causal ethno-political phenomenon, this study is primarily concerned with the identity–security-politics nexus. It addresses the question of how the politics of identity and dynamics of contra-identity claims produce a persistent security dilemma among different political blocs in contemporary Turkey. Addressing this question helps to explain why the Turkish state has consistently failed to successfully tackle the Kurdish question, as was the case of the Kurdish Opening in 2009.

The Kurdish movement’s EU policy in Turkey: An analysis of a dissident ethnic bloc’s foreign policy

This study aims to address a historical paradox: how can we understand the Kurdish movement’s EU policy in the two decades subsequent to the end of the Cold War? I argue that the Kurdish movement has pursued two different approaches towards the EU (or Turkey’s EU membership bid) in the last two decades. While the Kurdish movement adopted a pro-EU stance from the beginning of the 1990s until 2005, it situated itself in an in-between position towards the EU after that year. In the analysis of these two different periods, I will interrogate the role of the international system, the domestic setting, identity/difference and the relations of power in the Kurdish movement’s EU policy.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Debating the Ergenekon Counter-Terrorism Investigation in Turkey

In the Turkish nationalist narrative, the term Ergenekon signifies the mythical Turkish land in Central Asia that saw the re-birth of Turks hitherto brought to the brink of extinction by its enemies. Since the mid-1990s, it has been used to define ‘a Gladio-type gang hidden within the state’ by some, while others see it as ‘a wider organization ranging from armed gangs to civil society associations’ aiming to ‘defend the regime against Islamist and antiKemalist movements.’ By the latter half of 2007, what might be understood as an ‘official’ definition of the term emerged—as both an alleged clandestine ultra-nationalist organization with ties to some members of Turkish armed forces and the most important legal investigation process in Turkish history. Accordingly, Ergenekon is seen by the government as an organization aiming to foment civil unrest through high-profile assassinations and acts of terrorism with a view to creating the grounds and justification for a possible military takeover of the current government led by the religiously inclined Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, or JDP). The current investigation began when Public Prosecutor Zekeriya Öz sent a formal application to the police ‘asking for details of a string of assassinations, racist murders and even protest marches’ on October 5, 2007. This was followed by a series of police raids that resulted in the arrests of people ranging from well-known nationalists to retired army

Foreign Policy as Politicking in the Sarıkız Coup Plot: Cyprus between the Coup Plotters and the JDP

A considerable amount of ink has been spilled in the literature on civil–military relations during the government of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet veKalkınmaPartisi, JDP). However, far too little attention has been paid to the trails and travels of a group of army officers within the military, allegedly plotting a coup against the JDP government, mostly because there was no reliable evidence about their activities until the Ergenekon investigations commenced. Another related neglected area was that studies to date have tended to focus on the domestic power struggle between the military and the JDP, which did not address the role of foreign policy. Although some previous studies pointed out the transformative role of the foreign policy of the government, none, however, drew attention to the alleged coup plotters’ manipulation of foreign policy to gain influence and the upper hand vis-à-vis the government. A series of leaked documents from the recent Ergenekon inquiries not only revealed the inadequacies of existing studies but also heightened the need for reconsidering civil–military relations during the JDP government. This article focuses mainly on the role of foreign policy in the power struggle between the alleged coup plotters and the JDP government by studying the documents leaked from the Ergenekon inquiries. The leaked documents provide the students of civil–military

The Collapse of the Soviet Union as Dislocation

This chapter tries to understand the radical shift in the PKK’s perception of Stalin and the Soviet socialism after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This shift is very intriguing, considering that the representation of the Soviet Union as comrade or a natural ally during the Cold War played a significant role in the production of the post-1980 Kurdish political identity and in the legitimation of the PKK’s guerilla war against the Turkish state, and alternative Kurdish groups. Therefore, the chapter argues that this dramatic shift in the representation of the Soviet Union played a significant role in the transformation of the PKK’s aim from a national independence of Kurdistan to a demand for democratic autonomy within the borders of the Turkish state. The chapter also discusses how the PKK survived from such a dramatic collapse of the Soviet socialism unlike other similar movements following Soviet socialism all around the world.

Writing the Soviet Union as Comrade

This chapter tackles the reasons why the contemporary Kurdish nationalism developed a pro-Soviet imagination of world politics from the early 1970s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. The chapter interrogates the description of the October Revolution and Joseph Stalin in the PKK’s official documents in order to understand how positive connotations attached to early Soviet period legitimized the PKK’s brutal war against critical figures within the PKK and alternative Kurdish movements. In other words, the main aim of this chapter is to deal with the constitutive relation between the PKK’s description of the Soviet Union and the exclusion of alternative representations regarding the Kurdish identity. This constitutive relation played a significant role in rendering the PKK hegemonic in the representation of the newly emerging Kurdish subjectivities. This chapter also discusses the PKK’s stance toward daily policies of the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s.

Imagining the Kurdish Nation

This chapter provides a critique of the existing literature on the Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and highlights the difference between religiously motivated Kurdish uprisings such as the Sheikh Said Rebellion in 1925 and modern nationalist uprisings. Having differentiated the post-1980 Kurdish nationalism from previous cases, the chapter evaluates main dynamics in the imagination of the Kurdish nation in contemporary Turkey. This chapter argues that the perception of self, others, and threats among the Kurds was reshaped in a discursive space dominated by the PKK and its armed struggle against the Turkish state. Although the chapter discusses all these dynamics, it, however, focuses mainly on the imagination of traditional Kurdish social forces such as religion and tribes as internal others in the constitution of a new closed Kurdish nationalist society, which is the most striking difference between the post-1980 Kurdish nationalism and previous Kurdish uprisings.

Identity, Hegemony, and Imagining World Politics

This chapter introduces theoretical answers to the question of what is the role of resistant ethnic movements’ imagination of world politics in the construction of alternative closed society through which a new mode of power relations can exercise. Having discussed the necessity of a theoretical framework in order to study resistant ethnic movements’ discourse on foreign affairs in the production of subnational ethnic identities, this chapter presents a detailed evaluation of how foreign policy discourses and performances play an important role in the construction of identities and the exercise of power relations. Because of its significant role in constructing and disciplining identities through which power can exercise, not only the state but also dissident movements resort to foreign policy discourses and practices in their struggle for power and the construction of alternative subjectivities. Therefore, the chapter presents the function of foreign policy, at the hand of dissident ethnic movements, in challenging the existing hegemonic state power and producing an alternative closed society based on different ethnic imagination.

Writing the USA as Imperial Power

This chapter deals with the rise of anti-Americanism within Kurdish nationalism in the 1970s, the PKK’s discourse on the Turkish state as a puppet of US imperialism, and the PKK’s so-called war against US imperialism in the Middle East, respectively. By closely examining the PKK’s discourse on the USA and its policies in the Middle East, this chapter aims to show the role of anti-American discourse in delegitimizing the Turkish state in the eyes of its Kurdish citizens, normalizing the fight of the PKK against traditional Kurdish social forces, and making the PKK responsible for saving the Kurds from slavery under US imperialism supported by the Turkish state and traditional Kurdish social forces. While the description of the Turkish state as a puppet of US imperialism dismantles the identificatory process, which is vital in making the Turkish state the legitimate representative of Kurdish people, the discourse on the war of emancipation against US imperialism not only produces a new identificatory process for the Kurds in Turkey but also generates obligations/responsibilities that inscribe the PKK into the center of power.