Emel Akçalı

Kemalist Eurasianism: An Emerging Geopolitical Discourse in Turkey

Over the past decade or so, there has been a convergence between the Eurasianist and Kemalist ideologies in Turkey. A number of Kemalist and Socialist intellectual and political actors together with sections of the military have started to articulate Eurasianism (Avrasyacılık in Turkish) as a new geopolitical discourse for Turkey and as an alternative to Turkeys pro-Western foreign policy orientation. In this perspective, Eurasianism stands for a political, economic and cultural alliance with ‘Eurasian countries’, such as Russia, Iran, and Turkic countries in Central Asia, as well as Pakistan, India and China. This article aims to deepen the analyses carried out thus far on this emerging geopolitical discourse. To this end, it contextualises the emergence of the Eurasianism in Turkey within the wider social, political and historical context of which it forms a part, including the framework of asymmetrical political and economic relations that developed between Turkey and its Western allies in the post–Cold War period.

‘Taming’ Arab social movements: Exporting neoliberal governmentality

In the wake of the recent Arab revolutions, the European Union (EU) has sought to provide genuine and substantial support to a range of Arab social movements in the region’s emerging polities. Yet the EU’s recent democracy-promotion efforts represent a puzzle for earlier critical approaches to the relationship between Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which argue for the existence of hegemonic patronage linkages. We argue, however, that the EU’s attempts at democracy promotion in the MENA region may be understood through a governmentality framework, despite the limitations of such an approach. Specifically, the EU is actively promoting neoliberal policies in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in order to foster a mode of subjectivity that is conducive to the EU’s own norms and interests. What we observe are not just innocent attempts at democracy promotion, but a form of politics and economics that seeks to subject the agency on the ‘Arab street’ to EU standards. We conclude by going over the radical plurality of the Arab street, and show how it was in fact earlier neoliberal reforms by their former regimes that created the conditions of possibility for the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

“Nature Knows No Boundaries”: A Critical Reading of UNDP Environmental Peacemaking in Cyprus

In 2005, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) set up in Cyprus a peace-building project called Action for Cooperation and Trust (ACT). This project has aimed to create opportunities for bicommunal partnerships on environmental protection as a way to promote intercommunal tolerance. This article discusses critically the efficacy of this project to contribute to the debate on the significance of environmental cooperation in transforming ethno-territorial conflicts. We rely on both survey data and the qualified opinions of Cypriot environmental stakeholders to show that, in the case of Cyprus, successful environmental peacemaking strategies are dependent on widespread environmental awareness, trust in the “third party” (UNDP), and civil societys empowerment, which, however, should complement and not substitute for intervention at a state level. There is also evidence to suggest that the UNDP discourse about “nature knows no boundaries” is most effective when it generates solutions that are perceived to be beneficial to all parties involved, rather than when it uses the environment to discursively construct a common “patriotism” beyond ethnic identities.

Geographical Metanarratives in East-Central Europe: Neo-Turanism in Hungary

Two EU-based social scientists investigate the geographical metanarrative of Neo-Turanism as articulated by the recently ascendant far-right party Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), which differs from most European far-right movements but shares some elements of the anti-Western orientation with Eurasianism and Pan-Slavism. The authors trace Neo-Turanisms origin to a historical ideology (Turanism) that aspires to terminate Hungarys alliance with the Euro-Atlantic community and instead form a cultural, political, and economic alliance with the Uralo-Altaic peoples (i.e., Turks of Turkey, the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, Tatars, the aboriginal tribes of Siberia, and even Mongols, Manchus, Koreans, and Japanese). After examining the development of Turanism during the 18th to 20th centuries, they draw on concentrated fieldwork and interviews in 2012 to focus on its revival (Neo-Turanism) in post-communist Hungary. Due attention is paid to the revival within the political platform articulated by Jobbik as well as in the everyday political activities of many of the countrys inhabitants and social groupings in the context of Europeanization and globalization.

EU, Political Islam and Polarization of Turkish Society

It is generally believed that a ‘democratic’ political system corresponds to the rule of law, the protection of basic human, socio-political and economic rights (freedom of speech, religious tolerance and protection of private property), a well-functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces. In short, democracy is often understood as ‘liberal’ democracy. Since the end of the Cold War, the European Union (EU) ‘has been pursuing an almost messianic quest for the internationalization of liberal democracy abroad’ (Pace, 2009, p. 39) and in so doing has become an ‘external ally’1 for various domestic actors, especially in its candidate and neighbouring countries.

Reading the Cyprus Conflict through Mental Maps — An Interdisciplinary Approach to Ethno-Nationalism

There is a strong connection between a nation’s existence and that of its individual members, in the sense that if the nation faces the threat of extinction, so do its citizens.1 Likewise, for any nationalist project to be successful, it should first pass through the everyday life of the individual, and then diffuse its effects on a more collective and societal scale through institutional and non-institutional actors.2 Analysing individuals’ everyday lives and social relations may thus give hints about what kind of emotions and resources they invest for the future of their nation.

Do Popular Assemblies Contribute to Genuine Political Change? Lessons from the Park Forums in Istanbul

Abstract By engaging with the ‘Gezi/June’ Uprising in Turkey and the popular assemblies formed in its aftermath, this article foregrounds the notion of agonistic pluralism as advanced by William E. Connolly and Chantal Mouffe for understanding the emerging forms of direct democracy and their outcomes in Turkey. Via participant observation in four park forum sites in Istanbul, in-depth interviews with the participants, and a virtual ethnography on related Facebook sites, it scrutinises the degree to which popular assemblies resist and subvert the existing political order and create alternatives for radical political change.

The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity

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