Pinar Bilgin

Thinking past ‘Western’ IR?

Abstract The laudable attempts at thinking past ‘Western’ir should not limit their task to looking beyond the spatial confines of the ‘West’ in search for insight understood as ‘difference’, but also ask awkward questions about the ‘Westernness’ of ostensibly ‘Western’ approaches to world politics and the ‘non-Westernness’ of others. For there may be elements of ‘non-Western’ experiences and ideas built in to ‘Western’ ways of thinking about and doing world politics. The reverse may also be true. What we think of as ‘non-Western’ approaches to world politics may be suffused with ‘Western’ concepts and theories. Indeed, those who are interested in thinking past ‘Western’ir should take an additional step and inquire into the evolution of the latter. While looking beyond the ‘West’ may not always involve discovering something that is radically ‘different’ from ones own ways of thinking about and doing world politics, such seeming absence of ‘difference’ cannot be explained away through invoking assumptions of ‘teleological Westernisation’, but requires becoming curious about the effects of the historical relationship between the ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’ in the emergence of ways of thinking and doing that are—in Bhabhas words—‘almost the same but not quite’. This article looks at three such instances (Indias search for nuclear power status, Turkeys turn to secularism, and Asias integration into the liberal world order) in the attempt to illustrate how ‘mimicry’ may emerge as a way of ‘doing’ world politics in a seemingly ‘similar’ yet unexpectedly ‘different’ way.

From ‘Rogue’ to ‘Failed’ States? The Fallacy of Short-termism

This article deals with the growing policymaking interest in the condition of ‘failed states’ and the calls for increased intervention as a means of coping with international terrorism. It starts by highlighting the inordinate attention initially granted to the threat posed by ‘rogue states’ to the neglect of ‘failed states’. Generally, it is argued that the prevalence of such notions has to be related to a persistence of Cold War discourse on statehood that revolves around binary oppositions of ‘failed’ versus ‘successful’ states. Specifically, the purveyors of this discourse are practitioners who focus on the supposed symptoms of state failure (international terrorism) rather than the conditions that permit such failure to occur. Here, an alternative approach to ‘state failure’ is advocated that is more cognisant of the realms of political economy and security constraining and enabling developing states and appreciative of different processes of state formation and modes of social organisation.

Individual and Societal Dimensions of Security

Despite the prevalence of state-based approaches to security studies during the Cold War, alternative ways of thinking about security—focusing on the individual and society—also developed during this time period. However, in the post-Cold War era the primacy of the state in considerations of security has come under increasing challenge from a variety of perspectives. In this essay, the development of the study of individual and societal dimensions of security is traced and discussed against the background of the end of the Cold War. The first part of the essay examines the evolution of thinking about individual and societal dimensions of security during the Cold War. The second part focuses on the post-Cold War revival in thinking about these aspects of security. The essay concludes by considering the future of world politics conceived of as a “risk society” and the implications for individual and societal dimensions of security.

The ‘Western-Centrism’ of Security Studies: ‘Blind Spot’ or Constitutive Practice?:

Unlike some other staples of security studies that do not even register the issue, Buzan & Hansen’s (2009) The Evolution of International Security Studies unambiguously identifies ‘Western-centrism’ as a problem. This article seeks to make the point, however, that treating heretofore-understudied insecurities (such as those experienced in the non-West) as a ‘blind spot’ of the discipline may prevent us from fully recognizing the ways in which such ‘historical absences’ have been constitutive of security both in theory and in practice. Put differently, the discipline’s ‘Western-centric’ character is no mere challenge for students of security studies. The ‘historical absence’ from security studies of non-Western insecurities and approaches has been a ‘constitutive practice’ that has shaped (and continues to shape) both the discipline and subjects and objects of security in different parts of the world.

The politics of studying securitization? The Copenhagen School in Turkey

Copenhagen School securitization theory has made significant inroads into the study of security in Western Europe. In recent years, it has also begun to gain a presence elsewhere. This is somewhat unanticipated. Given the worldwide prevalence of mainstream approaches to security, the nature of peripheral international relations, and the Western European origins and focus of the theory, there is no obvious reason to expect securitization theory to have a significant presence outside Western Europe. Adopting a reflexive notion of theory allows, the article argues, inquiry into the politics of studying security, which in turn reveals how the Western European origins and focus of securitization theory may be a factor enhancing its potential for adoption by others depending on the historico-political context. Focusing on the case of Turkey, the article locates the security literature of that country in the context of debates on accession to the European Union and highlights how securitization theory is utilized by Turkey’s authors as a ‘Western European approach’ to security.

Whose ‘Middle East’? Geopolitical Inventions and Practices of Security

Contesting those approaches that present the ‘Middle East’ as a region that ‘best fits the realist view of international politics’, this article submits that critical approaches are relevant to this part of the world as well. It is argued that instead of taking the relatively little evidence of enthusiasm for addressing the problem of regional insecurity in the Middle East for granted, a critical place for such approaches to begin is a recognition of the presence of a multitude of contending perspectives on regional security each one of which derives from different conceptions of security that have their roots in alternative worldviews. When rethinking regional security from a Critical Security Studies perspective, both the concepts ‘region’ and ‘security’ need to be opened up to reveal the mutually constitutive relationship between (inventing) regions and (conceptions and practices of) security.

Regional Security in the Middle East : A Critical Perspective

Preface Introduction 1. Pasts, Presents and Futures of Security Part 1 Pasts 2. Representations of the Middle East During the Cold War 3. Practices of Security During the Cold War Part 2 Presents 4. Representations of the Middle East in the Post Cold War Era 5. Practices of Security in the Post Cold War Era Part 3 Futures 6. Alternative Futures for Security in the Middle East Conclusion Bibliography

A Return to ‘Civilisational Geopolitics’ in the Mediterranean? Changing Geopolitical Images of the European Union and Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era

The prevalence of the discourse of ideological geopolitics during the Cold War meant that both Turkey and the EU belonged to the West by virtue of their ideological orientation. In the absence of this prevalent geopolitical discourse, both the EU and Turkey have spent the 1990s trying to locate themselves geographically. Drawing on the literature on critical approaches to political geography and international relations, this article seeks to answer the question of whether the EUs post-Cold War security discourse on the Mediterranean in general and on relations with Turkey in particular point to a return to the earlier discourse of civilisational geopolitics. The article also presents a reading of Turkish policy makers’ attempts to resist EUs representation of Turkey in ‘non-Europe’ (as with the ‘Middle East’ or the ‘Mediterranean’) as boundary-producing practices which have served to underline the boundaries between the ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’.

Securing Turkey through western-oriented foreign policy

How are Turkey’s insecurities relevant to the analysis of its international relations? While it is interesting to look at how particular security concerns have affected Turkey’s foreign policies at various moments in history, this article will take a different route. Following the distinction that David Campbell has drawn between “Foreign Policy” (through which others are rendered “foreign) and “foreign policy” (through which relations with others are managed), the article will explore how Turkey’s insecurities have shaped a Foreign Policy that rests on the West/non-West divide. While the literature has analyzed specific acts of foreign policy and how they were crafted in response to specific military insecurities, the role that Turkey’s non-military and non-specific insecurities have played in shaping its international relations has remained understudied. Thus, the literature has not been able to fully account for the centrality of Turkey’s western orientation to its security. The argument here proceeds in three steps: First, the article draws attention to the necessity of looking at non-material as well as material insecurities in designing research on foreign policy. Second, it illustrates this necessity by focusing on the case of Turkey’s foreign policy. Thirdly, in view of this second point the article highlights the centrality of Turkey’s western orientation (i.e., its Foreign Policy) to its security, more persuasively than studies that exclusively focus on the material aspects of security.

Is the ‘Orientalist’ past the future of Middle East studies?

‘Is there a future for Middle East studies?’ was the title of Rashid Khalidi’s presidential address to the annual convention of the Middle East Studies Association in 1994. Khalidi’s own answer was that, in order for Middle East studies to have a future, scholars would need to reach beyond their own area of interest to other areas, reach out to the general public via teach-in and outreach activities as well as through the media, and communicate to the rest of their colleagues in the broader social science disciplines (such as political science and economics). Khalidi’s was by no means the only response to this question. Characterising the current state of the field as a ‘crisis’, Jerrold Green argued that ‘some intellectual stock-taking is required’ and that when doing this ‘the conceptual horse should be put in front of the areal [sic] cart so that scholarly investigation is hung on a stronger intellectual need than the mere fact that the region is interesting’. Robert Bates’s suggestion echoed that of Green: area studies specialists should embrace the move towards a disciplinary-orientated view which would amount to scholars gaining new skills in the use of formal theory, statistical methods and mathematics, he argued. In Ivory Towers on Sand: the Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, Martin Kramer presents a critique of Middle East studies that is based less on disciplinary than on political grounds. It is time for Middle East specialists, he argues, to put their house in order and look critically at themselves and drop ‘fashionable’ theo-