نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
موضوعات
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
Extended Abstract
Introduction
Turkey's foreign policy fundamentals have undergone significant transformation over the past two decades under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). This shift has moved Turkey from advocating a "Status Quo" position to becoming a "Revisionist state" in the international order. Historically, Turkey's foreign policy was rooted in westernization and adherence to the "Status quo," a stance influenced by the negative repercussions of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism during the Ottoman era. Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Republic, sought to distance Turkey from these ideologies, focusing instead on its official national borders as the basis for territorialization. This approach was supported by a non-interventionist policy outside its borders, encapsulated in the doctrine of "Peace at home, Peace in the world." Although Turgut Ozal attempted to alter these traditional principles in the early 1990s, his foreign policy failures delayed significant changes until the mid-2010s. During this period, three competing discourses emerged in Turkey: Pan-Turkism, Political Islam, and Kemalism. These discourses eventually led to an alliance between Political Islam and Pan-Turkism, which can be associated with imperialism. This article examines these three discourses and demonstrates how Turkey, after a century of transitioning from the Ottoman Empire to a nation-state, now seeks to restructure itself in an imperial form.
Methodology
This article addresses the question of how changes in Turkey's geopolitical discourse have influenced the logic of state territorialization. It analyzes the causal relationship between geopolitical cognition and territorialization, explaining how the former affects the latter. The study is qualitative and descriptive-analytic in nature, relying on documentary data collection methods, including library research and analysis of statements made by Turkish political leaders from 2015 to 2022. The selected texts emphasize two main elements: concepts related to territorialization and references to codes associated with perceptions, including treaties.
Results and Discussion
Geopolitical developments in Turkey have often been shaped by global geostrategic changes. In the Republic of Turkey, three primary geopolitical discourses emerged: the Kemalist and republican discourse, the Islamist discourse, and the Pan-Turkist discourse. Each discourse had distinct perceptions of space, place, and territory. After the Cold War, the Kemalist discourse waned, while the Islamist and Pan-Turkist parties formed a stable coalition due to their shared understanding of space and geography. This coalition gave rise to the neo-Ottoman discourse, which seeks to revive the values of the "Ottoman Caliphate." The AKP government acted as a synthesis between Islamism and Pan-Turkism, significantly impacting Turkey's geopolitical landscape.
Conclusion
Turkey's territorialization pattern has exhibited activism and "hard influence" in divided spaces such as Artsakh, the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the Kurdish cantons of northern Syria, the self-proclaimed government of Northern Cyprus, and areas under the control of Fayez Siraj in Libya. Through "soft influence," Turkey also aims to transform geo-cultural connections in Central Asia into geo-economic benefits, exemplified by the elevation of the Turkish Council to a regional organization in 2021. Turkey leverages nostalgia for the "Caliphate" in Salafist spaces across the Middle East while pursuing the dream of Turan in post-Soviet or Turkish-speaking regions. To understand the "Territorialization logic" behind Turkey's geopolitical discourses, two components are essential: "fundamental elements" and "spatial perception." These elements define the scope and application of territorialization, with each discourse reflecting the extent to which its proponents intend to expand territorial influence.
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کلیدواژهها English