Bipolar disorder : "The West and the Rest"
Author(s)
Advisor
Helvacıoğlu, BanuDate
2002Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
he current ‘War on Terror’ has revitalized the language of friends and enemies, us and
them, good and evil. The whole world has been forced to choose sides: are you with the
terrorists or are you with the ‘freedom loving democracies’? This bipolar construct of
west/rest dates back to the European expansion in the 16th century. Despite shifts in
political conjunctures and alliances since then, it has persisted as an organizing principle
operating on a variety of levels, as an idea, an ideology and an identity. Consistently
privileging the west’s role in defining itself in opposition to its Others, the west/rest
construct is a political tool with a powerful impact on how we perceive ourselves and
the world. The main question this thesis poses is: can the divide inherent in the west/rest iv
construct be reconciled? With the current war dividing us yet again into friends and
enemies, and with Islam silently targeted as the alter-ego of terrorism, understanding the
ways in which ‘the west and the rest’ dynamic has determined the boundaries of ‘us
versus them’ in the past, allows us to appreciate the current role it plays in orchestrating
the present. Turkey is used as an illustrative case, by examining how the construct of
Islam as Other functions politically within an Islamic democracy. A tentative conclusion
this thesis offers is that alternative conceptions of Islamic identity, originating from
within civil society, may well provide an opportunity for reconciling the deadlock of
‘the west and the rest’ as it is expressed both inside Turkey and in the international
arena.
Keywords
September 11thWar on Terror
“Friend and Foe”
Discourse of Power
Orientalism
Clash of Civilizations
Islam
State
Civil Society Relationship