Browsing by Author "Ceydilek, Erdem"

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Open Access
Constitution of Turkish self : a post-structuralist foreign policy analysis of JDP's foreign policy discourse on distant natural disasters
(2012) Ceydilek, Erdem
Identity is mostly portrayed as given in foreign policy analysis. However, the power of foreign policy discourse on identity constitution has been raised by poststructuralism for the last 30 years. As the overall objective, this study aims at showing the performative link between foreign policy and identity. Specifically, this study also aims at understanding the performative link between foreign policy discourse of Justice and Development Party (JDP) policy-makers and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) officials on distant natural disasters and the constitution of the Turkish self, through utilizing a critical discourse analysis methodology. There are three main findings of this study, namely (i) the foreign policy discourse of JDP on the distant natural disasters has constituted the Indonesia and Pakistan disasters as important events, (ii) this discourse has constituted the Turkish self as a homogenous community, (iii) this homogenous Turkish self is linked with several signifiers and differentiated from negated external others.
Open Access
European populist radical right leaders’ foreign policy beliefs: An operational code analysis
(Sage Publications, 2020-03) Özdamar, Özgür; Ceydilek, Erdem
Despite the significance of the subject, studies on the foreign policy preferences of European populist radical right leaders are scarce except for a handful of examples. Are European populist radical right leaders more hostile than other world leaders or comparatively friendly? Do they use cooperative or conflictual strategies to achieve their political goals? What are the leadership types associated with their strategic orientations in international relations? Using the operational code construct in this empirical study, we answer these questions and depict the foreign policy belief systems of seven European populist radical right leaders. We test whether they share a common pattern in their foreign policy beliefs and whether their foreign policy belief systems are significantly different from the norming group of average world leaders. The results indicate that European populist radical right leaders lack a common pattern in terms of their foreign policy belief systems. While the average scores of the analysed European populist radical right leaders suggest that they are more conflictual in their world views, results also show that they employ instrumental approaches relatively similar to the average group of world leaders. This article illuminates the microfoundations of strategic behaviour in international relations and arrives at conclusions about the role of European populist radical right leaders in mainstream International Relations discussions, such as idealism versus realism. In this sense, the cognitivist research school complements and advances structural accounts of international relations by analysing leadership in world affairs.
Open Access
Foreign policy operational codes of European populist radical right leaders
(2020-01) Ceydilek, Erdem
Recently, both in scholarly and policy circles, the populist radical right has been a popular and contested topic in Europe. Despite the increasing influence and visibility of European populist radical right (EPRR) parties and leaders, their foreign policy beliefs have not been studied thoroughly by scholars of International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), with a few descriptive exceptions. This study aims at filling this gap by linking the FPA and populist radical right literatures with an empirically and theoretically robust analysis. With an operational code analysis of the foreign policy beliefs of nine prominent EPRR leaders, this dissertation first seeks similarities or differences between EPRR leaders and also compare them to the average world leader, and then discuss the underlying reasons for the presence or lack of these similarities and differences. On the one hand, the results show that, in terms of beliefs about the political universe, the EPRR leaders can be grouped into two categories: Where nativism dominates over populism, the EPRR leaders’ beliefs about the political universe are more conflictual and vice versa. On the other hand, in terms of beliefs about foreign policy instruments, the general picture shows that the EPRR leaders are not and will not necessarily be conflictual. This study presents significant findings about the foreign policy beliefs of EPRR leaders and may also provide a basis for future research in this under-studied field.