The conceptions of “the international” in Turkey

In the last several decades, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has been problematized because of its limitations in engaging with non-core actors. A burgeoning literature in IR has underscored that the prevalent approaches in the discipline have particular understandings of world politics which are based on the experiences of core actors, and ideas and experiences of non-core actors are overlooked in these understandings. This literature has asked what IR would look like if ideas and experiences of non-core actors are also considered. This dissertation’s objective is to contribute to this literature by studying the conceptions of “the international” as found in one of the non-core contexts, namely Turkey. The dissertation develops and offers a novel analytical framework for studying the conceptions of “the international” in any given context. This framework is employed firstly to examine the understandings as found in IR scholarship so as to see what is available in the literature. Then, the framework is employed for analyzing the conceptions of “the international” in Turkey as one example to non-core actors of world politics. The dissertation discusses what IR scholarship captures and overlooks when the conceptions of “the international” in non-core contexts are taken into account.