Rearticulation of Turkish foreign policy its impacts on national/state identity and state society relations in Turkey : the Cyprus case

Abstract

The central problematic of this dissertation is how, in what ways and to what extent ‘foreign’ political discourses and representations are instrumentalized by the state apparatus in the constitution and maintenance of domestic political order and state identity in a given polity. In that respect, this study assuming a dialogical interplay between internal and international political processes and structures aims to re-examine and problematize the Turkish official discourse on the Cyprus question. Doing this, it is intended for critically questioning the role and impact of those discourses in the reproduction of the state identity and the state society relations in Turkey. Despite an increasing body of contemporary literature on the question, there still exists an urgent need for a brand new approach critically examining Turkey’s official Cyprus discourse from the viewpoint of power/domination relations in Turkey. This dissertation considering the restrictions and weaknesses of the mainstream scholarship proposes a new conceptual/analytical framework and research agenda facilitating the reassessment of Cyprus question and its implications in restructuring and/or securing the domestic politics in Turkey. In this context, the main argument of this thesis work is that the modes in which the Cyprus question is discursively framed and/or represented by the Turkish state elite within domestic politics are inherent to the reconstruction of state society relations and state identity in Turkey. Drawing on the post-structuralist and constructivist IR theories, I do propose that the official and mainstream understandings coding and fixing the Cyprus dispute primarily as an issue of state’s security and ‘a national cause’ around which the unity and cohesion of Turkish society should necessarily be guaranteed has a two-fold function: First, they ensure the continual reorganization of Turkish political life in full conformity with the priorities and policy objectives articulated by the state elite. This grants them the power and capacity of inscribing the boundaries of the political space and disciplining the political imagination. Second, they ensure the maintenance of the state society relations in its conventional and hierarchical terms in such a way as to reproduce the former’s supremacy over and independence from the latter.