Bahar Rumelili
Biographic Data
| ID | 107656 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bahar Rumelili |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bahar |
| FAMILY NAME | Rumelili |
| SIGNATURE | RUMELILI B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Koç University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9974-5074 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 472 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Feminising diplomatic work: Driving devaluation
While the growing representation of women in diplomacy is often celebrated, scholarship on occupational feminisation warns that feminisation can trigger a devaluation of professional work. This article focuses on two conditions identified as inhibitors of such devaluation – the overall status of the occupation and the value accorded to female labour within the occupation – and traces how these two conditions have varied over time and interacted w…
Ontological Insecurity and the Return of the Greek-Turkish Conflicts: Reconfiguring Hagia Sophia as an Ontic Space
This article locates the rising tensions between Greece and Turkey in the milieu of increasing ontological insecurity in the European periphery. Building on the growing literature on ontological security in IR, we argue that the dissipation of Europe as a framework of meaning and identity in the European periphery has generated ontological insecurity—a state of general anxiety which stems from the disruption of self-narratives—on part of the acto…
Systemic anxiety and the impasse of peacebuilding
Regional intergovernmental organizations and macropolitical boundary work
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has thrown into the spotlight the significance of where and how regional intergovernmental organizations (RIOs) such as the European Union draw their macropolitical boundaries. This article develops the notion of macropolitical boundaries to synthesize extant literatures on RIOs and their external relations, and presents a conceptual framework to study how different types of macropolitical boundarie…
Gendering Public Diplomacy: Turkey and Europe in the 1930s
This article scrutinizes the role of women’s rights and women actors in Turkey’s public diplomacy strategy in the 1930s and discusses whether and if so how it managed to change the long-standing European prejudices against Turkey. Accordingly, first, the article discusses the early reforms of the Turkish Republic and their European reception. Then, relying on critical discourse analysis, it examines two prominent cases; namely, Keriman Halis’ vic…
Anxiety and possibility: The many future(s) of Covid-19
This is the introduction to the forum, Anxiety and possibility: the many future(s) of COVID-19. It summarizes the contributions within a common framework and situates them in the extant literature
Covid-19: Uncertainty in a Mood of Anxiety
This contribution to the Forum, Anxiety and possibility: the many future(s) of COVID-19, develops a conception of uncertainty as constituted by cognitive (awareness of possibilities) and affective (mood in which possibility is encountered) dimensions. Based on this conception, it is suggested that the COVID-19 crisis has led to a qualitative leap in our already growing sense of uncertainty, both accentuating our awareness of possibilities that ar…
From Female Masculinity to Hegemonic Femininity: Evolving Gender Performances of Turkish Women Diplomats
This article analyses the gender performances of Turkish women diplomats through in-depth interviews. Building on Morison and MacLeod’s performance-performativity approach, we highlight the need to take into account the different meanings and significance of gender performances under different political and social conditions. We find that a shift and the diversification of gender performances are under way among Turkish women diplomats, from fema…
Conclusion: Status, ontological insecurity and authoritarianism
This conclusion to the special issue provides an overview of the contributions
Agonistic recognition as a remedy for identity backlash: Insights from Israel and Turkey
While an extensive part of the conflict transformation literature stresses the importance of transforming the identities of conflict parties through recognition, it fails to recognise the propensity of such transformations to generate ontological insecurity and dissonance, and consequently a possible backlash towards antagonistic identities. Drawing on agonistic thought, we develop a conception of agonistic recognition, premised on non-finalism, …
Challenging anti-Western historical myths in populist discourse: Re-visiting Ottoman Empire–Europe interaction during the 19th century
In this article, we conceptualize and demonstrate how historical International Relations (IR) can be employed to critically engage with the populist uses of history at present. In this endeavour, we focus on myths as analytical nodal points. We revisit the rich interdisciplinary literature on myths to conceptually connect historical research that unsettles myths with political critiques of myths in terms of their naturalizing effects at present. …
Constructivist Approaches to EU–Turkey Relations
This chapter provides a critical survey of constructivist approaches to EU–Turkey relations, which place significance on the role of norms, identities, discourse, ideas, and values in the relationship. It outlines the main contours of the constructivist school of thought in International Relations (IR) with a discussion of how the different variants of constructivism can be applied to the study of the case of EU–Turkey relations. It is followed b…
[Our] age of anxiety: Existentialism and the current state of international relations
Driving liberal change? Global performance indices as a system of normative stratification in liberal international order
The existing literature on Global Performance Indices (GPIs) is mostly dominated by unit-level analyses focused on specifying the relevant properties of the GPIs and the motivations of state actors in being influenced by GPIs. This article advances a systemic approach, which conceives of GPIs as collectively constituting a system of normative stratification in International Relations (IR). By bringing together the literature on GPIs with the rele…
Integrating anxiety into international relations theory: Hobbes, existentialism, and ontological security
This article draws on Hobbes and existentialist philosophy to contend that anxiety needs to be integrated into international relations (IR) theory as a constitutive condition, and proposes theoretical avenues for doing so. While IR scholars routinely base their assumptions regarding the centrality of fear and self-help behavior on the Hobbesian state of nature, they overlook the Hobbesian emphasis on anxiety as the human condition that gives rise…
Turkey as a Model for the Mediterranean? Revealing Discursive Continuities with Europe’s Imperial Past
This article critically engages with the discourse on “Turkey as a model country” for the Muslim world which became popular in Europe and the West after 9/11 and the Iraq War and later during the Arab uprisings. It argues that this discourse was not an ad hoc formulation developed in response to the imminent geopolitical challenges faced by Europe and the West, but that it reflects deeper legacies of colonialism and neo-orientalism produced in Eu…
Re-Mapping Centre and Periphery
Historians often assume a one-directional transmission of knowledge and ideas, leading to the establishment of spatial hierarchies defined as centres and peripheries. In recent decades, transnational and global history have contributed to a more inclusive understanding of intellectual and cultural exchanges that profoundly challenged the ways in which we draw our mental maps. \n \nCovering the early modern and modern periods, Re-Mapping Centre an…
Discourse Analysis: Strengths and Shortcomings
Discourse analysis is a much-favoured textual analysis method among constructivist and critically minded International Relations scholars interested in the impact of identity, meaning, and discourse on world politics. The aim of this article is to guide students of Turkish IR in their choice and use of this method. Written by two Turkish IR scholars who have employed discourse analysis in their past and present research, this article also include…
Paradoxes of identity change: Integrating macro, meso, and micro research on identity in conflict processes
Identity change is a core element of political conflict and transformation. Most relevant are changes towards and away from dyadically opposed identities. Defining an ‘enemy’, narrowing, or broadening the inner and outer circles of belonging to include or exclude the Other, are integral to conflict processes at international, state, group, and individual levels. This Special Issue brings together scholars with varied sub-disciplinary interests to…
Ontological insecurity in asymmetric conflicts: Reflections on agonistic peace in Turkey’s Kurdish issue
This article contributes to the recent literature on ontological security in conflict studies by empirically investigating, through a case study of Turkey’s Kurdish issue, how ontological asymmetry complicates peace processes. Over time, all conflicts become embroiled in a set of self-conceptions and narratives vis-à-vis the Other, the maintenance of which becomes critical for ontological security. In ethnic conflicts, however, these conceptions …
Civic Participation and Citizenship in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Five Cities
This study explores whether and how participation in civil society organisations (CSOs) has transformed citizenship attitudes in different cities in Turkey, and how civic participation and citizenship attitudes are affected by local politico-cultural dynamics. The analysis is based on interviews conducted with representatives of 36 CSOs in five Turkish cities: Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, Trabzon, and Izmir. Our comparative analysis of the five cit…
Taking the pressure: Unpacking the relation between norms, social hierarchies, and social pressures on states
This article advances a hierarchy-centered approach to the study of international social pressure on states. Prior scholarship has centered on the exposure of a gap between word and deed as key for social pressure. We argue that the scholarship on social pressure would benefit from paying more attention to the centrality of social hierarchies in the dynamics and effects of social pressure on states. It is through comparative assessments — the nor…
Brand Turkey: Liminal Identity and its Limits
Since the 2000s, Turkish policymakers and private sector interests have combined representations of Turkey as both Western and Eastern with a branding approach to identity in foreign policy, trade and investment promotion, and cultural sector activities. This article analyses how the commodification of its liminal identity as a dual identity allowed Turkey to invoke different aspects of its identity in the West and the East in ways that catered t…
Enacting multi-layered citizenship: Turkey's Armenians' struggle for justice and equality
Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, Turkey’s Armenians have been subjected to a trade-off between the limited minority rights granted by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and equal national citizenship. Traditionally a closed, depoliticized community, the citizenship practices of the Armenian minority have become increasingly differentiated in recent years. Building on a notion of citizenship as multi-layered and constituted through collective…
Identity and desecuritisation: The pitfalls of conflating ontological and physical security
Identity and desecuritisation: The pitfalls of conflating ontological and physical security
The external constitution of European identity: Russia and Turkey as Europe-makers
The view of identities as always situated in a relationship with the Other underlies contemporary constructivist social theory. Taking a step further, and combining constructivist approaches to identity with insights from post-colonial studies, this article argues that the Other, far from being a mere presence, often plays an active role in identity politics. By tracing the historically varying ways in which Turkey and Russia have engaged in Euro…
Constructing identity and relating to difference: Understanding the EU's mode of differentiation
The case of the EU points to the need to re-conceptualise the relationship between self and other in the IR literature. I argue that the literature forces us into an artificial choice between the liberal constructivist approach of disregarding the constitutive role of difference in identity formation and the critical constructivist approach of assuming a behavioural relationship between self and other, and therefore cannot account for the diversi…
Ontological insecurity in asymmetric conflicts: Reflections on agonistic peace in Turkey’s Kurdish issue
This article contributes to the recent literature on ontological security in conflict studies by empirically investigating, through a case study of Turkey’s Kurdish issue, how ontological asymmetry complicates peace processes. Over time, all conflicts become embroiled in a set of self-conceptions and narratives vis-à-vis the Other, the maintenance of which becomes critical for ontological security. In ethnic conflicts, however, these conceptions …
Integrating anxiety into international relations theory: Hobbes, existentialism, and ontological security
This article draws on Hobbes and existentialist philosophy to contend that anxiety needs to be integrated into international relations (IR) theory as a constitutive condition, and proposes theoretical avenues for doing so. While IR scholars routinely base their assumptions regarding the centrality of fear and self-help behavior on the Hobbesian state of nature, they overlook the Hobbesian emphasis on anxiety as the human condition that gives rise…
Constructing Regional Community and Order in Europe and Southeast Asia
Focusing on the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, this book demonstrates how collective identity depends on the construction of outsider states, such as Morocco, Turkey, and Australia
Transforming Conflicts on EU Borders: The Case of Greek‐Turkish Relations
Drawing on the trajectory of Greek‐Turkish conflicts, this article demonstrates how the EU's bordering practices affect the conflict resolution capacity of the EU on its external borders. Close institutional relations and positive identification with outsider states diffuse the logic of the security community. On the other hand, hard EU borders incapacitate the EU from having a positive influence
Liminal identities and processes of domestication and subversion in International Relations
In the course of his ethnographic study of the Ndembu tribes, the renowned anthropologist Victor Turner focused on the elaborate rituals that marked various phases of social transition, such as puberty and marriage. Also drawing on the work of Arnold van Gennep on rites of passage, Turner identified the entities going through social transitions as liminals, that ‘are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and …
Liminality and Perpetuation of Conflicts: Turkish-Greek Relations in the Context of Community-Building by the EU
While the `security communities' literature has underscored the positive implications of collective identity for sustained peace and cooperation within the communities, it has overlooked the possible security implications of the discourses and practices of differentiation necessarily entailed in the construction of collective identity. Building on the case of Turkish-Greek relations, I argue that through these discourses and practices of differen…
[Our] age of anxiety: Existentialism and the current state of international relations
Paradoxes of identity change: Integrating macro, meso, and micro research on identity in conflict processes
Identity change is a core element of political conflict and transformation. Most relevant are changes towards and away from dyadically opposed identities. Defining an ‘enemy’, narrowing, or broadening the inner and outer circles of belonging to include or exclude the Other, are integral to conflict processes at international, state, group, and individual levels. This Special Issue brings together scholars with varied sub-disciplinary interests to…
Turkey: Identity, Foreign Policy, and Socialization in a Post‐Enlargement Europe
This article analyzes the implications of post‐enlargement European international society for Turkey in three areas: identity construction, foreign policy and political reform. First, through an analysis of post‐2007 European Parliament debates on EU–Turkey relations, it argues that the construction of European and Turkish identities vis‐à‐vis each other is likely to remain an important arena of contestation. Second, it provides a brief overview …
Taking the pressure: Unpacking the relation between norms, social hierarchies, and social pressures on states
This article advances a hierarchy-centered approach to the study of international social pressure on states. Prior scholarship has centered on the exposure of a gap between word and deed as key for social pressure. We argue that the scholarship on social pressure would benefit from paying more attention to the centrality of social hierarchies in the dynamics and effects of social pressure on states. It is through comparative assessments — the nor…
Civil Society and the Europeanization of Greek–Turkish Cooperation
2005). Civil Society and the Europeanization of Greek–Turkish Cooperation. South European Society and Politics: Vol. 10, File: Turkey, Europeanisation and Civil Society (Guest Editor: Thomas Diez), pp. 45-56
Driving liberal change? Global performance indices as a system of normative stratification in liberal international order
The existing literature on Global Performance Indices (GPIs) is mostly dominated by unit-level analyses focused on specifying the relevant properties of the GPIs and the motivations of state actors in being influenced by GPIs. This article advances a systemic approach, which conceives of GPIs as collectively constituting a system of normative stratification in International Relations (IR). By bringing together the literature on GPIs with the rele…
Agonistic recognition as a remedy for identity backlash: Insights from Israel and Turkey
While an extensive part of the conflict transformation literature stresses the importance of transforming the identities of conflict parties through recognition, it fails to recognise the propensity of such transformations to generate ontological insecurity and dissonance, and consequently a possible backlash towards antagonistic identities. Drawing on agonistic thought, we develop a conception of agonistic recognition, premised on non-finalism, …
Brand Turkey: Liminal Identity and its Limits
Since the 2000s, Turkish policymakers and private sector interests have combined representations of Turkey as both Western and Eastern with a branding approach to identity in foreign policy, trade and investment promotion, and cultural sector activities. This article analyses how the commodification of its liminal identity as a dual identity allowed Turkey to invoke different aspects of its identity in the West and the East in ways that catered t…
Multilayered Citizenship in Extended European Orders: Kurds Acting as European Citizens
Drawing on an original empirical study of the European-level political practices of Turkish citizens/residents of Kurdish origin, this article advances the argument that political actors who lack the status of European citizenship can nonetheless engage in its 'practice'. While practices of European citizenship by non-citizen/non-resident actors are enabled by the extended economic, legal, political and normative orders developed around the EU, t…
Challenging anti-Western historical myths in populist discourse: Re-visiting Ottoman Empire–Europe interaction during the 19th century
In this article, we conceptualize and demonstrate how historical International Relations (IR) can be employed to critically engage with the populist uses of history at present. In this endeavour, we focus on myths as analytical nodal points. We revisit the rich interdisciplinary literature on myths to conceptually connect historical research that unsettles myths with political critiques of myths in terms of their naturalizing effects at present. …
Turkey as a Model for the Mediterranean? Revealing Discursive Continuities with Europe’s Imperial Past
This article critically engages with the discourse on “Turkey as a model country” for the Muslim world which became popular in Europe and the West after 9/11 and the Iraq War and later during the Arab uprisings. It argues that this discourse was not an ad hoc formulation developed in response to the imminent geopolitical challenges faced by Europe and the West, but that it reflects deeper legacies of colonialism and neo-orientalism produced in Eu…
Conclusion: Status, ontological insecurity and authoritarianism
This conclusion to the special issue provides an overview of the contributions
Civic Participation and Citizenship in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Five Cities
This study explores whether and how participation in civil society organisations (CSOs) has transformed citizenship attitudes in different cities in Turkey, and how civic participation and citizenship attitudes are affected by local politico-cultural dynamics. The analysis is based on interviews conducted with representatives of 36 CSOs in five Turkish cities: Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, Trabzon, and Izmir. Our comparative analysis of the five cit…
Enacting multi-layered citizenship: Turkey's Armenians' struggle for justice and equality
Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, Turkey’s Armenians have been subjected to a trade-off between the limited minority rights granted by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and equal national citizenship. Traditionally a closed, depoliticized community, the citizenship practices of the Armenian minority have become increasingly differentiated in recent years. Building on a notion of citizenship as multi-layered and constituted through collective…
From Female Masculinity to Hegemonic Femininity: Evolving Gender Performances of Turkish Women Diplomats
This article analyses the gender performances of Turkish women diplomats through in-depth interviews. Building on Morison and MacLeod’s performance-performativity approach, we highlight the need to take into account the different meanings and significance of gender performances under different political and social conditions. We find that a shift and the diversification of gender performances are under way among Turkish women diplomats, from fema…
Covid-19: Uncertainty in a Mood of Anxiety
This contribution to the Forum, Anxiety and possibility: the many future(s) of COVID-19, develops a conception of uncertainty as constituted by cognitive (awareness of possibilities) and affective (mood in which possibility is encountered) dimensions. Based on this conception, it is suggested that the COVID-19 crisis has led to a qualitative leap in our already growing sense of uncertainty, both accentuating our awareness of possibilities that ar…
Liminality and Perpetuation of Conflicts: Turkish-Greek Relations in the Context of Community-Building by the EU
While the `security communities' literature has underscored the positive implications of collective identity for sustained peace and cooperation within the communities, it has overlooked the possible security implications of the discourses and practices of differentiation necessarily entailed in the construction of collective identity. Building on the case of Turkish-Greek relations, I argue that through these discourses and practices of differen…
Constructing identity and relating to difference: Understanding the EU's mode of differentiation
The case of the EU points to the need to re-conceptualise the relationship between self and other in the IR literature. I argue that the literature forces us into an artificial choice between the liberal constructivist approach of disregarding the constitutive role of difference in identity formation and the critical constructivist approach of assuming a behavioural relationship between self and other, and therefore cannot account for the diversi…
Civil Society and the Europeanization of Greek–Turkish Cooperation
2005). Civil Society and the Europeanization of Greek–Turkish Cooperation. South European Society and Politics: Vol. 10, File: Turkey, Europeanisation and Civil Society (Guest Editor: Thomas Diez), pp. 45-56
Negotiating “Europe”: EU and Turkey
The institutional relations between the EU and Turkey intensified after the declaration of Turkey’s candidacy in 1999 (Muftuler-Bac 2005). In line with the pre-accession strategy for Turkey, the Commission prepared an Accession Partnership Document in November 2000, which the European Council adopted in March 2001. In turn, Turkey submitted its National Program for the Adoption of the EU acquis in March 2001. The 2002 Copenhagen European Council …
Conclusion
Following the end of the Cold War, regional organizations once again came to be represented as attractive remedies for regional problems and as the building blocks of global peace. With the growing interest in the concept of identity, the international relations discipline likewise embraced regions and regional organizations as cases of community-building and collective identity formation. Revisiting the Deutschian thesis, it was argued that thes…
Self/Other Interaction in International Relations (IR)
As introduced in the previous chapter, in assessing the implications of community-building for regional and global order, the question of how collective identities relate to others is very important. This chapter seeks to address this question at the theoretical level. Despite a growing number of studies (for reviews, see Neumann 1996 and Hall 2001), the IR literature on self/other interaction remains mired in conceptual confusion. This is mainly…
Identity/Difference and the Asean
Southeast Asia stands out as the region in the non-Western world that most closely approximates a community. In a region with great political, economic, and cultural diversity, the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN), initially established in 1967 among Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand, has fostered a collective Southeast Asian identity around the norms of non-interference, mutual respect for sovereignty and cons…
European Union and Regional Order
How does the way the EU interacts with difference affect the broader regional order in Europe? How, and under what conditions, can the EU contribute to a successful resolution of conflicts at its external borders? This question carries a lot of policy significance nowadays in EU circles, mainly because the continued existence of such disputes, such as Cyprus, reflects badly on the EU’s stated missions to export peace and become a foreign policy a…
Identity/Difference and the EU
As the prime example of community-building in international relations, how does the EU interact with difference, and with what implications for regional and global order? While some scholars argue that the EU has succeeded in constructing a postmodern community where self/other distinctions are blurred not only within the community but also in relation to its outside, others contend that the EU replicates the nation-state form in terms of externa…
Constructing Regional Community and Order in Europe and Southeast Asia
Focusing on the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, this book demonstrates how collective identity depends on the construction of outsider states, such as Morocco, Turkey, and Australia
Transforming Conflicts on EU Borders: The Case of Greek‐Turkish Relations
Drawing on the trajectory of Greek‐Turkish conflicts, this article demonstrates how the EU's bordering practices affect the conflict resolution capacity of the EU on its external borders. Close institutional relations and positive identification with outsider states diffuse the logic of the security community. On the other hand, hard EU borders incapacitate the EU from having a positive influence
Turkey: Identity, Foreign Policy, and Socialization in a Post‐Enlargement Europe
This article analyzes the implications of post‐enlargement European international society for Turkey in three areas: identity construction, foreign policy and political reform. First, through an analysis of post‐2007 European Parliament debates on EU–Turkey relations, it argues that the construction of European and Turkish identities vis‐à‐vis each other is likely to remain an important arena of contestation. Second, it provides a brief overview …
Multilayered Citizenship in Extended European Orders: Kurds Acting as European Citizens
Drawing on an original empirical study of the European-level political practices of Turkish citizens/residents of Kurdish origin, this article advances the argument that political actors who lack the status of European citizenship can nonetheless engage in its 'practice'. While practices of European citizenship by non-citizen/non-resident actors are enabled by the extended economic, legal, political and normative orders developed around the EU, t…
Liminal identities and processes of domestication and subversion in International Relations
In the course of his ethnographic study of the Ndembu tribes, the renowned anthropologist Victor Turner focused on the elaborate rituals that marked various phases of social transition, such as puberty and marriage. Also drawing on the work of Arnold van Gennep on rites of passage, Turner identified the entities going through social transitions as liminals, that ‘are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and …
The external constitution of European identity: Russia and Turkey as Europe-makers
The view of identities as always situated in a relationship with the Other underlies contemporary constructivist social theory. Taking a step further, and combining constructivist approaches to identity with insights from post-colonial studies, this article argues that the Other, far from being a mere presence, often plays an active role in identity politics. By tracing the historically varying ways in which Turkey and Russia have engaged in Euro…
Identity and desecuritisation: The pitfalls of conflating ontological and physical security
Enacting multi-layered citizenship: Turkey's Armenians' struggle for justice and equality
Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, Turkey’s Armenians have been subjected to a trade-off between the limited minority rights granted by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and equal national citizenship. Traditionally a closed, depoliticized community, the citizenship practices of the Armenian minority have become increasingly differentiated in recent years. Building on a notion of citizenship as multi-layered and constituted through collective…
Ontological insecurity in asymmetric conflicts: Reflections on agonistic peace in Turkey’s Kurdish issue
This article contributes to the recent literature on ontological security in conflict studies by empirically investigating, through a case study of Turkey’s Kurdish issue, how ontological asymmetry complicates peace processes. Over time, all conflicts become embroiled in a set of self-conceptions and narratives vis-à-vis the Other, the maintenance of which becomes critical for ontological security. In ethnic conflicts, however, these conceptions …
Civic Participation and Citizenship in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Five Cities
This study explores whether and how participation in civil society organisations (CSOs) has transformed citizenship attitudes in different cities in Turkey, and how civic participation and citizenship attitudes are affected by local politico-cultural dynamics. The analysis is based on interviews conducted with representatives of 36 CSOs in five Turkish cities: Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, Trabzon, and Izmir. Our comparative analysis of the five cit…
Taking the pressure: Unpacking the relation between norms, social hierarchies, and social pressures on states
This article advances a hierarchy-centered approach to the study of international social pressure on states. Prior scholarship has centered on the exposure of a gap between word and deed as key for social pressure. We argue that the scholarship on social pressure would benefit from paying more attention to the centrality of social hierarchies in the dynamics and effects of social pressure on states. It is through comparative assessments — the nor…
Brand Turkey: Liminal Identity and its Limits
Since the 2000s, Turkish policymakers and private sector interests have combined representations of Turkey as both Western and Eastern with a branding approach to identity in foreign policy, trade and investment promotion, and cultural sector activities. This article analyses how the commodification of its liminal identity as a dual identity allowed Turkey to invoke different aspects of its identity in the West and the East in ways that catered t…
Discourse Analysis: Strengths and Shortcomings
Discourse analysis is a much-favoured textual analysis method among constructivist and critically minded International Relations scholars interested in the impact of identity, meaning, and discourse on world politics. The aim of this article is to guide students of Turkish IR in their choice and use of this method. Written by two Turkish IR scholars who have employed discourse analysis in their past and present research, this article also include…
Paradoxes of identity change: Integrating macro, meso, and micro research on identity in conflict processes
Identity change is a core element of political conflict and transformation. Most relevant are changes towards and away from dyadically opposed identities. Defining an ‘enemy’, narrowing, or broadening the inner and outer circles of belonging to include or exclude the Other, are integral to conflict processes at international, state, group, and individual levels. This Special Issue brings together scholars with varied sub-disciplinary interests to…
Re-Mapping Centre and Periphery
Historians often assume a one-directional transmission of knowledge and ideas, leading to the establishment of spatial hierarchies defined as centres and peripheries. In recent decades, transnational and global history have contributed to a more inclusive understanding of intellectual and cultural exchanges that profoundly challenged the ways in which we draw our mental maps. \n \nCovering the early modern and modern periods, Re-Mapping Centre an…
Integrating anxiety into international relations theory: Hobbes, existentialism, and ontological security
This article draws on Hobbes and existentialist philosophy to contend that anxiety needs to be integrated into international relations (IR) theory as a constitutive condition, and proposes theoretical avenues for doing so. While IR scholars routinely base their assumptions regarding the centrality of fear and self-help behavior on the Hobbesian state of nature, they overlook the Hobbesian emphasis on anxiety as the human condition that gives rise…
Political science (35 works) · Sociology (35 works) · Law (28 works) · Politics (21 works) · Political economy (16 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Turkish (15 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works)