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A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy [1st ed.]
 9783030428969, 9783030428976

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
Front Matter ....Pages 1-1
Introduction: Transcending the State—A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy (Hazal Papuççular, Deniz Kuru)....Pages 3-17
Front Matter ....Pages 19-19
Transnationalized Accounts of Turkish Foreign Policy (Deniz Kuru)....Pages 21-39
Transnationality, Foreign Policy Research and the Cosmopolitan Alternative: On the Practice of Domestic Global Politics (Hüsrev Tabak)....Pages 41-68
Imperial Transnationalism: Turkish Middle East-Oriented Foreign Policy Expert Apparatus (1998–2011) (Jean-Baptiste Le Moulec)....Pages 69-93
Front Matter ....Pages 95-95
Transnational Issues, Non-governmental Organizations and the Genesis of Modern Turkish Diplomacy (E. Tutku Vardağlı)....Pages 97-120
The Sanjak of Alexandretta (Hatay) in Turkish Foreign Policy: A Case of “Accidental Diaspora” and Kin-State Politics (Hazal Papuççular)....Pages 121-140
Front Matter ....Pages 141-141
Turkey and Syrian Turkomans in the “New Middle East Cold War”: A Critical View from the Kin-State (Radiye Funda Karadeniz)....Pages 143-173
Constructing Liberal Subjects? Turkey’s New Diaspora Strategy (Şerif Onur Bahçecik)....Pages 175-194
Jews from Turkey in Israel and Cultural Diplomacy (1996–2006) (Ilker Hepkaner)....Pages 195-223
Front Matter ....Pages 225-225
“Humanitarianism” Transformed? Analyzing the Role of Transnational Humanitarian NGOs in Turkish Foreign Policy Toward the Middle East in the 2000s (Gonca Oğuz Gök)....Pages 227-258
Business Actors as Holders of Transnational Relations: What Role for Them in Turkish Foreign Policy? (Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel)....Pages 259-281
Front Matter ....Pages 283-283
Conclusion (Deniz Kuru, Hazal Papuççular)....Pages 285-292
Back Matter ....Pages 293-297

Citation preview

MIDDLE EAST TODAY

A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy Edited by Hazal Papuççular · Deniz Kuru

Middle East Today

Series Editors Fawaz A. Gerges Department of International Relations London School of Economics London, UK Nader Hashemi Josef Korbel School of International Studies Center for Middle East Studies University of Denver Denver, CO, USA

The Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and the US invasion and occupation of Iraq have dramatically altered the geopolitical landscape of the contemporary Middle East. The Arab Spring uprisings have complicated this picture. This series puts forward a critical body of first-rate scholarship that reflects the current political and social realities of the region, focusing on original research about contentious politics and social movements; political institutions; the role played by non-governmental organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood; and the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Other themes of interest include Iran and Turkey as emerging pre-eminent powers in the region, the former an ‘Islamic Republic’ and the latter an emerging democracy currently governed by a party with Islamic roots; the Gulf monarchies, their petrol economies and regional ambitions; potential problems of nuclear proliferation in the region; and the challenges confronting the United States, Europe, and the United Nations in the greater Middle East. The focus of the series is on general topics such as social turmoil, war and revolution, international relations, occupation, radicalism, democracy, human rights, and Islam as a political force in the context of the modern Middle East.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14803

Hazal Papuççular · Deniz Kuru Editors

A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy

Editors Hazal Papuççular Department of International Relations Istanbul Kültür University Istanbul, Turkey

Deniz Kuru Department of Political Science Goethe Universität Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Middle East Today ISBN 978-3-030-42896-9 ISBN 978-3-030-42897-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Part I Introduction 1

Introduction: Transcending the State—A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy Hazal Papuççular and Deniz Kuru

3

Part II Ideas on Turkish Transnationalism: Theory, Practice, and Intellectual Currents 2

Transnationalized Accounts of Turkish Foreign Policy Deniz Kuru

3

Transnationality, Foreign Policy Research and the Cosmopolitan Alternative: On the Practice of Domestic Global Politics Hüsrev Tabak

4

Imperial Transnationalism: Turkish Middle East-Oriented Foreign Policy Expert Apparatus (1998–2011) Jean-Baptiste Le Moulec

21

41

69

v

vi

CONTENTS

Part III

5

6

Transnational Issues, Non-governmental Organizations and the Genesis of Modern Turkish Diplomacy E. Tutku Varda˘glı The Sanjak of Alexandretta (Hatay) in Turkish Foreign Policy: A Case of “Accidental Diaspora” and Kin-State Politics Hazal Papuççular

Part IV

7

8

9

97

121

Asset or Liability? Diasporas and Transnational Communities in Turkish Foreign Policy

Turkey and Syrian Turkomans in the “New Middle East Cold War”: A Critical View from the Kin-State Radiye Funda Karadeniz

143

Constructing Liberal Subjects? Turkey’s New Diaspora Strategy Serif ¸ Onur Bahçecik

175

Jews from Turkey in Israel and Cultural Diplomacy (1996–2006) Ilker Hepkaner

195

Part V

10

Transnationalism in Turkish Diplomacy: A Historical Account

NGOs as Transnational Actors in the Formation and Implementation of Turkish Foreign Policy

“Humanitarianism” Transformed? Analyzing the Role of Transnational Humanitarian NGOs in Turkish Foreign Policy Toward the Middle East in the 2000s Gonca O˘guz Gök

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CONTENTS

11

Business Actors as Holders of Transnational Relations: What Role for Them in Turkish Foreign Policy? Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel

Part VI 12

259

Conclusion

Conclusion Deniz Kuru and Hazal Papuççular

Index

vii

285

293

Notes on Contributors

Serif ¸ Onur Bahçecik is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. His current research focuses on transnationalism, international development and human rights in global politics. He has previously published in Ortado˘gu Etudleri, New Perspectives on Turkey, Third World Quarterly, and Global Policy. He is also one of the editors of State, Religion and Muslims: Between Discrimination and Protection at the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Levels published by Brill. Ilker Hepkaner is a policy consultant, cultural critic, and writer based in New York City. He completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at NYU in 2019. His writing and research have appeared in Comparative Drama, The Revealer, Europe Now, and Ajam among others. He is the co-creator of Turkish pop music podcast Yine Yeni Yeniden 90’lar with Sezgin Inceel. Radiye Funda Karadeniz is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Gaziantep University, Islahiye Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences. After graduating from Marmara University, her M.A. in International Politics from Warwick University was on scholarship from Turkish Education Foundation (TEV) and British Council’s Chevening. Her Ph.D. from Marmara University on “‘Outside Turks’ in Turkish Foreign Policy: A Comparative Theoretical Analysis” was awarded honourable mention in 2015 Young Social Scientist Awards (Turkish Social

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Sciences Association). In 2007 she was a Fulbright Scholar. Her research focuses on Turkish Foreign Policy, “Outside Turks”, Turkish-American relations, and emerging powers in the changing world order. Deniz Kuru is a Lecturer of Political Science at Goethe Universität Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He received his Ph.D. from University of Southern California. Disciplinary and intellectual history and sociology of International Relations, German and French foreign policies, Turkey’s global position, Global Intellectual History and Global International Relations are his current research areas. He has published articles in Review of International Studies, International Relations, All Azimuth, Global Affairs, and Mediterranean Politics. Jean-Baptiste Le Moulec (Ph.D.) is currently lecturer in international politics and economics at ESSCA Business School (Angers and Paris, France). He received a political science education together with an international business management one. As a Middle East specialist, he was also trained in Arabic and Turkish languages while residing in several Arab countries and in Turkey. Although still linked to the Middle East, his current field of research has shifted from the political sociology of international relations to anthropological and economic matters. Gonca O˘guz Gök is Associate Professor of International Relations at Marmara University, Faculty of Political Sciences. Her research focuses on Global Governance, the UN and Turkish Foreign Policy. She has various publications on these topics. Her most recent book chapter, co-authored with Radiye Funda Karadeniz is “Emerging Middle Powers (MIKTA) in Global Political Economy: Preferences, Capabilities and their Limitations” in Emel Parlar Dal’s edited volume Turkey’s Political Economy in 21st Century with Palgrave Macmillan. Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel is Assistant Professor at Marmara University, Faculty of Political Sciences (Istanbul). She obtained her Ph.D. degree from Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po Paris) in June 2013. Her research is focused on transnational actors, the role of economic actors in international politics, the formation of diasporas, state building processes, foreign policy decision-making and feminist IR theory. She taught as lecturer at Sciences Po Paris between 2010 and 2013 and at Bahçe¸sehir University (Istanbul) between 2013 and 2015 before joining her current institution. She speaks Turkish, French, English, and has basic command on Arabic.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xi

Hazal Papuççular is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Kültür University, in Turkey. She completed her Ph.D. in Modern Turkish History at the Bo˘gaziçi University’s Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, and wrote several books, articles and chapters about Turkish foreign policy. She is the author of Türkiye ˙ s Bankası Yayınları, 2019) and curve Oniki Ada (1912–1947) (Türkiye I¸ rently studies Turkey’s transnational diplomatic history. Hüsrev Tabak is currently Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Recep Tayyip Erdogan University in Rize, Turkey. He completed his Ph.D. in Politics at the University of Manchester and his M.A. in Politics and Sociology at University College London (UCL). He is the author of The Kosovar Turks and Post-Kemalist Turkey: Foreign Policy, Socialisation and Resistance (I.B. Tauris, 2016) and “Methodological Nationalism and the Study of Foreign Policy in Turkey” (Uluslararası ˙ skiler/International Relations, 13:4, 2016). Ili¸ E. Tutku Varda˘glı teaches at the Istanbul Aydın University. She received her Ph.D. degree from the Bosphorous University in Modern Turkish History, conducting post-doctoral research as a fellow academic at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She published several books, book chapters and articles on political history, political organizations and movements, Turkish–Greek relations and Near Eastern Politics. She started her academic career as research assistant at Istanbul Bilgi University Centre for Migration Research. She also taught as lecturer at Yıldız Technical University’s Humanities Department.

Abbreviations

ACU AKP ASALA CARE CHP DAESH DITIB EU FDI FSA GNGO HDP HNGO IBF ICRC IHH INGO IO IR JNF LN LNHCR METU MFA MGK

Assistance Coordination Unit Justice and Development Party (JDP) Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere Republican People’s Party Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, IS) Turkish-Islamic Union of the Directorate of Religious Affairs European Union Foreign Direct Investments Free Syrian Army Governmental Non-Governmental Organization People’s Democratic Party Humanitarian Non-Governmental Organization International Business Forum International Committee of Red Cross Societies The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief International Non-Governmental Organizations International Organization International Relations Jewish National Fund League of Nations League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Middle East Technical University Ministry of Foreign Affairs National Security Council xiii

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ABBREVIATIONS

MIF MIT MNC ˙ MÜSIAD NATO NGO NSA ODA ORSAM PKK PLO PYD RP SAM SDF SETA SNC TBMM TFP TIKA TRNC ˙ TÜSIAD UN YPG YTB

Müsiad International Fair National Intelligence Organization Multinational Corporations Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association North Atlantic Treaty Organization Non-Governmental Organizations Non-State Actor Official Development Assistance Center for Middle Eastern Studies Kurdistan Workers’ Party Palestine Liberation Organization The Democratic Union Party Welfare Party Center for Strategic Research Syrian Democratic Forces Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research Syrian National Council Turkish Grand National Assembly Turkish Foreign Policy Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Turkish Industry and Business Association United Nations The Popular Protection Units Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities

List of Figures

Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2

The Plaque at the Süleyman Demirel Grove (Photograph by the author) JNF certificate to Ahmet Necdet Sezer (Photograph by the author)

205 210

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PART I

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Transcending the State—A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy Hazal Papuççular and Deniz Kuru

This volume emerged as a result of our wish to provide a different approach when it comes to the study of Turkish foreign policy (TFP). Instead of the mainstream focus on state-to-state relationships, the editors and contributors decided to follow a different, and rather neglected path, bringing together a number of works that are developed on the basis of a transnational(ist) understanding of foreign policy. Whereas the literature of International Relations has seen many such contributions, and also other foreign policy studies have started to originate from such a different insight, in the specific Turkish context, the

H. Papuççular (B) Department of International Relations, Istanbul Kültür University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] D. Kuru Department of Political Science, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_1

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overwhelming majority of Turkish and foreign scholars dealing with the area of foreign policy remain focused to a greater extent on the relations that connect “Ankara” to other state capitals. This means that a state-centric gaze has become intimately associated with the overall structure of TFP studies, whereby it is more or less just the states that matter. These mostly tacit presumptions, which in turn provide the analytical bases of much TFP work, derive from two related frameworks. First, the dominant idea in the scholarly community is one that privileges the statal actors, at least when it comes to the Turkey/Turkish side of the analysis. This position is grounded in the belief that, historically speaking, it was and is the state leaders and/or organs that were and are the leading actors not only in the area of foreign policy-making and implementation, but also the decisive players in the overall scene of foreign policy processes. Such an approach can in consequence easily lead to a process whereby scholars quite implicitly accept this assumption, and formulate their analyses solely within the confines of this given structure. The question that emerges in this regard is whether one should accept this dominant approach to the Turkish state that has shown at times even some statolatric features. While it is possible to assert that the state, depending on the regional and historical context, can exert a greater or lesser role, among others, in the area of foreign policy, one needs to be careful in developing these assumptions in order to prevent a reification of the state as the most powerful and most relevant actor. In the specific Turkish case, the same criterion should guide us in making a distinction between the at times dominant role of the state and the assumptions regarding its omnipotent position. The present volume distinguishes itself by rejecting the latter. Stated differently, our aim is to emphasize how a different outlook to the study of TFP, one based on a less state-centric approach, could promise a better analytical framework in studying Turkey’s foreign relations. A second point in this regard pertains to the position of non-state actors, and this in two separate realms. At the first look, it is possible to underline the role of Turkish non-state actors in the context of TFP. This presents by itself a rather non-mainstream approach in studies of TFP because the overall focus lies, as stated above, on the Turkish state. However, this book has the goal of overcoming such a narrower approach by shifting the scholarly interest toward such non-state actors from within

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Turkey, such as Turkish business NGOs or humanitarian-related groupings. At the same time, there is the second aspect of non-Turkish nonstate actors whose interactions with Turkish state actors and non-state entities provide a further level for scholarly analyses. As will be discussed below, we aim to cover both of these aspects, going even beyond the national frameworks in order to emphasize the very transnationality of some of these actors that emerge and decisively act in these processes. A point that relates to this general alternative is the prevalence of a broader understanding that sees foreign policy as a process that is limited just to statal actors, to wit, interpreting this process as one that only covers the state-to-state relationships. In that understanding, even if we extend our analyses to state-to-non-state connections, it would become possible to face criticism for leaving out the state. However, with the comprehensive changes we have witnessed in the last four decades (due to information technology revolution, globalization, etc.) there has also emerged a new condition: the rise of non-state actors. In line with these shifts, the scholarly community has gradually adapted a new line of analysis that now covers these actors as significant players of world politics. Hence, it has also become possible to look more closely at their role in processes of foreign policy, and not just as passive objects but active subjects. This volume aims to carry over these scholarly shifts into the domain of TFP studies. A second goal of the present work is to combine transnational(ist) analyses of TFP with a historically shaped framework. This means that the focus will not be merely on the present, dealing with certain contemporary cases, but will extend to the recent and more distant past, including various periods from within the twentieth century, starting in this regard even with the period that paved the way for the emergence of the Turkish Republic. By structuring our contributions in this way, the editors’ primary aim was to pinpoint the usefulness of transnational dynamics not just in the recent decades where it was possible to see the impact of globalization and the concomitant re-rise of non-state actors, but also in more neglected earlier decades of the previous century. This way it becomes possible to undertake a dual task: contributing to a nonstate-centric account of TFP and doing this in a more diachronic manner that does not privilege the present at the expense of the past. Such an alternative approach promises, in our opinion, also a useful means to underline the historical relevance of transnational(ist) analyses. While historians have provided advanced accounts of transnational dynamics that

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dealt with various periods, political scientists, and more specifically IR scholars, have constrained themselves by using this approach rather in the context of more recent cases. Therefore, our aim is not merely to advance TFP studies by making it more transnational but also to provide a number of cases that reflect the possibility of work that combines this with examples from the earlier twentieth century. This choice allows us to present a framework that simultaneously transcends the prevalence of statist and presentist studies. The chapters in the book are structured in a way that aims to answer certain questions that pertain to the goals explained above. First, they develop a novel approach regarding the role of transnational dynamics in the context of TFP. This means to clarify and exemplify a great number of transnational actors and factors in specific TFP-related cases. In light of the non-state-centric focus this volume aims to offer, the authors all underline how, in their varying ways, transnational relationships and interactions lead to certain often neglected dynamics whose consequences are of much significance in TFP-related processes, including its formulation, generation, and implementation. Each study tries therefore to highlight how transnational players or processes have shaped Turkey’s international position. While focusing on the non-state side of the story, many chapters also deal with the role of state actors, allowing for a transnational account that still has much space to offer for the Turkish state. Such an approach contributes to this volume’s goal of widening the study of TFP without neglecting the state as such. As discussed above, our main target is to go beyond the state-focused mainstream approaches. However, an alternative framework does not need to exclude all things related to the role and functions of the Turkish state. To the contrary, our definition of “transnational” paves the way for interactions that take place between non-state actors (from—at times simultaneously—within and/or outside Turkey) and the Turkish state actors. In some of our cases, the discussion even shifts to non-state connections within the context of TFP. Nevertheless, the goal is clear: to broaden the study of TFP and to accomplish this by the dual means of transnationally conscious and historically reflective ways. This also connects to the second aspect, namely to the question of the tempo-spatial limits of such an approach, and its power when it comes to explaining TFP. In this regard, our explicit wish is to reject the frequently seen preference for using transnational dynamics only in the more recent

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temporal frameworks or for considering regional actors from within the West. As the first part of this novelty was explained above, let us focus on the need to overcome a focus with merely Western non-state actors. By turning our attention also to non-state actors from beyond the confines of the West, our contributors, in a number of cases, manage to shift the emphasis not only from the statal actors, but also to do this by pointing to the relevance of regional non-state actors from the non-West. This significant re-orientation paves the way not only for revisiting Turkey’s longtime taken for granted absence from its southern and eastern neighborhood but also for allowing non-Western non-state actors to have a voice in processes of TFP. This aspect provides another novelty of the present volume, and underlines its goal of offering a novel framework for studies of TFP. At this juncture, it is useful to point to a third point, turning our attention to the benefits that our proposed approach can bring about. From a theoretical aspect, in the specific context of TFP studies, it would be a commonplace statement to reiterate the predominance of realist scholarship among Turkish IR scholars. With TFP studies emerging as the primary area of research for many Turkish academics, and the local weight of realism (see Aydın and Yazgan 2013), the inherent state-centrism of realism (see Buzan and Little 2000) leads to the continuation of state-focused studies. On the other hand, a similar approach also prevails among nonTurkey based scholars, for reasons connectable to the (above discussed) supposition that it is the state (in this part of the world) that plays the decisive role. As a consequence, works engaging with non-state actors are either non-existent, relegated to sidelines or come about only when there is an interest in violent regional actors that challenge the state. While in the context of TFP studies many scholars have started to associate themselves with constructivism and other theories that nominally challenge realism, and its concomitant state-centric frameworks, the resulting studies still largely remain tied to these assumptions. A lack of interest for cultural and social factors partially explains this outcome. Furthermore, the traditional focus on hard power issues, with its emphasis on military and security-related aspects, also prevents other ways of looking at TFP that would have enabled a broader examination of nonstate actors and of transnational interactions. Such attitudes reproduce, consequently, frameworks that are constrained, by their very nature, to state-to-state relations. These analyses tend at times to reify the state, and thus remain at a distance from even more traditional FPA studies that

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were able to pinpoint the differences and divergences arising within the state apparatus (see e.g., Rosenau 1967; Allison 1971). While we decided not to restrict the studies to a single theoretical framework, all the chapters that emerged highlight how this realist-cum-state-centric aspect that dominates current TFP scholarship can be, at least to a certain extent, overcome. A fourth issue deserves specific explanation, namely the ways in which transnational relationships shape TFP—with regard to its formation, formulation, and implementation. In this regard, the contributors illustrate not only how foreign political decisions take place in the interstices that are co-shaped by non-state actors and the ensuing transnational relationships but also that the origins of not a few foreign policy processes can be located in these very actors and relationships. At the same time, these dynamics show themselves as influential factors at the phase of formulating new policies. A number of chapters provide examples of how Turkish state actors are bereft of top-down TFP possibilities and have to content themselves with finding non-state actors that are ready to co-operate under their own conditions. This also enables us to question mainstream scholarship’s expectations that are prone to see Turkey’s foreign relations as a process under “Ankara”’s direct control when it comes to non-state actors or relationships that are not of an inter-state nature. The contributions in this volume, in line with their varying theoretical backgrounds, engage with this question from multiple dimensions. Whereas some even reject the TFP as a process that directly refers to Turkish state policies, others implement a perspective that illustrates the agential capacity of certain non-state actors, exemplifying thereby the advantages of a transnational(ist) approach. A fifth point concerns the necessity of acknowledging the limit(ation)s of transnational accounts. While we have discussed their benefits and the various ways in which they promise to advance our understanding of TFP, a reflexive analysis also requires us to discuss a number of possible constraints our alternative framework of transnational dynamics could face. The question regarding the role played by the (Turkish) state would again present a major issue. However, as explained above, we think that a state-centric analysis is frequently at odds with the realities on the ground and that revising this dominant attitude would offer a useful means for scholarly aggiornamento. In addition, by not totally decoupling the state from our framework, the chapters that follow also show that a transnationally conscious scholarship can still be able to deal

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with the state. A further move would be to consider certain inter-state relationships through the additional layers of transnational actors. This possibility is considered in more detail in our concluding chapter. Another issue could be the nature of these transnational dynamics, more specifically the positioning of non-state actors. Do we expect a Turkish NGO to play a role similar to an international organization or a regionally active transnational terrorist group? Our answer is not in the affirmative. The framework we have developed for this volume recognizes the different extent to which such actors can shape TFP. Nevertheless, in all the cases discussed, the aim is to underline how these various actors can still have a visible impact on TFP without necessarily shaping it in the direction of their original intent. Therefore, these studies testify to the role of contingent dynamics, a rather natural element of transnational interactions that emerge on the basis of a greater number of unknown knowns. The volume in its totality aims to use the case of TFP not only in order to provide an alternative account of the Turkish context. Our broader aim is to present a framework (both theoretical and empirical with the relevant case studies) that could be used also for other countries, questioning the focus on the state with its political decision-makers and the Foreign Ministry officials. We will discuss the prospects of this approach in the concluding chapter that not only restates our major findings and goals, but also elaborates the future of more transnationally shaped studies on foreign policy. This volume has set itself the goal of combining theoretical, historical and case study based studies. While the individual chapters will be summarized below, it is important to explain what kind of benefits this approach can offer. As stated above, the editors and contributors see much significance in overcoming the dominant state-centric approaches in TFP studies. The most comprehensive way to develop the alternative framework presented in this volume was therefore to explain the reasons for this novel approach in the specific context of TFP. In this regard, the book opens with the first section that develops certain theoretical insights, which clarify the points of critique vis-àvis state-centric analyses. At the same time, these illustrate alternative ways of engaging with TFP, in ways that shift the focus to transnational dynamics covering non-state actors and their roles in the making (and at times unmaking) of TFP. The subsequent section, “A Historical Account of Transnational Turkish Diplomacy”, follows with its distinct focus on

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historical examples of the various cases in which non-state actors had a significant impact on the TFP (even at a time that officially preceded the founding of the Republic in 1923). Such an approach enables us to pinpoint not the novelty but the continuity of transnational dynamics in the context of TFP, rejecting thereby accounts that would only deal with these aspects starting with the last third of the twentieth century. The section on “Diasporas and Transnationalizing Studies of Foreign Policy” shifts its attention to the role of diaspora actors in the processes of TFP, showcasing the promises and limits of analyses that focus on the formulation and implementation of TFP in interactions between Turkish state actors and various diaspora groups. By demonstrating the relevance of this type of non-state actors, the chapters of this section explain how there exists no single actor that could itself define the shape of TFP. The contingencies and constraints facing both the state and non-state actors exemplify the relevance of using transnational accounts for TFP analyses. The section on “NGOs as Transnational Actors” deals with the impact of NGOs, demonstrating the role of these non-state actors. The two chapters there not only discuss the characteristics of ties between the Turkish state actors and the respective NGO communities, but also clarify the ways in which their entanglements could play a major role in the making of TFP. This section also allows us to see the challenges that arise when the state actors and NGOs confront each other, requiring new formulations or changes in these relationships. The conclusion summarizes our main insights and provides some elaborations that highlight the way ahead for this novel research agenda that we developed in the context of TFP.

Theory, Practice, and Intellectual Currents The first part of the volume provides a more theoretically shaped perspective. It opens with Deniz Kuru’s chapter that discusses how to transnationalize accounts of TFP. In this regard, he points to, also using a number of vignettes, the possibilities through which to attend a different scholarly approach to the subject matter of TFP. In his framework, the focus is on a number of interstitial sites that pave the way for a questioning of the state as such when it comes to the domain of foreign policy. By underlining times and spaces that challenge the idea of a totally state-centric emphasis, this chapter serves also as a means to critically engage with the extant literature. Kuru presents a framework that revisits the conceptual ingredients found within the idea of TFP, dealing with “Turkish” and “Foreign,” in order to propose a more transnationalized

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approach for analysis of TFP. He concludes with a call for a broader, even global search, for the ways in which TFP is shaped, undertaken, and having an impact, inviting us to consider consequently a global intellectual history of/for TFP. Kuru adds thereby that a transnationally shaped approach would allow us to go beyond the prevailing state-centrism, showing the role of other actors and the ensuing interactions that further influence processes of TFP. Chapter 3, by Hüsrev Tabak, develops a theoretical framework based on the ideas of Ulrich Beck and his understanding of cosmopolitanism. The chapter’s major focus is on the problematic consequences of methodological nationalism. Tabak uses Beckian cosmopolitanism as a productive tool in offering ways to overcome such practices. At the same time, he develops the idea of a domestic global politics framework. This is presented as part of a means for developing a new type of research: transnational cosmopolitan foreign policy research. Tabak explains this as a tool for going beyond the dominant understandings that follow methodological nationalism. Elaborating in detail the insights of Beck, he concludes by offering a short discussion on the scholarly benefits of discussing the Syrian War and TFP via the lenses of this domestic global politics. This enables, in turn, to engage with aspects, developments, and processes that would have otherwise remained overlooked, or not properly studied. Chapter 4 is Jean-Baptiste Le Moulec’s study of Turkish experts on the Middle East in the early twenty-first century. His main focus is on the new generation of young Islamist intellectuals, scholars, and think-tank professionals whose educational background was largely shaped by their Western experiences and the years of education spent in these settings. By providing a kind of prosopographical analysis of this recent cohort of Middle East experts, Le Moulec presents a useful novelty in TFP, as his approach also relates to the impact of this new generation on the making of TFP via their semi-statal and party-related activities, found mostly at the crossroads of the AKP-led governments, its related think tanks and universities. His analysis points to an interesting aspect, to wit, the Westernmediated understanding of the Middle East by these experts. Their Western educational background, coupled with the concomitantly internalized standards of Western-style knowledge-production, build for Le Moulec a useful basis for asserting the non-novel character of these experts when it comes to developing a new Turkish approach toward the Middle East. Notwithstanding their Islamist background, these experts are shown to be bereft of developing an original framework for engaging with the region.

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A Historical Account of Transnational Turkish Diplomacy The use of the word “transnational” in history is quite extensive. Iriye in Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present and Future, determines the focal point of transnational history as “cross-national connections, whether through individuals, non-national identities, and non-state actors, or in terms of objectives shared by people and communities regardless of their nationality” (Iriye 2013: 15). Transnational history, in this sense, emphasizes connections across the borders; but these connections do not necessarily have to be about non-state actors or to play a role in foreign policy. The unit of analysis can be ideologies, knowledge, supranational organizations, or anything across the nations. Keeping the focus of this study in mind, our aim was not to write chapters that can be classified within “transnational history,” but to write on transnational actors that relate to, influence, and/or shape TFP in the early twentieth century. This was a challenging task for the historians that contributed to this volume since the abovementioned period of Turkey, and of the world, has been associated with the power of the nation-state. The authors, in this regard, employed an approach that focused on transnational interaction. According to Risse-Kappen, earlier works formed a binary opposition in International Relations in which state and society compete (Risse-Kappen 2003: 5). However, focusing on how these two sides interact with each other will likely produce more fruitful results for the field (ibid.) instead of reproducing a state-society opposition with no certain champions— or from another perspective, with obvious winners. Setting the focus on interaction, rather than on the aforementioned competition or another discussion of whether non-state actors are truly independent of the state, has become a useful analytical method for this part. In this way, it became possible to narrate certain issues of TFP from a transnational perspective without crushing the rather fruitless state vs. society (or state vs. nonstate) debate for a period which was dominated mostly by traditional diplomacy. The same situation also applies to the discussions about the power of non-state actors to change or influence the result of a foreign policy issue. Employing a transnational approach for historical cases by keeping these points in mind became one of the most outstanding contributions of this book to diplomatic history studies.

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In this regard, the chapter written by E. Tutku Varda˘glı, “Transnational Issues, Non-Governmental Organizations and the Genesis of Modern Turkish Diplomacy”, analyzes direct and indirect involvements of non-governmental organizations in Lausanne negotiations of 1922 and 1923. While important transnational issues, such as minority rights, prisoner of wars, and refugees were discussed within the responsibility of League of Nations, non-state actors like relief organizations, missionary groups, charity organizations, and diasporas participated in the process by sending petitions and campaigning. She emphasizes that the actions of these non-state actors led “Ankara” to recognize them as legitimate participants in foreign policy and to learn the new rules of diplomacy such as lobbying. The Turkish government’s position as a player of transnational politics even before the foundation of the republic is one of the key conclusions of the chapter. Varda˘glı’s approach to the Lausanne Conference from a transnationalist perspective also contributes to studies on this specific subject, which were written mostly based on the tough diplomatic negotiation process that took place between the delegates of the governments. Hazal Papuççular’s chapter, “The Sanjak of Alexandretta in Turkish Foreign Policy: A Case of ‘Accidental’ Diaspora and Kin-State Politics”, focuses on the role of Sanjak Turks in the formulation of Turkey’s Sanjak diplomacy in the interwar years. Papuççular looks at the interaction between Sanjak Turks and Turkish state by employing Brubaker’s “accidental diaspora” concept which implies a kin group that remained outside of the borders of a kin state after change of borders of a territorial unit. It analyzes the kin-state policies of Turkey which made this group of Sanjak Turks a strong element of its discourse about the annexation of the region. The author also addresses important problematics of the field, such as the independency of diasporas from kin-states in foreign policy and the instrumentalization of kin groups by kin states based on the specific conditions of the 1930s. The originality of the chapter stems from its display of the ways and limits of studying an interwar foreign policy issue of Turkey with a transnationalist approach.

Diasporas and Transnationalizing Studies of Foreign Policy In section “Diasporas and Transnationalizing Studies of Foreign Policy” of the volume, we turn our attention to the role of various diaspora and

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kinship groups in the context of TFP. The aim is not only to provide a distinct focus on these groups that is due to their significant role in Turkey’s positioning in international politics. At the same time, we try to underline how these groups have to be approached not merely as passive objects of Turkish state policies, but rather as active agential subjects that are able to influence Turkish policymakers. The three chapters, in their different thematic focuses, emphasize the dilemmas and challenges as well as opportunities that emerge through these transnational interactions. Radiye Funda Karadeniz highlights how the Turkish state and the Turkoman groups came to embody an uneasy kinship-based relationship at the times of the war(s) in Syria after 2011. Starting with a general overview of the regional dynamics and explaining the historical position of Turkomans in Turkey’s southern neighbor, Karadeniz presents a very detailed analysis of the different policies implemented by Turkish decision-makers and the surprising outcomes that emerged as a consequence of various shifts in the relationship between the Turkish state and the Turkoman ethnic groups in Syria. Providing a framework that clarifies a very difficult period of TFP, she offers a means for going beyond reified ideas about kinship ties between states and ethnic ties to groups living in neighboring countries. Making extensive use of broader literature, Karadeniz’ chapter demonstrates how taking a transnational approach can also help us gain a better understanding of TFP’s regional dilemmas at the time of the Syrian war. A different perspective is found in the chapter by Serif ¸ Onur Bahçecik. He focuses on the novel institutional structure of Turkey’s “Presidency for the Turks Abroad”, a state organ dealing with Turkish diaspora as well as Turkic groups abroad. By clarifying the political choices made by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments, Bahçecik employs a Foucaldian framework, and critically engages with the inherent limits of the manner in which Turkish state actors decided to approach “their citizens and brethren abroad.” His account presents first a historical analysis of how various Turkish state actors tried to deal with the diaspora, and how at all a certain idea pertaining to these diaspora groups was first required to emerge. On this basis, he shifts to discuss recent AKP government policies that culminated in this special state organ that has a ministry-like function. The emerging picture shows that actors other than the much-focused Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs can play different kinds of foreign policy roles, which also need to be explained—a task undertaken in this chapter.

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The final chapter of this section is Ilker Hepkaner’s study of a specific spatial context in Turkish–Israeli relations. By focusing on Jews from Turkey who emigrated to Israel and the subsequent generations in the framework of naming practices, he presents a detailed study on the influence of transnational dynamics when it comes to cultural diplomacy. Hepkaner looks at how Israeli citizens with Turkish background were able to honor visiting Turkish statesmen by giving their names to certain parks and forests and how this practice has its roots in the Atatürk Forest. Simultaneously, he presents a detailed analysis about the historical developments and the changes one finds in this practice in the later decades. His usage of a rather overlooked aspect in transnational dynamics helps us to gain a different understanding about the role of Jews from Turkey within the Israeli society. Demonstrating how such rather neglected practical decisions, even a small one such as naming a forest or a park, can play a role in bilateral relations, his account also manages to overcome the usual state-to-state analyses when it comes to studying Turkish–Israeli relations.

NGOs as Transnational Actors This part of the book aims to present an analysis of NGOs as actors that play transnational roles also within the context of TFP. This complements the volume’s focus on various elements making up the transnational. Following the preceding sections with their theoretically, historically, and diaspora-wise shaped chapters, the two chapters here deal with the way Turkish NGOs come to assume major roles in TFP. To a certain extent, the models employed resemble the section on diaspora and the chapters therein. This similarity pertains to the constraints but also capacities of NGOs in their interactions with Turkish political decision-makers. The chapters here offer helpful tools for witnessing, once again, this time in the case of the NGOs, how TFP can be better analyzed when the focus shifts from the decision-makers in Ankara to the civil society actors located in Istanbul and elsewhere. By overcoming certain constraints imposed by state-centric analyses, the emphasis on NGOs paves the way for looking for those actors that are not easily located merely within the national domain. Transnationalized accounts of TFP emerge also at the end of these two studies that question the studies that tend to offer one-way analysis of state to non-state connections in which the former is overemphasized at the cost of the latter.

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Gonca O˘guz Gök’s chapter looks at the transforming processes undergone by Turkish humanitarian actors, analyzing the specific case of newly emerging Turkish humanitarian NGOs that have started to play an active role in the Middle Eastern regional setting in the twenty-first century. Her aim is to provide both an account of the emergence of these novel actors and to emphasize the case of Turkish IHH, an organization whose actions have led to a confrontation between Turkey and Israel that resulted in a years-long diplomatic crisis. By contextualizing the IHH and its actions with regard to its role as a transnationally acting player, Gök allows us to comprehend the non-state and state actors within Turkey as complementary, and at times conflicting parts, of TFP. Highlighting the dynamics of their interactions in the context of the Turkish–Israeli relations, the chapter provides an additional layer through which to discuss the role of self-declared humanitarian NGOs as effective players and interveners in usually inter-state relations of the Middle East. Chapter 11 of this section is Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel’s study of the business community in Turkey in its distinct NGO-shaped formations. Her exploration leads us to understand Turkish business actors as not only national, but also transnational players. In this sense, ÖzdemirkıranEmbel offers a framework that analyzes Turkish business NGOs’ specific functions in the Turkish EU-accession process and the significant agential role undertaken by them. Especially, she explores their overwhelmingly pro-EU attitude and underlines how this approach enables them to become leading actors both at home and abroad by campaigning for the EU membership. Such a positioning is shown to be most easily accomplished through transnational relationships established by their ties with the European counterparts and the various ways of reaching out to the domestic and international public audiences. By studying the business actors of Turkey and their NGO structures and the policies implemented by them, it becomes possible, in turn, to gain a different understanding of how TFP is shaped by non-state actors at the interstices of transnational dynamics.

In Lieu of Conclusion As we tried to show in the preceding contextualization and summary of this volume and its goals, the overall aim is to provide a novel approach for studying TFP, both in a historically self-conscious and transnationally shaped manner. This spirit is reflected in our chapters, as many of them,

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even when not explicitly historical, reflect the desire to provide a historical framework within which to account for the emergence, development, and continuity of transnational dynamics. At the same time, the structure and content of the volume are based on our desire to present a balanced account of TFP, to wit, to provide chapters that at times overlap and complement each other. This interaction potential between the chapters also allows a less detached reading that at times turns the volume into a textbook-like structure, enabling the readers both to gain new insights into TFP and to advance their understanding of transnational dynamics in this specific, but also rather broad, aspect. While we mainly aim to expand the extant knowledge in the area of TFP, individual sections and their chapters could also be read in the light of their theoretical, historical or case study based explanations and explorations. At the same time, we see this project as a useful basis for others interested in broader issues pertaining to all things transnational or transnationalist. In his regard, the contributions were also structured as studies that would offer needed material on studies of TFP as well as of transnational processes. In the last chapter of the volume, in the conclusion, we offer a general summary of the arguments developed and pinpoint the ways of improving our scholarly journeys via a more transnationalized understanding when it comes to studying foreign policy.

References Allison, Graham. 1971. Essence of Decision—Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Little and Brown. ˙ skiler Aydın, Mustafa, and Korgan Yazgan. 2013. Türkiye’de Uluslararası Ili¸ Akademisyenleri E˘gitim, Ara¸stırma ve Uluslararası Politika Anketi – 2011. ˙ skiler 9 (36): 3–44. Uluslararası Ili¸ Buzan, Barry, and Richard Little. 2000. International Systems in World History. New York: Oxford University Press. Iriye, Akira. 2013. Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present and Future. London: Palgrave. Risse-Kappen, Thomas. 2003. Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Introduction. In Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions, ed. Risse-Kappen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenau, James (ed.). 1967. Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy. New York: Free Press.

PART II

Ideas on Turkish Transnationalism: Theory, Practice, and Intellectual Currents

CHAPTER 2

Transnationalized Accounts of Turkish Foreign Policy Deniz Kuru

What is foreign policy? A standard answer would focus more or less on states as relevant actors that are able, through their various agents and institutions, to determine a certain policy that would be implemented in relation with outside actors. A leading scholar defines foreign policy as “the sum of official external relations conducted by an independent actor (usually a state) in international relations” (Hill 2016: 4). I will aim to broaden this framework, more directly in the specific Turkish context, by turning to non-state actors (from inside and outside of a given state) that come to play a significant role in processes leading to the formation, and implementation, of the state’s foreign policy, discussing also the possibility of non-state aspects of foreign policies, partially questioning the official vs. non-official distinction. Stated differently, the goal is to overcome the state-centric approaches that are dominant in studies of foreign policy. What should one understand when speaking of transnationalized accounts? It can be seen as a move toward a non-state-centric approach

D. Kuru (B) Department of Political Science, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_2

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when dealing with states’ foreign policies. Instead of thinking of foreign policy/policies as frames that take shape within an interstate relationship, a less strict analysis allows us to think of supra- and sub-state actors from within and without that also play a defining role in a state’s decisions regarding its foreign policy. At the same time, there emerges the possibility to question the state as the leading actor even within the confines of a country’s foreign policy. Such an approach is also connected to the poststructuralist accounts that have enriched the International Relations starting with the 1980s (see especially Walker 1993) by questioning the very premises that assume a hermetic cut-off point between the international and the national, between the global and the domestic. These studies have paved the way for a new understanding in engaging with world politics because it became possible to analyze in a more critical fashion the supposed distinctions between domestic and international politics. A further dimension that extended the potential of such a revision took shape in the form of new historiographical studies that underlined the recentness, that is, the rather novel character of foreign ministries or established diplomatic settings (Leira 2016). The focus of diplomatic studies turned more directly to constant changes that have been affecting diplomatic institutions and mechanisms (see for instance Henrikson 2006). The emerging frame is one that challenges the usual diplomatic frames that see foreign policy as a sort of billiard balls model with its continuous back and forthmoves between national foreign ministries. Shortly, these wider lenses enable us to engage with issues of foreign policy in a way that is not limited to actions and reactions that take place, at most, between two capitals. At the same time, our studies in the area of Foreign Policy should take into consideration shifts in a not so distant discipline, i.e., History. The last few decades have brought about a dramatic change in the way in which interstate relations were turned to national narratives. Two connecting trends have led to the overcoming of diplomatic history’s state-centric accounts. First, transnational history made it possible to explain even a single nation’s past in the context of its various neighbors (Marjanen 2009). Words like entanglement, interwoven, and interconnected have replaced the earlier weight of nation-state-determined processes. Taking an even broader focus, studies of global history (Belich et al. 2016; Conrad 2017, and on global intellectual history Moyn and Sartori 2013) opened new vistas, underlining the rather artificial ways

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in which the borders of nations had also defined the limits of historical accounts (see van Ittersum et al. 2016 for an elaboration). In these instances, it became possible to connect the story about the impact of an African-American intellectual who had a European educational background to the socio-economic policies implemented in the African continent (for this particular example see Zimmermann 2010). Widening further the attack of social historians and the transnationalists on oldfashioned diplomatic history, global history confronted us, once again, with the limits of state-centrism. Another field that has recently witnessed much revisionism is the history of international thought. In this case, scholars, mostly from within International Relations (IR), have attacked various taken-for-granted historical narratives that associate certain thinkers with a certain set of ideas. This did not even just concern philosophers of past centuries or millennia, but also major names of IR’s twentieth century theoretical frameworks. As a result of these studies, it is now possible not only to question the much-repeated mantra about great, and supposedly realist, thinkers of the past centuries, but also to engage with Hans Morgenthau beyond his usual realist lines, seeing him (also) as a significant reformist (see especially Scheuerman 2010). More recent works, mostly by postcolonialist and decolonial scholarship, have also managed to finally generate more global research in these areas, pinpointing the interrelations between European and non-Western thinkers in the modern era, and extending thus our focus to contexts outside of the standard Eurocentric framework (see Jones Gruffydd 2006; on Eurocentrism Hobson 2012). At the intersection of these historiographical and social scientific shifts, I argue that our own approaches in studying foreign policy issues could also undergo a major aggiornamento, to wit, take on a new ontological understanding of (in this case Turkish) Foreign Policy. This means that one could make even studies of Foreign Policy less a matter revolving around a given state, and more a process that involved a great, and at times uncountable, number of actors. Obviously, the quest(ion) of parsimony haunts us all (at least since Waltz’ defense of it; see Waltz 1979). As social scientists, we face a challenge that seems to be less of a factor for historians. Expectations of parsimonious studies concern the requirement of providing clear theoretical models and easy-to-follow empirical observations instead of kitchen-sink style approaches that cover any and all. In this regard, one chooses to focus on the decisions of governments, the implementation of these by, mostly, Ministries of Foreign Affairs, and

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the role played by states’ diplomats abroad. Foreign relations are thus ties between state capitals, at times also extending to the headquarters of international organizations. As an alternative approach, this study proposes to broaden the usual lenses of studies engaging with (Turkish) Foreign Policy. Following the above-discussed tendencies in History and IR, it starts with a critical look at a leading example of mainstream studies on Turkish Foreign Policy. Consequently, the paper discusses in more general terms the possibilities of transnationalizing accounts of Turkish Foreign Policy, while also underlining the potential of foreign policies (with lower case letters) that can be analyzed in a non-state-centric manner. This would allow us to show aspects of these processes that are often left overlooked or not even considered as potential research topics. In this regard, it becomes possible to also deal with foreign policy context where the given actors are not necessarily states, but aim to pursue state-like foreign policies (Marès 2010). For this reason, I present three topics that mark by their very nature the promises of transnationalized narratives, going beyond state-to-state relationships. After briefly discussing each of these cases, the chapter concludes with a call for more global studies of foreign policies, specifically in the realm of ideas.

Transnationalizing Turkish Foreign Policy and Its Accounts Analyses of Turkish Foreign Policy have been marked, traditionally, by state-centric accounts. In this regard, it is useful to turn our gazes to a major survey-textbook project that played, and continues to play, a significant role in substantiating a certain vision/version of Turkish Foreign Policy. Continuing on the tradition of the textbook prepared by Suat Bilge in the 1960s and later updated into the 1990s by a team led by Mehmet Gönlübol,1 both leading scholars of Turkish Foreign Policy in those decades, it was the turn in the early 2000s of Baskın Oran, another professor from Ankara’s Faculty of Political Sciences, to develop a new account of the history of Turkish Republican-era foreign policy, covering the broad period from 1920s to 2000s.2 One significant innovation of the textbook3 edited by Oran was to interweave the various analyses in the book (originally published in two volumes, with the addition of a third one covering the early twenty-first century in a less historicist fashion) with a great number of “boxes” that

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aimed to make the (student) reader familiar with key concepts from different scholarly areas, ranging from diplomatic history to concepts from international law, from Turkish political history to details of European integration. These additional texts did not necessarily have a direct connection with the book’s main focus, itself consisting of a chronological and geographical account of Turkish foreign policy. Rather, they aimed at providing the readers with more knowledge that would be useful for a better grasp of more specific processes going on in Turkey’s foreign policy. Besides this significant contribution, the first two volumes dealing with the period up to the early 2000s had an approach that was determined on the basis of periods and geographic areas. The emerging framework was one that prioritized state actors and at times international organizations, with only a limited role given for non-state players such as international NGOs, sub-state actors from within Turkey, or international media as well as the global public opinion, all of them subjects that could play a substantive role in the formation and/or implementation of Turkish foreign policy. Interestingly enough, it was only the topic of human rights that deserved its own thematic section among political and regional issues in the periods dealing with both 1980s and 1990s. In the third volume, again, it became the sole topic to have its own chapter title.4 While the books do in fact engage with non-state actors, it seems still important to note that this happens only within the separate chapters, lacking therefore a direct and continuous exploration of this dimension. That no other topic except human rights made it to the chapter sections, even in the parts dealing with the 1990s and the twenty-first century underlines the overall state-centric nature of this important work. Recent years have seen a significant turn in social sciences and humanities toward the idea of transnational, aiming to generate case studies or syntheses which go beyond the state-centric approaches of the past. Not a few of these changes are a consequence of the impact of globalization, and also of a growing interest in global history, and more broadly, global studies. These are instances that tend to overcome the state boundaries as the central definers of political, cultural, or social dynamics, trying to turn our gaze to moves that focus on processes and actions which are much more interwoven and mutually influenced than basic state-centric analyses would be able to explain. In this context, transnational approaches have arisen as main alternatives to studies that merely deal with state-to-state relationships. However, it is also important to add that, notwithstanding the close connections between transnationally structured studies and the

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ongoing dynamics of globalization, such approaches are not merely to be applied in the case studies that pertain to the late twentieth century or early twenty-first century. To the contrary, transnational factors can be located at various points of the modern times, going beyond the nationstate influenced dynamics also in the cases of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.5 What does one understand from “transnationalized accounts of Turkish Foreign Policy” in this context? In order to explain its coverage, it would be useful to approach separately the three parts of this title: transnationalized accounts, Turkish, Foreign Policy. What is the meaning of “transnationalized” accounts in this regard? It refers to the idea that existing accounts of (in this case Turkish) Foreign Policy can be broadened by adding in a number of non-state actors whose influence in the formative stages and realization phases of a foreign policy decision is of a considerable degree. This signifies that one should not necessarily juxtapose a state-centric approach to one that just deals with non-state actors. To the contrary, the underlying suggestion in this context lies in the idea that a more comprehensive and still sufficiently succinct analysis of foreign policy can be produced by combining these two approaches. The emerging picture presents diverse transnationalized accounts, developing from a framework that manages to include non-state actors from the outside and inside, without confining the narrative to a given state per se. The plurality in the accounts is also of importance, as it underlines the weakness of certain analytical structures that are not that rarely employed by scholars of foreign policy. This means that the assertion of “the” foreign policy of a country is rather feeble on the basis of empirics, as no single account can succeed in providing an all-covering analysis. What does the related idea of transnational actors refer to? In this case, a rich spectrum of agents could be mentioned. This includes diaspora groups with (partial) origins in Turkey, business communities from within and outside Turkey, Turkish political parties as well as their foreign counterparts (not merely national political parties but also groups in the European Parliament), ethnic minorities with their transnational ties, NGOs in Turkey and those with international or other national connections (from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch), unrecognized state actors (from North Cyprus to South Ossetia), and so on. What matters is not the very nature of these actors, as they can be seen, from

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certain perspectives, as national actors or as international. The extent of their engagement with their Turkish counterparts, or the officials representing the Turkish state, is the framework that defines their transnational actorness. To put it shortly, transnational is what different actors generate in their interactions. Nevertheless, the dimension of non-state actors is of much importance, as state-to-state relationships would remain as the usual narrative frameworks of most studies focusing on what is regularly labeled as Turkish Foreign Policy. With regard to the concept of “Turkish Foreign Policy,” I want to make a two-partite distinction. First, there is a need for clarification about what is meant when writing about “Turkish Foreign Policy.” A second point to cover is what we understand from the idea of foreign policy per se. The label “Turkish” is used as a preferred way in the discussions concerning the foreign policy choices of the Republic of Turkey. In this regard, “Turkish” becomes an adjective form for the whole (nation-)state structure of (Republican-era) modern Turkey. However, one should be even careful with this basic premise, as certain caveats do exist. The most important aspect concerns the way in which the foreign policy of the Ottoman Empire is also associated with the concept of “Turkish Foreign Policy.” The eponymous title of William Hale’s significant contribution serves as a useful reminder in this regard, as it covers also the Ottoman-era foreign policies, starting with the later phases, that is, with the empire’s modernization period (Hale 2001). Notwithstanding these usages, it is more common to refer in fact to the Turkish state (the Republican era starting with 1923) when one deals with Turkish Foreign Policy. In the case of the ways in which foreign policy as such is analyzed, there arises the question whether the reference is to the Republican era foreign policy formulated and implemented by the Turkish state and its diplomatic mechanisms. In the present study, the answer to this question emerges as a major point of divergence compared to mainstream studies of Turkish Foreign Policy. For it is not an affirmative one. The framework employed here does not only look after transnationalizing various accounts of Turkish foreign policy but also aims to detach foreign policy/ies from a statal-diplomatic framework. For this reason, I will continue by referring to Turkish foreign policy/ies instead of “Turkish Foreign Policy” in the remainder of this paper whenever the aim is to differentiate between classical and alternative approaches.

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What does this alternative approach signify? It means that the foreign political entanglement in which Turkey is involved cannot be merely limited to dimensions of Turkish diplomatic activities abroad or certain policy decisions taken in/by, what we are used/taught to refer to as, “Ankara”. In this usage, the capital equals the decision-makers who equal the state that equals Turkey as such. This is not just state-centric, but concomitantly provides a narrow framework that leads us to overlook other agents. All foreign-related activities of political nature, the given environment of “Foreign Policy” as such, are tied in those approaches to the capitals and their relevant decision-makers, i.e., state actors instead of actors beyond, behind, and below the state. Combining the earlier critique in IR about the rather artificial nature of a supposedly clear division between the international and the national with a broader understanding of foreign affairs that do not just pertain to interstate actors enables us to widen our analytical lenses. This highlights the assumption taken here, based on the idea that foreign policies mostly take place in a realm that comes into being through mutually co-constituted social frameworks (see Doty 1993 for an early leading approach). Stated differently, foreign policy decisions or declarations cannot by themselves mean “a foreign policy” as the consequences of these are to emerge in a situation of constant interaction and even conflicting interpretations. To paraphrase Alexander Wendt’s famous title, “foreign policy is not what states make (of it).” As recently shown by the contributions to an edited volume, the very historicity of foreign policy practices and the varying dimensions of its past and present require us to take a broader look at it, one that does not limit itself to the present state system (Hellmann et al. 2016). In this regard, the issue of foreign policy becomes one of defining the boundary between the domestic and the external (see also Fahrmeir 2015). However, in such an approach, it is important to provide more agential capacity to non-state actors. Therefore, the following framework derives from an understanding that prioritizes the roles and impact capacities of non-state players when it comes to discussing a given issue of foreign policy. Most importantly, the aim is to put the emphasis on the very trans-boundary nature of foreign policies, independent of where the domestic/interior vs. international/external distinction is set. On this basis, it becomes possible to illustrate how a number of non-state actors become significant agents in the processes related to, in this specific case, Turkish Foreign Policy.

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In the following part of this paper, I will provide three short empirical observations in this regard, underlining the multiple ways in which foreign policy accounts need to be developed in new ways, the bases of which relate more intensively to non-state actors as well as the visible challenges faced by state-formulated policies.

Case 1: The Location of “First Visits” A newly established tradition in Turkish foreign policy has been for a new prime minister (prior to 2018 there used to be one) to undertake his/her first visit to Nicosia, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)—an entity whose only recognizer as a state is Turkey. This is not so dissimilar from other countries, for instance, the traditional visits made by German chancellors to Paris, or more recently, French presidents to Berlin, following the formation of new governments or presidential elections, respectively. What differs in the Turkish case, though, is the question whether this counts at all as an aspect of Turkish Foreign Policy. In the alternative, and broader approach of, what I call, Turkish foreign policy/ies, these visits are a not to be ignored part of these policies. This means that even if, from the perspective of international law and the resolutions of the UN Security Council, the Turkish Cypriot state does not enjoy such a status,6 the visit’s very happening remarks each Turkish government’s intention of reproducing the existing situation. By this practice (on practice theory in IR and diplomacy see Pouliot 2008; Adler and Pouliot 2011; Neumann 2012), it becomes possible for all actors to note Turkish state officials’ interest in underlining the TRNC’s statehood. Even if one notes the rather unequal position between a Turkish Prime Minister and the representatives of TRNC (be it the Turkish Cypriot President or Prime Minister), as the Turkish Cypriot politicians depend ultimately on the policy preferences of the Turkish government, the visits still represent a part of Turkish foreign policies. The complexity of these visits was marked in an indirect way as Oran’s edited volume spoke at one point of a new Prime Minister’s “first abroad visit” to TRNC, with a different chapter in the same volume mentioning this same Prime Minister’s “first visit abroad,” although, this time, with Iran as its destiny (Oran, volume II 2001b). This shows how even among Turkish scholars there ruled some ambiguity with regard to the stateness of the Turkish Cypriot entity.

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Why does the TRNC’s selection for hosting the first visit matter? It is significant because it serves as a message that underlines the existing ties generated by Turkish control over this region or in the form of a Turco-Cypriot Turkish friendship. Even setting aside the issue of the statehood-in-question, the visit still matters, not least due to having become a regular aspect of governmental business. The same is valid for the annual celebrations that take place in July, commemorating the start of the Turkish landing of the summer of 1974 on the island. On this day, the Turkish government pays special attention to attend the TRNC’s national holiday activities, with the usual participation of Turkey’s high level officials. Although it is seen as part of a state-to-state interaction within the Turkish-North Cypriot framework, it has no such perception for the outsiders. Thus, it represents rather a symbolic attempt by Turkish decision-makers to show their presence on the Turkish-controlled part of the island. In the case of “first visits,” what are the transnational aspects that need to be elaborated? It concerns the way state-to-(non-)state relations are shifted to a more public sphere, with these visits becoming a means of also reaching out also to non-state officials, including the local population, which feels quite isolated (Navaro-Yashin 2012), left alone by the international community due to North Cyprus’ unrecognized statehood. At the same time, by indirectly underlining the isolation of Turkish Cypriots (this includes their impossibility to attend international sports events), Turkish first visits symbolize the limits even of transnational options. If an entity is not internationally recognized as a state, even transnational connections face difficulties in getting underway. The extraordinariness of the visits serves to reiterate the international isolation of the entity, notwithstanding the presumed state-to-state nature of Turkish-North Cypriot ties. What remains are Turkish policies that are locatable in-between the Foreign and the Domestic, as the Turkish-controlled northern part of the island has to connect to the world via Mersin, a Turkish province on the Mediterranean coast. In this regard, the very definitional boundaries between the international and the domestic become more ambiguous, simultaneously leading us to revise our understanding of transnational dynamics themselves. In this case, transnational becomes a level of analysis that emerges at the conflictual interstices of a challenged interstate relationship. The concomitant rejection of a domestic, to wit, national relationship, by the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot authorities makes the

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transnational the only remaining analytical level to approach their connections from a broader perspective. The transnational in this regard emerges not merely as a result of the continuing unwillingness of both sides of this relationship to turn it into a domestic connection, an option that would emerge as a consequence of a hypothetical Turkish annexation of the island’s northern half. It also relates to the lack of an international dimension that would be recognized by other actors. This turns the Turkish-North Cypriot Turkish connection to one that becomes more easily approachable from the perspective of transnational dynamics. The visits themselves can be interpreted therefore as an event that takes place in this in-between space that is neither international nor national. Understanding Turkish foreign policies in this framework is a task that could better be advanced by using this transnational perspective.

Case II: The Yunus Emre Institutes The cultural dimension of foreign policy presents perhaps a rather convenient issue area for mainstream transnational approaches that follow the old lines based on the supposed distinctions between the high politics of political and military affairs, and the soft power aspects of cultural and social issues. In this context, recent studies have also shed some light on non-Western states’ latecomer status in this cultural sphere. The cultural centers established around the globe by the sponsorship of the People’s Republic of China, the Confucius Institutes, in affiliation with leading international universities and institutions, testify to this tendency.7 Following the earlier examples of Goethe Institut, British Council, Institut Français, or Instituto Cervantes, Turkey has decided to establish its own brand of cultural centers abroad. This was an important aspect of the JDP governments’ country-branding efforts that played a significant role during their first ten years in office. The new institute was formed under the auspices of a specific foundation, carrying the same name and including representatives from the government, bureaucracy, and a number of various non-governmental organizations.8 Interestingly enough, the choice of the first centers abroad was quite meaningful in its own geographical regard. They were, to a great extent, established in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire, and not in the bigger metropolitan areas like Paris, London, or Berlin—these would come in later expansion stages of these centers.

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How would a transnationalized account deal with this case? In mainstream approaches, the focus would be on the decisions of the state actors, in this case the Turkish government and its official foreign policy priorities. As is well known, the 2000s and especially early 2010s, marked a special interest for Turkish political decision-makers with regard to former regions that made up the Ottoman Empire.9 This was more visibly the case in the Balkans and the Arab countries. In that regard, the founding of Yunus Emre centers in the cities of these two regions is interpretable as an example of Turkish Foreign Policy. However, a transnationalized account paves the way for dealing also with non-state and non-Turkish actors, making it possible to engage with Turkish foreign policies. For instance, one would need to look at reactions generated in these regions and cities. How, and to what extent, did the local population show its interest in these centers? Did any specific positive or negative assessments take place in media reports? What was the impact of Turkish language courses, which has so far been the most focal point of activities undertaken by these centers? These questions would require detailed answers in the varying contexts of the Balkans and the Middle East countries in order to explain how decisions taken by the decision-makers in “Ankara” have repercussions that could differ from their original intents. With regard to these questions, it is useful to state that their aim was not merely to serve as language centers, but also to promote a certain image of Turkey, one that would include at times more “old-style” events such as concerts and movie screenings that used to be organized also at the time of preceding governments, in a more ad hoc nature. Nevertheless, the way certain political or cultural topics are selected and conferences and similar gatherings structured, it becomes visible that the ruling party’s own interests are reflected across these institutes. A certain level of nostalgia for the Ottoman era, with its supposed pax ottomana, marks such events. In a transnational manner, a national, now more imperiallike attitude, takes the stage, and reaches the audiences abroad. The process is a transnational one, as the cultural events, and language education aspects, relate to individuals and go beyond the confined realm of any given state, even the Turkish one. The consequences of this cultural policy pertain, therefore, to transnational accounts of foreign policies, as their actual outcomes cannot be pre-defined, but are shaped by contingent trajectories within the varying spatial contexts. As becomes clear, the founding process of these institutes was, not surprisingly, shaped to a great extent by the political forces that had been

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ruling Turkey since 2002. Although the institute was under the guidance of the Yunus Emre Foundation, in which even for a few civil society representatives some seats in the council were reserved, the polarized nature of Turkish politics and society quasi automatically led to a perception that the institutes would be a means of governmental propaganda for the Justice and Development Party policies. In this regard, they were seen as a further means of the broad domestic political restructuration that was taking place in Turkey. Again, this case provides therefore another example of the interwovenness between the international and the domestic, a context for which a transnationally set perspective can offer broader insights compared to the former two. Finally, in the case of cultural institutes, it is important to underline that transnational dynamics include especially the following non-state targets: the local population in host states who are expected to become more familiar with Turkish culture and even language, frequent and positive media presence that emerges from regularly covered Turkish cultural events, and the overall soft power dimension (see Nye 2004). This signifies that although the institutes were probably part of a general decision, the impact they generated easily went beyond the framework that related to Turkish Foreign Policy. While soft power as such could be associated with statal actors, its ramifications, as I tried to explain above, pertain less to the state itself. Most visible examples of this are the Turkish soap operas that have triggered huge popularity for the country, although many of them portray a Turkish (or Ottoman) society that has values at odds with those defended by the ruling party.

Case III: Who Studied Where? Socialization Through Education A further case that would enable us a better grasp of transnational dynamics at play in the staging/enactment of Turkish Foreign Policy is the individual, and even possibly collective, background of foreign-policy makers and implementers with regard to their educational past. Stated more broadly, this could present elaborations of foreign policies involving Turkey that go beyond a mere focus on the state-as-actor. This would allow us to overcome classical accounts that do not delve into the mechanisms and processes of foreign policy that are outside of the direct “political questions,” leaving therefore aside educational-socialization influences that continue to shape actors that “make/create” foreign policy.

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This case study could involve multiple actors: Turkish politicians who have been socialized in Western-modeled education practices,10 Turkish diplomats whose educational socialization took place in Western universities, post-Ottoman state leaders in the newly independent states who had studied at Ottoman institutions,11 and even the next generations of policy-makers who have been socialized through ERASMUS during their studies in Turkey or European countries. It is useful to discuss shortly the implications of these socialization processes in Turkish foreign policies. While norm socialization studies constitute nowadays an important approach in IR (see for an early example Risse et al. 1999), which pinpoint the impact that shared norms have on those that adjust themselves to these, there has not been any study to look in detail at how practices of Turkish Foreign Policy have been shaped in the specific context of Turkish politicians or diplomats under the impact of their educational paths. Direct socialization in Western institutions of higher education would be expected to form the Turkish politicians and/or diplomats in a certain direction that would make it easier for them to develop and implement foreign policy decisions, the meaning of which would be more clearly comprehensible for the Western actors with whom one is in contact—as well as the broader international society, which one can assume to have widely internalized these norms (for a recent take on this globalized international society see Dunne and Reus-Smit 2017). In this regard, it would be important to consider the extent of Turkish foreign policy actors who have studied abroad (with different categories for BA, MA, and PhD studies, also taking into account whether their studies preceded or coincided with their postings in the case of diplomats). At this juncture, a transnationalized account could enable us to even compare the historical trajectory of these educational socialization dynamics, showing whether the change in percentage terms coincided with any (consequent) general shift at the level of Turkish Foreign Policy. In this sense, transnationally inspired analyses carry the potential of providing a fuller picture of conditions under which a state’s “official Foreign Policy” takes place. With regard to ERASMUS, it is important to underline that already tens of thousands of Turkish and European students have spent part of their university studies in European countries or various Turkish cities. It is visible by now that many of these exchange students are becoming important players in their national or even European spheres of politics and diplomacy. By having spent a considerable time of their formative years in Turkey, former European ERASMUS students are now

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in possession of direct insights into Turkish society and culture as well as different aspects of its political scene, in addition to many individual level and group-based networks. Some of these are now members of the European Parliament or leading junior politicians within their national political parties. Similar engagements with European countries are also valid for former Erasmus students from Turkey, whose first generation is now in their thirties and gradually entering the higher-middle echelons of Turkish bureaucracy, as well as NGOs. They are the first group in modern Republican history to have studied in such large numbers abroad, with direct experiences concerning various styles of European social and cultural life. In their case, one needs to take this generational perceptual change into consideration when dealing with future Turkish foreign policies, as these same people will play a major role in the production and implementation of these in the coming years.

Conclusion On the basis of the points made in this chapter, it is proper at this juncture to highlight a related aspect that will need more engagement in future research dealing with Turkish foreign policy practices. This concerns the level of global ideational influences. Stated differently, it becomes important to show more interest in the ways in which foreign policies are, also in the case of their background, formatting, ideas,12 much shaped by global transfer of ideas and knowledge (see also Bourdieu 2002). This goes even beyond the usual focus on norms, pushing us to deal more intensively with questions of individuals and other non-state actors who are capable of developing concepts and tools for global politics, which in turn also find their place within Turkish Foreign Policy, and foreign policies in their broader understanding. Based on this promise, transnational(ized) accounts of Turkish Foreign Policy can also pave the way for the next step of global histories of foreign policy. The most convenient place to start in this regard would be global intellectual history (see Moyn and Sartori 2013). This can be realized, in the specific case of Turkey, by turning our attention, among others, to the following aspects. First, who were the ideational influencers of various Turkish foreign ministers, including Western as well as nonWestern thinkers whose publications have potentially played a major role in shaping also Turkish Foreign Policy? Taking into consideration prominent, and at times even obscure, thinkers could bring in some interesting

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clarifications to this question. Second, did certain global ideologies shape to a visible extent Turkish foreign policy practices and processes? Working on Third Worldism, Eurasianism, Westernism, or Islamism could provide many helpful insights in this regard. Their most important contribution would be to show how on an ideational basis, non-state actors were able to gain leverage and shape, in turn, Turkish foreign policies. They helped to determine the overall framework of Turkey’s possibilities, but also to generate various spaces of transnational connections. Third, did Turkish thinkers come up with their own original or modified ideas that later managed to influence non-Turkish actors such as foreign diplomats, different NGOs or the academics abroad? In this case, it would be essential to engage directly with various fora at which Turkish diplomats were active—and hence could promote in these milieus the ideas that they were carrying over from the Turkish domestic context. Such a reframing of our research agenda, in the specific context of studying Turkish Foreign Policy, would pave the way for a more comprehensive engagement with the broader ideational sources as well as individual and group-level agents involved in these processes, going beyond a permanent focus on “Ankara”, which is reified as the embodiment of decision-makers. A transnational turn, enriched with a more long-term interest in the historical processes, would allow us to revise the prevalent attitude in studying TFP by shifting our attention more to the non-state actors, as well as the emerging interstices that are beyond the usual confines of merely national or international dimensions—as shown by the preceding elaboration via three brief examples. Concluding this chapter, I want to reiterate that transnationalized account offer more explanations of past and current Turkish Foreign Policy and the broader implications of Turkey’s foreign policies. Furthermore, this step toward a transnational direction also has the potential of providing a useful starting point for future explorations of Turkey’s foreign relations under a broader approach. This means that a global intellectual history of Turkish Foreign Policy awaits its turn to be written.

Notes 1. Olaylarla Türk Dı¸s Politikası (translatable as “Turkish Foreign Policy through Cases”), with 1967 and 1996 editions among others. 2. Oran (2001a, b, 2013, three volumes). An English translated edition covers the period of the first two volumes; see Oran (2010).

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3. Although written in a detailed and comprehensive manner, the clear goal was to make it the standard work on Turkish Foreign Policy for university students. 4. See Oran (2001b, volume II; 2013, volume III). From a global perspective, this choice seems to be fitting the later framework of Moyn who saw the concept of human rights to have developed in its modern sense only with the 1970s; see Moyn (2010). 5. For recent examples see Contemporary European History’s volume 25, no. 4 (2016) with various studies on transnational dynamics in early twentiethcentury European history. 6. See UNSC resolution 541, 18 November 1983. 7. On state-sponsored national cultural centers abroad see Paschalidis (2009). 8. See the official website of the institute: www.yee.org.tr. 9. Also known under the concept of neo-Ottomanism in Turkish Foreign Policy. See among others Yanık (2016) for a recent discussion. 10. Hanio˘glu’s intellectual biography of Atatürk discusses this very dimension in its first chapter, see Hanio˘glu (2010). 11. I thank Hazal Papuççular for having referred to this aspect in our earlier discussions. 12. On background ideas see the special forum articles in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 18:2 (2016) as well as Brighi and Giugni (2016).

References Adler, Emanuel, and Vincent Pouliot. 2011. International Practices. International Theory 3 (1): 1–36. Belich, James, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham (eds.). 2016. The Prospect of Global History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bilge, Suat (ed.). 1967. Olaylarla Türk Dı¸s Politikası 1919–1965. Ankara: AÜSBF Yayınları. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 5: 3–8. Brighi, Elisabetta, and Lilia Giugni. 2016. Foreign Policy and the Ideology of Post-ideology: The Case of Matteo Renzi’s Partito Democratico. The International Spectator 51 (1): 13–27. Conrad, Sebastian. 2017. What Is Global History? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 1993. Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A PostPositivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines. International Studies Quarterly 37 (3): 297–320.

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Dunne, Tim, and Christian Reus-Smit (eds.). 2017. The Globalization of International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fahrmeir, Andreas. 2015. ‘Außenpolitik’ in historischer Perspektive. Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik 15 (1): 15–23. Gönlübol, Mehmet (ed.). 1996. Olaylarla Türk Dı¸s Politikası 1919–1995. Ankara: Siyasal Kitabevi. Hale, William M. 2001. Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774–2000. London: Frank Cass. Hanio˘glu, M. Sükrü. ¸ 2010. Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hellmann, Gunther, Andreas Fahrmeir, and Miloš Vec (eds.). 2016. The Transformation of Foreign Policy: Drawing and Managing Boundaries from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Henrikson, Alan K. 2006. Diplomacy’s Possible Futures. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 1 (1): 3–27. Hill, Christopher. 2016. Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century. London: Palgrave. Hobson, John M. 2012. The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jones Gruffydd, Branwen (ed.). 2006. Decolonizing International Relations. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Leira, Halvard. 2016. A Conceptual History of Diplomacy. In SAGE Handbook of Diplomacy, ed. Costas M. Constantinou, Pauline Kerr, and Paul Sharp, 28–38. London: Sage. Marès, Antoine. 2010. Quelle politique étrangère mener sans État? Le cas tchèque au XIXe siècle. Le bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin 32: 15–31. Marjanen, Jani. 2009. Undermining Methodological Nationalism: Histoire croisée of Concepts as Transnational History. In Transnational Political Spaces: Agents-Structures-Encounters, ed. Mathias Albert, Gesa Bluhm, Jan Helmig Helmig, Andreas Leutzsch, and Jochen Walter, 239–263. Frankfurt and New York: Campus. Moyn, Samuel. 2010. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moyn, Samuel, and Andrew Sartori (eds.). 2013. Global Intellectual History. New York: Columbia University Press. Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2012. The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Neumann, Iver B. 2012. At Home with the Diplomats: Inside a European Foreign Ministry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Nye, Joseph S. 2004. Soft Power. New York: Public Affairs. Oran, Baskın (ed.). 2001a. Türk Dı¸s Politikası - Cilt 1 (1919–1980). Istanbul: Ileti¸sim.

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Oran, Baskın (ed.). 2001b. Türk Dı¸s Politikası - Cilt 2 (1980–2001). Istanbul: Ileti¸sim. Oran, Baskın (ed.). 2010. Turkish Foreign Policy 1919–2006. trans. Mustafa Ak¸sin. Utah: The University of Utah Press. Oran, Baskın (ed.). 2013. Türk Dı¸s Politikası - Cilt 3 (2001–2012). Istanbul: Ileti¸sim. Paschalidis, Gregory. 2009. Exporting National Culture: Histories of Cultural Institutes Abroad. International Journal of Cultural Policy 15 (3): 275–289. Pouliot, Vincent. 2008. The Logic of Practicality: A Theory of Practice of Security Communities. International Organization 62 (2): 257–288. Risse, Thomas, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.). 1999. The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scheuerman, William E. 2010. The (Classical) Realist Vision of Global Reform. International Theory 2 (2): 246–282. Special Forum: Background Ideas in International Relations. 2016. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18(2): 273–369. Special Issue: Transnational Anti-Fascism: Agents, Networks, Circulations. 2016. Contemporary European History 25(4). van Ittersum, Martine, Felicia Gottman, and Tristan Mostert. 2016. Writing Global History and Its Challenges—A Workshop with Jürgen Osterhammel and Geoffrey Parker. Itinerario 40 (3): 357–376. Walker, R.B.J. 1993. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Yanık, Lerna K. 2016. Bringing the Empire Back in: The Gradual Discovery of the Ottoman Empire in Turkish Foreign Policy. Die Welt des Islams 56 (3–4): 466–488. Zimmermann, Andrew. 2010. Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Transnationality, Foreign Policy Research and the Cosmopolitan Alternative: On the Practice of Domestic Global Politics Hüsrev Tabak

Introduction Methodological nationalism is a default position in International Relations (henceforth IR); as it is historically thought of as ruled by national assumptions like the following: humanity is composed of a limited number of nations; those nations are organised and demarcated from each other as nation-states; borders of those nation-states are natural barriers representing the difference between inside (national) and outside (international); and the international begins where the national ends. The transnational relations literature developed within IR, following the general inclination within the field, followed the vocabulary and conceptual tools produced by the listed (and many other) national assumptions, making methodological nationalism a common practice also for the way transnationality is studied within IR. Therefore, despite having shown that the

H. Tabak (B) Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Rize, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_3

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national boundaries have blurred as a result of increasing transnational mobility, the scholarship restrained the transnational experience to a “national condition” and did not challenge the rules governing it. This chapter accordingly raises a critique to the methodological nationalism’s dominancy in the way transnationality is studied within mainstream International Relations and foreign policy research and offers a Beckian cosmopolitan alternative for going beyond such a scholarly bias. Beckian methodological cosmopolitanism, accordingly, argues that within the scope of global interconnectivity, and as side effects of global trade or global threats, the dualities such as domestic/foreign, local/global or national/international produced by methodological nationalism have been dissolved and merged into new forms of cosmopolitan experience— that can be explored only transnationally. This is a condition of cosmopolitan kind that created everyday global awareness, empathies, solidarity, loyalties and eventual responsibilities, the examination of which necessitates adopting a transnational cosmopolitan perspective. Such a perspective, the study further suggests, will transnationally redefine the core units, levels and structures of IR and foreign policy research, enabling the scholarship to better make sense of and research the transnational and cosmopolitan shifts the contemporary world has gone through. The chapter starts with a brief review of the historical development and contemporary agenda of the transnational relations literature within IR and maps out the core approaches to and discussions on the transnational phenomenon. This is followed by a section that unveils the tacit methodological nationalist practices dominant in the IR transnational relations literature. The sections three and four offer a cosmopolitan redefinition of IR and transnational relations, and discuss the possibility of a transnational cosmopolitan foreign policy research by which a domestic global politics framework for studying foreign policy in the cosmopolitan condition is introduced. In the final section, the domestic global politics framework is applied to illuminate the transnational character and complexity of the Syrian civil war and the responses to it from territorial 1 Turkey.

The Transnational Phenomenon in IR The transnational phenomenon and its implications and consequences for foreign policy and world politics have long been problematised within IR. The initial studies (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) theorising the phenomenon within IR coincided with communication technologies

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allowing transnational groups to elude state control and gain a certain level of autonomy. The new communication technologies at the time enabled multinational corporations or transnational activism networks to “develop global networks that undermine the ability of states to regulate or tax production” or “bring information to light on human rights and environmental practices that governments prefer to keep secret” (Lake 2010: 49), respectively. This was a development opening the state’s takenfor-granted control over domestic, foreign and international politics into discussion. It was in this very ground that Nye and Keohane, in their pioneering work, described “transnational relations” as “contacts, coalitions, and interactions across state boundaries that are not controlled by the central foreign policy organs of governments” (Nye and Keohane 1971a: 331) and via “transnational relations” they attempted to theorise what could not be explained at the time by a state-dominated, statecentred perspective to international politics (Risse 2013: 429). In the 1970s, accordingly, the research agenda on transnational relations started to enquire about how transnational networks/structures, as autonomous or quasi-autonomous actors of world politics, were affecting the “abilities of the governments to deal with their environment” in general and the “interstate politics” in particular (Nye and Keohane 1971a: 331). The “reciprocal effects between transnational relations and the interstate system” was a core subject of enquiry, in the scope of which the implications of transnational relations for the study of world politics and the government influence (constraints, support, involvement) on transnational networks were debated (Nye and Keohane 1971b: 747; Tarrow 2001: 4; Gilpin 1971: 398–419; 1976; Teschke 2010: 172). The research agenda in the 1990s, a period of renewed interest in theorising about transnational actors, was shaped by an increasing debate on globalisation and the further weakening of nation-state against transnational “forces” (Risse-Kappen 1995a: 5; b: 280, 282; Risse et al. 1999). In the scope of this renewed interest, novel conceptualisations on new transnational actors were introduced. The epistemic communities are one of them and evoke the role that transnational networks of knowledgebased experts play in influencing decision-making processes of states and/or international organisations through identifying the interest for policy-makers or through “illuminating the salient dimensions of an issue from which the decision-makers may then deduce their interests” (Haas 1992: 3–4). Epistemic communities here were considered as capable of

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making “authoritative claim(s) to policy-relevant knowledge” within certain issue areas dominated by uncertainties—for instance about nuclear destruction or climate change—based on their “causal beliefs and policy preferences” (Haas 1992: 4). Another actor conceptually introduced and accordingly theorised was the transnational advocacy networks, which, as cross-border social/solidarity movements (agents ), participated in “global politics” with the “ability to create norms and contribute to regime formation and implementation” (Barnett and Sikkink 2010: 71). They are described broadly as networks “bound together by shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and services” and are considered to be aiming “to help create new issues and categories and to persuade, pressure, and gain leverage over much more powerful organizations and governments” through “mobiliz[ing] information strategically” and through developing novel “channels of access to the international system” (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 2, 1). Along with these two, vast studies were conducted on the transnational character and the agency of the terrorist groups and criminal networks (Barnett and Sikkink 2010: 71). By the 2000s, however, a new agenda/theme emerged—transnational governance—and scholars began exploring the “conditions under which non-state actors can contribute to the effectiveness and problemsolving capacity of transnational governance” thus to rule-making practices in transnational level (Risse 2013: 440). Within the scope of this ever-growing scrutiny, vast empirical studies were conducted such as on transnational security governance or environmental governance. The complementary regulatory interaction between the transnational non-state actors, state actors and international organisations and the self-regulating capability of the transnational actors have become a prevalent concern of academic curiosity—two tendencies summarised as “governance with governments” and “governance without governments” (Risse 2013: 426). In short, transnational relations is considered as a domain of crossborder practices featuring the imperative role non-state actors of transnational kind play in shaping interstate relations and world politics.2 There, therefore, is an implicit agency centrism at play in the literature. In the case of a transnational account of an individual country’s foreign policy, similarly, the scrutiny again lingers on the relevant government’s relations with, or reaction towards, certain transnational actors including multi-national companies, international non-governmental organisations, transnational advocacy networks, social movements, transgovernmental organisations, religious movements, terrorist groups, criminal networks

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or diasporas. This agency centrism, however, has impeded IR scholarship from comprehensively making sense of the transnational condition, yet there are other issues, mostly methodological, preventing us from properly dealing with the transnational experience.

The Methodological Nationalist Bias in IR Perspective on Transnationality Transnationality has always been a constant mode of social, political and economic experience in modern times, “even in the high days when the nation-state bounded and bundled most social processes” with IR scholarship discovering transnationality’s importance relatively early compared to other disciplines (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 302). Yet, it thought of transnationality as an “offspring of globalization” (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 302), a form of external connectedness between distinct territorial nations and their states, and a process of the increasing of links of mostly technological, social and economic kinds “‘between nations’, ‘between states’ and ‘between societies’” (Beck 2000: 87). The scholarship, therefore—although featuring cross-border mobility and its breaking the statecentrism and the nation-state’s absolute control over the agency both within and beyond its borders—sustained studying transnationality as a mode of communication and interaction influencing interstate relations and world politics. Thus the national assumptions—as principles with reference to which the world and human interaction are thought to be organised3 —are still primarily relied on in thinking of and writing about transnationality. The national principles here refer to social scientific practices of naturalising nation-state and of territorialising social science imaginary, practices coined as methodological nationalism in broader social sciences. As a scholarly practice, methodological nationalism is suggested to arise when a scholarly outlook studies the nation-state as “an isolated, self-sufficient and endogenously developing unit” (Chernilo 2011: 14), imagines the territorial state as a container of a distinct and bounded national society (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 307), assumes national borders as natural barriers representing the difference between inside and outside (Beck 2003a: 454), describes “processes within nation-state boundaries as contrasted with those outsides” (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 307), locates states and societies “within the dichotomy of national and international ” (Beck 2003a: 454), thus imagining the world as “naturally divided into

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an indefinite number of formally analogous national units” nearly 200 of which are constituting “the international system” (Chernilo 2011: 104). This mode of thinking indeed has for quite a long time been “the dominant ontology of politics and political theory” (Beck 2003a: 454). Methodological nationalism, as a tacit bias (Chernilo 2011: 100), has therefore for a long time influenced how social scientists imagine, elaborate, report and contribute to the reification of the world (or the knowledge about the realities of the world) they are studying. The traces of such misconduct—of naturalisation and territorialisation—are apparent also in the way transnationality has been studied within IR. As seen above in the way globalisation is understood, it has long impeded IR scholarship from adequately dealing with the transnational experience. Firstly, in line with the inherent methodologically nationalist bias within IR (Hellmann 2014: 28), the transnational relations literature took nation-states and the national-state-system for granted and believed that the international system is a natural setting (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 304–305) and that “national and international” constitute “the two sides of an independent whole” (Beck 2003b: 26), with transnational actors moving in and out, thereby bridging them and equally blurring their boundaries. Relatedly, scholars treated international politics as a domain of involvement also for transnational actors, confirming it to be “a multiplication of nation-states, each defining one another’s borders and mirroring one another’s essential categories” (Beck 2003b: 26). This is the case in both early and contemporary scholarship. For instance, Nye and Keohane readily accepted the interstate system by highlighting the transnational actors’ becoming an influential actor within such a system. Keck and Sikkink (1998: 12), similarly, argued that “[s]cholars theorizing about transnational relations must grapple with the multiple interactions of domestic and international politics as sources of change in the international system”; this is because transnational advocacy networks “participate in domestic and international politics simultaneously”. Confirmingly, Thomas Risse-Kappen, having treated the domestic and the international as two distinct structures of governance and domains of circumstances, suggested that to better theorise about transnational relations one should “differentiate the international and domestic conditions under which transnational coalitions and actors are able to influence state policies”

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(1995a: 32–33, 5). It is such a ground that enabled Risse-Kappen to propose that “under similar international conditions, differences in domestic structures determine the variation in the policy impact of transnational actors” (1995a: 25; also see Risse-Kappen 1995b). Here, while it is admitted that the boundaries of the nation-states have become hyperpermeable enabling transnational actors to move inside and outside, back and forth smoothly, the national and the international have continued to be embarked on as two distinct domains of policy practice. Eventually, the distinction (dichotomy) of internal/external (endogenous/exogenous or domestic/international) becomes reified and naturalised. Secondly, within the dichotomy of the national and the international, the transnational actors—with the ability to act within and transmit new norms and ideas towards both of the domains of policy practice—are imagined as bridging different territorial national domains. Accordingly, whether they are considered as networks (in the form of epistemic communities or advocacy networks), institutional structures (in the form of terror organisations, multi-national corporations, or religious groups) or communities (diasporas, ethnic groups, kin communities), the transnational actors in IR have retrospectively been treated and approached as channels of communication and normative and material transmission between distinct “national” and “international” domains. Such a process and function has been explained with reference to the blurring of the boundaries between the national and the international, and to the national borders’ getting permeable. However, this has restrained the transnational experience to territorial realities and boundaries drawn on the basis of national assumptions. Thirdly, transnational relations scholarship in IR suggested enquiring about “transnational interactions” from a “structural and actor-centred” perspective (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 13). This means that scholars merely included a new agency and a “level” of interaction into the analysis as an alternative to the research field’s state-centrism, other than challenging the broader rules governing the actor-centrism—the national condition— in IR. Accordingly, IR scholarship has endeavoured to initially theorise the role non-state actors play in influencing international policy regimes and in making individual states act in specific ways in the global times. It was this very concern that led, for instance, Keck and Sikkink to argue that “[t]he concept of a transnational advocacy network is an important element in conceptualising the changing nature of the international polity and particularly in understanding the interaction between societies and

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states in the formulation of international policies” (1998: 236, emphasis added). This structure-centrism and actor-centrism have led IR scholarship to imagine the transnational as a domain composed of state and non-state actors and as a realm between, or covering, international and national levels. Such methodological nationalism practices have indeed been consequential—as scientifically proven empirical realities unfolded by transnational relations scholarship, they tacitly and unintendedly contributed to the reification of the nation-state system.4 Moreover, through such a perspective trans-border interactions and connections that cannot be nationally defined have been ignored (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 308, 302), and hence the absolute reality that (IR) transnational relations scholarship describes has become a nationally defined and internationally controlled transnational one (Robertson and Dale 2008). There is no doubt that the agency perspective has contributed to a better understanding of transnational relations, yet the unnoticed methodological nationalism dominant in their writings made the scholarship also contribute to the reification of realities produced by social actors, in the scope of which the territorial state has been affirmed and eventually naturalised. So, how, then, can transnational relations scholarship go beyond methodological nationalism? In recent critiques of methodological nationalism, two general tendencies suggesting ways to overcome methodological nationalism in terms particularly of empirical research have emerged; namely, the transnationalist approach and the cosmopolitan methodology.5 The transnationalist approach’s core motivation in calling for going beyond the national outlook is the “recent ‘discovery’” of “[h]ow transnational the modern world has always been even in the high days when the nation-state bounded and bundled most social processes”, so that transnationalism is “a constant of modern life… rather than a recent offspring of globalization… a view that was captured by methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 302). Such a conclusion leads transnationalist scholars to expectedly call for unfolding the transnational forms of communication and interactions governing and equally withering the so-called epistemological “national” condition. The social relations/world thought to be explained via a national methodology is therefore now being readdressed and reconsidered with a transnational perspective. Several social science fields including migration studies

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have offered revised conclusions; global ethnography or studies of nationalism with an intention to not pose constitutive impacts on the social world they are observing. The second is the cosmopolitan approach that offers a broader research methodology and a new paradigmatic ground to be embraced in alternating methodological nationalism. The cosmopolitan perspective accordingly suggests that humanity is experiencing a cosmopolitan condition other than a national condition, and that the dualities produced by methodological nationalism such as “the global and the local, the national and the international, us and them have dissolved and merged together in new forms;” to better grasp the new condition, both empirically and conceptually, “we need some kind of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’” (Beck and Sznaider 2006: 3). Having seen that IR literature on transnational relations has long discovered and well documented the presence of transnational forms of interactions, and that the cosmopolitan approach offers broader methodological challenges to the very core and nationalassumptions-imposed dualities of the IR—such as the national and the international or the local and the global—it may be more suitable to embrace the cosmopolitan perspective and to examine the cosmopolitan condition’s implications for researching IR, foreign policy and transnational relations.

The Transnational in the Cosmopolitan Condition A pioneering figure in formulating cosmopolitanism as an empirical research methodology, Ulrich Beck argues that humanity is experiencing an unintended cosmopolitan condition (other than a national condition), and the existing methodological nationalist approaches to social sciences fail to explain the realities of this new experience. The cosmopolitan condition here refers to the enforced and unplanned changes in the everyday state-of-affairs of humanity (Beck 2006: 2). This new human condition, accordingly, evokes that novel realities have arisen (cosmopolitanisation) as part of unintended consequences of global interconnectivity, as “side effects of global trade or global threats such as climate change, terrorism or financial crises”—by which, for example, a person’s life, body, suffering and even the very “individual existence become part of another world, of foreign cultures, religions, histories and global interdependencies, without [a person’s] realizing or expressingly wishing it” (Beck 2006: 19). As involuntary experiences tearing down “the walls

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of national indifference” and overcoming “geographical distances” cognitively making everyone live “in a direct and universal proximity with everyone else” (Beck 2009: 11, 12), cosmopolitan realities herald a state of affairs “mix[ing] the ‘native’ with the ‘foreign’” (Beck and Grande 2010: 417), activating and connecting “actors across borders, who otherwise don’t want to have anything to do with one another”, and eventually making “the old differentiations [and distinctions] between internal and external, national and international, [global and local] us and them”6 lose validity and sharp contours (Beck 2007a: 287). Cosmopolitan realities consequently create everyday global awareness, cosmopolitan empathies, cosmopolitan solidarity, cosmopolitan loyalties and eventual cosmopolitan responsibilities (Beck 2006: 9). Here cosmopolitanism is rejected to be “a lifestyle choice”, but rather seen as a mostly tragic “involuntary condition” (Beck and Grande 2010: 417), for example, of the refugees and other displaced masses or of those globally experiencing a traumatic shock in front of their TVs due to the catastrophic events in the other side of the planet that they just watched on the screen. The cosmopolitan condition, therefore, represents a moment, for social sciences, when the national condition’s “premises and boundaries” defining the “units of empirical research and theory” become dysfunctional (Beck 2007a: 287). Therefore, we need instead a cosmopolitan methodology (methodological cosmopolitanism) presenting an alternative to the national outlook in grasping the novel cosmopolitan and the relevant transnational realities, empathies, solidarities, loyalties and responsibilities. Beck discusses methodological cosmopolitanism with reference to three interlinked methodological choices: replacing social actor perspective with social scientist perspective, rejecting the imagined dualisms produced by the national condition, and embracing alternative units of research beyond dualism-informed levels of analysis formulations. First of all, for scholarship to go beyond nationally defined transnational perspective to hold a methodological cosmopolitan outlook, an epistemological shift from social actor perspective to social-scientific observer perspective is required (Beck and Sznaider 2006: 4). The former contributes to the reification and reproduction of national assumptions and realities produced by social actors, while the latter would help to unfold social actors’ efforts for redefining and restructuring the realities of the world they are living in (Beck 2007b: 689). Secondly, methodological cosmopolitanism suggests not studying transnationality in the scope of or as a state in-between dualities, but

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rather as global domestic and domestic global domains of practice and thus research (Beck and Sznaider 2006: 1). This is because the cosmopolitan condition “created new types of cosmopolitan political spaces which clearly transcend national boundaries and integrate national, inter-, trans- and supra-national actors, organizations, networks, institutions and norms” and has integrated “different territorial levels, different types of actors and different kinds of activities” (Grande 2006: 106, 89). Enquiring about transnationality within the cosmopolitan condition, thirdly, requires defining actor constellations and territorial scope of political activities transnationally thus including various national and transnational actors (e.g. political parties, transnational organisations), processes (e.g. mobility, mobilisation, memory, ethnicity, capitalism), structures (e.g. transnational policy regimes, global assemblages, world religions, transnational migrant networks, kin groups) and localities (e.g. border zones, global cities) into the analysis (Beck and Sznaider 2006: 15; Beck and Grande 2010: 410–441). This represents the (forced) meeting of the local with the global, and the reinvention of the global, the international, the transnational and the local as transnationally governed domains to be analysed with an alternative level of analysis, and unit of analysis formulations beyond nation-state and national dualisms. Accordingly, as a challenge to treating the transnational level as a domain in between the international and national levels, Beck proposed “global domestic politics” as the primary unit of research, in the scope of which a meta-power game beyond national/international distinction is transnationally played, and in the scope of which the transnational is nationally, transnationally, trans-locally and globally explored; and in which national governments, national societies, supranational organisations, transnational civil society movements, and even global businesses participate (Beck and Sznaider 2006: 15, 18; Beck and Grande 2010: 410–411). Such a retreat has demonstrated the governing rule of the cosmopolitan condition, transnationality, yet also made clear the “power of the local” in the cosmopolitan condition (Beck 2008: 34). This suggests that confirming Robert Robertson’s glocalisation theory, globalisation has also altered the internal quality of the local. In the cosmopolitan condition, therefore, while the global could be investigated locally even by “bypassing the national” (Beck 2002: 23), the national space is becoming the “showcase of the global” (Beck and Grande 2010: 430), and concomitantly is “rediscovered as the internalized global ”, a process called by

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Beck as inner globalisation or globalisation from within (Beck 2003b: 21). This invokes, in tandem with global domestic politics, a domestic global politics 7 —in the scope of which the global–local interactions with reference to transnational meta-power game or the rival initiatives/dynamics such as cosmopolitanisation vs anti-cosmopolitanisation or globalisation vs anti-globalisation in localities could be observed. This is the juncture on which Beck (2002: 23) suggested that This localization of the global, or of the non-national, in national territories, and of the national outside national territories, undermined a key duality running through many of the methods and conceptual frameworks prevalent in social sciences, that the national and the non-national are mutually exclusive.

However, this retreat to the national—in which it is declared that the national/international and similar other dualities have dissolved thus “the national is no longer national, just as the international is no longer international” (Beck and Sznaider 2006: 3, 6)—does not come to mean the end of the nation-state. In the cosmopolitan condition the nation-state’s function has also been transnationally redefined; so that it gets treated “as a conceptual variable, whose significance must be empirically investigated” (Beck and Grande 2010: 428; also see Grande 2006: 105). Here, the “national” or the nation-state become incorporated as a transnational locality/space and “as an empirical variable”, losing its “epistemological monopoly position as the unit of research” (Beck and Grande 2010: 428). For example, the national domain is still authoritative as global flows and mobilities are mostly initiated locally. Moreover, national governments are influential in transnational regulations systems, such as in “climate change, internet regulation or the taxation of transnational enterprises” (Beck and Grande 2010: 430). Such a retreat to the locality and the national could eventually enable foreign policy research to redefine its research agenda in the cosmopolitan condition. Nevertheless, along with the national, the cosmopolitan methodology also incorporated the international into the analysis and reinvented it as “a new space for understanding trans- or post-international relations” and a multitude of other “interconnections, not only between states but also between other actors on different levels of aggregation” (Beck 2008: 30). Here, the cosmopolitan perspective draws attention to the becoming dysfunctional of the sharply defined boundaries between nations, states,

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people and even responsibilities in conventional IR. This is because, as given above, “the global and the local, the national and the international, us and them have dissolved and merged together in new forms” and “the national is no longer national, just as the international is no longer international” (Beck and Sznaider 2006: 3, 6). This evokes a transition from nation-state focused international politics to a non-state-centred postinternational or trans-international politics—also coined as global domestic politics, as stated above. Within the scope of global domestic politics governments, international organisations, and civil society movements all “have to redistribute burdens and costs, redefine goals, find appropriate ways and means, forge coalitions and imagine futures for a common world, which results in deep-seated resistances and conflicts” (Beck 2006: 36–37). This is the juncture where Beck (2006: 37) proposed that The term ‘international’ must definitely not be struck from the vocabulary of politics and political theory. Relations between states remain centrally important, but they are no longer exclusive or monopolizable and, most importantly, they are changing their grammar. The coerced, unintended cosmopolitanization of international relations also follows the model of interference among side effects – of capital flows, flows of cultural symbols, global risks, terror attacks, migration flows, anti-globalization movements, ecological and economic crises. The units of ‘international relations’ – the fetish-concepts of ‘state’ and ‘nation’ – are being hollowed out because in …[cosmopolitan condition] national problems can no longer be solved on a national basis.

Cosmopolitan outlook therefore “initiates a grammatical change in the term international”; a change making international politics into a “venue for trans-international policies” and a “post-international politics not centred on nation-states”, in which the domestic, foreign, interstate and substate politics all mirror each other (Beck 2006: 37). This is a state of affairs leading to the emergence and constitution of new cosmopolitan political spaces and complex sovereignties (Grande 2006: 94, 97), and the redefinition of interstate system of the national condition as a transnational setting (Beck 2006: 38). The research agenda of transnational relations— that had earlier studied the “reciprocal effects between transnational relations and the interstate system” (Nye and Keohane 1971a: 331) with reference to the national condition’s premises—should now discover that in the cosmopolitan condition the “international system” has become a transnational structure and process, in which a global domestic politics

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takes place with the involvement of diverse transnational and national actors, structures, and processes. The ways in which global terrorism, interstate wars and the concomitant oppression against civilians during conflicts are dealt with constitute an essential example for observing the functioning of this global domestic politics, hence of trans- or post-international relations. Accordingly, such developments have so far resulted in the civilians’ being a direct target as a representation of a “universal vulnerability”, creating thus a borderless responsibility for governments—and for transnational actors whose activities are “no longer defined by the nation-state and the international arenas established by it” (Grande 2006: 89)—to include “groups [outside of national borders] which have previously been excluded” into the domain of global transnational responsibilities in order to intervene at the expense of violating sovereignty (Beck 2002: 20). This brought about the transnational redistribution of sovereignty, and the challenging of the national outlook that used to see the responsibility as “absolute within a border” (Beck 2002: 20) and as equally absent outside such borders.8 To sum up, the Beckian cosmopolitan approach suggests a change in the way the transnational phenomenon is addressed. Accordingly, the national condition that nationally defined the transnational experience has been replaced by a cosmopolitan redefinition of transnationality. Along with the transnational, the national and international have been transnationally redefined and incorporated into a transnational cosmopolitan analysis.

The Quest for a Transnational Cosmopolitan Foreign Policy Research World politics has long been a subject of enquiry for transnational relations scholarship, and extraordinary attention has accordingly been paid to “reciprocal effects between transnational relations and the interstate system”. Along with this, scholars have also widely elaborated the implications and consequences of the transnational phenomenon for foreign policy processes, and of how individual states deal with transnational actors, networks, and structures, vice versa. This edited collection is, in fact, one of those endeavours, and examines a single country experience of transnationality with reference to foreign policy processes. Nevertheless, it should initially be expressed that foreign policy is a vocabulary of the national condition, and is considered as the external

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policy of a nation-state overseen mostly by the government yet also participated in by interest groups and the public opinion. It is based on the assumption that the world is divided into comparable national units, with IR and foreign policy research principally studying the relationship among them (Tabak 2016: 21–39; 2019). In writing about foreign policy, while the community is imagined as a national one, the policies of a government are mostly attributed to the nation—through implying that the outwardly policies of governments are the manifestations of the personality, identity, and will of the nation living within the territorial borders of the relevant state—so that the nation and the state are identified in association to each other or even equated (Tabak 2016). Eventually, scholars of foreign policy contribute to the reification, materialisation, and naturalisation of national and international realities and dualities manufactured by social actors. In cosmopolitan condition’s vocabulary, on the other hand, foreign policy, as a policy domain, becomes relevant concomitant to redefining the national and the international as transnational processes and spaces. It comes to be a practical manifestation of domestic global politics in the scope of which diverse yet territorially identifiable actors, processes, structures and institutions of transnational kind participate in global domestic politics. By the same token, as a practice of domestic global politics, foreign policy also comes to be a collection of transnational localglobal interactions shaping local politics, and of practices of transnational kind mirroring global domestic politics within the locality. Stated differently, foreign policy, in the cosmopolitan condition, is a venue for transinternational policies in which the domestic, foreign, interstate and substate politics all mirror each other, and function as complementary—yet not always affirmative (Beck 2006: 37–38). Within this context, foreign policy (domestic global politics) involves both official and unofficial (representative, discursive, behavioural) responses to transnationality’s and interconnectedness’ manifestations in both everyday life and formal processes in local/global context, and within global domestic politics. Moreover, foreign policy in the cosmopolitan context (domestic global politics) is also an intersubjective interaction and representation moulded by an ongoing dialectics between cosmopolitanisation and its enemies, that is, between transnationality and national-based counter-reflexes of political, cultural, economic, and societal kinds. In relation to this, domestic global politics comes forth as an instrument for observing the process of constructing, redefining and negating the relevant criteria for inclusion

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and exclusion—whom/what to include in the domain of global responsibilities and why. At this juncture, it functions as a means to interpret and legitimate (or de-legitimate) borders of economic, cultural, political, legal or technological kind drawn for territorial fixation, and exclusion/inclusion of also risks, fears or threats. In short, the domestic global politics redefines the foreign policy’s functions in the cosmopolitan condition with reference to transnationality, and prescribes a crucial role to it both in global domestic politics and in local transnational/global politics. However, this requires further empirical analysis and testing. Nevertheless, it is still doubtful whether transnational accounts of a territorial country’s foreign policy would be studied from the cosmopolitan outlook since such accounts have long served as practices of methodological nationalism. It is also clear that singling out individual territorial settings is not so helpful in understanding the functioning of global domestic politics. However, having included the national to the analysis as an empirical variable, highlighting the prominence of individual settings’ experience in cosmopolitanisation, and their participation in global domestic politics may contrarily be better in understanding the impacts of the cosmopolitan condition. As a guiding outline to be followed in conducting cosmopolitan empirical research on domestic global politics, first and foremost, the transnational and cosmopolitan qualities, condition, and realities of the relevant setting—as a transnational locality and space—should be empirically unfolded without territorially confining them. Following this, the position of the relevant territorial setting within the global domestic politics in both governmental and civil societal levels—such as the roles in and participation to transnational policy regimes—should be identified. Subsequently, the unit of research should be chosen based on the research question, yet without confining the focus merely on agency through taking transnational processes and structures into account. This would help to replace the agency focus of conventional transnational relations studies, and taking transnational experiences and communications of all kinds into consideration. All these would provide a necessary starting point for a transnational cosmopolitan foreign policy research.

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A Case Study---Territorial Turkey and the Domestic Global Politics of the Syrian Civil War From the perspective of actually existing cosmopolitanism, the civil war in Syria made territorial Syria and neighbouring localities such as territorial Turkey exposed to enforced cosmopolitanisation when the new composition of the population and the public and political agenda are considered. This was due to the fact that the war resulted in the complete change of Syria’s political and administrative character, in millions of people fleeing to neighbouring countries—hence changing the country’s demographic composition, and in the swarming of foreign fighters to Syria to join the fight in the ranks of various militia groups including the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Al Nasra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, DAESH, and even the Hezbollah.9 In tandem with this, the humanitarian destruction and the suffering the Syrian people experienced within or outside their territorial country led the public opinion, again for instance, in territorial Turkey to develop empathies and responsibilities justifying the mobilisation of mass humanitarian aid, of political support to warring groups (to the opposition or government depending on the political position of the provider), and later of the military intervention.10 The civil war accordingly added on the transnational qualities of territorial Turkey and territorial Syria, as it turned both territories into transnationalised spaces where the mobilisation of people could not be curbed by national borders—borders were not tight enough to hold in people from moving back and forth to Syrian and Turkish territories in the southern borders of Turkey or from fleeing to European mainland through Turkish territories (Oktav et al. 2018). Turkey, as a transnational space, accordingly hosts the governmentin-exile (interim government) and the national liberation council (Syrian National Council) of the Syrian opposition that transnationally govern certain parts of territorial Syria, remotely orchestrate the FSA’s warring, gather political support from around the world, represent the people of Syria (the opposition block) in international gatherings where the future of the country is negotiated, raise funds for the FSA, maintain communication with diaspora, and inform the world public opinion about the atrocities of the regime such as civilian killings or chemical weapons usage.11 There are also individuals, for instance, reporters or humanitarian workers from European countries who have come to territorial Turkey (and equally to territorial Syria) to provide help to women and

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children including orphans, or to report the human suffering caused by the Syrian regime’s brutality and to attract the world public opinion.12 In another example, the FSA and other groups recruited youth from the refugee camps within territorial Turkey, commissioning them into their ranks within Syria. Along with foreign fighters, citizens of Turkey from various backgrounds “went” to Syria (simply crossed the border), and joined certain groups to fight in their ranks: accordingly, while the Turkish nationalists went to fight along with the Turkomans, the Islamists joined the ranks of various Islamic groups including Al-Nusra and the DAESH, and Kurdish nationalists and pro-Kurdish socialists spawned for joining the PYD, YPG and PKK in their fight against the DAESH, the FSA, and the Turkish army. Furthermore, some representatives of Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), met the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad in the middle of the war, notwithstanding the government’s fierce hostility to him (Hurriyet Daily News 2013). The CHP moreover mediated the release of Turkish citizens who were captives of the Syrian Army. In a similar dissenting move, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) visited Russia after Turkey and Russia came to the brink of a conflict due to Turkey’s downing a Russian warplane after the warplane violated the Turkish airspace on the border with Syria (Reuters 2015). HDP’s visit was to benefit from the hostility between Russia and Turkey—Turkey–Russia relations were already at odds due to their conflicting and competing positions in Syrian civil war at the time as the Russian government was standing with the Basher Al-Assad regime and carrying out airstrikes against the opposition forces supported by the Turkish government—and to negotiate furthering the Russian support towards Kurdish paramilitary forces within northern Syria in their fight for taking control of certain areas populated by Kurds. Turkish humanitarian NGOs, such as the IHH Humanitarian Relief, have had excessive humanitarian assistance along with mediation and humanitarian diplomacy missions within territorial Syria, and have acted as a trustable third party between the local anti-regime groups, the international community, and even the Syrian regime. The IHH, along with many other Turkeyoriginated civilian organisations, assisted medical aids’ reach to the needy within territorial Syria, arranged the wounded FSA fighters or opposition journalists in getting the necessary medical treatment within Turkey, accompanied civilians from the civil war, and built camps for the displaced people within territorial Syria in collaboration with several groups within and outside territorial Syria (Tabak 2015: 193–215). Similarly, INGOs as

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transnational bodies, such as the Danish Refugee Council, International Medical Corps, Mercy Corps, International Rescue Committee, CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere), or Save the Children International (and tens of others) have opened field offices within territorial Turkey, provided assistance (including food, housing, education, health, employment) to conflict-affected Syrian citizens living within or outside refugee camps, thus transnationalising the mostly national (based on the locations these NGOs are headquartered) donations made out of humanitarian responsibilities (Svoboda and Pantuliano 2015). Also, there are Syrian-initiated organisations operating within territorial Turkey such as the Assistance Coordination Unit (ACU) providing training of various kinds to activist youth among Syrian refugees. The enforced cosmopolitanisation yet has not been welcomed by all. The economic burdens the war and the refugees brought, and the artillery shells or rockets fired from territorial Syria towards Turkish territories (or the terrorist bomb attacks organised) created a collective anger within territorial Turkey targeting the Turkish government for being involving in others’ war, the Western countries for supposedly flaming up the war, or the Syrian refugees in Turkey for “escaping from their own war” and choosing instead to live in comfort in Turkey (Ça˘gaptay and Yüksel 2019). Nevertheless, the civil war has created actual cosmopolitan encounters within territorial Syria and territorial Turkey, and a domestic global politics has taken place between the two localities with the intended or unintended participation of transnational (militia, humanitarian, religious, political) groups, governments, political parties, public opinion, individuals and their sympathies. Jointly, and through transnational mechanisms, they all became a part of what the people discussed as the Syrian civil war. Such involvements and encounters, however, cannot be explained through foreign policy mechanisms or transnational politics alone, and definitely not via the vocabulary of the national condition. The actual existing cosmopolitan realities created complex, complementary and even conflicting encounters and involvements that have altogether irreversibly altered the cosmopolitan and transnational character and qualities of territorial Turkey and territorial Syria (and many other localities, agents and global public opinion). They have equally made people engage in differing (competing and even conflicting) responses, the political interaction to which this chapter calls the domestic global politics played around the Syrian civil war.

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The cosmopolitan condition, therefore, led (voluntarily or not) various actors, processes, structures and institutions of transnational kind to participate in the domestic global politics of the Syrian civil war. Moreover, having considered the cosmopolitan assumption that the foreign policy would function as an instrument for inclusion and exclusion (through including the domain of global responsibilities) and a means to interpret and (de)legitimate borders drawn for inclusion and exclusion, I could give a final brief example related to the Syrian civil war that further reveals the functioning of domestic global politics. As a game-changer in the Syrian civil war, the DAESH created a global terror—through terrorist attacks worldwide, visually spreading a horror cultivated by barbarism, destroying the heritage of human civilisation, and indiscriminately killing civilians thus making the most vulnerable its target—that soon made suppressing it at all cost an urgent cosmopolitan duty for the world nations. The fight against DAESH thus became a global cosmopolitan responsibility also shared by the parties fighting the Syrian civil war (either directly or via proxy forces ), despite the differences in motive and interest. In territorial Turkey, accordingly, both the Turkish government and pro-Kurdish HDP involved in such a transnational cosmopolitan mission, yet with differing political agendas. For the Turkish government, the DAESH is a threat to global peace and a terrorist group responsible for several bomb attacks that killed hundreds of civilians on its soil. Several steps have been taken against the group since late 2013, including freezing its financial assets and economic resources, deporting foreign fighters trying to cross the Syrian border to join the organisation or taking hundreds of its members under custody for terror charges. Yet, Turkey did not have direct military encounter with DAESH within territorial Syria except the retaliations to the fires opened by DAESH targeting Turkish patrol teams on the border stations. This was the case albeit they came to share national borders by early 2014. Yet Turkey, as of March 2018, undertook a military operation within territorial Syria against DAESH although they no longer share borders which were cut by the US-backed Kurdish paramilitary forces by December 2016. Turkey’s military operations directly targeting DAESH subjects within territorial Syria started only in the summer of 2015, as a response to a terror attack in Suruç, Sanlıurfa, ¸ killing more than a hundred civilians in a wedding, plotted by the DAESH. Yet, the attacks were confined to massive air bombings of selected military targets. The Operation Euphrates

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Shield initiated in the summer of 2016 was the primary military involvement by which the last remaining border zone between the DAESH and Turkey was eventually taken control of, cleansing the area from DAESH presence (BBC 2017). The military campaign was conducted in collaboration with FSA militias, and they together held hundreds of settlements in the area. After a year the Operation Euphrates Shield was successfully conducted, in January 2018, the Turkish Army initiated another widespread military operation, the Operation Olive Branch, in collaboration again with FSA targeting DAESH and PKK affiliated Kurdish militia groups in the Afrin region of north-western Syria (Kasapo˘glu and Ülgen 2018). Only after a year and a half, in October 2019, another yet more comprehensive military operation, the Operation Fountain of Peace, was conducted, yet this time targeting the north-eastern Syria with an aim to completely free that specific foreign area from PKK-affiliated militia, the sworn enemies of national Turkey, to help the Syrian people to gain control over their territory, and to take over the captured DAESH prisoners (a.k.a. foreign fighters) from the US with a responsibility to prosecute them—the latter was a mission borne as a result of the European countries’ revoking the citizenship of their nationals who fought in Iraq or Syria as part of DAESH (Reuters 2019). All these operations have been justified by the Turkish government as conducts initiated for securing Turkey’s national security, and equally fulfilling its cosmopolitan global responsibility. It is at this very juncture that the pro-Kurdish HDP has been endeavouring to delegitimise the Turkish government’s offensive within territorial Syria against DAESH via arguing that Turkey’s so-called global responsibility and fight against DAESH is only to disguise its policies against Kurdish administrative presence within territorial Syria, therefore, is an anti-Kurdish act, applying to both within and outside territorial Turkey (Al Jazeera 2018). As a proof of this, they argue that the DAESH seized Raqqa (in eastern Syria) as early as March 2014 and since then have fiercely attached Kurdish populated areas on the north emptying the Kurdish towns and slaughtering thousands. The Turkish government, according to them, turned a blind eye to the atrocities and massacres the DAESH committed against the Kurds; even worse, it was busy with bombing Kurdish towns within territorial Turkey. Here, they refer to the fierce response the Turkish police and armed forces gave to the PKK’s claiming authority in a number of towns in the south-east Anatolia in the summer of 2015 following the declaration of the establishment of autonomous Kurdish cantons in northern Syria. Nevertheless,

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Turkey’s excluding protecting the Kurdish populated areas from its socalled global responsibility against DAESH—that became obvious when Turkey remained in inaction to the DAESH forces’ trying to seize Kobanî (Ayn al-Arab), a border town to Turkey, in mid-September 2014—created an aggressive reaction resulting in HDP’s calling the Kurds to pour out onto the streets to protest the government’s inaction by which the protestors killed tens of civilians for being jihadists and supporters of DAESH in several cities within territorial Turkey on 6–7 October 2014 (BBC 2014). The pro-Kurdish groups even argued that Turkey was channelling military support to DAESH to help them to capture the town and preferred sharing border with DAESH rather than with a Kurdish administrative structure—the justification for why Turkey had been excluding the Kurds from its cosmopolitan responsibility. Nonetheless, the PKK and other Kurdish groups mobilised thousands of Kurdish youth from Turkey and worldwide to join the fight against DAESH—a cosmopolitan global responsibility—within Kobanî, and Turkey blinked at those foreign fighters’ passing over to territorial Syria, Kobanî, to join the fight. The Turkish government, due to harsh criticism also, first time in the country’s history, allowed the Peshmerga of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq to use its soil to pass to Kobanî and assist their co-nationals in their fight against DAESH (The Guardian 2014). Kurdish forces within territorial Syria since then have been discharging their cosmopolitan global and equally local responsibility of fighting against DAESH and have been well supported by the global public opinion (see The Guardian 2019). One can clearly see in this case the transnationally carried out domestic global politics and the participant actors’ making use of global politics and cosmopolitan responsibilities for the purpose of inclusion, exclusion, legitimation and de-legitimation. We, however, had to leave out transnational Turkey and Syria (diaspora localities abroad populated by ethnic Turks and/or Kurds) and digital Turkey and Syria as cosmopolitan actual, or virtual deterritorial spaces, involved in the domestic global politics of the Syrian civil war. Their inclusion may have provided broader insights on the transnational complexity of the domestic global politics of the Syrian civil war.

Final Remarks This chapter raised a critique of the methodological nationalism’s dominancy in the way transnationality is studied within IR. It offered a Beckian cosmopolitan alternative for going beyond such a scholarly bias, by which

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the core units, levels, and structures of IR and foreign policy research are tried to be transnationally redefined. This includes the introduction of a framework for a transnational cosmopolitan foreign policy research. This study made clear, among others, that in the scope of the cosmopolitan perspective (1) the assumptions of the national condition by which IR and IR transnational research have been retrospectively built on have been dissolved, (2) the transnational, other than the national, is the governing rule of the interactions of “national” and “international” kind, (3) a transition from a nation-state focused international politics to a non-state centred post/trans-international politics is necessary, therefore IR should be a venue for studying trans-international politics, (4) the research agenda of transnational relations is to discover that “international system” is a transnational structure/process in which a global domestic politics takes place, thus (5) IR’s main unit of research is the global domestic politics, participated in by diverse transnational actors that hold a global transnational responsibility and that are involved in the redistribution of sovereignty and finally (6) a domestic global politics framework would provide a ground for foreign policy research to re-evaluate its approaches to both local and global transnational politics. In the case study, I employed the domestic global politics framework to the Syrian civil war, and made clear that the cosmopolitan condition created transnational encounters that cannot be grasped or depicted via the vocabulary or confining assumptions of the national condition. The foreign policy is redefined as multi-party and multi-locality involved domain of politics and interaction, and is definitely a transnational process. The domestic global politics, accordingly, takes place within/throughout cosmopolitanised localities, and its actors are intended or unintended participants of political interaction and conflicting encounters. Having followed the thread drawn in the relevant discussion above, in writing the case part, it is clearly seen that for the domestic global politics framework to fulfil its explanatory capacity, the cosmopolitan and transnational qualities of the settings and processes under scrutiny are required to be defined. Moreover, it is also clear that the domestic global politics is a domain for discharging global responsibilities, and at the same time is a domain for making use of such responsibilities for inclusion/exclusion and legitimation/de-legitimation depending on the political goals of the participant. This is similar to the dispute between the cosmopolitanization and its enemies taking place within cosmopolitanised localities, to which Ulrich Beck long ago directed our attention. Accordingly, the

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cosmopolitan realities cosmopolitanisation brings, or the opportunities in our case, create discrepancies between those exposed to such realities/opportunities. As a final point, in the case study, I had to leave transnational localities (such as diaspora spaces) and digital/virtual spaces out of our analysis. Their inclusion may have provided broader insights on the transnational complexity of domestic global politics.

Notes 1. Globalisation has shown that “the national (such as firms, capital, culture) may increasingly be located outside the national territory, for instance, in a foreign country or digital spaces” (Beck 2002: 23). Therefore, through expressing territorial Turkey, I intend to confine the case study within Turkey’s legal borders thus to rule transnational Turkey (i.e. diaspora spaces) and digital Turkey (i.e. global virtual spaces on Turkey) out of the scope of our research. 2. This is yet the case albeit the constructivist scholarship in the 1990s was criticized for having a focus merely on the “structural effects of norms” for not paying attention to “agency” in transnational relations. See Richard Price (2003: 583). 3. Similar to globalisation being studied as interconnectedness between distinct nations and states. 4. For a discussion on the nation-state’s reification through methodological nationalism see Robinson (1998: 561–594). 5. A third approach would be Daniel Chernilo’s call for revising “the thesis of social theory’s immanent methodological nationalism” dominant among the transnationalist and cosmopolitan critiques, Chernilo (2006: 15). 6. This is a state in which the otherness of the self and the otherness of the other is admitted. Also see Beck (2006: 14). 7. Piotr Sztompka, following Beck, interprets the domestic global politics as a transnational bridge between different “people, their groups, communities, political organizations, cultures, civilizations” that helps dealing with transnational concerns such as “energy policy, sustainable development, fighting global warming, war with terrorism” (2010: 27). 8. Beck thus argues that “the cosmopolitan responsibility does not imply a general elimination of sovereignty, but rather its redistribution” (2005: 14). 9. For a detailed discussion on the economic and social consequences of the Syrian conflict, see World Bank Group (2017). 10. For a detailed discussion on Turkey’s position in the Syrian civil war, see World Bank Group (2015). For the response of Lebanon, the country hosting more than a million and a half Syrian refugees, to the Syrian civil

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war and for particularly the role of Hezbollah, as a politico-military actor, in increasing the transnational qualities of territorial Syria, see Bozkurt (2016: 414–415). 11. The official webpage of the National Syrian Coalition contains valuable information regarding how the revolutionary resistance is transnationally orchestrated by the opposition. See http://en.etilaf.org/. 12. Independent journalist Salwa Amor would be an excellent example of this kind. See the following link for some of her reportings http://www. middleeasteye.net/users/salwa-amor.

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Lake, David. 2010. The State and International Relations. In The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, ed. Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal, 41–61. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nye, Joseph, and Robert Keohane. 1971a. Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction. International Organization 25 (3): 329–349. Nye, Joseph, and Robert Keohane. 1971b. Transnational Relations and World Politics: A Conclusion. International Organization 25 (3): 721–748. Oktav, Özden Zeynep, Emel Parlar Dal, and Ali Murat Kur¸sun (eds.). 2018. Violent Non-state Actors and the Syrian Civil War: The ISIS and YPG Cases. London: Springer. Price, Richard. 2003. Transnational Civil Society and Advocacy in World Politics. World Politics 55: 579–606. Reuters. 2015. Russia Hosts pro-Kurdish Turkish Politician Who Condemns Ankara, 23 December. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisisrussia-turkey/russia-hosts-pro-kurdish-turkish-politician-who-condemnsankara-idUSKBN0U60P220151223. Accessed 2 March 2018. Reuters. 2019. Erdogan Says Turkey to Launch Military Operation in Northeast Syria, 5 October. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-turkeyusa/erdogan-says-turkey-to-launch-military-operation-in-northeast-syriaidUSKCN1WK053. Accessed 9 October 2019. Risse, Thomas. 2013. Transnational Actors and World Politics. In Handbook of International Relations, ed. Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons. London: Sage. Risse, Thomas, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1999. The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Risse-Kappen, Thomas. 1995a. Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Introduction. In Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-state Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions, ed. Thomas Risse-Kappen, 3–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Risse-Kappen, Thomas. 1995b. Structures of Governance and Transnational Relations: What Have We Learned? In Bringing Transnational Relations Back in: Non-state Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions, ed. Thomas Risse-Kappen, 280–313. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robertson, Susan L., and Roger Dale. 2008. Researching Education in a Globalising Era: Beyond Methodological Nationalism, Methodological Statism, Methodological Educationism and Spatial Fetishism. In Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies. Bristol: University of Bristol. Robinson, William. 1998. Beyond Nation-State Paradigms: Globalization, Sociology, and the Challenge of Transnational Studies. Sociological Forum 13 (4): 561–594.

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Svoboda, Eva, and Sara Pantuliano. 2015. International and Local/Diaspora Actors in the Syria Response: A Diverging Set of Systems? Humanitarian Policy Group Working Paper. https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odiassets/publications-opinion-files/9523.pdf. Accessed 3 March 2018. Sztompka, Piotr. 2010. One Sociology or Many? In The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions, ed. Sujata Patel, 21–28. London: Sage. Tabak, Hüsrev. 2015. Broadening the Nongovernmental Humanitarian Mission: The IHH and Mediation. Insight Turkey 17 (3): 193–215. Tabak, Hüsrev. 2016. Metodolojik Ulusçuluk ve Türkiye’de Dı¸s Politika ˙ skiler 13 (51): 21–39. Çalı¸smaları. Uluslararası Ili¸ Tabak, Hüsrev. 2019. Uluslararası’nın Beckçi Ele¸stirisi. Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi 74 (2): 405–427. Tarrow, Sidney. 2001. Transnational Politics: Contention and Institutions in International Politics. Annual Review of Political Science 4: 1–20. Teschke, Benno. 2010. Marxism. In Oxford Handbook of International Relations, ed. Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal, 163–187. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Guardian. 2014. Turkey to Allow Kurdish Peshmerga Across Its Territory to Fight in Kobani, 20 October. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2014/oct/20/turkey-allows-peshmerga-forces-to-travel-to-kobani. Accessed 1 March 2018. The Guardian. 2019. British Isis Fighters in Syria ‘May Be Freed If US Allows Turkey Invasion’, 7 October. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ oct/07/isis-fighters-in-syria-may-regain-liberty-if-us-allows-turkey-to-invade. Accessed 9 October 2019. Wimmer, Andreas, and Nina Glick Schiller. 2002. Methodological Nationalism and beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences. Global Networks 2 (4): 301–334. World Bank Group. 2015. Turkey’s Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis and the Road Ahead. Washington, DC: The World Bank. World Bank Group. 2017. The Toll of War: The Economic and Social Consequences of the Conflict in Syria. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

CHAPTER 4

Imperial Transnationalism: Turkish Middle East-Oriented Foreign Policy Expert Apparatus (1998–2011) Jean-Baptiste Le Moulec

Introduction Delivering a transnational account of Turkish Foreign Policy requires primarily specifying the understanding of “transnational” and of “transnationalism” chosen for this contribution. The perspective adopted by most of recent International Relations (IR) studies still considers the state as the central actor even if a growing involvement on behalf of non-state actors (NSAs) can be observed. These terms were used at first by IR specialists studying the ties that immigrants, whether constituted as diaspora or not, establish with their country of origin (Glick Schiller et al. 1992). This case constitutes indeed an ideal illustration of nation-to-nation relationship without the systematic mediation of states. Likewise, other contributions of this book deal with transnationalism through the use of Turkish diasporas by the Turkish state in its domestic and foreign policies (see the chapters by Bahçecik or Papuççular for instance). Even though the

J.-B. Le Moulec (B) ESSCA School of Management, Angers, France © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_4

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word “international” refers to nations, the international order is actually dominated by state-to-state relations. In such a configuration, states are assumed to be the legitimate representatives of nations. The invention of the term “transnational” was therefore responding to a heuristic necessity. States can actually be present in transnational fluxes, and some kin-based bonds are even a convenient tool to implement state policies abroad. These ties indeed grant the opportunity to states to delegate a part of their influence policy abroad to autonomous agents by cultivating their feeling of national belonging. This particular chapter will even argue that state policies can be conceived and conveyed thanks to transnational fluxes out of their very agents’ total control over the phenomenon. In the aftermath of the accession to power of the AKP, in late 2002, the study of Turkish Foreign Policy developed tremendously, both in Turkey and in western countries. By the end of the 2000s, a “geopolitical shift” may have been diagnosed by AKP critics (Dalay and Friedman 2013; Ça˘gaptay 2009) while its intellectual Praetorian guard advocated for a growing autonomy that would not reset Turkey’s traditional alliance with the West (Aras 2009; Uluta¸s 2010). Turkish foreign policy’s main architect between 2003 and 2014, Ahmet Davuto˘glu had actually been looking forward to a profound renewal of diplomacy methods and to the diversification of its actors beyond state boundaries, even if this aggiornamento should remain under state control, and for the sake of national interest (Davuto˘glu 2001, 2008). Thus, the role of NGOs, of ethnic minorities such as the Turkomans and Arab Turks was not only supported by political actors, but also analyzed by IR specialists in the last decade (Altunı¸sık 2009; Laçiner 2007; Schmid 2011; Angey and Molho 2015), sometimes even stating the originality, and the novelty, of the use of NSAs in Turkish Foreign Policy—an assumption that, as we will demonstrate, was purely instrumental.

An Advocacy Dispositif Made of Experts and an Expert Dispositif Made of Area Specialists The central idea I wish to put forward is that Turkey’s hegemonic plan regarding the Middle East is structured by the transnational circulation of ideas and organizational patterns. When Turkey builds a regional project relying on a shared religion, common sociologic features and a shared past (largely rewritten and idealized for that purpose), it openly promotes the (re)invention of a transnational regional unity. Here like in so many

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other cases of policy advertisement, the invention of traditions plays a fundamental role (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Some ethnic minorities like the Turkomans, the Kurds, or the Circassians are called upon to convey Turkey’s civilizational plan because they are minorities both in Turkey and in neighboring Arab countries. However, inside Turkey and in western countries, this project has not engendered a consensus. The AKP government was in need of some expert advocacy. These experts, individuals but also organizations such as think tanks and university research centers, are the product of an academic space that is by now highly internationalized. Most of them have spent years completing their PhDs in the US or in the UK, thereby demonstrating the marginalization of French and German-speaking elites, and the rising domination of the American higher education model in Turkey and elsewhere. Some of them have firstly been socialized and politicized in conservative backgrounds of Turkey, making them critical of the West. Nevertheless, their student years abroad impregnated their academic references (books and institutional patterns). Philosophically and sociologically attracted by the Muslim world, these experts have become Anglo-Saxons in their professional practices as well as in their bibliographic quotations. Hence a coherent foreign policy advocacy apparatus was set up from the mid-2000s in Turkey. However, this was an apparatus that sees the Middle East “through western eyes.” Besides, the Turkish Middle East-oriented foreign policy did not only need experts able to defend it on the national scene and in expert debates abroad. It also needed state of the art Middle East experts able to guide and advise policy-makers. As early as in 2001, in his program-like book Strategic Depth (Davuto˘glu 2001), Ahmet Davuto˘glu called for the creation of Middle Eastern studies research centers in Turkey (Davuto˘glu 2001: 452–453). From 2007 to 2008 onward,1 this type of organization suddenly multiplied in universities and outside, under different designations and under the leadership of Davuto˘glu’s western-trained disciples. These organizations attracted public and private funding2 that was used for various purposes: fieldworks, publications, events, training. This general trend was helped by the opening of Arabic language courses and Middle East politics lessons in political science faculties of Turkish universities. A cluster seemed to emerge between foreign policy decision-makers, Middle Eastern studies and universities in Turkey. Guiding this generation of young experts, some elders offered their expertise. For some of these veterans, Middle East expertise was forged in transnational Marxist

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pro-Palestinian organizations in 1970. For others, former theology students, knowledge was acquired during stays in Arab countries, in quest of Islamic knowledge. In the mid-2000s, these different categories of actors met and formed the aforementioned foreign policy apparatus, a dispositif that was mainly built to promote the AKP government’s foreign policy in Turkey and in the rest of the world.

Studying a Foreign Policy Apparatus Through Sociology and Epistemology The idea of this chapter is to focus on the formulation and the legitimation of Turkish foreign policy by actors identified as “experts,” be them scholars, journalists, or state officials. My argument is partially inspired by the study of the international circulation of ideas as analyzed by Pierre Bourdieu (2002), Yves Dezalay (1991, 2004) and Brian Garth (2012). Concentrating on “situations of transnationalism” or groups of individual trajectories generating “transnational fluxes,” I try to explain how Turkish state’s foreign policy is relying on non-state, partially uncontrolled, international phenomena. Studying international individual trajectories, knowledge-producing organizations in Turkey and the cross-border circulation of ideas, I define the contours of a group of western-educated AKP-linked intellectuals who, even though theorizing the intensification of the bonds between Turkey and Middle East, have been mainly importing western ideas, bibliography, and organizational patterns to perform their duties as pro-government foreign policy experts. This contribution will underline a paradox lying at the very bottom of Ahmet Davuto˘glu’s foreign policy: conceived as authentically Turkish and Muslim (Davuto˘glu 2001), this policy has perpetuated the western tropism regarding knowledge production methods and the scientific/policy-oriented representations of the Middle East. The argument is also based on recent studies on the Turkish state and policy-making modes (Aymes et al. 2015) that tended to dispute the divides implied by dual categorizations such as public/private, state/nonstate, center/periphery, state/civil society. Refuting prior analysis (Mardin 1991; Heper 1985), recent studies showed that policy-making in Turkey has been relying on transaction and cooperation between state and nonstate actors since the latest decades of the Ottoman Empire. In our case too, I observe that state boundaries are blurred enough by some

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apparently private actors that have been entrusted with evidently progovernment assignments. While the limits that supposedly separate state from non-state, and political society from civil society tend to vanish, it is the very relevance of such oppositions that are undermined. This deconstruction is nevertheless critical to understand the utilization that has been made of academia and non-public agents by government officials. In Erdo˘gan’s Turkey, just like in Macron’s France, upcoming or monopolizing leaders start building their legitimacy on the claim that they are civil society in power. In the French case or in the Turkish one, as well as in all cases where populism and plebiscite have been recently and willingly confused with democracy, a closer look to history soon neutralizes this “civil society in power” narrative. Playing with categories such as state and non-state, civil society and political society, the redefinition and opposition of such notions must be seen as one of the many artifices used by rulers to fabricate legitimacy and defuse critics preventively.

Transnational Movements (Between Turkey and the Arab Middle East) Versus State’s Policy: 1960s and 1970s The Turkish republic has been built on the myth that religious practice had to be replaced by belief in modernity and science. Muslim faith and practices were considered by Kemalists as a main factor of fatalism and therefore backwardness (Bozarslan 2013). Keeping away from the Arab Middle East, which had anyway “betrayed” the Ottoman caliphate (Laurens 2004), but also expurgating as much as possible official historiography from the “Ottoman heritage” became core principles of the regime instituted in 1923. However, this official restriction has partially failed. Despite the linguistic and cultural Turkification of the population in the first 30 years of the Republic (Bozarslan 2013), several ethnic groups kept transnational roots both on the western and the eastern frontiers, as family links could not be severed by ideology. These family ties of the Kurds, the Arabs, the Turkomans, or the Circassians were also natural channels for trade and the circulation of ideas. The cross-border situation therefore remained in this unofficial but tolerated condition until the 1960s, even gaining some recognition in Democratic Party years (1950–1960). From the end of the 1960s, after the Turkish state and its guardian, the Army, had joined the western

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crusade on communism, a conflict emerged with radical left in Turkey, pushing a fistful of Turkish radical left militants to flee to Syria and Lebanon through Kurdish cross-border networks (Çandar 2012). Joining the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon quickly gained the status of a toughening and pantheon-like hero-making experience for Turkish leftists (Feyizo˘glu 2011). Even if radical left militants and the Turkish state were fiercely opposed on the Turkish soil, opposing Israel’s imperialism was considered, even by the Turkish state, a legitimate cause. In the mid-1970s, the newly shaping separatist Kurdish nationalist movement, also of Marxist inspiration, intensified its contact with the urban western radical left insurgency (Çandar 2012). It established channels with Syrian and Iraqi Kurds. When the Turkish state began to violently repress urban radical left militants (through deportation and torture), joining the Palestinian fight became for some of them not only a good cause but also a desirable escape. Apart from these ethnical realities and political feuds, the eastern border was also growingly challenged by the quest for knowledge and credit on behalf of Turkish theologians. The education in Islamic theology and law, performed by the madrassa in Ottoman times and providing civil servants until the Tanzimat Reforms (Mardin 1989), was transferred and restricted to Imam Hatip high schools3 and theology (ilahiyat ) departments in universities. However, the official channels with the Arab world having been drastically narrowed by the Republic’s founders and public funds allocated to these institutions being rather limited, the quality of these teachings suffered and might have even lost some legitimacy (Mardin 1989). Unofficially, imams and preachers kept on teaching religion to the children of conservative families; but it could not stop the loss of knowledge in religious matters, and a degraded capability to speak and teach Arabic. More generally the state’s control over these subjects was ill-perceived by the lecturers and their students as well as by larger groups of conservative Turks. Hence, there followed the dual need to flee from this control and to get, out of Turkey, closer to the crib of Islam, and to fill in the missing knowledge. Already in the 1960s, a handful of students, who would later become faculty deans and/or notorious theology authors, went to spend a year or a full curriculum in Mecca, at the Umm Al-Qura University, in Kuwait or in Jordan. In the 1970s, the number slightly increased even if students seemed to prefer Cairo and Tunis beside Amman.

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The 1980s and 1990s showed a fast change in this regard, despite the 1980 military coup. While the number of students in religious high school increased, forcing the multiplication of these institutions, it also brought more students to theology faculties. The number of candidates for expatriate studies in the aforementioned destinations rose. Theology education also profited from the development of means of communication by the end of the century. In conclusion, not only did these matters restore the link between conservative Turks and the Arab centers of Islamic knowledge, they also established a transnational channel between a part of the Turkish society and the Middle East against which the 1997 post-modern coup would be ineffective.4

Economic Openings in the Middle East The neo-liberal era in Turkey that was led by Turgut Özal (Prime Minister between 1983–1989, and President between 1989–1993) also contributed to the establishment of transnational channels with the Middle East. Indeed, Turkey’s economic policy in the 1980s allowed the emergence of a new class of entrepreneurs in central Anatolia, the Anatolian Tigers (Bu˘gra 1994), which were different from the existing urbancentered bourgeoisie of Turkey in terms of their cultural background. While supplying the local market, these businesspersons gathered in a new association, the Independent Businessmen and Industrial Association (MÜSIAD),5 soon looking for export prospects in Europe but also in other eastward directions. Özal governments escorted them abroad, in the Gulf area and Libya. The information on how to start new businesses, how to find work and how to repatriate money to Turkey could circulate. Here again, new transnational channels were opened, but this time they were also partially supported by the state.

The Turning Point of the Normalization of Turkish--Syrian Relations The Adana Agreement with Syria in 1999 after a tense climax led to a quick reconciliation6 between the two neighboring countries. In Turkey itself, the peace treaty also paved the way for collaboration between political movements and social groups once opposed to each other; elements of the former radical left and the Muslim conservatives. The reunion of these two trends was crucial to build a Turkish expertise on the Middle

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East because both had long-term contacts and experience in the region. A common interest in the Arab Middle East, even with somewhat conflicting motives,7 brought them together in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In addition to numerous official delegations to Syria after the 1999 agreement, in which these actors got to know each other, specifically two organizations symbolized the encounter between these two non-state promoters of transnational fluxes with the Middle East at the turn of the century: The Abant Platform and the Middle East Conference (Ortado˘gu Konferansı). The first was launched even before the Adana Agreement, in 1998, by some of Fethullah Gülen’s followers, journalists and scholars. The second was organized by personalities with former links to Turkish left-wing movements such as Nuray Mert or Mete Çubukçu. The Abant Platform was more of a gathering of Turkish and Turkish-Kurdish intellectuals regardless of their political opinions. If it did not only concern the development of ties with the Middle East in particular, Abant relied on its participants’ contacts to build a network and open a debate with intellectuals and politicians from the Middle East. The Ortado˘gu Konferansı, created in 2004, was more transnational. It consisted of collective delegations of Turkish intellectuals (journalists, scholars, writers) to Middle East countries, including Iran and Israel, where they met their intellectual counterparts. The organization’s committee was proposing visits and meetings in Syria, Iraq, Iran or Gulf countries to prominent Turkish intellectuals who could decide individually to go or not,8 to finance their journey or ask for support. These two structures played the role of an intellectual catalyst for the emergence of a consensus on the necessity to restore Turkish-Arab transnational ties at the elite level. It also constituted the basis of a heterogeneous ensemble of actors from various political landscapes, from Islamic right to radical left (1970s and in the present) that would contribute to the legitimization of the AKP government’s Middle Eastern policy and to the use of transnational channels in enforcing it. One of the cements of these groups was a common focus (but not consensus) on the impact of 9/11 on the Middle East, notably the new wave of violent American interventionism. Although often trained in the US, most of these intellectuals were deeply influenced (although reflecting various interpretations) by Edward Said’s analysis of ancient and contemporaneous Orientalism. Nonetheless, at the end of the 1990s, few Turkish intellectuals and politicians could offer empirical knowledge about Arab societies. Apart

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from some journalists such as Cengiz Çandar or Faik Bulut, other potential Middle Eastern experts were outside of the policy-making area. The theologians teaching in Ilahiyat faculties after spending, for some of them, a few academic years in the region, were quite discreet, still mortified by the 1997 military coup. Their responsibility in the rampant propagation of so-called retrograde social practices had then been pointed (Bölügiray 1999) by the military chiefs. Among the journalists, the old generation that knew the region was made of a fistful of former leftists who had fought with PLO. The younger generation of Middle East specialists was (at that time) still being trained at the universities, in Turkey and abroad. The latter generation’s vision and experience about the region would of course be different from the former one. The new generation came from conservative backgrounds.9 As far as social science scholars were concerned, in the early 2000s, they were primarily interested in the European Union accession process.10 It seems that some IR scholars renewed their regional expertise according to the government’s foreign policy agenda: Central Asia in the early 1990s, then Eurasia and Caucasus, consequently the EU by 2000, and finally the Middle East. In this case, specialization appears as an opportunistic and therefore quite mobile or unstable ambition. Be they political scientists or IR specialists, most foreign policy experts in the AKP government’s environment approached the Middle East as a whole. Not required—for financial and security reasons, but not only these—during university curriculum, “surveys on the field” were practiced on an exceptional basis. The mastership of an area language, well considered, was however hard to achieve considering the quasi-ban on Arabic in social science faculties since 1997 and the scarcity of Persian and Hebrew courses. Only a few Middle East dedicated departments managed to propose language courses in cooperation with the faculties of Arts (Marmara, Sakarya, Elazı˘g). In sum, at the beginning of the 2000s, Turkish knowledge of the Middle East based on empirical experience relied on former leftists and theologians. It is interesting to note that this empirical knowledge was also quite rare among scholars and journalists identified as members of the Gülen community. Thus, if some transnational channels exist with the Middle Eastern societies and if some rather marginal groups open a breach in the psychological ban regarding Arab countries, a qualitative leap has to be made to grant to these ferments the opportunity to shape Turkey’s new ties with its eastern neighbors. The Middle East orientation the AKP government adopted in its foreign policy in the second part of the 2000s may have played that role.

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The Instrumental Approach of Transnationalism in Turkish Rulers’ Speeches and Practices The AKP’s accession to power not only brought a new party to power but granted the civil servants and advisors of a younger generation with conservative backgrounds access to state institutions. Nevertheless, these were less the avatars of the Anatolian tigers fostered by Özal than the sons of urbanized Anatolians, teachers, public servants, and engineers (Le Moulec 2016). One of them, among the oldest of these new elites, was Ahmet Davuto˘glu (44 years old in 2003). Ahmet Davuto˘glu was invited by Abdullah Gül and Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan to advise them on foreign policy (Zengin 2012) in 2003. He was not the sole advisor on foreign policy. The AKP’s international program had actually been prepared by the former ambassador Ya¸sar Yakı¸s, just a few weeks before the 2002 elections. Yakı¸s was not a Muslim conservative but the most capable person in the vicinity of the party to fulfill such a mission at the time. When the government was shaped, the new leaders looked for advisors closer to their circle. As a former member of conservative student syndicate MTTB,11 an IR scholar who had started to make himself known, and an education entrepreneur who had already created and directed several “cultural foundations,” Davuto˘glu was more in line with AKP leaders’ ambitions. Though he was not the only formulator of AKP’s foreign policy program, Davuto˘glu bore his own conception of Turkey’s role on the regional and global scene. In 2001, Küre Yayınları, a publishing house belonging to the Bilim ve Sanat Foundation, founded in 1984 by Davuto˘glu and others, published Stratejik Derinlik.12 In this book, the then Marmara University IR professor assesses Turkey’s position in the world and provides recommendations. He advocates for a multiplechannel and multilevel diplomacy under state control that takes advantage of what he calls Turkey’s multiculturalism and religious diversity. He also advises the enhancement of Turkey’s empirical knowledge capacities regarding the Middle East (Davuto˘glu 2001: 452–453), Turkey’s “natural region” (Navaro-Yashin 2002). Davuto˘glu’s scholarly trajectory is also quite interesting. After a PhD at Bo˘gaziçi University, one of Turkey’s most prestigious colleges, he taught at Kuala Lumpur’s Malaysian International Islamic University between 1990 and 1994, a strange destination considering Bo˘gaziçi’s

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position—former Robert College—as a launching ramp toward US universities. Nevertheless, after his Malaysian experience Davuto˘glu returned to Turkey, and taught at Marmara University’s English-speaking IR department while managing cultural foundations such as Bilim ve Sanat or Avrasya-Bir foundations. His employment in Malaysia and the involvement in the creation of cultural foundations are crucial to analyze his career because it shows that it is actually built upon political choices. Davuto˘glu went to Malaysia instead of going to America or Europe to enhance his career. As a student, he created a cultural foundation whose objective was to teach and promote Islamic and Ottoman cultural heritage to university students outside of their university studies. In the mid2000s, Bilim ve Sanat has become an incubator of conservative intellectuals and a recruiting ground for government officials. In 1999, Davuto˘glu also participated in the creation of the Avrasya-Bir Foundation with food industry magnate Murat Ülker. Among other activities, this foundation supported ASAM, an Ankara think tank favored by the military (Kanbolat and Karasar 2009). In 2003, Davuto˘glu was definitely not a famous scholar with great ideas that his biographers sometimes presented (Zengin 2012). He has been preparing himself for this advisor assignment. The organizations he created earlier would provide him with the team members he needed to defend and implement his ideas in the Turkish diplomatic decision-making field. These team members were generally pervaded by Davuto˘glu’s thought as explained in Alternative Paradigm (Davuto˘glu 1994), Strategic Depth (Davuto˘glu 2001) but also in his lectures at Marmara University. Having been one of his students provided a position in this environment even though the structure of his network remained quite horizontal, slightly imitating the tarikat model. Following the hoca’s13 path, his disciples have much of international experience—however rarely regarding the Middle East—having completed a curriculum in English and showing deep interest in world politics (Le Moulec 2016). All this fueled the transnational dimension of the foreign policy dispositif Davuto˘glu was about to set up when he took up the foreign policy advisor position for the Prime Minister. In Davuto˘glu’s first circle then, there was what one could call an epistemic community, using Peter Haas’s expression (Haas 1997). This epistemic group was not transnational, but the training and the resources of its members were structurally transnational. These young scholars who had studied mostly abroad, but also pursued a series of seminars at the

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Bilim ve Sanat Foundation or attended master’s lessons at Marmara University, relied on their academic resources and international experience to promote and explain Middle Eastern politics thanks to new organizations: a new generation of academic journals published by a new wave of Turkish think tanks.14 In the Turkish case, the closer circle of Davuto˘glu’s epistemic community existed before AKP’s win in the 2002 elections (early 2000s). It materialized itself under the wings of the government as an intermediary between policy decision-makers and policy analysts outside of the government. This community did not need to convince the government but was impregnated by an Islamic conservative vision of Turkish national interest. Nonetheless, it brought know-how that was crucial in the perspective of a foreign policy “revolution,” shifting from a western tropism to a more autonomous one. Indeed, these young scholars had worked in western think tanks, having had the opportunity to measure their utility in terms of international circulation of ideas. They also collaborated with western academic journals that provided a good way to learn editorship and peer-reviewed journals’ functioning, and to appreciate the efficiency of academic journals as far as the shaping of international foreign policy debates is concerned. In other words, transnationalism determined their curricula and skills.

A Structural Transnationality Due to the Curricula of “the Disciples” The comparative analysis of 140 Turkish individual careers (Becker 1963) who had distinguished themselves by an involvement in the production of knowledge on Middle Eastern politics in Turkey since the late 1990s, revealed about 30 trajectories directly linked to Ahmet Davuto˘glu’s (Le Moulec 2016). The comparison covered the period when each individual entered high school (until 2015).15 All these individuals came from conservative backgrounds. The major part of them had an interest in the Arab Middle East prior to their university studies. About two-thirds of the group made an initiation trip to one of the neighboring Arab countries in their first three years of university studies. All of them shared a disappointment regarding the lack of reference to Islamic culture and “civilization” in their social science curricula, especially in high ranking schools (e.g., Bo˘gaziçi, the Middle East Technical University/METU and Bilkent). As a result, half of them followed Bilim ve Sanat Foundation’s

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lessons while they were at university in the early 2000s, and later a quarter of them became teaching coordinators in this organization. The other quarter had the opportunity to teach at Bilim ve Sanat once they finished the curriculum. After their undergraduate studies in Turkey, they generally went to average16 universities in the USA (e.g., Utah State, Ohio State, George Mason) or in the UK (Warwick, Durham) to complete a PhD in political science or in International Relations thanks to Turkish or foreign scholarships.17 Some of them worked in American think tanks while studying.18 During their stay abroad, they learnt and transmitted what Davuto˘glu called western Weltanschauung (Davuto˘glu 1994). With their return to Turkey, this generation reintegrated into the Turkish higher education, some of them going directly to Davuto˘glu’s newly founded university: Istanbul Sehir, ¸ a university linked to the Bilim ve Sanat foundation. Others, during and after the Davuto˘glu era, joined Medeniyet University (Istanbul) or Ibn Haldun University, the latter often indicated as being close to “President [Erdo˘gan]’s men.” The institutions in which they taught were themselves created upon an American model. The system in which these experts operated therefore had a debt toward transnational fluxes of both ideas and organizational patterns. The insertion of these individuals into the foreign policy decision-making process as advisors or commentators does not allow us to call it exclusively Turkish, no matter how much opposed they pretend to be to “western” concepts and interests. Think tanks such as SETA, TEPAV or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs strategic thinking organization SAM19 (founded in 1996) resembled some Washington, D.C. organizations, which was no surprise when one realizes that for example SETA founders did internships and worked in these organizations. This institutional mimetism is reinforced by the transatlantic financial and academic ties that Turkey’s most prominent think tanks maintain with organizations such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace or the German Marshall Fund whose role as promotors of expertise-led-governance is widely recognized. Regarding the relation of these Davuto˘glu disciples to Middle East, this interest generally developed in the postdoctoral phase, as a subspecialization, as if it were merely a consequence of the government’s foreign policy. Middle East specialists with a deeply rooted vocation seem to be scarce in Turkey. One must look outside of the academia to find some (e.g., the aforementioned ex-leftists who spent some time with the PLO in Lebanon). If Turkish diplomatic circles have also given birth to a limited number of Middle East experts, many scholars insist on the lack

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of such experts in the higher education system.20 In the generation that got a PhD in the early 1990s, half a dozen individuals can be found, all in International Relations Departments of prestigious universities like Bo˘gaziçi, METU or Bilkent. But their empirical relationship to the Middle East was limited and their local language skills were rather weak. Their academic tropism was definitely western. Nonetheless, prominent scholars such as Recep Boztemur, Meliha Benli Altunı¸sık and, later, Özlem Tür developed academic networks with the Americanized Middle East academia during their postgraduate studies and consequently through academic venues.21 Directly linked to Ahmet Davuto˘glu or not, the generation that was trained by these rare Middle East specialists from the 1980s and 1990s is more numerous. Beside increases in state funding to Middle East studies advocated by Davuto˘glu (Davuto˘glu 2001: 452–453), the so-called new balance or re-centering of Turkish foreign policy between its traditional NATO allies and the Muslim or emerging world (Jabbour 2017), has a direct impact on IR and political science students’ choices. A large constellation of newborn specialized scholars emerged in the course of the 2000s. Exploiting enlarged possibilities to pursue a PhD, in state or private universities, in Turkey or abroad, they also sometimes find opportunities as junior researchers in Ankara’s and Istanbul’s recently multiplicated “strategic thinking organizations,” also called think tanks. In these think tanks, a pattern seems to gain some stability: the AKP period’s most prominent think tanks were founded by Anglo-Saxon PhDs who transferred their know-how as soon as they returned to Turkey. The organizations they created have employed junior researchers who were completing their PhDs at Turkish universities. They also managed to attract Middle East specialists from other fields such as the media, diplomacy and the army. On a more punctual basis, scholars from Anglo-Saxon countries and continental Europe have also been invited, giving credit and prestige to these think tanks. Academics from the Middle East have also contributed, but rather marginally in comparison to the former. Thanks to the funding allocated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Office of the Prime Minister22 and other government administrations, these think tanks capitalized on their already transnational resources to consolidate a transnational circulation of ideas and intellectuals. SETA, ORSAM, USAK,23 TEPAV, as main beneficiaries of the government’s generosity, diversified their communication means: websites, magazines, peer-reviewed journals, and numerous events.

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For organizations like ORSAM or SETA, small teams of researchers were sent to conduct fieldwork in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Israel. Their mission was actually a dual one: meeting local actors and identifying partnership opportunities for their think tanks. Besides, international workshops and conferences were regularly set up to create a transnational epistemic community globally lenient to AKP’s foreign policy. The goal was to influence elites, but also, thanks to media coverage, to broadcast Turkey’s official positions to global and foreign public opinions. In addition, English-speaking or multilingual academic journals/reviews with multinational scientific committees were created or purchased: Insight Turkey, Uluslararası Hukuk ve Politika, Ortado˘gu Etütleri, Analiz. This was done in order to present Turkish and foreign expertise on themes defined by the think tank. In a slightly different manner, the Ankara-based and AKP-linked Stratejik Dü¸sünce Enstitüsü (Strategic Thought Institute) established the Arab-Turkish Congress for Social Science, a meeting of scholars from Turkey and Arab countries that took place every year between 2010 and 2015 in different cities of the region (Ankara, Cairo, Istanbul, Amman, and Marrakech). The powerful humanitarian NGO IHH (Insani Yardım Vakfı, Foundation for Humanitarian Relief) also has an expert cell that can count on the organization of local networks and empirical experience in countries such as Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan.24 Turkish think tanks (and humanitarian NGOs to some extent) did not demand the contributions of international experts for the sole purpose of self-legitimation or to give more credit to their pro-government stand. Their transnational resources and networks also helped circulating concepts and ideas such as the so-called “Turkish Model” (Dede 2011) or the advocacy against accusations of “shift of axis in foreign policy.” These broadcasting operations aimed to ease the government’s influence policy in the Middle East and North Africa, before the Arab revolutions and even more intensively in the subsequent period. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the whole expert apparatus, although damaged by Turkey’s domestic turmoil, has still been in use. Its new function is to contain the harm caused to Turkey’s influence policy in the area, and to try to explain the erratic decisions of a growingly isolated executive power. In sum, it appears here that the academic and political initiative launched by Davuto˘glu and his followers has remained captive of European and North-American knowledge production on the region, and

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dependent on Anglo-Saxon organizational patterns to promote and legitimate a policy for the public. The initial idea was indeed that Turks being Muslims who have shared territories, institutions, and cultural expressions with the Arabs and other Middle Eastern peoples, were in a better position to understand the region than western orientalists. The project was to go out to the field, “meet” the actors, collect first-hand data, in order to produce a 100% Turkish knowledge on the region that would ultimately serve Turkey’s foreign policy. In this regard, the enterprise may be considered to have largely failed, even if Middle Eastern studies and more generally area studies in Turkey have reached an unprecedentedly advanced point by the mid-2010s.

A Transnational Diplomacy: “Multichannelism” Transnationalism has also been at the center of Turkish foreign policy theorization and implementation. In many occasions, starting with Stratejik Derinlik, Ahmet Davuto˘glu advocated for new diplomacy methods that would grant credit to foreign non-state actors (e.g., political parties such as Hamas in Palestine, An-Nahda in Tunisia) for the sake of knowledge and peacemaking. As a chief advisor and then as a minister, he insisted on meeting foreign party leaders or tribal chiefs for instance (Zengin 2012) in order to better know the stakes of a political dilemma, and despite the fact that his counterparts did not have any official mandate to speak to a Minister of Foreign Affairs. Davuto˘glu’s plan was indeed to develop Turkey’s knowledge of the Middle East, to introduce Turkey to these actors, to bring Turkey’s word to them, and, if possible, to contribute to peacemaking and crisis management in the area. Transnationality here was purely instrumental of course. Davuto˘glu and his team actually bet on the asymmetry of such ties between Turkish state representatives and foreign non-state groups’ leaders to enhance Turkey’s influence in the region, and maybe shape some countries’ political future by supporting tomorrow’s prominent actors. This approach exposed him and the whole AKP foreign policy agenda toward the Middle East to the accusation of “neo-Ottomanism,” an expression used to qualify Turgut Özal’s policy toward Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Davuto˘glu rejected this term in several occasions, contesting among others the imperialistic meaning of neo-Ottomanism. The necessity to take Ottoman history again into account, to draw links between

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this past and Turkey’s present, to look at this period in a renewed, magnifying way, did not mean, according to the father of the Strategic Depth doctrine, a will to reproduce the past. Although Davuto˘glu was undoubtedly an idealist, he was also a political tactician. Instead of denying, he rather turned the accusation of imperialism that resulted from Turkey’s recent initiative in the Middle East into an expert debate. He was also perfectly conscious that the Ottoman conception regarding the region and international relations would be anachronistic. The various references to the Ottoman space, including the use of archaic vocabulary were part of a political and intellectual enterprise to re-establish Turkish–Arab ties that had been negated for a long time on both sides. It consisted mainly of putting forward positive and/or reinterpreted historical and social facts about the Ottoman and Seljuk empires, or even of glorifying some periods over others (e.g., Yavuz Selim’s and Abdulhamit II’s period). As an IR scholar, Davuto˘glu was aware that international relations take roots in history and people-to-people relationships. Relying on these two elements may help to understand his actions between 2003 and 2014 but also provide another meaning for “transnational” in this case. Not only were these transnational ties as cross-border relations between individuals and groups distinct from state-to-state ties, but they were also an attempt to link social groups that were linked in the pre-national era with the descendants of these groups in the nation-state period. The redefinition of the “transnational” term that Davuto˘glu proposes in his “strategic depth” doctrine consists of adding a temporal dimension to the geographic one (Davuto˘glu 2001). Transnational relationships do not only cross borders, but they also cross unfavorable time periods. While being a strong supporter of the state as an international actor, Davuto˘glu, emphasizing like many other analysts the incompleteness of nation-building processes in the Middle East (Hourani et al. 2004; Benraad 2015), tries to go beyond the notion of nation by asserting that the region’s sole opportunity to regain power and prestige is through this redefined transnationalism. What he omits to mention is that he tends to believe that transnationalism is only legitimate when it remains in the state’s control perimeter. Davuto˘glu did not introduce these “transnational methods” into Turkish diplomacy even though he had theorized and systematized them. Some channels that he used had already existed for years. When he praised Turkey’s multiculturalism in Strategic Depth, he alluded to the Turkomans, the Arabs, the Circassians, and the Kurds25 whose associations and

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traditional leaders could serve as “passeurs,” that is deal brokers, information sources, with bordering countries. Davuto˘glu voiced this transnational vision of diplomacy in his Kirkuk speech of 2012 (Yılmaz 2012). The Turkomans in particular were designated to increase Turkey’s influence in bordering countries such as Syria and Iraq but also in Lebanon where the weakness of state institutions opened the way to Turkey’s maneuvers.26 In Syria where state institutions were strong until 2012, Turkish transnational public diplomacy operation through the Turkomans was rejected politely but firmly.27 Nonetheless, the former President Abdullah Gül’s closest advisor was Er¸sat Hürmüzlü, an Iraqi Turkoman.28 The Turkoman Folklore Association had hosted, since 2008, the Ortado˘gu Ara¸stırmalar Merkezi (ORSAM), a think tank whose director is de facto nominated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It has even been said that the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosts a powerful Turkoman lobby.29 Davuto˘glu called for an alliance with “the Kurds” for the sake of Islamic civilization, in order to bring Turkey’s good word in neighboring countries through Kurdish networks. The harnessing of Iraqi Kurds against Turkish Kurds, for commercial purposes or in order to play against Iraq’s Shiite power, may have been the only manifestation of this alliance in practice. However, by the end of the 2000s, with a greater number of higher education diplomas in political science having been obtained by Turks of Arab origin, their presence in some elements of the foreign policy expertise apparatus appeared more clearly: think tanks even sought to recruit them for their language skills. The Arab Spring also triggered some significant transnational academic movements that Turkey managed to turn into its favor. In Egypt, General Sissi’s coup pushed some pro-Muslim Brother Egyptian scholars to Turkey in search of academic jobs. In this case, the channels to “insert” such a small number of individuals were fortunately available: Sakarya University and the Marmara University Middle East Studies Institute seemed to be ready to offer some positions to these political exiles.30 At last, the Turkish-Gulf Cooperation Council relationship has been regularly revitalized since the 1980s, and is notably fueled by important financial transactions in both directions (Larrabee 2011). This is so far a transnational area that has been little affected by the Syrian or the more recent Saudi–Qatari crisis. Likewise, and despite the discontent caused to some Turks by the increased flow of Arab-Gulf tourists in Istanbul, this trend provides a minimal insurance to the AKP government against a new severing of Arab–Turkish ties.

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Conclusion The AKP government put forward quite early its capacity to resuscitate ancient transnational ties to serve its foreign policy, a policy aiming to balance the previous western alliance with a “new” Middle Eastern orientation. This chapter showed that rather than actually resuscitating, the Turkish government in the last two decades utilized these ancient transnational ties just like its predecessors had done. Indeed, the Özal administration and the consecutive governments, paving the way for a more decisive comeback of Turkey in the Middle East (if the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire is regarded as a “departure” of Turks from that area), had also used Turkomans as intermediaries, as well as ex-leftists with Kurdish and Arab networks as go-betweens and advisors. Nevertheless, completely refuting AKP’s assertion concerning the originality of its foreign policy would be inaccurate because the way these transnational links were used, by think tanks in addition to the Turkish government, and the variety of the transnational channels that were actually opened or reinvigorated in this recent period, were actually unprecedented. Ahmet Davuto˘glu was the main the architect of that new Turkish expert configuration on the Middle East. We may be tempted to consider on the one hand that he eventually betrayed his ambition to resuscitate exclusive Turkish–Middle Eastern relations, without a western component in between, since he mainly called on western-trained Turkish specialists to revive Turkish–Arab relations and others. However, not recognizing that he placed infra-state bounds, transnational ties, at the center of its policy between 2003 and 2009 would not be objective. It is necessary to consider the peculiar meaning he gave to this concept. Transnationalism is more than a dimension of the Middle East policy apparatus set under the AKP rule; it appears as one of its structural parameters once we look at the training of its supporting experts, and the promotion channels they use on a global scale. In Davuto˘glu’s vision, transnational ties were not only geographic, cross-border, but also historical, crossing time periods. The very performative effect of that political and strategic vision on Turkish Foreign Policy lasted at least for a decade. Davutoglu’s dismissal from the Prime Minister’s office in May 2016 signaled that Turkey was entering a new foreign policy phase, one in which the new President, Erdo˘gan, would not care so much anymore of the public’s opinion on its policy—a phase in which expert opinion became even less required on behalf of political decision-makers.

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Notes 1. After having been given the special advisor to the Prime Minister title as well as the ambassador title, Davuto˘glu became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in May 2009. He was the foreign policy chief advisor to the Prime Minister until then. 2. Big private equities thereby find a way to show their support to the government. It is an allegiance mechanism that is not new in Turkey. See Kanbolat, Hasan, et Hasan A. Karasar. Türkiye’de Stratejik Dü¸sünce Kültürü ve Sratejik Ara¸stırma Merkezleri: Ba¸slangıcından Bugüne Türk Dü¸sünce Kurulu¸sları. Nobel Yayın Da˘gıtım, 2009. 3. Starting with 11 year-old children, these schools offer a curriculum in which the student’s time is divided between Islam related subjects (Arabic language too) and secular disciplines. 4. In 1997, the military high command issued a warning regarding the orientations taken by Necmettin Erbakan (Refah Party, Islamic conservative). This message resulted in the dismissal of Erbakan’s government and is considered a post-modern coup in Turkish political history. Turkish Islamic conservative memories reflect it as a very traumatic event. Hundreds of young women and men in the following years discontinued their higher education because they did not consider Turkish universities as fitting their moral and intellectual desires. 5. Rival of the TÜSIAD (Turkish Industry Businessmen Association), gathering Turkey’s biggest and most ancient companies, MÜSIAD represents the emergence of these new businessmen as a new group of economic actors gathered in the Independent (“M” stand for “Müstakil” Independent but many were tempted to claim it stands for “Müslüman”, Muslim) Industry Businessmen Association For more, see Yankaya-Péan, Dilek. 2013. La nouvelle bourgeoisie islamique: le modèle turc. Paris: PUF. 6. Triggered by the expulsion of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan from Syria to Kenya, where Turkey could arrest him. 7. One could also say that there lies the initial flaw. In the early 2010s, Turkish Muslim conservatives would be accused by ex-leftist for looking at the Middle East with imperialist eyes of a resurgent Ottomanism. The latter would be considered the allies of western imperialism, using the democratization rhetoric to protect western interest and their own, imported, ˙ way of life. See Nuray Mert’s «Islam Emperyalizmi, Neo-Osmanlıcılık (Impérialisme islamique, néo-ottomanisme)». Milliyet, 2 September 2011. http://www.tumkoseyazilari.com/yazar/nuray-mert/; also see, Ye¸silta¸s, Murat. 2014. «The New Era in Turkish Foreign Policy: Critiques and Challenges». Insight Turkey 16 (3): 25–36. 8. Several accounts of these trips have been made to me, between 2012 and 2014, by Nuray Mert (scholar-columnist), Fulya Atacan (scholar),

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9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

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Kerim Balcı (journalist, self-educated to left-wing ideology but coming from a very traditional family in Erzurum) and Burcu Gültekin Punsmann (scholar and think tanker). We could provide many examples. Let us just give a few names: Fehim Ta¸stekin, Hakan Albayrak, Kerim Balcı, Sefer Turan. Turkish candidacy is officially recognized at EU’s Helsinki summit in 1999. Millî Türk Talebe Birli˘gi, Turkish National Student Union, a right-wing student association gathering various conservative trends among which Islamic ones and ultra-nationalists. It might be of some relevance to note that the book was not translated into English nor French, even though it was published in Arabic, Persian and Chinese in the course of the 2000s. It may allow us to see it as a preference for Muslim world and “emerging world” transnational circulations over dominant western transnational cultural flows. In its religious acceptance, the word can be translated as “master” or “guide.” In Davutoglu’s case, even if it is used as the common title of most teaching personnel in Turkey, the relationship that his collaborators have maintained with him supports the hypothesis of a polysemic title, academic but almost religious, too. P. Haas’ epistemic community is based on the case of the American denuclearization scientist community that managed to bring their ideas on top of an agenda political agenda that was initially in favor of arms race, in the early 1980s. The fact is very few of Davuto˘glu’s close followers have been to imam hatip liseleri (2 out of 33 characters whose careers have been analyzed in our prosopography). While coming from rather religious conservative backgrounds, their parents’ choice reflects more elitist preferences. We can therefore see it as coherent with the decision made by most of them to pursue their postgraduate higher education abroad, in western AngloSaxon countries. Not counted among the most prestigious like Harvard, Stanford, Princeton. Most seem to have been awarded TÜBITAK or Fulbright scholarships. However, some cases like Talip Küçükçan were awarded several times a ˙ Diyanet scholarship on behalf of ISAM (Islam Ara¸stırma Merkezi, Istanbul) or foreign universities’ post-grad scholarships. They later count among SETA’s senior officials. SETA stands for Siyasal, Ekonomik Toplumsal Ara¸stırmalar Vakfı (Foundation of Political, Economic and Social Research). Created in 2008 in ˙ Ankara by Ibrahim Kalın, now the presidential spokesperson, it assumes the function of the AKP main think tank. ORSAM, which stands for Ortado˘gu Stratejik Ara¸stırma Merkezi (Middle East Strategic Research

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20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Center), was founded in 2009 by Hasan Kanbolat, a former researcher of nationalist ASAM think tank led by the scholar and politician Ümit Özda˘g. ORSAM was hosted by the Türkmen Kültür Association whose networks it used for its research in northern Iraq. TEPAV (Toplum ve Eknonomi Ara¸stırma Vakfı, Society and Economy Research Foundation) is the Turkish Chambers and Stock Exchange Union’s (TOBB) university think tank, in Ankara. It was created in the mid-2000s and is known to have got closer and closer to the AKP, losing its most critical researchers in the early 2010s. Interviews in Ankara and Istanbul, autumn and winter 2012–2013. Since the late 2000s, METU has been organizing an annual Middle East Studies Conference that has gained international visibility and prestige. The launch of this event has benefited from its creators’ networks (a.k.a. Meliha B. Altunı¸sık, Özlem Tür, Recep Boztemur). The office was suppressed in 2018 following the constitutional revision that turned the regime into a presidential one. The revision came into force after Erdo˘gan’s reelection as president in June 2018. USAK, which stands for Uluslararası Stratejik Ara¸stırmalar Kurumu (International Strategic Research Center), is an organization created in 2005 by diplomats and right-wing intellectuals with a favorable eye on AKP’s policy. Former PM and President Abdullah Gül, whose portrait was long hung in the entrance, was said to be its political sponsor. This think tank also had the reputation to be close to Fethullah Gülen’s community. The organization was closed in 2016. See chapter on IHH. The Turkomans are Turks but many were nomads when the republic was created. Modernization and economic development implied their settlement. In exchange for their subjugation, many obtained jobs in the army. Some also served as intermediary with Syrian and Iraqi Turkomans, see Hürmüzlü (2015). See chapter on Turkoman policy. Interview with Bilgay Duman, ORSAM, Ankara, December 2014. Interviews at ORSAM, January 2013. Interview with Burcu Punsmann, Ankara, December 2014. Interviews in Istanbul, December 2013 and January 2014. The ArabTurkish Congress of Social event took place in Cairo before the coup. It gave the opportunity to Egyptian scholars to identify Turkish higher education institutions.

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References Altunı¸sık, Meliha Benli. 2009. Ortado˘gu ve ABD: Yeni Bir Döneme Girilirken. Ortado˘gu Etütleri 1 (1): 69–81. Angey, Gabrielle, and Jérémie Molho. 2015. Beyond Soft Power the Stakes and Configurations of the Influence of Contemporary Turkey in the World. European Journal of Turkish Studies 21. Aras, Bülent. 2009. The Davuto˘glu Era in Turkish Foreign Policy. Insight Turkey 11 (3): 127–142. Aymes, Marc, Elise Massicard, and Benjamin Gourisse (eds.). 2015. Order and Compromise: Government Practices in Turkey from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Early 21st Century. Leiden: Brill. Becker, Howard. 1963. Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Benraad, Myriam. 2015. Irak, la revanche de l’histoire: de l’occupation étrangère à l’État islamique. Paris: Vendemiaire. Bölügiray, Nevzat. 1999. 28 S¸ ubat Süreci 1. Istanbul: Tekin Yayınevi. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. Les Conditions Sociales de La Circulation Internationale Des Idées. Actes de Recherche En Sciences Sociales 145. Bozarslan, Hamit. 2013. Histoire de La Turquie de l’Empire à Nos Jours. Paris: Tallandier. ˙ sim. ˙ s Adamları. Istanbul: Ileti¸ Bu˘gra, Ay¸se. 1994. Devlet ve I¸ Ça˘gaptay, Soner. 2009. The AKP’s Foreign Policy: The Misnomer of ‘NeoOttomanism’. The Washington Institute. http://www.washingtoninstitute. org/policy-analysis/view/the-akps-foreign-policy-the-misnomer-of-neoottomanism. Çandar, Cengiz. 2012. Mezopotamya Ekspresi, Bir Tarih Yolculu˘gu. Istanbul: Ileti¸sim. Dalay, Galip, and Dov Friedman. 2013. The AK Party and the Evolution of Turkish Political Islam’s Foreign Policy. Insight Turkey 15 (2): 123–139. Davuto˘glu, Ahmet. 1994. Alternative Paradigms: The Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanschauungs on Political Theory. Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefields. Davuto˘glu, Ahmet. 2001. Stratejik Derinlik. Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu. Istanbul: Küre. Davuto˘glu, Ahmet. 2008. Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007. Insight Turkey 10 (1): 77–96. Dede, Alper Y. 2011. The Arab Uprisings: Debating the ‘Turkish Model’. Insight Turkey 13 (2): 23–32. Dezalay, Yves. 1991. Marchands de Droit. L’expansion Du Modèle Américain et La Construction D’un Ordre Juridique Transnational. Paris: Vaucresson.

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Dezalay, Yves. 2004. Les Courtiers de L’international. Héritiers Cosmopolites, Mercenaires de L’impérialisme et Missionaires L’universel. Actes de Recherche En Sciences Sociales 151–152 (January): 4–35. Feyizo˘glu, Turhan. 2011. Denizler ve Filistin. Istanbul: Alfa. Garth, Brian. 2012. Lawyers and the Construction of Transnational Justice. New York: Routledge. Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1992. «Towards a Definition of Transnationalism. Introductory Remarks and Research Questions». Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 645 (juillet): ix–xiv. Haas, Peter. 1997. Knowledge, Power and International Coordination. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Heper, Metin. 1985. The State Tradition in Turkey. Walkington: Eothen Press. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hourani, Albert, Philip Khoury, and Mary C. Wilson. 2004. The Modern Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris. Hürmüzlü, Er¸sat. 2015. The Turkmens of the Middle East. Turkish Policy Quarterly. Jabbour, Jana J. 2017. La Turquie. L’invention d’une diplomatie émergente. Paris: CNRS Editions. Kanbolat, Hasan, and Hasan A. Karasar. 2009. Türkiye’de Stratejik Dü¸sünce Kültürü ve Sratejik Ara¸stırma Merkezleri: Ba¸slangıcından Bugüne Türk Dü¸sünce Kurulu¸sları. Nobel Yayın Da˘gıtım. Laçiner, Sedat. 2007. Türkiye’nin Ortado˘gu’daki Yumu¸sak Gücü. Uluslararası Hukuk ve Politika 3 (12): 163–166. Larrabee, Stephen F. 2011. Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Turkish Studies 12 (4): 689–698. Laurens, Henri. 2004. L’Orient Arabe. Arabisme et Islamisme de 1798 à 1945, 2ème ed. Paris: Armand Colin. Le Moulec, Jean-Baptiste. 2016. Janissaires Du Savoir. Sociologie Des Producteurs et Diffuseurs de Savoir Sur Le Moyen-Orient En Turquie (1998–2015). Doctorat, Aix-en-Provence: Institut d’Etudes Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence. Mardin, Serif. ¸ 1989. Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi. Albany: State University of New York. ˙ Mardin, Serif. ¸ 1991. Türk Modernle¸smesi. Istanbul: Ilesti¸ sim. Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2002. Faces of the State. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Schmid, Dorothée (ed.). 2011. La Turquie Au Moyen-Orient: Le Retour D’une Puissance Régionale? Paris: CNRS Editions. Uluta¸s, Ufuk. 2010. Turkish Foreign Policy in 2009: A Year of Pro-activity. Insight Turkey 12 (1): 1–12.

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Yılmaz, Hüseyin Ra¸sit. 2012. Davuto˘glu’s Visit to Kirkuk and the Iraqi Turkmens. Ankara: TEPAV. http://www.tepav.org.tr/upload/files/13442794604. Davutoglu___s_Visit_to_Kirkuk_and_the_Iraqi_Turkmens.pdf. Zengin, Gürkan. 2012. Hoca: Türk Dı¸s Politikasında “Davuto˘glu Etkisi”. Istanbul: Inkilâp.

PART III

Transnationalism in Turkish Diplomacy: A Historical Account

CHAPTER 5

Transnational Issues, Non-governmental Organizations and the Genesis of Modern Turkish Diplomacy E. Tutku Varda˘glı

This study analyses the diplomatic position of the Ankara Government vis-à-vis transnational matters in reference to the Lausanne Treaty negotiations. The Ankara Government negotiated the Lausanne Treaty as the successor of the Ottoman government. The Lausanne Treaty, signed between Turkey and the Allied Powers in 1923, is an internationally noteworthy case as the last one of the series of treaties concluding the First World War. The Treaty did not only generate the constitutive elements of the modern Turkish state but also a new consensus on such transnational matters as the status of prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities. The intergovernmental approach is an unfavorable ground to comprehend these intrinsically transnational issues. Moreover, Turkish foreign policy will always come short of a proper account in the absence of a transnational viewpoint. The Lausanne Treaty negotiations provide a fertile ground to see how the new regime in Turkey, namely, the Ankara

E. T. Varda˘glı (B) Istanbul Aydin University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_5

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Government, approached key transnational matters. They also allow seeing who their direct and indirect diplomatic addressees were, and which diplomatic principles were put forward by the new regime at a moment of genesis of modern Turkish diplomacy. As a constitutive and norm-setting grand case of diplomacy for Turkey, the Lausanne Treaty has been studied for many years. However, the national significance of this Treaty curtailed the transnational issues discussed under the same framework. In fact, transnational issues like the situation of war prisoners, refugees, and minorities constituted the number one agenda item of the Lausanne negotiations due to the emergency of the situation. Regarding these transnational matters, the Allied Powers followed the principles fixed in the other post-WWI treaties in order to reach out an international consensus. However, the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne renegotiated these principles by resorting to reciprocity and accommodation principles. Thus, the new regime was adapting to new diplomatic concepts, and positioning itself within the international society. For the reason that the transnational issues under question were about war prisoners, refugees, and minorities, several non-governmental organizations were heavily interested in the negotiations. Ranging from small ecclesiastical societies and charity groups to the international relief organizations and clubs, various non-governmental organizations tried to protect the interests of their fellows. These organizations made efforts to influence the trajectory of the negotiations in several ways for their own causes, especially by the mediation of the League of Nations (LN). The LN mediated at the Lausanne negotiations as an international arbiter. During the formal negotiations, these non-governmental organizations emerged as an indirect diplomatic addressee for the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne. The key questions here are: how did these non-governmental organizations access channels of international diplomacy; how far could they intervene into the course of negotiations; and to what extent were they influential over the final diplomatic outcomes? Since the key transnational content of this Treaty was negotiated under the LN framework, the official archives of this international organization constitute the key source of this study. Additionally, Turkish Prime Ministry Ottoman and Republican State Archives were used to support these

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key materials. Finally, these official archives involving also personal letters and telegraphs are evaluated in a way to understand how the Turkish Delegation positioned itself concerning transnational questions vis-àvis the international and non-governmental interlocutors at a constitutive moment of modern Turkish diplomacy.

International Politics During the Lausanne Negotiations International politics was going through a remarkable transformation when the peace negotiations in Lausanne were commenced in November 1922, following the war between Turkey and Greece. In a sense, the Turkish-Greek war between 1919 and 1922 can be evaluated as the last battle of the First World War. This is to say that the competition among the Great Powers was transformed into a Turkish-Greek rivalry in the last stage of the First World War. The reconciliation of Turkish-Greek rivalry was the first and foremost objective of the Lausanne conference. However, other than securing an agreement between the belligerent parties, this conference functioned as a world forum for discussing key matters of international politics, especially the rearrangement of the Near East by the Great Powers. For this reason, the peace conference in Lausanne was frequently referred as the Near East Conference in the West (Toynbee 1923: 84–85). The American Peace Society, as one of the preeminent representatives of the US public opinion regarding world affairs since 1830s, described the overall significance of the Lausanne Conference as such: The Near Eastern Conference at Lausanne, which is still in progress at this writing, has developed a number of surprises, which have placed it in the category of really important world conferences. In fact it is nearly representative of all the great world powers as any international conference has ever been. The great Allied powers - Great Britain, France and Italy - are there of course. Turkey holds the center of the stage. The Danube countries are present and naturally Greece, the immediate cause of the whole parley. But besides these Japan has a seat there, while Russia through her Soviet Government, is very much on the scene. But even more important than all this, the United States is there in full strength, officially a mere observer, but in reality a vital participant. The only notable absence at the Conference is Germany. (Advocate of Peace Through Justice 84:12, 426)

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The key question was whether the involvement of these Great Powers would regenerate power politics or mark the beginning of “new diplomacy” in international politics. In other words, the “new diplomacy” would be tested against the Great Power politics. This “new diplomacy” vision was largely influenced by Wilsonian ideals and became very popular in the immediate aftermath of the WWI among civil society on the international level (Davies 2012: 45–423; Sluga 2013: 45–78; Wright 1957: 65–86). This vision marked a shift toward international idealism. The idea of balance of power was replaced by the balance of peace discourse in parallel to this new international enthusiasm. According to this new approach, “a utopian perception of international society emerged analogous to the ideal civil society” (Sofer 1988: 197). As Morgenthau noted, the adherents of this idealist vision regarded the LN as the first attempt for world government (Morgenthau 1946: 1067). Therefore, also with the involvement of the LN, the Lausanne negotiations would act as a contest arena between the forces of power politics and the new diplomacy. Leaving aside the utopian aspirations of the international idealists, this international atmosphere would exert at least a moral obligation on the diplomats negotiating at Lausanne (Halliday 2001: 21–37). For example, Lord Curzon, as the chairman of the Lausanne Conference, said, regarding the minority issues, that “the minority treaties should be observed not only as an international treaty but for the sake of humanity” (Meray 1970: 5). Similarly, the chairman of minorities sub-commission, the Italian delegate Mr. Montagna said “the sub-commission on the minorities is performing a critical task interesting not only the attendants of the Lausanne Conference but the whole world” (Meray 1970: 152).

Transnational Issues at the Lausanne Conference Despite the moral enthusiasm sweeping the international environment at that time, humanitarian issues of transnational kind were underestimated in the Lausanne Conference, in comparison to matters such as territorial conflicts or economic interests. However, it was also transnational questions such as the situation of prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities that had brought the parties to the negotiation table. The vital significance of these transnational subjects forced the diplomatic parties to commence official negotiations as soon as possible. However, these issues were not discussed at the highest diplomatic level in line with their vitality. For most of the time, discussions took place between secondary rank

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diplomats in the sub-commission meetings. Contrary to the disinterest of diplomatic authorities, international public opinion was very preoccupied with these transnational issues of humanitarian kind (McCarthy 2011). Specifically the situation of prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities generated a large media coverage, bringing people together in various kinds of humanitarian campaigns that were launched by a variety of non-governmental organizations. In a sense, various non-governmental organizations ranging from ecclesiastical societies to diaspora groups, humanitarian relief organizations to social clubs took the initiative as the spokespersons of these war weary transnational subjects. On the other side, the “genuity” of these transnational issues and organizations has always prompted heated debates in academic circles. As Samuel Huntington puts it, “transnationalism is a term which suffers from being ‘in’ in social science. Many people now use it to mean many different things. It has achieved popularity at the price of precision.” (Huntington 1973: 334). Raymond Aron was among the first to introduce the concept of “transnational society” into international relations theory. He used the term to refer to cross-border commercial transactions, population movements, expansion of common beliefs, and organizations (Aron 1966: 105). On the other hand, Keohane and Nye coined the broadest definition of the term. For them, transnationalism explains all interactions across the states in which at least one of the participants is not the agent of a government or an international organization. Challenging the state-centered approach to international politics, Keohane and Nye offered an agent-oriented definition of transnationalism by stressing the affiliation of the participants with the governments or international organizations (Keohane and Nye 2017: 167–173). As a path-breaking study in this field, this emphasis has directed the literature toward transnational agents rather than transnational issues. Nevertheless, the belated development of full-fledged transnational organizations does not mean that international society has not faced transnational questions before. Arguing that transnational questions predated the development of truly transnational organizations, this study concentrates on the post-WWI refugee and minority issues as transnational matters assumed by different kinds of non-governmental organizations. The situation of prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities was brought onto the agenda of the Lausanne Conference as a vital and emergent matter to be discussed and resolved as soon as possible. Both WWI and the Turkish-Greek war had generated many prisoners of war and refugees who

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got stuck in Anatolia, and the position of still surviving minorities was at stake. The establishment of the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (LNCHR) implied that the situation of these war weary people would be evaluated according to universalistic principles. This meant that the LN was assuming the responsibility for prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities at the expense of old missionary institutions. Neither statecentric protection mechanisms nor temporal remedies of humanitarian institutions, but only a transnational mechanism under the auspices of the LN could remedy the situation of these transnational subjects. A tripartite definition of the transnational subjects under question, namely, prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities, offers an indispensable category for most of the times. Even a single individual can suffer from being a prisoner of war, refugee, and a minority subject at different stages of war, or seek international protection as the one who suffers from all these positions. Recognizing the transnational character of the minority question, the Great Powers established a post-war minority protection system under the auspices of the LN and tried to secure this system by international law (Fink 1995: 197–205). “Albania, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and, outside of Europe, Iraq were persuaded to accept minority obligations as part of the terms of their admission to the LN.” These guarantees were also “a condition of peace” for “East-Central European states-Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria that had been on the losing side of the war” (Preece 1997: 82). Separate commissions were established under the LN framework to investigate the situation of prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities. However, these commissions worked in close collaboration as they had so many crosscutting issues. Post-war questions such as the situation of prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities constituted a favorable ground for the LN to pursue its unavoidably transnational mission as a new ambitious international organization. Both the approach to these questions and the content of the problematic displayed highly transnational characteristics. Firstly, many international norms about prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities were standardized by the post-WWI treaties. Therefore, it would be expected that states joining this framework would not negotiate but indeed adopt these norms. So it turned out to be a mere accommodation of the norms by the states in a quest for universalization of the policy terms in a specific field, if not a world governmental initiative (Risse-Kappen 1994: 185– 214; Warwick 1970: 655–674). Secondly, among the people to be protected there were those who were not in a position to be supported by

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any kinstate but to be approached by a transnational mind. For example, Armenian, Assyrian, and Chaldenian refugees from Anatolia were deprived of a fellow nation state support at the Lausanne Conference. Despite the support of some Great Powers, the responsibility to protect these people did not belong to any state authority but to humanity in general. As Montagna clearly expressed, the “Armenian question interested the whole world” (Meray 1970: 158). Therefore, the rights of these people could only be secured by LN’s transnational coverage. As Fink (1995) suggests, while the Great Powers had taken in the past responsibility for implementing the minority protection clauses in international treaties, in 1919 they decided to endow the new world organization with this burden and responsibility. Therefore, the situation of these war weary people imposed on the LN a transnational moral obligation. The League’s minority system was designed to provide minimum enforcement of the treaties without inciting minorities or alienating their governments (Fink 1995: 157). From the point of the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne the question was how to accommodate the transnational provisions of post-WWI minority treaties without depotentiating national sovereignty. The accommodation of post-WWI minority provisions into the national context was accepted as a legitimate right of the national governments. Therefore, the Turkish Delegation would be able to make use of this space for maneuvering. However, the Versailles Treaty with Germany posed an obstacle for the accommodation or national customization efforts of the Turkish Delegation. For the Allied Powers had pointed out that any favorable provision in the Lausanne Treaty on this ground would provoke Germany, and empower her hand to challenge the Versailles Treaty (Meray 1970: 24). Another limitation over the accommodative attempts of the Turkish Delegation was the indirect involvement of NGOs. Although not being able to participate in processes of formal diplomacy, these organizations tried to influence the outcomes of the Lausanne negotiations for their own causes. Therefore, the Turkish delegates had to resort to some other conceptual tools or diplomatic methods as a shield against interventions of these non-governmental organizations. While doing this, the delegation had to introduce Turkey as a benevolent state to obtain international recognition.

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Transnational Actors Intervening into the Lausanne Conference Non-governmental organizations of different types took an active position to influence the Lausanne negotiations regarding prisoner of war, refugee, and minority issues. As was noted before, these organizations played a critical role to force the LNHCR to bring the parties to the diplomacy table so that they could help these people as soon as possible. Among these organizations, there were international relief organizations, religious missionaries, ecclesiastical societies and their charity organizations, diaspora groups, secular clubs, and committees of various kinds. It is claimed that they had many similar grounds with the contemporary transnational organizations regarding their objectives, activities, and organizational patterns. These organizations can be analyzed through different schemes in reference to Huntington or Risse-Kappen. Huntington categorizes transnational organizations according to their sources of control, organizational structure, and nationality pattern (Huntington 1973: 333–368), while Risse-Kappen divides them into state-controlled, society dominated, and fragile categories (Risse-Kappen 1995). Following Risse-Kappen, we could say that there were both state and society dominated forms among the non-governmental organizations under question. Indeed, Risse-Kappen’s criteria largely fall into the source of control category of Huntington. Alternatively, Huntington adds organizational structure and nationality pattern criteria. The type of non-governmental organizations analyzed in this chapter relates to the ones representing state and society controlled categories according to Risse-Kappen. In reference to Huntington’s categories, they display diasporic formations and internationally affiliated body characteristics regarding their organizational structure, and are multinational in their nationality pattern. Not only the transnational aspects but also the communicative methods of these non-governmental organizations were taken into account. Regarding their methods of accessing mainstream channels of diplomacy, it is possible to list a number of alternative ways such as resorting to the traditional method of petitioning, which took the form of telegraphing at that time, lobbying in the form of reaching out to authorized persons by individual contacts, and campaigning by mobilizing affiliated entities or using media sources. However, petitioning by individuals as representatives of NGOs or numerous ad hoc committees constituted the

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most widely used method of access to political authorities. These communicative methods were also influential in generating a nationwide public agenda. For example, as Barton noted; regarding the situation of refugees from Anatolia, both the US State Department and the President were so deluged with telegram, petitions and letters from all over the country from individuals and all kinds of assemblies, as poured in upon their desks at that time, asking that the United States should do something to stop this tide of barbarism from sweeping across into Europe, and to save Constantinople. (Barton 1923: 155)

Their methods could vary, but the LN platform was the common denominator for all these non-governmental organizations trying to influence policy outcomes in Lausanne. Among non-governmental organizations endeavoring to influence these negotiations, the Geneva-centered International Committee of Red Cross Societies, Armenian Red Cross Society, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, Lord Mayor’s Fund in London, British–Armenia Committee, and another London-based organization, the Boy Scout International took the lead. The International Committee of Red Cross Societies (ICRC) was one of the first and most prominent non-governmental organizations to intervene into the humanitarian situation in Anatolia regarding the situation of prisoners of war and refugees. It had examined the situation of the retreating Greek Army on its way through Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, and called the LNCHR to bring the issue onto the agenda of the Lausanne negotiations (Rodogno 2014: 83–99). One of the initial objectives of the Red Cross societies was to support prisoner exchanges after the ceasefire. As early as 1880s, the prisoners of war and refugees, many of whom were minority subjects at the same time, were taken under the protection of Red Cross societies. As Bossy notes the reason for existence of the ICRC was to alleviate human suffering during war. Therefore, these societies served a supranational cause from the outset, and were welcomed by all belligerent nations as the approved medium of communication (Bossy 1952: 204–212). Officially charged by the minority sub-commission, the ICRC took the first step to start prisoner exchanges between Turkey and Greece, consequently transferring the mission to the LNCHR (Meray 1970: 7). When the LNCHR High Commissioner Dr. Fridtjof Nansen arrived in Istanbul to investigate the situation on the field, he reported:

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I hope I may be able to induce him to release at least some of the male refugees who have been deported to the interior of Anatolia. I had yesterday a meeting with all the Allied High Commissioners here in Constantinople and they have agreed to give me their full support in my demarche with Kemal (Atatürk). I am however most anxious to be able to tell Kemal when I see him that I have already done something to help the Turks so that I can show that I am impartial as between the two sides. If I had already done something for Turks I think, it would greatly assist me in connection with the deported male refugees. There is one small matter about which the Turks here made great complaints. It is that they have never been able to get out of the Greek Government or the Greek Red Cross lists of Turkish prisoners in Greek hands. They alleged that they supplied lists of Greek prisoners within a few weeks after their capture and continue to do so regularly, but in spite of continued protests by the International Red Cross the Greeks have never supplied any list at all. I promised to see if I could get such lists and Turks expressed their complete disbelief in my ability to do so. I should like therefore very much to get these lists without delay as I believe it would make some impression on the minds of the Turks and particularly on Hamid Bey, who besides being the President of Red Crescent is a person of you know great influence with the Angora Government. (LNA, Letter from Nansen to Colonel Corfe, 13 October 1922, 48/24229/23548)

The above commentary by Nansen displays indeed the typical position of the Ankara Government and the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne. Nansen’s inability to directly reach Kemal Pasha implies that the new regime aimed at displaying its statecraft to international authorities as part of a quest for international recognition as a sovereign state. The same diplomatic distance kept against international and nongovernmental authorities can also be read as a cautious attitude toward non-governmental authorities in reference to their past records as instigators (Grabill 1964; Bass 2008; Rodogno 2011; Çetinkaya 2014). On the other hand, Ankara Government’s compliance with international rules and regulations about war prisoner exchanges manifests its quest for international recognition and also its efforts to maintain the legitimacy on its own side. As a result, the Turkish Government accepted non-governmental organizations only as an indirect diplomatic addressee, when international rules ordered it to act in collaboration with them. Nansen was received by the Ankara Government just as one of dozens of charity directors acting in the country. From Ankara Government’s point of view, the only official body responsible for relief activities was

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the Turkish Red Crescent. Foreign organizations were required to work in ˙ ˙ collaboration with it (BOA, DH.I.UM, 22.N.1339, 3/1; BOA, HR.IM, 10.1923, 236/32). For this reason, Nansen was also directed to the Red Crescent Directorate in Istanbul, as any other relief organization chief would be, to act on behalf of non-Muslim refugees. Despite his efforts to get in direct contact with the Ankara Government, he was advised not to visit Ankara before the official start of peace negotiations (LNA, Letter from Childs to Drummond, 31 October 1922, 48/24318/24318). At that time, the Government was more concerned about the situation of war weary, displaced Turks elsewhere in Anatolia. In his inauguration speech at Lausanne, the head of the Turkish Delegation, Ismet Pasha, underlined that over one million displaced Turks were waiting for Ankara Government’s support to survive (Cebesoy 2011: 237). This is to say that non-Muslim ex-subjects were left to the discretion of international authorities, kinstates, charity organizations, or whoever would like to help them. Other than the International Red Cross, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul was among the first organizations applying to the LN to act on behalf of refugees. The Patriarch made an immediate appeal to the LN as early as 13 September 1922, just after the advent of the Turkish Army to Izmir. The Patriarchate forwarded the telegram to the LN by the mediation of the Lord Mayor’s Fund and the British–Armenia Committee (LNA, Letter from the Lord Mayor Fund [Vickery] and British–Armenia Committee [Kennedy] to Sr Eric Drummond of LN in Geneva, 13 September 1922, 48/23605/23548). The collaboration between the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, Lord Mayor’s Fund and British–Armenia Committee deserves attention as an alternative way to access formal channels of diplomacy. Lord Mayor’s Fund, which was a London-based municipal welfare organization, had been helping Armenian refugees since the late nineteenth century (Farrel 1941: 393– 396; Kidd 1984: 336–358). On the other side, the British–Armenia Committee was established by influential members of the British parliament in order to lobby for the enforcement of minority rights in the Ottoman Empire. The long-time Chairman of the Committee, James Bryce had a respected seat in the House of Lords. In comparison to other Armenian diaspora organizations, for instance the Committee of Friends of Armenia (Tusan 2014: 47–77) and counterpart organizations in Paris (Terzian 1974: 260–277), the British–Armenia Committee was a better-equipped channel to act within formal diplomacy. If the UK’s dominant position in

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the LN is also taken into account (Stainer 1943: 124–125), the Patriarchate’s choice to establish contact with Lausanne makes sense. Furthermore, it was not only acting for Greek, but also for other Christian refugees. Although many refugees from Anatolia were overwhelmingly Greeks, a remarkable number of Armenians also followed Greeks in their exodus from Asia Minor. Despite the fact that neither the League nor any other agency could collect reliable statistics about the number of Armenian refugees, some estimates by LNHCR officials could give an idea. In mid-October 1922, that means during the rush times of evacuations from Anatolia, the number of the Armenians scattered through Greece was estimated as 50.000, with 10.000 of them still in Rodosto (Tekirda˘g) in Eastern Thrace (LNA, Various notes on the situation, 17 October 1922, 48/24891/23548). At the beginning of November 1922, it is stated in the minutes of a meeting held by the LN, that they expected 300.000 Armenian refugees (LNA, Minutes of Meeting, 8 November 1922, 48/23605/23548). Indeed the number of Armenian refugees was comparable to that of Muslims of Greece to be transferred to Turkey according to the Lausanne Population Exchange Protocol (Ladas 1932; Raoul 1925; Koufa and Svolopoulos 1991). However, Armenian refugees were not mentioned in this Protocol. Greeks and Turks were diplomatically supported during these negotiations by their kinstates. Not only minorities but also their properties were exchanged between the two states according to this Protocol. Nevertheless, questions such as where to settle, how to finance relief, and how to compensate the losses of Armenian refugees were still pending, with sub-commission discussions on refugees and minorities in Lausanne mainly concentrating on the distribution of Greek and Turkish minorities between the kinstates. The Armenian state, already under Soviet control at that time, was not in a position to act on behalf of its fellows. Thus, Armenian refugees were left to the discretion of humanitarian organizations. The following letter from the US Department of State to its Ambassador in Italy during the Lausanne negotiations manifests the Great Power attitude concerning Armenian refugees in the most obvious form: The problem of finding permanent homes for the refugees is one, however, which it is not within the scope of private relief agencies. It will require the cordial cooperation of the local authorities, where the refugees may be situated and of the Powers whose territorial and other interests in the

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Mediterranean area may make it possible for them to assist. (LNA, Letter from Department of State, Washington to Ambassador of Italy, 31 March 1923, 48/35000/23548)

The tone of the Washington telegram sounded that Great Powers intended to share the responsibility of the refugees in the way they had shared the dominions. As a result, non-governmental organizations had to assume utmost responsibility for their own fellows. Armenian Red Cross and Refugee Fund, Committee of the Friends of Armenia based in London, Gulbenkian Commission, and Klassen Foundation can be listed among the pioneer organizations supporting Armenian refugees (Conlin 2010: 277). Gulbenkian Commission and Klassen Foundation preferred to help the Armenian refugees by improving their life conditions in places where they settled, in collaboration with the LN. Both organizations provided housing and education support to Armenian refugees settled in Greece and elsewhere in order to facilitate their permanent settlement (LNA, Letter from the Greece High Commissioner to Childs, 30 June 1924, 48/24077X/24077). However, the Committee of Friends of Armenia and the Armenian Red Cross took a more diplomatic stance by petitioning directly the General Secretary of the LN during the Lausanne negotiations. The Committee of Friends of Armenia directly contacted Nansen on behalf of Armenian refugees in Anatolia immediately after Allied Powers’ departure from Istanbul (LNA, Telegraph from the Committee of Friends of Armenia to Nansen, 20 September 1922, 48/23605/23548). On the other hand, the Eastbourne branch of the Armenian Red Cross and Refugee Fund wrote to the SecretaryGeneral of the LN that “compensation for the loss of their property should be made to Armenia whose sons fought faithfully by our side in the late war” (LNA, Letter from Eastbourne branch of Armenian Red Cross and Refugee Fund to Sr Drummont of LN, 25 November 1922, 48/24891/23548). This national Red Cross society made efforts to add Armenian refugees into the population exchange framework between Turkey and Greece, which was being negotiated at that time in Lausanne. Adjoining into this frame would at least save the properties of Armenian refugees. However, these demands were disregarded in Lausanne due to Great Powers’ disinterest. Moreover, the still dominant state-centric nature of diplomatic negotiations would not allow doing so.

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Therefore, it emerges that the role of the non-governmental organizations was more critical for the future of Armenian and other nonMuslim refugees from Anatolia such as the Assyrians and Chaldeans, since they were deprived of the support of a kinstate. However, this does not mean that Greek refugees from Anatolia were not supported by nongovernmental organizations or did not need their support. Apart from the Patriarchate, several other non-governmental organizations made efforts to support Greek refugees from Anatolia. Among these organizations, the London-based Boy Scouts International Bureau strived the most by contacting the LN directly and incessantly. It also tried to raise a public campaign over its claims. This organization alleged that Greek boys were massacred in Anatolia and called the LN upon duty to act on behalf of the Greek community (LNA, Telegram from the Boy Scouts International Bureau in London to LN in Geneva, 6 October 1922, 48/24212/23548). In response to the alleged information and request of the Boy Scout International Bureau about the massacre of Greek boys in Anatolia, the Secretary-General of the League replied that Dr. Nansen was already on the field and helping out the refugees with his team. The Secretary also added that the League was also likely to be asked in the near future to assume responsibility for the protection of minorities in Turkey. Then he followed: Both these difficult and responsible undertakings can only be carried through on condition that we can secure to some extent at least the cooperation of the Turkish Government. Would it not therefore be somewhat dangerous for the League to take any action, however justified in itself, which would imperil or render more difficult negotiations which will have to be taken to assist great bodies of people who will have to go on living in Turkey or recover or be compensated for property left behind? If as I assume your object is to obtain immediate publicity for the matter you report it might be well to utilize some other agency than the League. But apart from these, an appeal to the League might well endanger the interests of the living and I hope you will agree that these interests must prevail. (LNA, Private Letter from the General Secretary of LN, Mr. Drummond to the Chief of Boy Scouts International, 12 October 1922, 48/24212/23548)

It is understood from this response of the Secretary-General that asking the cooperation of Ankara Government was not just a personal approach of Nansen, but reflected LN’s institutional strategy vis-à-vis the Ankara

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Government. Ankara Government was also open to dialogue on this matter as long as its authority was fully recognized as a constitutive government. Moreover, this reply indicated that the LN authorities knew the fact that the atrocity discourse had long been used for publicity, and that it blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction (Bass 2008). The International Bureau would not insist on and replied that: The League of Nations with its fuller information and wider outlook is best able to decide the right line of action and realizing your sympathetic attitude we are entirely content to leave the matter in your hand. (LNA, Letter from the Chief of the Boy Scouts Association, London to Drummond, 17 October 1922, 48/24212/23548)

The Boy Scouts International did not take an active role in humanitarian operations for the refugees. As was truly understood by the SecretaryGeneral, the major aim of this organization was publicity. Except the ICRC, both transnational and non-governmental statuses of the organizations that have been mentioned so far can be questioned. However, it is equally important to keep in mind that we are not delineating on the Weberian ideal types but real organizations with their own peculiar and unique characteristics. Therefore, rather than simply applying the above mentioned schemes of Risse-Kappen and Huntington, modifying their models can make more sense. For example, the humanitarian efforts and lobbying initiatives of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul puts it into the position of a non-governmental actor trying to influence the diplomatic outcomes. The same organization can fulfill Huntington’s organizational structure and nationality pattern criteria. According to these criteria, the Patriarchate was able to extend its organizational power and scope toward many ecclesiastical groups in the West. From the point of nationality pattern, it was offering relief not only to Greek Orthodox subjects in Istanbul but also Armenians and other Christian refugees. To sum up, while the ICRC took an initiator role to bring the belligerent parties to the negotiation table, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul was influential in exerting international influence over the Ankara Government by utilizing its respected religious authority, mobilizing ecclesiastical societies on the international level (Gorman 2010: 51– 73) and lobbying through influential diaspora organizations. The most direct and active stance was taken by the Boy Scout International by

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means of directly petitioning the most authorized LN bodies. On the other hand, Gulbenkian Commission and Klassen Foundation displayed the most compliant stance by facilitating Armenian refugees’ permanent settlement where they found refuge. However, none of these organizations could have comfortable access to Anatolia for humanitarian operations. Nor could they reach out to the Ankara Government. As a matter of trust, Ankara Government preferred American missionaries to any humanitarian organization of the Allied Powers. Neither ICRC nor any national Red Cross but almost solely American relief organizations were helping the refugees and minorities in Anatolia during the Lausanne negotiations. As noted before, even Nansen encountered this reserved attitude of the Ankara Government. This means that Ankara displayed a selective approach to come to terms with foreign non-governmental actors.

Impact on Turkish Diplomacy Transnational issues such as prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities posed three key questions for the Turkish Delegation to tackle: an obligation to take non-governmental organizations as another diplomatic addressee, fine-tuning between national sovereignty and transnational cooperation, and fixing Turkey’s position as a new benevolent state in the emerging international system. The first question implied that the Turkish delegation would no longer be able to present an intransigent stand against refugee and minority organizations acting on humanitarian grounds as transnational actors. Refugee and minority issues persisted for a long time as the most troublesome topic between the Ottoman Empire and the Great Powers. However, these matters were put in front of the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne as part of a transnational consensus. As a new state seeking recognition in the international system, the government in Ankara did not have so much freedom to display disinterest for these issues. On the other hand, it had to maintain its firm stand to defend the National Pact declared by the Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul much earlier, long before the Lausanne Conference, on 28 January 1920. The National Pact, which also included an article about minorities, was accepted by the parliament in Ankara, the Turkish Grand National Assembly, as the key strategy paper to be defended at all costs. Regarding this National Pact, the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne did not have an adaptive flexibility but an obligation

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to adhere to pre-established principles concerning refugee and minority issues. From another point of view, Rush suggests that whereas the Turkish Delegation had a national pact to defend, this was not the case with the British. She suggests that this pact provided a profound, preestablished strategy and guidance for the delegation (Rush 1980: 79). Moreover, Ismet Pasha could take refuge in this pact whenever he felt uneasy in front of Lord Curzon as an in experienced diplomat (Cebesoy 2011: 275). An advantage for the Turks was that the National Pact’s minority provisions largely conformed to international standards of the era. The National Pact stipulated on the position of minorities under the new regime in the following manner: The rights of minorities as defined in the treaties concluded between the Entente Powers and their enemies and certain of their associates shall be confirmed and assured by us – in reliance on the belief that the Moslem minorities in neighbouring countries also will have the benefit of the same rights. (Toynbee 1922: 209–210)

The treaties referred to in this article of the National Pact doubtless belong to the group of treaties concerning minorities signed by Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, the Serb–Croat–Slovene Kingdom, and Greece. Reciprocity was established as the key principle to regulate minority affairs on the international ground. Thus, the National Pact was already in line with current international standards. Consequently, during the negotiations the whole matter turned into a question of how to accommodate this reciprocity principle into the national context. According to Turlington, the reciprocal treatment of minorities between Turkey and Greece would act as a strong safeguard for minorities in Turkey, since it was expected that Greece would raise the minority protection standards, with Turkey having to do the same (Turlington 1924: 700–701). From the viewpoint of the “new diplomatic approach,” the reciprocity principle was not of course sufficient on its own to restore justice for prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities. This diplomatic principle would not be able to secure democratic legitimacy. It could also bring out eyefor-an-eye results. The international system had to allow for interventions of civil society in several ways. There were no better social agents than the NGOs to fill in this democratic legitimacy gap of the new international system. The Turkish Delegation would have to adopt these unwritten rules of the new international system, too. As noted before, tackling

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with NGOs as indirect diplomatic addressees emerged as a result of this new diplomatic atmosphere. However, vis-à-vis non-governmental organizations, the Turkish Delegation followed a strategy based on selective reconciliation. Almost solely, this included American relief organizations working in Anatolia during the Lausanne negotiations. Besides, Turkey’s new diplomatic cadre was learning the unwritten rules of new diplomacy. Many non-governmental organizations trying to influence the course of formal negotiations were based in London. Given the British dominance in international politics and international organizations at that time, this cannot be taken as a mere coincidence. The Turkish Delegation must have understood the significance of lobbying in London. Instead of an open refusal against non-governmental organizations trying to influence the negotiations, the Delegation followed the same method to counteract. In one of these occasions, Lord Curzon got furious when learning that Turkish representatives were sent to London for lobbying, while he was in Lausanne for formal negotiations (Advocate of Peace Through Justice, 85:2, 71). Consequently, when trying to deal with the transnational issues and their organizational supporters, Turkish diplomacy would test new methods, including fine-tuning, selective reconciliation, and counter lobbying. The second question posed by transnational issues at Lausanne concerned the boundaries between domestic and international politics. Whenever the Allied Powers demanded any cooperation from the Turkish Delegation concerning the situation of prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities, the delegation evaluated these demands from the point of national sovereignty, and claimed domestic authority over the people under question. For example, regarding the conscription of minorities living in Turkey, Rıza Nur, a Turkish delegate in Lausanne, insisted that granting military service exemption to minorities should be left to the domestic laws of sovereign states (Meray 1970: 188). Lord Curzon ridiculed this overemphasis of the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne by saying: “Ismet, you remind me of nothing so much as a music box, for you play the same old tune over and over and over again, sovereignty, sovereignty, sovereignty” (Grew 1950: 354). For the Turkish Delegation, the Ankara Government should become an all-sovereign authority over the minorities living in the country, and the recognition of any rights was evaluated as a concession from national sovereignty. Therefore, the question of minority rights also turned into a question of boundaries between national and international laws. When they reached a consensus over the

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minority rights, the national and international power domains of the new regime were largely fixed on this ground. As a third factor, the transnational cooperation capacity of the Turkish Delegation would determine Turkey’s status as a new state in the emerging international system. The question was whether it would be benevolent and civilized enough to take its part in the international system as an honourable member or not. The promised LN membership would be realized according to the performance of the Republican Turkey in the area of minority affairs. The Turkish Delegation accepted the jurisdiction rights of the LN over minority affairs in Turkey. From the point of the Turkish Delegation that was an open cheque for the LN membership. However, national sovereignty reservations of the new state remained largely intact. In his speech in the Turkish Parliament, Mustafa Kemal precisely stated the position of the newly established regime vis-à-vis the LN: We desire that the League of Nations should not be an instrument of domination for the strong, but should develop as an institution which will assure harmony among nations, and provide a means of examining and settling conflicts in accordance with international law. (Turkish Grand National Assembly Records 1924, Vol. I Session: I, 1 March 1924: 175)

Concluding Remarks The constitutive treaty of modern Turkey did not only certify the international recognition of the regime, but also accommodated it into the emerging transnational standards. In the post-WWI period, prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities were inevitably treated as transnational subjects, especially in the absence of a kinstate to support them. Neither Great Powers nor international organizations but various kinds of nongovernmental organizations made the greatest efforts to protect the rights of these transnational subjects. Therefore, non-governmental organizations emerged as an indirect diplomatic addressee for the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne regarding the situation of these transnational subjects. Influenced by the atmosphere generated by the “new diplomacy,” the diplomatic parties in Lausanne had to act under the moral obligations of humanitarianism. The Turkish Delegation had to do so in order to pave the way for international recognition as a new state, and thus display its benevolence. Since non-governmental organizations working for the causes of prisoners of war, refugees, and minorities represented the

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highest moral obligations, it was unavoidable for the Turkish Delegation to find ways for coming to terms with these organizations. Therefore, it opted for maintaining a reserved but equally balanced approach toward these organizations. On the one hand, the Ankara government displayed its reservations against these organizations by not permitting foreign relief organizations to help non-Muslim refugees in the country. On the other hand, it made efforts to manifest its benevolence by the diplomatic recognition of the LNHCR, and through its collaboration with US relief organizations helping the refugees in the country. The delegation in Lausanne acted according to new conceptual tools like reciprocity and accommodation to tackle with this diplomatic question. Reciprocity and accommodation constituted key principles of the international minority protection system under the auspices of the LN. There was not so much discussion in Lausanne about the reciprocity principle, since the National Pact of the Ankara Government was very much in parallel with this principle regarding minority rights. However, accommodation or national customization of international standards on minority rights generated hot debates. The delegation’s attempts to claim minority rights as Turkey’s own domestic matter aggravated the situation. As the Delegation reached a consensus over minority rights, it drew the boundaries between national and international power domains of the new regime in Turkey. Moreover, by reaching a consensus solution, Republican Turkey as a new state would secure its position in the family of civilized nations. Coming to terms with international standards over war weary transnational subjects was not an easy task for the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne. In close communication with the Ankara Government, it tried several methods to reach consensus. Fine-tuning between claims of national sovereignty and a moral obligation to act on behalf of war weary transnational subjects, selective reconciliation with non-governmental organizations of humanitarian kind and counter lobbying in London constituted the key methods for them to tackle with this question. Consequently, the new regime in Turkey did not only gain international recognition but also became a player of transnational politics at the end of the Lausanne Treaty negotiations.

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References Archive Documents League of Nations Archives (LNA). LNA, Letter from Nansen to Colonel Corfe, 13 October 1922, 48/24229/23548. LNA, Letter from Childs to Drummond, 31 October 1922, 48/24318/24318. LNA, Letter from the Lord Mayor Fund (Vickery) and British Armenia Committee (Kennedy) to Sir Eric Drummond of LN in Geneva, 13 September 1922, 48/ 23605/23548. LNA, Minutes of Meeting, 8 November 1922, 48/23605/ 23548. LNA, Letter from Department of State, Washington to Ambassador of Italy, 31 March 1923, 48/35000/23548. LNA, Letter from the Greece High Commissioner to Childs, 30 June 1924, 48/24077X/24077. LNA, Telegraph from the Committee of Friends of Armenia to Nansen, 20 September 1922, 48/23605/23548. LNA, Letter from Eastbourne branch of Armenian Red Cross and Refugee Fund to Sir Drummond of LN, 25 November 1922, 48/24891/23548. LNA, Telegram from the Boy Scouts International Bureau in London to League of Nations in Geneva, 6 October 1922, 48/24212/23548. LNA, Private Letter from the General Secretary of LN, Mr. Drummond to the Chief of Boy Scouts International, 12 October 1922, 48/24212/23548. LNA, Letter from the Chief of the Boy Scouts Association, London to Drummond, 17 October 1922, 48/24212/23548. LNA, Various notes on the situation, 17 October 1922, 48/ 24891/23548.

Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives (BOA) ˙ BOA, 22.N.1339, 3/1, DH.I.UM. ˙ BOA, 10.1923, 236/32, HR.IM.

Turkish Grand National Assembly Records (TBMM Records) TBMM Records, 1924, Vol. I Session: I, 1 March 1924.

Periodicals The Surprises at Lausanne. December, 1922. Advocate of Peace Through Justice 84 (12): 426–427.

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The Failure at Lausanne. February, 1923. Advocate of Peace Through Justice 85 (2): 71–72. The Lord Mayor’s Cripple Fund. August 17, 1907. The British Medical Journal 2 (2433): 407–408.

Books and Articles Aron, Raymond. 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox. NY: Doubleday. Barton, James L. 1923. A Program for the Near East. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 108: 153–159. Bass, Gary J. 2008. Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention. New York: Vintage Books. Blanchard, Raoul. 1925. The Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey. Geographical Review 15 (3): 449–456. Bossy, Sandra. 1952. The International Red Cross. International Journal 7 (3): 204–212. Cebesoy, Ali Fuat. 2011. Siyasi Hatıralar: Büyük Zaferden Lozan’a, Lozan’dan ˙ Cumhuriyet’e. Istanbul: Temel. Çetinkaya, Y.Do˘gan. 2014. Atrocity Propaganda and the Nationalization of Masses in the Ottoman Empire During the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (4): 759–778. Conlin, Jonathan. 2010. Philanthropy Without Borders: Calouste Gulbenkian’s Founding Vision for the Gulbenkian Foundation. Análise Social 45 (195): 277–306. Davies, Thomas R. 2012. A ‘Great Experiment’ of the League of Nations Era: International Nongovernmental Organizations, Global Governance, and Democracy Beyond the State. Global Governance 18 (4): 405–423. Farrell, W.G. 1941. Beyond the Margin. Social Work (1939–1970) 1 (7): 393– 396. Fink, Carole. 1995. The League of Nations and the Minorities Question. World Affairs 157: 197–205. Grabill, Joseph L. 1964. Missionaries Amid Conflict: Their Influence upon American Relations with the Near East, 1914–1927. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Grew, Joseph C. 1950. “The Lausanne Peace Conference of 1922–1923.” In Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 69, pp. 348–367. Gorman, Daniel. 2010. Ecumenical Internationalism: Willoughby, Dickinson, the League of Nations and the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship Through the Churches. Journal of Contemporary History 45 (1): 51–73. Halliday, Fred. 2001. The Romance of Non-state Actors. In Non-state Actors in World Politics, ed. D. Josselin and W. Wallace. London: Palgrave.

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Huntington, Samuel P. 1973. Transnational Organizations in World Politics. World Politics 25 (3): 333–368. Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye. 2017. Power and Interdependence. In Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace, ed. Richard K. Betts. New York: Routledge. Kidd, Alan J. 1984. The Social Democratic Federation and Popular Agitation Amongst the Unemployed in Edwardian Manchester. International Review of Social History 29 (3): 336–358. Koufa, Kalliopi, and Constantinos Svolopoulos. 1991. The Compulsory Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey: The Settlement of Minority Questions at the Conference of Lausanne, 1923, and its Impact on Greek-Turkish Relations. In Ethnic Groups in International Relations, ed. P. Smith, 275–308. New York: New York University Press. Ladas, Stephen P. 1932. The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. New York: Macmillan Company. McCarthy, Helen. 2011. The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism, 1918–1945. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Meray, Seha L. (ed.). 1970. Lozan Barı¸s Konferansı: Tutanaklar, Belgeler, vol. 1. Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Basımevi. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1946. Diplomacy. The Yale Law Journal 55 (5): 1067– 1080. Preece, Jennifer J. 1997. Minority Rights in Europe: From Westphalia to Helsinki. Review of International Studies 23 (1): 75–92. Risse-Kappen, Thomas. 1994. Ideas do not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War. International Organization 48 (2): 185–214. Risse-Kappen, Thomas, ed. 1995. Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-state Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rodogno, Davide. 2011. Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire 1815–1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rodogno, Davide. 2014. The American Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Humanitarian Politics and Policies in Asia Minor and Greece (1922–1923). First World War Studies 5 (1): 83–99. Rush, Dorothy B. 1980. Lord Curzon and Kemalism: The Old World and the New East. Social Science 55 (2): 77–88. Sluga, Glenda. 2013. Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sofer, Sasson. 1988. Old and New Diplomacy: A Debate Revisited. Review of International Studies 14 (3): 195–211.

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Stanier, J.Gordon. 1943. Problems of World Government. The American Scholar 12 (1): 124–125. Terzian, Aram. 1974. Growth of the Armenian Community in Paris During the Interwar Years 1919–1939. The Armenian Review 27 (3): 260–277. Toynbee, Arnold J. 1922. The Western Question in Greece and Turkey. London: Constable and Company. Toynbee, Arnold J. 1923. The East After Lausanne. Foreign Affairs 2 (1): 84– 85. Turlington, Edgar. 1924. The Settlement of Lausanne. The American Journal of International Law 18 (4): 700–701. Tusan, Michelle. 2014. Crimes Against Humanity: Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide. The American Historical Review 119 (1): 47–77. Warwick, Donald P. 1970. Transnational Participation and International Peace. International Organization 25 (3): 655–674. Wright, Quincy. 1957. Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations. Social Research 24 (1): 65–86.

CHAPTER 6

The Sanjak of Alexandretta (Hatay) in Turkish Foreign Policy: A Case of “Accidental Diaspora” and Kin-State Politics Hazal Papuççular

Introduction The first decades of the twentieth century saw the demise of the multiethnic and multi-religious empires as one of the results of the World War I, and the formation of new nation-states in the geographies that had once belonged to these structures. The postwar borders, which were drawn based on ethnicity principle in theory, but that reflected the arbitrary decisions of the victorious powers in practice, included minority groups on a large scale. The post-Ottoman geography was not an exception to this narrative, together with the mandate system imposed on these newly created states. All of the post-Ottoman states, except Turkey, became mandates of Britain or France that wanted to control the Middle East with

H. Papuççular (B) Department of International Relations, Istanbul Kültür University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_6

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a “softened” version of the previous colonial system, under the guarantee of the League of Nations. The mandate system foresaw independence when a state was developed enough to administer itself.1 The question of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, which Turkey would call Hatay in the late 1930s, began to dominate the agenda of Turkish foreign policy when the French authorities and the Arab nationalists started to negotiate the terms of independence for the French Mandate of Syria, thanks to the rising anti-colonial movement in the country. The position of Ankara on the issue was to provide independence for the region first, and to annex it afterwards. In this sense, the case of Sanjak reflects an exception in interwar Turkish foreign policy, being the only expansionist act of Turkey as an anti-revisionist power throughout the period (for interwar foreign policy of Turkey see Hale 2013: 31–55). Turkey’s diplomatic effort to resolve the Sanjak issue is a relatively well-studied topic in Turkish foreign policy literature. This study, instead of dealing with the diplomatic undertakings of Turkey, aims to analyze the place of Sanjak Turks in Turkish foreign policy making, and Turkey’s policies targeting Turkish community across the border to achieve its foreign policy goal. In other words, it shows how Turkey formulated policies toward an “accidental diaspora” as a kin-state, and how this “accidental diaspora” tried to shape Turkish foreign policy, through the case of Sanjak. In this way, this chapter also tries to show how the concepts related to transnationalism and foreign policy can and should be handled concerning a period that is regarded as the apogee of nationalism and authoritarianism.

Conceptual Framework: Transnationalism, Accidental Diaspora, and Kin-State Policies In the recent decades, the number of studies related to transnationalism and transnational actors in the international relations has tremendously increased. Many of these accounts, however, have been mostly related to the accelerating phase of globalization, as a result of which transnational social movements would fight against the problems of the world, such as global inequalities; non-governmental organizations would defend human rights, democratization, and development; and transnational diasporas would become a bridge between home and host states to support

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their interests (Koinova 2010: 149). Not surprisingly, one of the common features of this literature has been their stance to regard transnationalism in a globalized world as antithetical—and sometimes panacea—to nation-state structures. Apart from this, as Clavin says, the studies tackling transnationalism usually put forward “transnationalist encounters as consistently progressive and co-operative in character,” regardless of their discipline (Clavin 2005: 422). However, although transnational perspectives relying upon globalization tend to reach beyond the state borders, transnationalism has been used in this article rather as implying connections of various actors across or between the borders of nation-states.2 In other words, nation-states are still existent in this narrative, to an extent that they were actually determinant in the solution of a diplomatic problem. While the Turkish community living in the Sanjak of Alexandretta was an important component of the Turkish strategy toward the region, states and borders remained significant and strong, not an astonishing fact with regard to the conditions of the interwar period. Furthermore, this narrative also challenges the dominant perspective about the progressive nature of anything related to transnationalism, as quoted from the article of Clavin above. Faist rightly suggests that the concepts supposedly tied to transnationalism or transnational spaces may have a “dark side” in a way that “when it comes to understanding of the political, human mobility may reinforce and recreate all kinds of beliefs and -isms, including nationalism, patriarchism, sexism, sectarianism and ethno-nationalism” (Faist 2010: 15). In this respect, two other -isms that might be added to the picture are separatism and irredentism based on the trans-border relationship of Turkey to the Turkish community of the Sanjak in the 1930s. Therefore, what the terms transnationalism and transnational actors imply is not necessarily tied to liberalism, cosmopolitanism, or globalism in the historical or recent context. A similar clarification needs to be made about the definition of the concept related to “diaspora,” which has been used with different meanings. Shain and Bath formulate a broad definition for diaspora meaning a people “with a common origin who reside, more or less on permanent basis, outside the borders of their ethnic or religious homeland—whether that homeland is real or symbolic, independent or under foreign control” (2003: 453). However, as Waterbury says “literature on diaspora and transnationalism defines a diaspora almost exclusively by its migrant origins or the far-reaching dispersal of an ethnic community to multiple

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points, reflecting classic cases of diaspora such as the Jewish and Armenian ones” (2010a: 131). In other words, an ethno-national diaspora is formed as a result of migration; voluntary or forced (Sheffer 2013: 9). None of these definitions has the ability to explain ethno-national communities that were created because of border changes. Regarding the Turkish groups that remained outside of the Republic of Turkey, the existing literature employs different terms since there is a real necessity to differentiate these kin groups from others, such as Turkish diaspora living in Germany (Karadeniz 2011: 69–70). Thus, the term Turkish minority (Dı¸s Azınlık) has mostly been used for Turks living in the former Ottoman territories, rather than the concept of diaspora (Karadeniz 2011). In this respect, this study utilizes the concept of “accidental diaspora” for the Turks of Sanjak since they never constituted a minority similar to those of Greece or Iraq. The term “accidental diaspora” that has been put forward by Brubaker is very useful in order to understand a kind of ethnic community that was created not by “post-national,” but by “postmulti-national” structure, as in the case of the demise of the multi-ethnic empires after the First World War, or the dissolution of the Soviet Union: Labor migrant diasporas are constituted by the movement of people across borders, accidental diasporas by the movement of borders across people. Second, migrant diasporas form gradually through countless individual migration trajectories, while accidental diasporas crystallize suddenly following a dramatic – and often traumatic – reconfiguration of political space. Third, labor migrant diasporas are constituted through the voluntary actions of those who comprise them, while accidental diasporas come into being without the participation, and often against the will, of their members. Fourth, labor migrant diasporas tend to be territorially dispersed, and to lack deep roots in their host countries, while accidental diasporas tend to be more concentrated and territorially rooted. Finally, labor migrant diasporas typically remain for some time citizens of their home countries, while members of accidental diasporas are citizens of the countries in which they live. (Brubaker 2000: 1–2)

Therefore, this study uses the term “accidental diaspora” for Sanjak Turks since they remained outside of the newly drawn Turkish borders after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The abovementioned post-multi-national period brought a different phase of minority nationalism to accidental diasporas themselves, sometimes with a quest for state recognition of their cultural or political rights

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(Brubaker 2000: 5). When these groups face a threat to these rights or to their very existence, they usually demand support from the kin-state to which they feel belonging. The kin-state, on the other hand, may support the rights of the community in different international or transnational settings or may intervene into the situation directly to protect these rights (King and Melvin 1999: 114). However, although it is often assumed that these groups tend to create problems, or even conflicts or wars between kin and host states, foreign policy decision-making processes in most of the cases have been determined by other factors, like domestic situation in the kin-states, deficiencies of resources, and foreign policy priorities (King and Melvin 1999). It is more likely that the kin-state intervenes into the situation regarding its kin-group when the priorities of the group coincide with the priorities of kin-state’s foreign policy aims. Considering Turkey’s limited commitment to other Turkish groups living in Greece, Iraq, and Bulgaria in the same period (Karadeniz 2011: 138–140), the abovementioned understanding about the political action based on the overlap between foreign policy aims and kin-state politics becomes more explanatory for the Sanjak case. A more instrumentalist approach should be stressed as well. If the kinstate is the strongest player in the triangular relationship composed of trans-border/national community, host state, and the kin-state itself, it becomes the latter that usually shapes the ties (Brubaker 1996). Both recent and historical cases that show the role and the power of the kinstate imply “state-led transnationalism,” which involves the instrumental utilization of cross-border ties to reach nationalist agenda, including the use of ethnic diaspora for irredentist ambitions (Waterbury 2010a: 133– 134). The interwar period is one of the most exemplary epochs in this respect, both with respect to the creation of many accidental diasporas and to the revisionist powers that saw these accidental diasporas as a means to claim former borders. For instance, not only Nazi Germany in its extreme form but also Weimar Republic gave support to networks and organizations—whether controlled by the state or not—in the areas where these accidental diasporas lived, such as Sudetenland which would be annexed by the Nazis in 1938 (Brubaker 2000: 12). Likewise, another revisionist power of Europe, Hungary, tried to increase its influence in the areas outside of its borders yet with Hungarian minority, through both informal networks and state-led organizations, for its future irredentist claims (Waterbury 2010b: 30).

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Unlike these two countries, Turkey was not an irredentist power in the interwar period, with the exception of the annexation of the Sanjak of Alexandretta. However, in this case, Turkey followed a similar kind of transnational strategy for its accidental diaspora living in the Sanjak, from providing financial resources for different activities to the formation of quasi-government organizations in and outside of the region. But, before the zenith of this process, Ankara’s relationship with the Sanjak and Sanjak Turks was shaped first by the Turkish War of Independence, then by the identity-based kin-state policies.

The Emergence of the Sanjak Problem: The Sanjak and Its Turks in Turkish Foreign Policy Until the Mid-1930s When the World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the signing of the Mudros Armistice in October 1918, the Entente armies had not entered the majority of the areas in the Sanjak yet. After the armistice, which paved the way for large-scale occupations in the Ottoman Empire, the Allies managed to occupy Sanjak together with the southern areas of Anatolia surrounded by the Taurus Mountains. Since the war-time diplomacy between France and Britain foresaw Syria and Cilicia as the French zone of influence, the remnants of the British forces withdrew from the region later on, with the French Commissariat in Beirut declaring the Sanjak of Alexandretta as an administrative unit composed of Alexandretta, Antioch, Beylan, and Harim (Satloff 1986: 149–150). The local resistance movements followed soon after the occupations of the Allies. In various regions of Anatolia, Associations for Defense of Rights (Müdafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyetleri) were founded. The Sanjak was not an exception in this sense. In Sanjak’s different regions, like Antioch and Dörtyol—which would be part of Hatay later on—Turks were organized by the former Unionists, particularly against the Arab bands, the French occupation forces, and the Armenian legions in the French army (Ada 2013: 29). Sanjak’s associations were in contact with those of Antep, Mara¸s, and Adana (Ada 2013), facilitating to interpret them as a quasi-regional resistance movement, although the fate of the Sanjak of Alexandretta would be completely different than that of Cilicia. For this reason, the historiography on Sanjak has usually questioned whether the region was included in the National Pact3 (Misak-ı Milli) or not. Since

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the area was not under the Allied occupation when Mudros Armistice was signed, it was included in the “motherland” that the National Pact claimed (Ada 2013: 36). This issue constitutes the first contacts between the leaders of the Sanjak’s resistance movement and Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). In his memoirs, Tayfur (Sökmen), who would be the first president of the independent Republic of Hatay, writes that he contacted first the authorities in Antep and then Mustafa Kemal Pa¸sa himself, who later answered his telegram stating that the region was within the frontiers of the National Pact (Sökmen 1978: 33–35). This first communication and the subsequent events are important because it signifies a pattern for the relationship between the nationalist leaders of this future accidental diaspora and Ankara. The leadership of the Sanjak’s Turkish community always tried to seek help, to demand active policies from the kin-state, and to influence foreign policy decisions of Turkey through intensive contacts although they were not very successful, at least until the mid-1930s, regarding a direct political action. The further contacts between the parties coincided with the Ankara Agreement that ended hostilities between France and Turkey in 1921. France had tried to reach a separate treaty with Ankara after the Battle of Sakarya.4 The Turks of the Sanjak of Alexandretta lobbied exhaustively for the future of the area in Ankara, where the nationalist movement had its center. They discussed the matter with Mustafa Kemal Pa¸sa and Fevzi (Çakmak) Pa¸sa and pled for the inclusion of the Sanjak within the borders of Turkey. Ankara could not succeed in this, despite the region being included in the National Pact. However, Turkey managed to obtain a special autonomous status for the Sanjak through which the Sanjak Turks would benefit from specific rights to develop their culture and language— as it was accepted as an official language (Pehlivanlı et al. 2001: 35–36). According to White (2011: 155), it was not surprising that the Sanjak Turks would be the only group that changed the Syrian map later on given the fact that unlike any other ethno-religious group in Syria, they had a kin-state—Turkey—supporting their rights. The Ankara Agreement of 1921 became a disappointment for the Sanjak resistance movement. Turks sent telegrams to Ankara saying that the Association for the Defense of Rights of the Sanjak became obscure in the region with this agreement (Türkmen 1939: 1039–1041). Mustafa Kemal Pa¸sa, promising aid to the Sanjak’s Turkish community, encouraged Tayfur (Sökmen) to continue with his endeavor for the future of the region

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(Sökmen 1978: 63). However, although the group continued the resistance against the French, some of them had to flee to Southern Anatolia because of the danger of imprisonment. They founded an organization in Adana named Association for the Defense of Rights of Alexandretta and Its Environs (Iskenderun ve Havalisi Müdafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti), with the secret branches organized in the Sanjak. The group frequently went to Sanjak and remained there when the political situation in Syria permitted, all the way directing the struggle from different places. The last wave of effort by the Sanjak Turks came before the Lausanne Conference to include the region in the Turkish territory. The telegrams sent from the different regions of the Sanjak to the Turkish Grand National Assembly requesting the change in the terms of 1921 Agreement during the Lausanne Conference (see Akyol and Kaplan 2014) did not yield a positive result. In 1923, Turkey confirmed Ankara Agreement’s earlier terms in the Lausanne Treaty after which another phase of struggle would begin. Some historians suggest that the special autonomous regime of the Sanjak, which officially recognized the Turkish cultural rights, contributed to the domination of the Turkish identity and language in the region, and a direct identification of the people with the Republic of Turkey instead of the Syrian state, eventually leading to the annexation of the area by Turkey (White 2011: 149). Although the statement is correct given the historical outcome, one cannot suggest that the process was smooth and direct, especially in the 1920s. On the contrary, the matter of the aforementioned Turkish identity was very complicated, as were the demographic features of the region. Satloff (1986: 153) rightly says that “an attempt to determine the Sanjak’s demographic composition is little more than an attempt to separate the plausible from the impossible,” with its more than 200,000 inhabitants. Neither the language nor the religion could be a reliable demarcation line, since an Armenian could speak Turkish, an Arabic speaker could be an Alawite or a Catholic, and a Sunni Muslim could be an Arab, Turk, or Kurd (Shields 2011: 19–22). There are still many arguments regarding the majority of the population that refer to conflicting data. Whatever the real situation was, however, Turkey always claimed that the Sanjak was a Turkish territory, and that the Turks were the majority in the total population. However, this Turkish community was divided among the progressive and conservative lines, in other words, among the people who defended Kemalist modernity and people who opposed this (Satloff 1986: 159).

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Shields (2011: 24–25), in her valuable book, Fezzes in the River, depicts very successfully how the symbols of the Kemalist regime, such as hat, became a dividing line among the population, and how the anti-Kemalists insisted on fez over hat in the Sanjak. Actually, it is possible to see this division in each accidental diaspora of Turkey in the neighboring countries, including the Turks of Greece or of the Italian Dodecanese (see Papuççular 2019; Featherstone et al. 2011). However, as the regime in Turkey was consolidated in the late 1920s, at least in Sanjak’s accidental diaspora the Kemalist wing started to dominate the political and social scene. The reasons for this were the active contacts between the Kemalists of the Sanjak and Turkish government as well as the encouragement and the material support of the kin-state, especially for the dissemination of the Kemalist identity (Ada 2013: 90). The special autonomous status of the Sanjak of Alexandretta also played a role in the process of cultural development in a way that half of the schools taught in Turkish, with the majority of the journals and newspapers also published in Turkish (Ada 2013: 91), facilitating thereby the Turkish propaganda. One of such influential newspapers was Yeni Gün that started its life in 1928 with scientific and literary inquiries yet continued with political issues although this resulted in the closure of the daily by the French authorities (Melek 1991: 14–15). The issue about the Turkish language changed its scope in 1930 with the decision taken by the Sanjak’s provincial administration on the use of the Latin Alphabet in the Sanjak’s Turkish schools. However, this could not be implemented properly due to the reaction of the Syrian central state (Payaslı 2011: 1704–1707). Surely, these steps were supported by the Turkish government. All the leaders of the Sanjak Turkish community were either in contact with the Turkish government through the Turkish consulate in Aleppo or through the visits that they made to Turkey, where they had political organizations to support them (Melek 1991: 15). Turkey implemented various strategies to shape the movement in the region as well as to control it. For example, students from the Sanjak were invited to take education in Turkish schools, reaching some 175 students within a few years (Ada 2013: 90–91). It was no coincidence that these students would work for the annexation of Sanjak in the following years. While the mobility of the people for education was promoted, school textbooks were sent from Turkey for those who stayed within the borders of the Sanjak. These cultural

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policies gradually evolved into a political stance especially with the 1930s, chiefly owing to the changing status-quo in Europe and in Syria. Both the local and national newspapers of Turkey started to highlight political developments in Syria in the 1930s. This was a noteworthy alteration in a country in which the press was under the control of the state authorities, especially when keeping the previous careful attitude of Turkish diplomacy vis-à-vis the Sanjak in mind. At one occasion, when the Turks in the parliament of the Sanjak emphasized that they did not want to be tied to the Damascus government in 1931, newspapers in the southern cities would disseminate the news (Melek 1991: 18–19). Likewise, beginning in 1932, as the Syrian government started to work for independence, the Turkish press, based on the information coming from the Sanjak, had begun to emphasize the violation of Turks’ rights to develop their culture and language in a more vivid tone (Ada 2013: 85–86), showing that Turkey started to prepare both the national and the international public about its interest in the region, as well as to patronize the Turkish diaspora’s rights, in case of Syrian independence. Since the Sanjak Turks were well aware of the vitality of the Turkish newspapers for their cause, they frequently aimed to be published by them. Melek (1991: 21–22), in his memoir, emphasizes how the Turkish publications together with the protests of the university students and the People’s Houses (Halkevleri) in Turkey just after an event in Alexandretta, influenced the French officials’ opinion concerning the power of the Turkish diaspora in the Sanjak. The effort of the accidental diaspora to obtain support from the kin-state, and the policies of the kin-state over its diaspora based on its foreign policy goals, intensified in the mid-1930s.

Collaboration in Political Action: Harmonization of Turkish Foreign Policy with Kin-State Practices In 1926, the deputies in the Sanjak parliament had taken a contentious decision and declared their independency, leading to a political crisis in Syria (Satloff 1986: 163–164). The decision of the Turkophonedominated parliament was eventually reversed by the pressure of the French officials and the Syrian government. According to Satloff (1986: 164), this decision had been taken in order not to pay taxes to the center. However, Uzer (2011: 94), similar to many accounts on the Sanjak’s history, emphasizes the role of pro-Turkish feelings in the region that was

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impressed by the Kemalist ideology. What is important in this process, regardless of its socio-economic or political basis, was the fact that Turkey could not intervene into the situation although some promises had been made by the Turkish politicians to support the Sanjak Turks in 1923. The attitude of Turkey in the 1920s reflects the aforementioned assumption that the formation of foreign policy decisions of the kin-state in terms of intervention was determined by various elements, such as the domestic factors and/or foreign policy priorities. Although Turkey tried to implement cultural policies based on Kemalist nationalism, it pursued a careful policy toward the Sanjak. This was directly related to the fragile situation of Turkey in the 1920s. In terms of foreign policy, Turkey was struggling with many diplomatic and security problems, such as the Mosul question and the rising threat at its western shores (Papuççular 2019). In terms of domestic politics, in addition, Turkey was a war-torn country that tried to implement radical changes in different spheres, which sometimes resulted in political or social dissent (see Zürcher 1993). Therefore, it was impossible for Turkey to follow the policies that the Turkish community in the Sanjak frequently demanded in the 1920s. Yet, the next decade was completely different regarding both the status of Turkey and the international circumstances. On the one hand, the regime had been consolidated substantially, and Turkey had overcome the majority of its diplomatic problems, having become an esteemed country in the international arena. On the other hand, the world had been divided between anti-revisionist and revisionist powers alongside an ascending fascism. According to Khoury, the reason for the success of the Sanjak separatist movement in the late 1930s was the combination of both changes: “the external hand of Turkey and France’s willingness to sacrifice Syria’s territorial integrity for France’s larger international interests” (1989: 494). These international interests were founded upon the aim of not alienating Turkey, which was an important country in the Mediterranean holding the Straits. Therefore, as opposed to the 1920s, the mid1930s brought an opportunity for Turkey to annex a region in which it was interested for both strategic and irredentist reasons. The ostensible reason that accelerated the process came with the negotiations over the independence of Syria between the French and the nationalist Arabs. When the draft treaty was prepared in the spring of 1936, no particular reference had been made for the special autonomous status of the Sanjak. Although the matter was problematized by Turkey, which was contacted by the leaders of the accidental diaspora, the first

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official diplomatic undertakings would be taken in August 1936. The reason for this delayed reaction was another key matter of Turkish foreign policy: Montreux Conference. Actually, it was an interesting phase regarding the relationship between Turkey and the Sanjak Turks. Although Turkey was determined to solve the matter in favor of the Turks, the officials tried to control the diaspora leaders in this fragile period. During a meeting with the leaders of the Turkish community who asked for a strategy to harmonize the policies, Turkish Prime Minister Ismet Inönü stressed that they should have gone to the Sanjak and worked for the national aim, yet warned them to be particularly careful since Turkey was dealing with the status of the Straits at that time (Melek 1991: 26). Obviously, Turkey did not want to create any problems that could obstruct the progress in the Montreux proceedings. Likewise, Turkey’s emphasis on the necessity of waiting for the directives before acting almost in each meeting shows that Ankara feared from an independent action that could cause trouble for the future calculations. Neither the memoirs of the leaders of the Turkish community nor the academic works that have been referred in this chapter indicate a discord between the parties. Yet, it is intriguing that the same memoirs occasionally accentuate that the Sanjak Turks did not consider appealing to the League of Nations separate from Turkey since they counted on their homeland (Melek 1991), showing that it was another option on the table. Melek (1991: 29–30), who would become the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Hatay, also narrates an informal meeting with the then Deputy Foreign Minister of Turkey, Sükrü ¸ Saraço˘glu, to whom he stated that if Turkey did not support the Sanjak in this very fragile period, the Hatay Turks would handle the matter themselves, venturing death if necessary. After the signing of the Montreux Convention, Turkey shifted its attention to the future of the Sanjak as expected. In one of the League of Nations sessions, the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tevfik Rü¸stü Aras, addressed his French counterpart about the special status of the Sanjak, yet with no favorable reply. Nearly at the same time, the Syrian delegates made a speech about the future status of the Sanjak of Alexandretta within the structure of independent Syria. The term “minority” used for the Turks triggered a harsh reaction in the Turkish press. Falih Rıfkı Atay, in Ulus, strictly refused the minority claims of the Syrians and emphasized that since the Turks represented the majority of the Sanjak, they should

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have ruled their own fate, very similar to the Arabs in Syria.5 Actually, the statement of Atay summarizes the forthcoming Turkish stance well, which insisted on the Turkish majority in the Sanjak and followed policies accordingly, in a close cooperation with its accidental diaspora. Atatürk’s speech in the opening ceremony of the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1936, which emphasized that the real owners of the region were the Turks (Mango 2013: 580), was another reflection of this stance. In line with studies on the fields of history and language, Atatürk decided that the name of the region would be Hatay, which was associated with Khitai, a Turkic group in the Central Asia, and sounded like the Hittites of Anatolia. Thereafter, the struggle of Turkey would be based on proving the existence of a Turkish majority in the Sanjak to the interested parties with which it conducted bilateral or multilateral diplomacy. For this reason, Turkey supported various organizations and employed diverse strategies to mobilize the Sanjak Turks politically. One such strategy was the change in the name and the organizational might of the Society for the Defense of Rights of Alexandretta and Its Environs. The new name of the Society became the Society for Hatay Sovereignty, which reveals the aim of the organization. This establishment had many branches both in the Sanjak and in Turkey, and was heavily supported, and supervised, by the Turkish authorities although it was an independent association in legal terms (Demir 2002: 53). In 1936, this organization became the most important representative of Sanjak Turks. On the one hand, it managed to send notes to the interested parties about the status of the Sanjak within the post-mandate Syria and warned them about the responsibility that they would bear for the possible incidents that may take place (Ada 2013: 113). In other words, it became an organization that communicated the position of the Sanjak Turks to the outer world. On the other hand, to prove the earnestness of the Turkish community, they started a boycott in the economy as well as at the schools in the Sanjak (Ada 2013: 113). It is important to emphasize that boycotts would become a part of ordinary politics in the region after 1936. In the Sanjak of Alexandretta, nationalism and related political organizations were not restricted to the Turks. On the political scene, two vying nationalisms, Turkish and Arab, worked for the future of the region (Khoury 1989: 502). Very similar to the Turkish community, Arabs had various associations and the support of the Syrian government in Damascus. The reflection of these competing nationalisms in the Sanjak was

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the rising tension between, and also within, different communities. Two issues at the end of 1936 transformed this tension into communal violence, which would continue until the annexation of Hatay by Turkey, bringing about frequent casualties from both sides. One of these issues was the upcoming Syrian election to determine the parliamentarians in Damascus who would sign the independence treaty. As a distinguished member of the Society for Hatay Sovereignty, Sökmen (1978: 94) emphasizes how he changed the mind of the officials in Ankara, in terms of boycotting the elections. He writes that he persuaded Prime Minister Inönü and Undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry Menemecio˘glu for Sanjak Turks to boycott the election because of the situation inside the Sanjak and the possible repercussions of an electoral failure for the national cause (Sökmen 1978: 94). The boycotts of the Turks, together with other groups, increased the tension in the region. Likewise, Turkey’s uncompromising attitude toward France, concerning the future of the Sanjak in an independent Syria, resulted in sending of the case to the League of Nations for inquiry, generating further disorder. When Turkey appealed to the League, it also asked for security measures to save the Turkish community in the region, who, according to the Turkish delegates, was in danger (Ada 2013: 120). After the parties applied to the League of Nations, which would send a commission to the Sanjak for inquiry, another organization of the Turkish diaspora was founded in the region. It was the People’s Party (Halk Partisi) which became the official organization of the Turkish community before the League and participated in the meetings and proceedings as the sole representative of this accidental diaspora (Sarınay 1996: 27–28). The delegates of Turkey and the members of the People’s Party collaborated in most of the issues related to the Sanjak in the meetings of the League. Indeed, apart from the League, the members of the party were always in close communication with Turkish authorities through the newly opened consulates in Antioch and Alexandretta, the branches of various organizations in Southern Anatolia, or frequent visits to Turkey. In addition to the multilateral process in the League, Turkey also continued its bilateral undertakings with France. Since it was a time that Europe was sprinting to another war, making thus the balance of power issue in the Eastern Mediterranean a crucial one, Britain also supported Turkey during its bilateral contacts with France (Ada 2013: 126). Alongside the diplomatic efforts, the Turkish military started to move troops from different parts of Anatolia to the southern border. Atatürk himself

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made inspection visits therein in order to show Turkey’s determination about Sanjak’s future (Uzer 2011: 95). In other words, Turkish authorities tried to show that diplomacy was not the only option, regardless of the feasibility of a possible military undertaking at the time. All these attempts yielded a result in the League of Nations in 1937. It was decided that the Sanjak would become an independent country, with Turkish being the only official language, but it would remain within the structure of Syria. However, the ties with Syria were so weak that the completely autonomous parliament of the Sanjak could even conclude international treaties without the approval of Syrian government (Shields 2011: 114). After the recognition of the independent status of the Sanjak, Menemencio˘glu said that “Turkey had successfully safeguarded a threatened population and at the same time ensured cooperation with neighbors and set a precedent to preserving world peace” (Shields 2011: 114). The statement of the undersecretary depicts well how Turkey harmonized its irredentist foreign policy goal with a kin-state duty over a diaspora. The new status could be implemented after an election, the system of which would be based on communal representation. The procedure necessitated the registration of the constituents based on their communal identities before the elections, in order to calculate the number of seats for each group. It is not surprising that in an area like the Sanjak in which various ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups lived, the registration period led to a propaganda war between the organizations, both those of Arabs and Turks. As a result, an immense number of violent incidents took place in the Sanjak, despite the existence of the impartial observers of the League of Nations, as well as the mandate officials. The campaign of the Turkish community to register people as Turks was carried out by another newly created organization: People’s Houses. They were founded by the leaders of the Turkish community particularly for propaganda purposes (Duman and Payaslı 2014: 353–355). People’s Houses implemented different strategies to impress the Sanjak’s inhabitants as well as the international public opinion. For instance, they organized demonstrations in the region simultaneously with those that took place in Turkey, targeting the European audience (Sarınay 1996: 20– 21). Likewise, they sent orators and teachers affiliated with the People’s Houses to the villages to disseminate Turkish identity and to persuade people to register as Turks (Shields 2011: 123–124). In this respect, Alawites had turned into a key element for the future of the Sanjak because they could change the balance of power regarding

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the parliamentary distribution. According to the French statistical data, the population of the Sanjak of Alexandretta was 220,000 which were composed of 85,000 Turks, 62,000 Alawites, 25,000 Armenians, 22,000 Sunni Arabs, and 18,000 Christians other than the Armenians (Uzer 2011: 97). Therefore, People’s Houses tried to win over the Alawites by effective propaganda. Shields (2011: 138) emphasizes that in a meeting with the leaders of the Turkish diaspora, who wanted more financial support, the Turkish consul in Aleppo stated that they had already been paid more than 150,000 Turkish liras, showing that the aforementioned effective propaganda of Sanjak Turks was seriously backed by Turkey. Actually, apart from the financial support, the state and the Turkish press were also culturally promoting the Turkish aims over the Alawites, by claiming that they were not Arabs, but Hittite Alawite Turks, based on the “Turkish History Thesis.”6 Since the Alawite registries became fundamental for the fate of the region, they were not solely targeted by Turkish organizations. Different Arab institutions, such as the League of National Action, tried to pursue similar kind of policies, yet they were not as efficient as the Turkish ones. According to the British consul in Aleppo, Turkish community was much more successful in mobilizing these people, owing to the help of its consul, organizational structure, and Turkish funds (Shields 2011: 156). Registering people based on an identity accelerated the already existent polarization in the society, which led to outbursts of violence. The ensuing chaos, together with the necessities of the changing international situation, would determine the destiny of the negotiations, as well as the region itself. A disorderly registration period continued in 1938, during which the Turkish–French bilateral contacts changed the regulations of the process a couple of times, in order to ensure a Turkish majority in the parliament.7 High-ranking officers from the Turkish army, including the Chief of General Staff, made long inspection visits to the Southern Anatolian region, and Atatürk himself went to the border zones to show Turkey’s determination. At the same time, Germany was now preparing for its action toward Sudetenland after the success of Anschluss, with the European wing of the Axis consolidating. In other words, Turkey’s position mattered more than ever for both France and Britain. Hence, it was no coincidence that after the registration and election process in 1938, the Turks won the majority of the seats in the parliament which would be called the assembly of a new state: Republic of Hatay. Most of these Turkish parliamentarians were well-known figures of the aforementioned People’s

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Party who had been supported throughout the process. They became the ones to adopt Turkish legal codes, national anthem, and money; and they would vote for the decision which made Hatay a province of the Republic of Turkey in 1939.

Conclusion This chapter analyzed a period in which Turkey implemented active policies toward the Turkish community living in the Sanjak, mostly based on its foreign policy aim: annexation of the region. It was suggested that the very existence of a Turkish community across the border, which was theorized as “accidental diaspora” by this chapter, formed the backbone of the Turkish discourse toward the region. Until the mid-1930s, Turkey implemented a kin-state policy mostly based on the dissemination of the Kemalist identity in the region in which the communities were divided. Yet, after the Sanjak of Alexandretta came up as a major foreign policy subject, Turkey’s activism vis-à-vis the Turkish community was intensified and politicized. As Khoury suggests (1989: 502), “it is unlikely that the Sanjak would have been severed had the force of Turkish nationalism not been more dynamic than the force of Arab nationalism and had it not received greater reinforcement from across the Turkish frontier than Arab nationalism received from Damascus.” While Turkey’s struggle for the region continued also in the bilateral proceedings until 1939, transnational practices of Turkey over its accidental diaspora played a major role in the process of annexation. Likewise, it is important to note that the Turkish community in the Sanjak also wanted to influence the stance of Turkish foreign policy, through intensive contacts with Ankara having started already by the time of the Turkish War of Independence. In the context of the 1930s, state domination in this process both with regard to diplomatic undertakings and the relationship between accidental diaspora and the kin-state is obvious, and after all, expected. However, it is still important to display a foreign policy case from the perspective of—accidental— diaspora and kin-state politics in order to exemplify how some concepts and practices mostly associated with the recent decades had reflections in the past and in a very different context.

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Notes 1. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations covers terms and conditions of the Mandate System. 2. According to Thomas Faist (2010: 9–34), “[t]ransnational spaces comprise combinations of ties and their substance, positions within networks and organizations and networks of organizations that cut across the borders of at least two national states.” 3. National Pact (Misak-ı Millî) is a resolution passed by the last Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul in 1920. The importance of the pact stems from its first clause, which declared that the territories still under the Ottoman control at the time of the Mudros Armistice would be the integral part of Turkish homeland. 4. The Battle of Sakarya became a turning point for the Kemalists since the defeat of the Greeks constituted a breach between the Allies, thus strengthening the diplomatic hand of the Kemalist movement. 5. “Sancak Türklü˘gü, bir itilafnamenin hududlarını ayrıca tayin etmi¸s oldu˘gu bir mıntıkanın büyük ekseriyetidir. Münaka¸sa olunan mesele Suriye mıntakası içinde bir ekalliyet davası de˘gil, ayrı bir mıntıkanın halk ekseriyetine hukuk vermek davasıdır. Sancaklılar da Suriyeliler gibi talilerine hâkim olmalıdırlar” (Ulus, 25.9.1936: 1). 6. Actually, the press was referring to the Alawites as Alevi Turks of Hatay (Cumhuriyet, 14.2.1938: 1). Turkish History Thesis is a historical theory formed by the Turkish Historical Society in the 1930s. It suggests that Turks emigrated to different parts of the world from Central Asia and brought civilization everywhere they reached. The basis of the world civilization is Turkish, according to this understanding. 7. Turkey wanted 22 of 41 seats for the Turkish community in the parliament. To this end 55% of the people should have been registered as Turks, yet the number had remained at 49–50% by 1938 (Ada 2013: 165).

References ˙ skilerinde Hatay Sorunu, 1918–1919. Ada, Serhan. 2013. Türk-Fransız Ili¸ ˙ ˙ Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları. Akyol, Taha and Sefa Kaplan. 2014. Açık ve Gizli Oturumlarda Lozan Tartı¸smaları, TBMM’de Lozan Müzakereleri Tutanakları. Istanbul: Do˘gan Kitap. Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brubaker, Rogers. 2000. Accidental Diasporas and External “Homelands” in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present. Vienna: Institute for Advanced Studies.

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Clavin, Patricia. 2005. Defining Transnationalism. Contemporary European History 14 (4): 421–439. Demir, Ya¸sar. 2002. Hatay’da Siyasi Çeki¸smeler ve Türkiye’nin Politikası. History Studies: International Journal of History 4: 48–72. Duman, Olcay Özkaya, and Volkan Payaslı. 2014. Sancak’tan Vilayet’e Ba˘gımsızlık Mücadelesinin Bir Kültür Evi, Halk Evleri (1937–39). In Uluslararası Ça˘glar Boyunca Hatay ve Çevresi Arkeolojisi Sempozyumu Bildirileri. Hatay: Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi Yayınları. Faist, Thomas. 2010. Diaspora and Transnationalism: What Kind of Dance Partners? In Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, ed. Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist, 9–34. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Featherstone, Kevin, et al. 2011. The Last Ottomans: The Muslim Minority of Greece 1940–1949. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hale, William. 2013. Turkish Foreign Policy Since 1774. New York: Routledge. Karadeniz, Radiye Funda. 2011. Türk Dı¸s Politikasında Dı¸s Türkler: Kar¸sıla¸stırmalı Teorik Bir Çalı¸sma. PhD diss., Marmara University. Khoury, Philip S. 1989. Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism 1920–1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press. King, Charles, and Neil Melvin. 1999. Diaspora Politics, Ethnic Linkages, Foreign Policy and Security in Eurasia. Quarterly Journal: International Security 24 (3): 108–113. Koinova, M. 2010. Diasporas and International Politics: Utilizing the Universalistic Creed of Liberalism for Particularistic and Nationalist Purposes. In Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, ed. Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist, 154–166. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. ˙ Mango, Andrew. 2013. Atatürk, Modern Türkiye’nin Kurucusu. Istanbul: Remzi Yayınevi. Melek, Abdurrahman. 1991. Hatay Nasıl Kurtuldu? Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. ˙ Papuççular, Hazal. 2019. Türkiye ve Oniki Ada (1912–1947). Istanbul: Türkiye ˙ s Bankası Kültür Yayınları. I¸ ˙ Payaslı, Volkan. 2011. Hatay’da Harf Inkılâbı’nın Kabulü ve Yeni Alfabenin Uygulanması (1928–1938). Turkish Studies 6 (1): 1697–1712. Pehlivanlı, Hamit, Yusuf Sarınay, and Hüsamettin Yıldırım. 2001. Türk Dı¸s Politikasında Hatay (1918–1939). Ankara: Avrasya Stratejik Ara¸stırmalar Merkezi Yayınları. Sarınay, Yusuf. 1996. Atatürk’ün Hatay Politikası-I- (1936–1938). Atatürk Ara¸stırma Merkezi Dergisi XII (34): 3–65. Satloff, Robert B. 1986. Prelude to Conflict: Communal Interdependence in the Sanjak of Alexandretta 1920–1936. Middle Eastern Studies 22 (2): 147–180.

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Shain, Yossi, and Aharon Barth. 2003. Diasporas and International Relations Theory. International Organization 57 (3): 449–479. Sheffer, Gabriel. 2013. Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad. New York: Cambridge University Press. Shields, Sarah D. 2011. Fezzes in the River: Identity Politics and European Diplomacy in the Middle East on the Eve of the World War II. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Sökmen, Tayfur. 1978. Hatay’ın Kurtulu¸su için Harcanan Çabalar. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. Türkmen, Ahmet Faik. 1939. Hatay Tarihi: Hatay Manda Tarihi Silahlı ˙ Mücadele Devresi. Istanbul: Tan Matbaası. Uzer, Umut. 2011. Identity and Turkish Foreign Policy: The Kemalist Influence in Cyprus and the Caucasus. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Waterbury, Myra A. 2010a. Bridging the Divide: Towards a Comparative Framework for Understanding Kin State and Migrant-Sending State Diaspora Politics. In Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, ed. Rainer Bauböck and Faist Thomas, 131–148. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Waterbury, Myra A. 2010b. Between State and Nation: Diaspora Politics and Kin-State Nationalism in Hungary. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. White, Benjamin Thomas. 2011. The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Minority in French Mandate Syria. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Zürcher, Erik Jan. 1993. Turkey: A Modern History. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

PART IV

Asset or Liability? Diasporas and Transnational Communities in Turkish Foreign Policy

CHAPTER 7

Turkey and Syrian Turkomans in the “New Middle East Cold War”: A Critical View from the Kin-State Radiye Funda Karadeniz

Introduction In the beginning of the Arab Uprisings, the winds of change and peoples’ will to democracy increased the hopes of many who believed in a peaceful transition to a new order in the Middle East. However, it was soon realized that these expectations did not fit the reality, and Syria became the most challenging case of the uprisings. Together with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Arab Uprisings starting in 2011 created “black holes” in the Middle Eastern political order, culminating in failed states such as Syria and Iraq, the rise of powerful-armed non-state actors like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS) and jihadist groups and armed ethnic groups such as Kurds under the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yetkiya Demokrat,

R. F. Karadeniz (B) Islahiye Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Gaziantep University, Gaziantep, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_7

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PYD) with its militia, The Popular Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG). Gregory Gause describes this new complex Middle East order as “new Middle East Cold War” implying a balance of power game, in which not only great powers and regional states led by Iran and Saudi Arabia, but also non-state actors are competing for more influence over the direction of Middle East politics. In this Cold War, especially armed non-state entities, tied through ideological, ethnic, or political links with regional states, became an important source of power for players. In this context, Turkomans in Iraq and Syria increased their political and military efforts to become influential transnational players, and in order to survive, they turned their face to Turkey as their kin-state. As the kin-state of minorities living in its neighbouring countries, since the establishment of the Republic, Turkey has followed a very cautious “Outside Turks” policy. While the common ethnic ties with minorities living on the other side of the border as a result of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire provide Turkey with an incentive to act as a protector of their rights, its foreign policy principles constitute the framework of how it would act in practice.1 Turkey’s main kin-state policy lines can be summarized as: to support minorities in their home countries for enjoying rights and freedoms as equal citizens; to preserve their cultural and ethnic identities, refraining thereby from unilateral actions; and to keep them in their countries as “peace bridges”, in other words, to prevent their migration as much as possible.2 Throughout the Cold War and in its aftermath, the twin principles of non-intervention in internal affairs of its neighbours and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity have been the main lines of Turkey’s kin-state policies. This policy of caution, in some situations, necessitated “to forget” minorities for the sake of Turkey’s own security considerations and bilateral relations. Contrary to some views claiming that Turkey has not been interested in kin-minorities living outside its borders, in order to follow these policy lines policymakers in Ankara have used many instruments to keep the minority communities living in border areas under Turkey’s “control”. This is due to two reasons: preventing them from becoming a source of friction in bilateral relations, and from being used as a weapon against Turkey’s own security and domestic politics.

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After the Arab Uprisings, it was possible to witness that Turkey’s kinstate policy has evolved into a more active policy with military and political dimensions in the case of Syria. There is a growing literature about Turkey’s Middle East policy after the uprisings. However, how its kinstate role has been affected is a rather neglected aspect in this literature.3 Therefore, this chapter will give a transnational account of Turkey’s policy in Syria with regard to its relations with Syrian Turkomans within the context of the New Middle East Cold War, and search for answers to the following questions: Why, and how, did Turkey remember Syrian Turkomans in its Syria policy? How did Turkey utilize its transnational ethnic ties with Syrian Turkomans? Which factors were influential in Turkey’s policy towards the Syrian Turkomans? What are the limitations of Turkey’s policy? The general argument I provide is that Turkey’s own Kurdish issue and regional foreign policy considerations, rather than ethnic ties, are Turkey’s main motives for its alliance with the Syrian Turkomans. The chapter first analyses the changing Middle Eastern order after the uprisings, and focuses on Syrian Turkomans’ situation in this new order. It subsequently discusses Turkey’s relations with the Syrian Turkomans, investigating the evolution of its kin-state policies throughout the Syrian civil war until the end of Euphrates Shield Operation.

The New Middle East Cold War: Failure of the State and Rise of Non-state Actors Gause claims that after Arab Uprisings the best framework to understand changing order of the Middle East is to analyse the condition as a Cold War among a number of regional players, both states and non-state actors, in which Iran and Saudi Arabia play the leading roles. Within this analytical framework, rather than being a direct military war, it is a struggle for the future direction of Middle East politics. Therefore for Gause “the military and political strength of the parties to civil conflicts, and the contributions that outsiders can make to that strength, is more important than the military balance of power between Riyadh and Tehran” (Gause 2014: 3). Saudi Arabia and Iran are not confronting each other militarily; they are taking advantage of the ongoing conflicts to strengthen their positions. He underlines that great powers are important participants, but “not the drivers of events” and that “the weakening of the state” was the main reason for conflicts in the New Middle East Cold War, rather than sectarianism or the rise of Islamist ideologies (Gause 2014: 4).

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While the end of a Weberian understanding of state power created “phantom or extremely weak states” (Krause and Milliken 2010) in the Middle East, weak regimes which had trouble controlling their own societies and local players were in search of regional allies against their domestic opponents. Thus not only a state’s own military power but also “transnational ideological and political connections that make potential clients open to a relationship” is necessary for success in this new Cold War. Therefore, for Gause, the key to success is “to be able to support non-state actors effectively in their domestic political battles within the weak states of the Arab world” (Gause 2014: 19). It is also underlined that armed groups arising as a result of domestic anarchy and state failure, as witnessed in state weakening in Syria and Iraq (Vinci in Ünver 2016: 71), have led political opposition groups and those excluded from the political system towards armed mobilization (Krause and Milliken 2010). Since 2011, non-state actors in the region have gained an increasing significance in social and political life (Durac 2015: 38). The conflicts in Syria and Iraq as well as the surrounding areas have become “the symbol of an ominous new trend … the disintegration of statehood into tribal and sectarian units” (Kissinger 2014: 234). Therefore, as Gause claims, the new Cold War can only be understood by analyzing the links between domestic conflicts, transnational connections, and regional state policies. In this framework, as was the case in the early years of the Arab Cold War, the civil war in Syria has become a battleground of regional and superpowers in the changing Middle East order (Gause 2014: 4). Transnationalism, Kin-States, and Civil Wars: A Framework to Analyze Turkey and Syrian Turkomans in the Syrian Civil War Conventional wisdom accepting civil wars as purely domestic phenomena has regarded nation states as “hermetically sealed, independent units” (Salehyan 2006: 4). However, the outbreak of the civil war in Syria has provided an invaluable test case displaying transnational characteristics of civil wars by challenging this conventional wisdom in the post-Cold War era. Since its outbreak with the beginning of the uprisings in 2011, its escalation process with foreign intervention and external support, and its outcomes,4 the war in Syria has shown civil wars’ transnational characteristics, including links to actors in other countries, and international interventions (Gleditsch 2017).

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Tracey and Karagiannis claim that non-state actors have a “disproportionate amount of influence” when state structures lose their power in a conflict situation (German and Karagiannis 2016: 1–2). In the Syrian battleground, non-state actors,5 including transnational ethnic groups and transnational rebel groups,6 gained importance as Assad forces lost their control over larger parts of the country.7 Various religious and ethnic groups have become influential violent non-state players with the conflict’s deepening in the past years (Blanchard et al. 2015). In this context, the Syrian Turkomans, who constitute one of the ethnic minority groups in Syria, started to get organized around their ethnic identity, looking for support from their kin-state, Turkey. Civil War in Syria as a Window of Opportunity for Turkomans Turkomans (used to) live in Syria mainly in Aleppo, Latakia–Idlib (Bayırbucak), Homs, Hama, Tartus, Al-Raqqah, Daraa, Damascus, and Golan (Ipek 2016: 2). Unlike Kurdish groups, they were geographically dispersed across Syria. Due to pressures, and the absence of any census based on ethnicity, their population statistics are controversial. While some assert that they are around 360,000–600,000 (Hür 2014; Heras 2013), others claim their estimated number as being around 3.5 million (Mustafa 2015: 5; Vurmay 2011). The last fieldwork before the uprisings about Syrian Turkomans conducted by Da˘g also underlines this statistical problem (Da˘g 2015). On the other hand, the demographic structure of Turkoman-dominated places has changed after the uprisings as a result of war and migration.8 Since the end of Ottoman rule in Syria, Turkomans had to deal with many pressures in preserving their ethnic identity. During the French rule in Syria, Turkey, and France concluded the Ankara Agreement (1921), which only guaranteed the rights of Turkomans living around the Iskenderun region. After Syria’s independence, no agreement has been concluded between it and Turkey that mentions any rights for Turkey to act as a guarantor of Turkomans remaining in Syria. During the 1936– 1939 period of Hatay’s annexation to Turkey, pressures on Turkomans increased (Hür 2014). The 1926 Syrian Constitution provided Turkomans with rights to publish in Turkish. However, after the annexation of 1939, Turkomans who remained within Syria faced many difficulties in economic and social life spheres. Therefore, many Turkoman families living around Aleppo had to immigrate to Turkey (Hür 2014), mostly ˙ moving to Kırıkhan, Iskenderun, and Adana (Ta¸stekin 2015a).

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After the Syrian independence, no official distinction has been made between Arabs and Turks when constructing a national identity. Because of the absence of ethnic recognition and concomitant Arabization policies, Turkomans could not preserve their ethnic identity (Güzel 2017). Deprived of schools in Turkoman language and broadcasting or publishing, they had difficulties in preserving their language (Rubin 2011: 530). Turkoman leaders assert that under Hafez al-Assad’s rule their community was viewed as a potential “fifth column” for Turkey, which had an unfriendly relationship with the Syrian regime during this era (Heras 2013). The pressure and fear atmosphere of the regime was felt in everyday practices, even when talking Turkish at home.9 Hence, Turkomans could not develop any political or cultural organizations under the Syrian Baathist regime. Yet, despite the pressure of the regime, they kept “looking North” by perceiving Turkey as their kin-state.10 The Arab Uprisings became a turning point for Syrian Turkomans since they would at this juncture for the first time openly start to get politically organized in order to preserve their identity. In the meantime, both politically and militarily, they tried to mobilize as a non-state armed group in the civil war. In this period, Turkey also rediscovered its ethnic ties with Syrian Turkomans, becoming more willing to act as their kin-state. For instance, the then Foreign Minister Davuto˘glu’s speech revealed transnational ties with Syrian Turkomans, to which Turkey was attaching much significance. In a speech at the parliament, he stated that “we do not accept any border dividing us. There is a border, which we respect; however, in our hearts and destiny there is no border” (TBMM Genel Kurul Tutana˘gı 2012: 66). It is asserted that in the beginning of the uprisings, Turkey had encouraged this community to revive its ethnic identity by including them under the opposition umbrella against the Assad regime.11 Once a forgotten community in neighbouring Syria, Syrian Turkomans became a “popular” issue in Turkey.12 Therefore, the uprisings, and the civil war as its outcome, brought a window of opportunity for both Syrian Turkomans and Turkey, allowing them to reconstruct ties based on a transnational ethnic identity. In other words, the civil war provided the necessary ground for Turkomans and Turkey to establish an “ethnic alliance”.13 Yet King and Melvin assert that “even if political elites look nostalgically across a state’s frontier, stressing the duty to protect the interests of its co-ethnics in another host state, there is no reason to believe that such an identity will find an expression in foreign policy” (King and Melvin 2000: 109). Therefore as stressed by them, analysts

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need to look under what circumstances and why transborder co-ethnics become a point of concern for foreign and defence ministries. Existing studies suggest that civil wars provide opportunities for states to utilize ethnic ties as important transnational linkages (Nagle 2013: 288). Transnational Ties and Kin-States The literature on the transnational dimension of civil wars underlines transnational ethnic kin as an important factor in starting and facilitating civil wars (Gürses 2015). Some studies argue that ethnic ties that transcend national boundaries accelerate the conflict by providing shelter as well as human and material resources to rebels (Gürses 2015: 142), whereas some other studies underline the role of peaceful kin-state policies.14 In sum, it can be concluded that kin-states establish ethnic ties with their co-ethnics based mainly on the two broad motivations of national identity and national interest (Wolff 2003a, b: 3).15 In order to act as a kin-state of its co-ethnics, the state’s political elites should believe that they are members of an imagined ethnonational community. Moreover, using this nationalist rhetoric for co-ethnics can also provide them with domestic support at home (Nagle 2013: 293). Holsti underlines that “reasons of affinity and sentiment rather than … power or more hard-headed cost-benefit analyses” motivate states (Holsti 1996: 129). However, it should be underlined that kin-states do not act only with affective reasons such as ethnic, religious, or ideological motivations. National interests of kin-states, in other words, their domestic and foreign policy priorities are also important motivation sources (King and Melvin 2000: 133–134). States develop kin-state roles for their kin as a result of their own domestic policies and/or in order to strengthen their geopolitical interests.16 They use different tools in achieving their aims, ranging from political to military support, and even to irredentism (King and Melvin 2000). As Salehyan underlines, minority groups also benefit in multiple ways from protective policies of their kin-states (Salehyan 2006). In the New Middle East Cold War framework, the Syrian Civil War displays “how state and non-state actors needed each other to achieve their interests” (Risse-Kappen 1995: 281), and provides a fertile ground for both minorities and kin-states in the region to establish ethnic alliances in furthering their aims. I now turn to an analysis of how transnational ethnic ties with Syrian Turkomans are instrumentalized in Turkey’s Syria policy within this context.

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Turkey in the Syrian Civil War: From a Reluctant to an Active Kin-State Two main issues, Hatay (the former Syrian territory annexed by Turkey in 1939) and water (the issue of Euphrates River and Turkish dams there), dominated the agenda of Syria–Turkey relations for decades. In addition to these issues, during the 1990s, the support of the Syrian government for Kurdish Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK) was another issue of contention that brought the two neighbours to the brink of war. After the 1998 Adana Agreement between the two countries, with the Syrian regime agreeing to cease its logistical and financial support for PKK and to expel its leader, the bilateral relationship was able to gain a momentum. The 2000s witnessed an increasing level of cooperation, especially during the Justice and Development Party (AKP) period, within the Turkish government’s framework of “zero problems with neighbours” policy between Syria and Turkey. This would continue until the outbreak of the civil war.17 In this history of bilateral relations, the Syrian Turkomans were never an important issue to affect the course of this relationship. As stated before, they had been under pressure while preserving their ethnic identity under the Baathist rule. Ties between Turkey and the Syrian Turkomans were very limited under these conditions. Turkey had also been reluctant to take the role of kin-state for Syrian Turkomans due to the dominant role of security issues in the Turkish-Syrian bilateral agenda. However, with the Arab Uprisings, Turkey’s role was also to change from a reluctant to an active kin-state. Turkey Discovers the Syrian Turkomans Card: Kin-State Policies Until 2014 When uprisings began in Syria, Turkey first tried to pressure the Syrian regime for democratic reforms, but as these uprisings evolved into a civil war, the AKP government changed its policy, and openly began asking for a regime change by supporting the opposition movement in Syria. It allowed the opposition to organize on its own territory under an umbrella called the Syrian National Council (SNC). On the other hand, Turkey began to host and to support the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) which turned Turkey to a party to the Syrian conflict (Altunı¸sık 2013). As a result of changes in the regional context and through its influence on bilateral relations with Syria, Turkey found opportunities to act as a

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kin-state of Turkomans. In this context, Turkey’s first steps with regard to Syrian Turkomans were to bring them together under one umbrella organization, consequently incorporating this organization into the Syrian Opposition Forces. In order to reach these aims, Turkey opened its border for Syrian Turkoman organizations, as it did the same for the Syrian Opposition, supporting the establishment of the Syrian Turkoman National Assembly in 2013 (Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı Mali Bütçe Tasarısı 2013).18 In 2014 and 2016, the Assembly renewed its elections and board of executives. For Turkey, the Assembly would be the sole representative of Syrian Turkomans. It demanded that the Assembly should act in line with Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (Ta¸stekin 2015a). According to a leading commentator, the then Turkish Prime Minister Erdo˘gan “opened the Syrian Turkomans file” in early July 2012. He mentioned Syrian Turkomans in the context of Aleppo, and showed Turkey’s unease about the PKK–PYD presence in North Syria (Ergin 2012). In his speech at the opening ceremony of the Syrian Turkoman National Assembly, Erdo˘gan underlined Turkey’s Turkoman policy with these words: It is highly important that the Turkomans get represented in the newly formed Syrian cabinet. It is beneficial for the Turkomans to act in a wide and inclusive political formation through which they can make their voices heard, and to obtain the status they deserve in a new democratic Syria. (AKP Official Web Site 2013)

The then Foreign Minister Davuto˘glu also underlined Turkey’s policy in the initial years of the conflict with these words: “it is essential that Syrian Turkomans assume an active role in the process of building a new Syria; the Syrian Turkomans will build a bridge of brotherhood between Turkey and Syria” (Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web Site 2013). With the support of Turkey, in the beginning of the civil war, Turkomans received 16 seats in the Syrian National Council and three members in the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (Ta¸stekin 2015a; Heras 2013; TBMM Genel Kurul Tutana˘gı 2012: 66). A changing regional context, bilateral relations with the Assad regime, and common ethnic ties with Syrian Turkomans gave Turkey an incentive to assume the role of a kin-state. While encouraging Syrian Turkomans to stay at their homes and to get politically organized, with the intensification of hostilities, Turkey

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had to open its borders for Syrian Turkoman refugees (TBMM Soru Önergesi Yanıt 2016). In 2013, the total number of Syrian Turkomans living in refugee camps in Turkey was around 21,376 (TBMM Genel Kurul Tutana˘gı 2013: 30–36). They were hosted in Osmaniye and Islahiye refugee camps that were to close down in 2018 (Ufkumuz 2016). In 2015, the number of Syrian Turkomans living in Turkey increased to 120,000. Most of Syrian Turkomans live in cities such as Hatay, Gaziantep, Osmaniye, Malatya, Sanlıurfa, ¸ Kahramanmara¸s, and Istanbul (Man¸set Haber 2015). The Syrian Turkoman National Assembly reported that 350,000–400,000 Syrian Turkomans, including 35,000 in refugee camps, lived in Turkey (in 2017) (Güzel 2017). In the cultural sphere, Turkey provided Syrian Turkomans with educational rights. For instance, under the coordination of the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities, Syrian Turkomans living in camps had Turkish classes, and the ones who succeeded gained the right to register for a university in Turkey (Sondakika.com 2013). As the Syrian conflict has been transformed throughout the years, and turned into a proxy war in a Cold War context, Syrian Turkomans became important actors for Turkey, since their strategic location in Bayırbucak and Eastern Aleppo was of much importance to Turkey’s main route of aid to Syrian opposition forces. Therefore, after 2014, Turkey started to increase its support for Syrian Turkomans not only politically but also militarily. The Changing Nature of the “Ethnic Alliance”: From Political to Military Support The year 2014 was a turning point in Turkey’s changing Syrian Turkoman policy. As the civil war continued, the first frustration for Turkey appeared with FSA’s failure to advance on the military front in 2013 (Barkey 2016: 28). Moreover, as Assad forces withdrew from Northeast Syria, and Kurdish military forces took control of the region, PYD divided it into three cantons: Afrin, Jazira, and Kobane, declaring it would seek autonomy in the context of a Syrian Republic (Touloumakos 2016: 132). After establishing its self-proclaimed Caliphate in June 2014, ISIS increased attacks on Kurdish towns near Kobane. These attacks played a major role in empowering PYD in getting the support of the US. Hence, Turkey had to share its border with two violent non-state actors, PYD, and ISIS. The Azaz–Jarablus line, which was the only territory outside of

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these forces’ control, became for Turkish authorities an important place to protect. The possibility of establishing an autonomous Kurdish state in Syria with the unification of these three cantons through the Azaz– Jarablus line increased the Turkey’s threat perceptions. The government declared the west of the Euphrates as its red line in Northern Syria, and announced that any incursion west of this river in northern Syria along the Turkish border by the PYD, as well as any attack north of Idlib by the Syrian regime forces, would be seen as violation of this “red line” (TRT World 2015). In addition to these developments, the establishment of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on 10 October 2015 affected Turkey’s position towards PYD, since it is perceived by Turkey as the empowerment of Kurdish militias.19 Turkey has started to prioritize its fight against the PYD, and its parallel armed force YPG, which were seen as the Syrian manifestations of PKK. Thus the opposition’s fight against the regime of Bashar al-Assad would become a secondary concern for the Turkish government (Heller 2017). In this context, in order to increase its power on the battleground, Turkey provided military support for Syrian Turkomans living in this region.20 Turkoman rebel groups became not only an important ally for the anti-Assad opposition but also for protecting Turkey’s border security as a “potential buffer for any autonomous Kurdish region” (Conradis 2015). Within the context of a war of survival, like other groups in Syria, Turkomans aimed at increasing their military capacity in order to become a violent non-state actor in the conflict. At the war’s start, it is reported that more than 10,000 Turkoman fighters were mobilized in armed opposition groups throughout Syria, with the greatest number of groups concentrated in Latakia, Aleppo, and its suburbs (Heras 2013). Initially, the Turkoman military structure in the Latakia province was composed of 12 troops, and a higher division of these troops was called “Brigade of Turkoman Mountain”. Also in central Aleppo, the security of six Turkoman neighbourhoods was provided by these troops (Orhan 2013: 14–15). In addition to these, there were small armed Syrian Turkoman groups in Al-Raggah, Damascus, Idlib, Hama, and Tartus provinces (Orhan 2013: 17–18). There was no direct link between Syrian Turkomans in political opposition, and Turkoman fighters and their military organizations in the field. However, as the Syrian conflict deepened, culminating in the rise of ISIL, and PYD’s growing power, and increased divisions within anti-Assad opposition forces, the Syrian Turkoman National Assembly

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called for unification of these armed groups into one army (Al Jazeera Turk 2015b). Yet such efforts were not successful. It could be said that in the Syrian Turkoman opposition, there were two independent wings, namely a political and a military one, composed of these divided armed groups. As Ta¸stekin states, there had also been divisions among armed Syrian Turkomans. For instance, some groups chose to act with the Assad regime and jihadist groups, while there were Syrian Turkomans within the SDF acting with YPG (Ta¸stekin 2015a). It should also be underlined that there is no Turkoman brigade solely composed of Turkoman fighters. For instance, currently Sultan Murad Brigades, Muntasır Billah Brigades, and Fatih Sultan Mehmed brigades are among the prominent military groups known as Turkoman brigades. However, Turkoman fighters do not constitute, demographically, the majority as they act together with other armed groups in the FSA.21 In this picture, Turkey followed two strategies to support and “control” Syrian Turkomans militarily. One of the strategies was to provide military training to Syrian Turkoman groups within the scope of the Syria Train and Equip Program of the US, established in June 2014, and supported by the US-led coalition against ISIL (Durgun 2015; NTV Haber 2015). This program was originally designed to recruit, vet, train, and equip a force of 5400 Syrians per year for three consecutive years (Blanchard et al. 2015: 22). Turkey, in its negotiations with the US, offered to train 2000 (as the first group), mostly Turkomans from the Damascus and Aleppo areas who saw the removal of Assad from government as their number one target (Al Monitor 2014). However, this policy did not provide the expected results (Al Jazeera Turk 2015c; Erdemol 2015). The US could not keep its economic burden, and it became difficult to find fighters who would fight not against Assad but only against ISIL (Mehta 2015). Turkey’s second strategy was to support Syrian Turkomans’ military units by bringing them together under a single Syrian Turkomans Army (Yeni Safak ¸ 2015a). According to news sources, meetings between Turkish intelligence officers and Turkoman Brigade representatives (Syrian Turkoman Assembly, Syrian Turkoman National Bloc, etc.), took place in Ankara, aimed at completely unifying the troops in order to reach the number of 5000, and also to ensure that they behave, fight, and move like a regular army. The troops were planned to take positions at Aleppo,

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Bayırbucak, and Latakia. This is the most important part of Turkey’s strategy of eliminating the ISIS threat and PKK from its borders and for preventing the Syria-based Kurds from forming a state. The United Turkoman Army was said to be acting with Turkish troops during Turkey’s cross-border operations coordinated from Ankara (Yeni S¸ afak 2015b). It was also claimed that via parties established by Syrian Turkomans living in Turkey, Turkey was sending fighters to the battleground for Turkomans. In 2015, the Syrian Turkoman Development Party was established in Osmaniye and Adana which only accepts members from the Syrian Turkoman community around Kilis and Iskenderun (Radikal 2015). According to a newspaper report, Zaman Al Wasl, this party was searching through Facebook announcements for young Syrian Turkomans aged between 18 and 35 to act as police force working in the “buffer zone” which Turkey planned to establish in Northern Syria. The announcement promised that the volunteers would earn 500 US$ monthly, and would be trained in Gaziantep (Diken 2015a). Not only Syrian Turkoman-related political parties, but also Turkish organizations across the country’s political spectrum—from pan-Islamists to hard-right Turkish nationalists— started to recruit fighters for the Turkoman Front (Heller and Grimaldi 2016). For instance, two such organizations from these ideological positions, Istanbul Alperen Ocakları and Ülkü Ocakları, were said to find fighters to protect the Turkomans in Bayırbucak (Diken 2015b; Milliyet 2015; Heller and Grimaldi 2016). Grimaldi and Heller (2016) claim that IHH and Imkander are among the main religious NGOs providing relief and fighters for opposition forces in general and the Turkomans specifically. Turkey’s efforts to organize Syrian Turkomans into a unified army and to support their military forces received a serious blow when Russia started to support Assad forces militarily. The Russian intervention on Assad’s behalf since September 2015 helped the regime to reverse their losses (Blanchard et al. 2015: 10). Syrian Turkomans around the north of Aleppo, near the Bayırbucak region, suffered from Russia’s air strikes, and nearly 2000 Syrian Turkomans had to escape to Turkey (Anadolu Agency 2015; Reuters 2015). Syrian Turkomans became an important issue of crisis in Russia–Turkey relations when a Turkish jet fighter shot down a Russian jet over Latakia’s Turkoman-populated Bayırbucak region in November 2015 on the basis of violating its airspace along the Syrian border.22 It was claimed that Turkomans opened fire at the crew of the

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downing jet as they tried to parachute into Syrian government-held territory (BBC News 2015). Alparslan Çelik, a Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves member, was accused of killing the Russian pilot (Daily Sabah 2016a; Hürriyet Daily News 2016; Sondakika.com 2016). As a Turkish citizen, he acted as deputy commander of a Syrian Turkoman brigade in Bayırbucak region (Ta¸stekin 2016a). His acceptance of the accusations of killing the Russian pilot made him as a case of diplomatic contention between Russia and Turkey in 2016 (Ta¸spınar 2016). Russia demanded his trial as a condition for normalization of diplomatic ties with Turkey after the Jet crisis. However, despite the crisis, in January 2016, Turkey’s National Security Council (MGK) reaffirmed its support for “the Turkomans in Northwestern Syria who are being targeted by the Russian air strikes” (Daily Sabah 2016b). Moreover, President Erdo˘gan in a television program openly stated his firm support for Syrian Turkomans in Bayırbucak with these words: “Maybe many more people will die… but Türkmenda˘gı will be the witness of the victory. Keep praying, we are doing our best” (Timeturk 2016). But as to prove King and Melvin (2000) right, the rhetoric on the part of Turkey as the kin-state of Turkomans could not have been reflected in policy outcomes because of prioritizing its own security and foreign policy considerations, in addition to the limitations of its power capacity. Back to Reluctant Kin-State Policies Turkey’s Syria policy entered a new phase in the beginning of 2016 due to regional and domestic factors. This change of policy has been described as “Turkey’s First Syria policy”, implying that its policy evolved from a pro-regime change policy to one based on counterterrorism. This meant the fight against the rise of jihadist groups in the region, and particularly of the Islamic State (ISIS), and the strengthening of Syria’s Kurdish militias, YPG (Heller 2017). In terms of regional factors, the effects of the establishment of the SDF, and the increase in PKK and ISIS attacks on Turkey, should be underlined. For instance, as a result of PKK attacks almost nine hundred Turkish security personnel and more than 2600 people had died since July 2015 (Heller 2017). A refugee influx exceeding three million, and the direct involvement of Russia on the side of Assad’s forces, were other regional factors which would lead Turkey to revise its Syria policy (D’Alema 2017: 10). Together with domestic factors such as the end of “Turkey’s Kurdish peace process”23 and the failed coup d’état

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in July 2016, these regional factors in a way forced Turkey to give priority to its own security considerations. As a result, in order to deal with ISIS and the PYD at the same time, it had no choice but to ease tensions with Russia and Iran. In this context of a changing Syria policy, Turkey’s relationship with Syrian Turkomans was deeply affected. In the Bayırbucak region, in June 2016, opposition forces, and Syrian Turkomans in specific, lost their power to resist regime forces supported by Russia (Aktif Haber 2016). Turkomans underlined that logistical support coming from Turkey was very limited during this period.24 The region fell to the regime’s control, with Turkomans having to flee to Turkey after heavy Russian bombardments (Al Jazeera Turk 2015a; Hürriyet 2015). Camp 1071 in Türkmenda˘gı, where most of Syrian Turkoman fighters were receiving military training, was closed, and its fighters distributed across armed opposition groups (Al Jazeera 2017a). Alparslan Çelik was sentenced to five years of prison for illegal arms possession on May 22, 2017 (Cumhuriyet 2017). This picture shows us Turkey’s prioritization of improving its relations with Russia in order to deal with its threat perceptions concerning ISIS and PYD. Therefore, interests rather than identity were the motivation for acting, or not acting, as a kin-state in the case of Turkey. “Operation Euphrates Shield” and Syrian Turkomans Another illustration of Turkey’s acting as a kin-state on the motivation of its own domestic and foreign policy interests can be seen in its military operation called “Operation Euphrates Shield”.25 In August 2016, Turkey started an operation in northern Syria, in the region between the Euphrates River to the east and the area around Azaz to the west. The aim was to clear Turkish border from ISIS militants, but also to stop Syria’s Kurds, who were hoping to unite Afrin and Kobane (D’Alema 2017: 13). The operation ended in March 2017 (Osborne 2017). Operation Euphrates Shield was executed by Turkish Armed Forces and FSA components formed by Ahrar al-Sham, the Sultan Murad Division, Jays al-Tahrir, Al-Mutasim Brigade, the Nour al-Din al-Zinki Movement, the Salahaddin Brigade, and the Hamza Division (Ye¸silta¸s et al. 2017: 22; Özer 2016). The Sultan Murad Division and the Hamza Division included Syrian Turkoman fighters. Yet it should be again underlined that Turkoman numbers were limited, with the majority composed of FSA militias.26 Due to this operation, Turkish financial and logistical support

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to these Turkoman brigades increased. Turkey was also to benefit from its military cooperation with these groups on the battleground. The operation was welcomed by Turkoman political organizations. The Syrian Turkoman National Assembly supported Turkey’s military intervention since they believed that if Turkey’s military presence in the field was secured, they could gain power to have a say in Syria’s future (Anadolu Agency 2016). Abdurrahman Mustafa, the Assembly’s representative in Astana and Geneva Peace talks,27 underlined that their presence at peace talks was thanks to Turkey’s gaining upper hand in the battlefield through the operation (Al Jazeera 2017c). In addition to political representatives, also the Sultan Murad Division participated at the talks in Astana (Arslan 2017). Syrian Turkomans were perceived by Turkey as an important partner in the post-conflict phase of the Euphrates Shield Operation. This operation generated a territorial control extending from Jarablus to Azaz, pushing ISIS out of the border area, and at the same time creating a “physical barrier between the Kurdish cantons of Afrin and Kobane” (Mufti 2017). By supervising military operations through establishing Turkish-trained Syrian “Free Police” (Ibrahim 2017)28 and governance arrangements such as relief and stabilization programs, Turkey aimed to establish “a model of Turkish state-building” and make the region attractive for refugees to return (Heller 2017). Turkomans were taking various roles in assisting Turkey in delivering services, ranging from education to military aspects. Some Turkomans, on the other hand, claimed that there was not a dramatic improvement in their lives after the operation, and were unsure about how long the Turkish military would stay in the region.29 Güzel states that Turkomans from Homs were replaced to this region (Güzel 2017). It is said that since the operation area covers villages where Turkomans mostly lived before the civil war, that nearly 300,000 refugees, mostly dominated by Turkomans, had returned their homes after the operation (Altan 2017). Yet, this argument is open to debate since others claimed that after the operation around 46,000 refugees from Turkey returned to Syria (Ye¸silta¸s et al. 2017: 42). Also, most of the Turkoman refugees fear the pressure of the regime on them once they return to their homes, as their return depends on how the post-conflict Syrian regime would be.30

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A Critical Overview of Turkey’s Kin-State Policies Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Turkey’s kin-state policies have been criticized on many grounds. The first argument is related to Turkey’s instrumentalization of Syrian Turkomans for its own foreign policy calculations in the war. These critics assert that the Turkish government used the “Syrian Turkomans case” in order to employ its Syrian policy for domestic political purposes (Girit 2016; Heller and Grimaldi 2016). By emphasizing kinship ties with the Syrian Turkomans, the government was said to aim to receive public support in providing military and logistical assistance to anti-Assad opposition forces. Since northwestern Syria, where Syrian Turkomans live, was strategically important, and as they were seen as sympathetic to al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (Ta¸stekin 2016b), some claimed that Turkey’s logistical support for these forces was legitimized as if they were going to Syrian Turkomans. Turkish National Intelligence Service (MIT) trucks case is illustrating this argument (Ta¸stekin 2015b). On January 19, 2014, on the information that they were carrying weapons and explosives to al-Qaeda in Syria, three trucks were stopped by the Adana Provincial Gendarmerie Command. While the trucks were taken for an extensive search, MIT personnel had prevented the search (Ta¸stekin 2015b). The Turkish government claimed that the trucks were carrying “humanitarian aid” to Bayırbucak Turkomans (Bianet 2015), with President Erdo˘gan refusing claims MIT was sending weapons to alQaida: “Such lies against our intelligence agency are unacceptable. Those who make such claims have the obligation to prove them. At a time when Turkomans in Bayırbucak are under attack, it is unthinkable for Turkey to do nothing” (Daily Sabah 2015). In addition, after the failed coup d’état of July 2016 in Turkey, it was understood that the stopping of MIT Trucks was planned by members of FETÖ terrorist organization, and the military personnel associated with the case were sentenced to life imprisonment (Sputnik News 2016; T24 2017). These debates around the case illustrated the critiques on the argument regarding the instrumentalization of Turkomans. A second critical argument concerning Turkey’s kin-state policies came from pro-Kurdish opposition forces in Turkey. They asserted that this policy was discriminatory with regard to Syrian Kurds (TBMM Genel Kurul Tutana˘gı 2014: 33–34). The People’s Democratic Party (HDP) criticized the Turkish government’s strict position against Syrian Kurds’ plans for

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developing a semi-autonomous unity in Northern Syria, while separately supporting the Syrian Turkomans’ political organization to get united. Another critic argued that “strong Turkish support for Turkoman tribes and strong Kurdish support for the PYD have affected, even defined, Turkish-Kurdish relations in Turkey” (Genç 2015). As mentioned before, King and Melvin (2000) rightly assert that kin-minorities could become a valuable tool in the hands of policymakers in kin-states for gaining support in domestic politics. In the June 2015 parliamentary elections, AKP lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in its 13-year one-party rule, while the pro-Kurdish HDP was able to gain a place in the parliament as the first pro-Kurdish party to reach the electoral threshold of 10% that included an increasing popular support from different segments of the electoral base. In such a context, it can be asserted that the Syrian Turkomans case not only provided the government with a useful tool to realize its foreign policy aims in Syria, but also a strong cause to increase nationalist public sentiment against PYD’s growing power and its repercussions in Turkey’s domestic politics. The third argument is about the impact of Turkey’s policies on the situation of Syrian Turkomans in the post-war order. Critics claim that Turkey’s support for Turkomans had turned the latter into targets in the war. A Turkish nationalist MP criticized the government for making the Turkomans targets of the Syrian regime by openly declaring Turkey’s military support to them (TBMM Genel Kurul Tutana˘gı 2014: 53). Ta¸stekin also underlines the risk of Syrian Turkomans being labelled as Turkey’s “fifth column” if the Syrian army were to take back the control of their region (Ta¸stekin 2015a). In addition to these critiques, some other comments concern Syrian Turkoman representation in the post-war Syrian state, if it is to be established. While Turkey supported Syrian Turkomans in international platforms, as witnessed in their inclusion into the Syrian National Council, or voiced their situations at the United Nations (Demirta¸s 2015), Turkey could not manage to include Syrian Turkomans in Geneva peace negotiations. Moreover, others argued that while Turkey was strongly opposed to PYD’s participation in Geneva-3 peace negotiations, it kept its silence about Syrian Turkomans’ exclusion from these negotiations (Hürriyet 2016). Therefore, critics asserted that the government’s rhetoric could not be turned into practice, something that showed instrumental reasons were Turkey’s real motivations in taking the role of kin-state for Syrian Turkomans in the New Middle East Cold War.

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The last criticism at Turkey’s kin-state policies comes from Syrian Turkomans. On the one hand, they are aware that without Turkey’s support they could not survive in the war, and they appreciate this. On the other hand, they complain about inconsistencies, and lack of sufficient financial and logistical dimensions in Turkey’s approach. For instance, they underline Turkey’s uncoordinated official policies between various institutions such as National Intelligence Service, Turkish Armed Forces, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.31 In addition, it is claimed that despite problems arising from Syrian Turkomans themselves,32 as a kinstate, Turkey has not succeeded in uniting Syrian Turkomans’ political and military groups under one organization. Some Turkomans are questioning the legitimacy of the Syrian Turkomans National Assembly, not finding sufficient its efforts to represent Turkomans’ demands in a postwar Syria and in the ongoing peace talks.33

Conclusion To conclude, as discussed in this chapter, after the Arab Uprisings had changed the regional context and Turkey’s bilateral relations with Syria, it was Turkey’s ethnic affiliation with Syrian Turkomans and its own security and foreign policy calculations that played an influential role in engaging Syrian Turkomans in its Syrian policy since 2011. This alliance, based on common transnational ethnic ties with Syrian Turkomans, provided Turkey with the chance to act as a kin-state. Its own security and domestic policy considerations throughout the war determined the evolution of relations with them. As the civil war deepened, the threat of sharing its longest border with a possible autonomous Kurdish state and ISIS, and the military success of Assad forces and its supporters on the battlefield, led Turkey to militarily support Syrian Turkomans, based on its own security considerations. In other words, as the war had changed its character, Turkey started to instrumentalize Syrian Turkomans as a tool in its foreign policy. Lastly, it should be underlined that Syrian civil war has opened a new transnational space for Turkish foreign policy by which it would transform Syrian Turkomans’ role as a non-state actor. This picture supports the argument that states and non-state actors are in need of each other to further their aims in the New Middle East Cold War. Looking at transnationalism as a field of interaction between states and non-state actors,

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rather than viewing the dominance of one over the other, will broaden our scope of analysis on Turkey’s Syria policy as shown in this chapter. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Ay¸segül Sever for encouraging me to study the subject, Ismail Obeid Adam for his assistance and guidance in conducting interviews, and various valuable commentators in the conferences at which the draft work has been presented (15th National Congress of Turkish Social Science Association in 2017, 76th MPSA Annual Conference in 2018, and Mülkiye International Relations Congress in 2018).

Notes 1. For a detailed analysis of Turkey’s policy towards its kin-minorities in Iraq, Bulgaria, and Greece in a comparative analysis since the establishment of the Republic see Karadeniz (2011). 2. For an official document laying out this principle see General Directorate of State Archives. Moreover see Serif ¸ Onur Bahçecik’s chapter in this book. 3. Turkey’s Syria Policy has been subject of many academic studies since 2011. See, for example, Co¸skun (2013), Güney (2013), Tür and Kumral (2016), and Hinnebush and Tür (2013). 4. For a detailed analysis on the outcomes of the Syrian War see Parlar Dal (2017). 5. For a detailed analysis on non-state actors see Aydınlı (2013). 6. Transnational rebels are defined by Salehyan as “armed opposition groups whose operations are not confined to the geographic territory of the nation-state(s) that they challenge. Transnational rebels gather funding and resources among the diaspora, recruit fighters among refugee communities, and importantly, secure bases in neighbouring countries from which to attack their home state” (Salehyan 2006: 17). 7. For instance, according to a report for CRS, by February 2014, US Directorate of National Intelligence estimated that “the strength of the insurgency in Syria at somewhere between 75,000 or 80,000 or up to 110,000 to 115,000 insurgents, who were then organized into more than 1500 groups of widely varying political leanings” (Blanchard et al. 2015, 9). 8. There is no published work regarding how many Syrian Turkomans have migrated to Turkey between 2011 and 2017. The statistical estimates are around 250,000 (An ex-member of the Syrian Interim Government, Unattributable Personal Interview, Gaziantep, December 7, 2017). 9. A Syrian Turkoman refugee, Unattributable Personal Interview, Gaziantep, December 7, 2017.

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10. An ex-member of the Syrian Interim Government, Unattributable Personal Interview, Gaziantep, December 7, 2017. 11. A member of a Turkey-based humanitarian aid organization in Syria, Unattributable Personal Interview Istanbul, December 19, 2017. 12. The issue was on the agenda of newspapers. For instance see Milliyet (2016), Günebakı¸s (2016), and HaberTürk (2016). 13. Moore and Davis discussed that “ethnicity is important because ethnic ties among peoples across state borders in the international system act as unstated alliances among peoples. The alliance refers to a similarity or relationship in character, structure, etc. affinity rather than the more traditional meaning of the term in international relations” (Moore and Davis 1998: 92). 14. For such policies see Nagle (2013: 288) and King and Melvin (2000: 109). 15. Heraclides categorizes these motivations as instrumental and affective reasons (Heraclides 1990: 341). 16. For a detailed analysis of these policies see Sabanadze (2006), Wolff (2003a), Davis and Moore (1997), Van Evera (1995), Chazan (1991), Moore and Davis (1998), Davis and Moore (1997), Davis et al. (1997), and Nagle (2013). 17. For a detailed analysis of Turkey–Syria relations see Kürkçüo˘glu (2002), Ye¸silyurt (2013), and Oktav (2015). 18. The Syria Turkoman Bloc has been the first organization of Turkomans based in Latakia and Bayırbucak regions. This organization controls 12 Turkoman Mountain Brigades in Latakia. The Syrian Turkoman Movement was established in March 2012 and due to some clashes in the organization, in 2012 Syrian Turkoman Democratic Movement began its activities near Aleppo. In addition to these organizations, Syrian Turkomans living in Turkey established the Syrian Turkoman Platform. The Syrian Turkoman Assembly was established in March 2013 with the support of Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For detailed information see Cevizci (2017). 19. For detailed information about Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) see Lund (2016). 20. On August 24, 2016, Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield to fight against ISIL and PYD. For a detailed analysis see Al Jazeera (2017b) and Han and Özkan (2017). 21. Members of Syrian Turkoman political and military opposition wings, Unattributable Personal Interview, Gaziantep, December 7, 2017 and Istanbul, December 25, 2017; An ex-member of the Syrian Interim Government, Unattributable Personal Interview, Gaziantep, December 7, 2017. 22. For an analytical evaluation of the crisis see Er¸sen (2017).

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23. For a detailed analysis of Turkey’s Kurdish Peace Process see Rumelili and Çelik (2017) and Pusane (2014). 24. A Syrian Turkoman rebel, Unattributable Personal Interview, Gaziantep, December, 7, 2017. 25. Turkey remarked that Operation Euphrates Shield was conducted in the scope of the UNSC resolutions for the fight against ISIS as stated in Article 51 of the UN Charter. See “Ba¸sbakanlık Koordinasyon Merkezinden ‘Fırat Kalkanı Operasyonu’ Hakkında Yapılan Basın Acıklaması” (2016). For a detailed information about the operation and its critique see Ye¸silta¸s et al. (2017) and Han and Özkan (2017). 26. A member of Sultan Murad Brigade, Unattributable Personal Interview, Gaziantep, December, 7, 2017. 27. For detailed information on Astana Process: Factsheet on the Astana Process (2017). 28. In December 2017, it was announced that a national army composed of FSA components had been established in the region by the Interim Government with the support of Turkish Armed Forces. See Anadolu Agency (2017). 29. Syrian Turkoman refugees in Gaziantep, Unattributable Personal Interviews, Gaziantep, December, 7, 2017. 30. Syrian Turkoman refugees in Gaziantep, Unattributable Personal Interviews, Gaziantep, December, 7, 2017. 31. An ex-member of the Syrian Interim Government, Unattributable Personal Interview, Gaziantep, December, 7, 2017. 32. For a detailed analysis of Syrian Turkomans’ establishment of political organizations since the beginning of uprisings see Cevizci (2017). 33. Members of Syrian Turkoman political and military opposition wings, Unattributable Personal Interviews, Gaziantep, December 7, 2017 and Istanbul, December 25, 2017.

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CHAPTER 8

Constructing Liberal Subjects? Turkey’s New Diaspora Strategy Serif ¸ Onur Bahçecik

In a well-known book on foreign policy analysis, Valerie M. Hudson defines foreign policy as “the strategy or approach chosen by the national government to achieve its goal in its relations with external entities. This includes decisions to do nothing” (Hudson 2012: 14). Those who observe the contemporary diffusion of a type of policy labeled “diaspora strategy” around the world may be tempted to conclude that the newly emerging institutions and transnational practices for the mobilization of diaspora are actually belated responses to diaspora as an external entity. After so many years of doing nothing, governments are supposedly trying to find ways of connecting to their citizens abroad. A closer analysis of diaspora strategies around the world, however, shows that the national governments are not responding to already existing entities out there but rather constituting migrant populations in new ways (see Gamlen 2008; Kunz 2012b; Ragazzi 2009). In many cases, migrant populations have

S. ¸ O. Bahçecik (B) Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_8

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been living abroad for so many years, and they have been labeled in various ways. Recently, many governments started to call migrant populations as “diasporas” by highlighting their connections to the nation and their role in the global economy. Studies on Turkey’s foreign policy often disregard transnational actors like diasporas. The literature has been dominated by a security-oriented and state-centric view of international politics (Yalvaç 2014). For many scholars security presents an overwhelming concern of Turkish decisionmakers (see Oran 2001). While some studies pay attention to non-state actors when they pose a security challenge (Oktav et al. 2018; Ye¸silta¸s and Karda¸s 2018), the state-centric view often disregards transnational actors. Such a view reifies structures and actors ignoring social construction of these categories through specific discursive and nondiscursive practices (Bigo and Walker 2007). The transnational focus adopted in this volume, however, allows an analysis of relational aspects of Turkey’s foreign policy and rather than presuming the diaspora or the state as objects out there, takes them as relations constructed through various transactions (Anderson 2015; Ergenç and Göçer Akder 2017). This chapter contributes to the nascent literature on the construction of Turkey’s diaspora. Turkish citizens have been moving to especially Western European countries since the 1960s with or without government encouragement. Studies show that these migrant populations have been characterized in different ways in different periods. By tracking the different identities attributed to these groups, Aksel has shown how diaspora has not been a constant entity (Aksel 2014). Initially seen as “workers abroad” in official discourse, they came to be named as Euro-Turks or diaspora. Recent studies have emphasized the attempts by governments to mobilize these migrant populations in line with Turkey’s foreign policy aims (Aydın 2014; Mencutek and Baser 2018; Okyay 2015). Other studies highlight the complexities of Turkey’s transnational attempt to “preserve a Muslim identity engrained in Turkishness” (Çitak 2018) through the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), and the complications created by the misguided and at times ethnic-oriented conceptions of diaspora in Turkey’s foreign policy (Yaldız 2018, 2019). I seek to contribute to this literature by emphasizing (1) the intricate connections between Turkey and what are seen as non-state actors, (2) the contradictory efforts to create liberal diaspora subjectivities by Turkey while engaging in authoritarian policies at home. Non-state actors (NSAs)

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are defined as actors that are “largely and entirely autonomous from central government funding and control: emanating from civil society, or from the market economy, or from political impulses beyond state control or direction” (Josselin and Wallace 2001: 3). The liberal literature on non-state actors conceptualized states and NSAs as “broad opposing categories” (Josselin and Wallace 2001: 2). Despite the realization that in practice the relations between states and non-state actors are quite complex, the literature is based on a liberal conception of state as a selfcontained and freestanding actor whose interests are often conceptualized in distinction or opposition to the NSAs based in civil society. The notion that states could play a role in constituting non-state actors in various ways is not considered within the liberal perspective. As Chapter 2 of this volume suggests, however, the aim of providing transnational accounts of Turkish foreign policy is not to “juxtapose a state-centric approach to one that just deals with non-state actors” (Kuru, this volume) but to make accounts of foreign policy more comprehensive. Diasporas understood as “any group of people who have spread or become dispersed beyond their traditional homeland or point of origin” (OED 2014) are also seen as NSAs. The three characteristic features of the diasporas were their dispersion (either due to a disaster or due to their own will), their homeland orientation (real or imagined), and practices of “boundary maintenance” (Brubaker cited in Cohen 2008: 12). This characterization is wide enough to include classical diasporas such as the Jews and the Africans, and underlines the significance of nationalist themes such as homeland, and strong, if not indelible, differences from the rest of the community. In terms of the relations with the state, the focus has been put upon the relations with the host community political authority, and therefore the literature often dealt with problems of immigration, multiculturalism, integration, and assimilation. Diasporas have been variously considered as cultural, political, and security problems with dubious loyalties and even as fifth columns. More recently, an emerging literature has come to consider the ways in which states reenvision emigrant populations abroad as their diaspora (Gamlen 2008; Kunz 2012b; Larner 2007; Ragazzi 2009). These shifts in the way states relate to expats in distant lands indicate not only a transnationalization of state authority but also the emergence of a new object in foreign policy. By expanding attention to populations living abroad, states seek to reinvent and rescale ways of exercising power beyond their boundaries. Simultaneously they

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go beyond classical international politics and make the welfare of expats (however defined) a significant dimension of their policy. In order to follow the ways in which émigré populations are constituted and reconstituted, I adopt a governmentality framework (Dean 2010; Foucault 1991; Kunz 2012a; Ragazzi 2009). This framework assumes that notions such as expatriates, diaspora, etc., are different ways of constituting populations abroad. The key to understanding different ways of governing lies in the analysis of political rationalities. The analysis of political rationalities, in turn, entails three different dimensions: knowledge, identity, and means (political technologies) utilized to maintain the relations. For any activity that seeks to govern the conduct of people, the analysis needs to focus on knowledges, namely, “distinctive ways of thinking” (Dean 2010: 33) about a problem. These knowledges presuppose or give rise to specific subjective experiences or identities. Finally, the activity of governing is carried out with specific technologies that also interact with the knowledge and identities. To exemplify, Kunz (2008), in her analysis of Mexican diaspora strategy from a governmentality perspective, shows how conceptualizations of diaspora shifted in the 1980s. Mexican migrants to the United States, who were once seen as traitors to the nation, suddenly became heroes, and the Mexican President Vicente Fox declared in 2001 that he was governing for all Mexicans including the population living abroad. In this new conceptualization, migration has been seen as an effort to reach economic opportunities, and the state authority has been expanded to include transnational populations. In terms of identities, the Mexican government sought to create new subjectivities by responsibilizing the diaspora with sending remittances home and contributing to the development of the nation. Finally, the technology aspect refers to the various programs instituted by the Mexican government to encourage Mexican migrants to remain connected to the homeland such as double nationality, specific investment opportunities, and government supported Hometown Associations in the United States.

Transnationalism and Turkey’s Foreign Policy In the last decade, transnational aspects of Turkey’s foreign policy have become all too visible. Perhaps the biggest crisis of this period, the Mavi Marmara incident in May 2010,1 was an unmistakably transnational action bringing together six non-governmental organizations led by the

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Turkey-based IHH (The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief). More recently, Turkey’s “citizens” abroad have also emerged as a significant transnational factor in Turkey’s foreign policy. It is estimated that the “Turkish community” abroad amounts to approximately 6 million people (Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı n.d.). 5.5 million of this population resides in West European countries, a region where Turkey has strong political, economic, and military relations. With the facilitation of voting procedures for citizens living abroad, this population has become even more important for Turkish politics. In recent years, government and opposition political parties have tasked some of their Members of Parliament (MP) with mobilizing citizens abroad and carrying their input into the political system, even when the MPs did not have formal overseas electoral districts. In the recent parliamentary elections on June 24, 2018, five people from the Turkish migrant community in Germany have been proposed as candidates for the parliament (Dalaman 2018). This has contributed to the construction of a transnational population, and created opportunities for the diaspora to become a significant actor in Turkish politics. The facilitation of voting procedures for citizens living abroad also contributed to the creation of a new constituency in Turkish politics, and made this population an issue with ever-increasing significance and impact in Turkey’s relations with Western European countries. The April 2017 referendum on constitutional changes has been a significant turning point for the emergence of “Turkish diaspora” as a transnational factor in the relations between Europe and Turkey. Since the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey in 2013, the Turkish government was increasingly seen as sliding into authoritarianism, and criticisms toward human rights problems were straining the relations between Europe and Turkey. On top of this, the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, and the relatively muted reaction from European capitals, have led to disappointment not only in official circles but also among supporters of the government abroad. Against this background, in the run-up to the April 2017 referendum, the Turkish government attempted to organize several public meetings in European countries. While some of these meetings were officially organized as “cultural events,” the purpose was campaigning for the constitutional referendum. This process of transnational mobilization has led to fresh problems between Europe and Turkey, the effects of which are still ongoing. In March 2017, community meetings of high profile Turkish government ministers were canceled in Germany (Deutsche Welle 2017a).

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On March 11, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs was denied landing clearance from Netherlands on his way to a public meeting on the constitutional referendum due to “public order and security” concerns. On the same day, Turkish Minister for Social and Family Affairs Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya crossed from Germany to the Netherlands. On her way to the Turkish Consulate in Rotterdam, the minister was stopped and asked to leave. While the Dutch police forcibly dispersed the crowd that came to support the minister, the minister herself was accompanied to the German–Dutch border and was declared persona non-grata. The confrontation between Minister Kaya and Dutch security staff was video-recorded and televised over national TV stations in Turkey. In her confrontation with the security staff, Minister Kaya accused the Dutch government of human rights violations, arguing that “freedom of expression, freedom of assembly… have been suspended” (Özkan 2017). In this way, she reiterated a theme that emerged in official attitudes toward European countries in Turkey’s foreign policy in recent years: Europe’s commitment to liberalism and democracy is waning, and Turkish people living abroad can and should stop this trend by holding fast to their rights and freedoms provided by the political institutions of host countries. Moreover, at least for a brief period, the cost and benefit analysis of Turkey’s policymakers seems to be modified. The government seemed to give priority to perceived interests of “Turkish diaspora” over maintaining relations with European capitals. Hence, attempts to mend the relations did not work, and worsening relations between the Netherlands and Turkey eventually led to the withdrawal of ambassadors in February 2018. This lasted until July 2018 when MFAs decided to resume relations (Bulur 2018). Although successive Turkish governments since the 1960s sought to defend the rights of expats from Turkey, the way members of the migrant populations were conceived and their rights understood has changed considerably. This change can be observed in terms of the knowledge, identity, and technology. Compared to the 1960s, Turkish governments’ knowledge of the aspects of the Turkish population has expanded greatly. The concern with basic demographic characteristics and social and economic needs shifted to include political participation (YTB 2015b). In addition to funding and construction of mosques and schools for Turkish children, the government came to emphasize electoral participation as a new technology to sustain the links with the homeland. In the remainder of this chapter, I will elaborate on the changing conceptions of migrants and the instruments used by the Turkish government by looking at the changes since the 1960s.

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Constructing Migrants Mobility across and within borders has always been a fundamental social process. With the development of capitalism, private control of human mobility within the feudal system was replaced by state control of mobility (Torpey 1998). Following the Second World War, the role of nationstates became even more significant in controlling human mobility as a significant factor in national development. In one of the most significant texts of modernization theory, The Passing of Traditional Society, Daniel Lerner reports a survey on Middle East countries carried out in the 1950s. The survey was seeking to measure the social mobility tendencies of individuals. One of the questions of the survey was “if for some reason you could not live in your country, what other country would you choose to live in?” Interestingly, many respondents in Turkey said they would rather die than live in another country (Lerner 1958: 148). 51% of what Lerner called “traditional” section of the population could not even imagine to live outside of Turkey (Lerner 1958: 144). However, the nation-states were not discouraged. After a decade and a few years later, Turkey’s First Five Year Development Plan published in 1963 called for an employment policy that encouraged the export of surplus labor to Western European countries (Devlet Planlama Te¸skilatı 1963). This was not simply a strategy of exporting unwanted and excess population to Western European countries. The development plan argued that one of the problems of social development in Turkey was the coexistence of a small industrial sector with a large and highly populated unproductive subsistence sector (agricultural production). The encouragement of outward migration sought to transform the rural population into a skilled labor force. The outward migration of Turkish workers would not only reduce the pressures of urbanization but would also function as a technical training program where Turkish peasantry would learn industrial skills abroad, and contribute to the modern sector of the economy upon their return. In line with this strategy, Turkish governments have signed Labor Recruitment Agreements with the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and ˙ Sweden between 1961 and 1967 (Içduygu and Aksel 2013). In addition to the emphasis on the acquisition of skills, especially during the 1970s, Turkish officials came to see the diaspora with an economic lens and sought ways to attract the foreign currency earned by migrant workers (Artuko˘glu 2005: 40). Here the focus was not only on the remittances

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sent by the workers back to Turkey but also the mobilization of foreign currency earned abroad for productive purposes within Turkey. In line with this identity of “workers abroad” the government used certain technologies to mobilize foreign exchange earnings. The Village Development Cooperative (Köy Kalkınma Kooperatifleri) was put forward in 1965, and appealed to the desires of Turkish peasants to work abroad. According to the scheme, villages which established development cooperatives would be given priority in the job placements abroad (Güven 1982). It was thought that migrant workers would invest their foreign exchange earnings in these cooperatives, and in this way they would not only use their money for productive purposes but would also inject entrepreneurial spirit to their communities upon their return. These show that Turkey’s migration policies were shaped by concerns of economic and social development in these decades. Migrants were basically seen as a “labor force” and as future entrepreneurs that would push the backward rural areas into modernization. The state sought to extract resources from migrant workers either in the form of currency or technical skills. The strategies adopted by the Turkish governments within a developmentalist framework did not always turn out to be fruitful. While the exporting of labor was intended for low-skilled peasants, it later turned out that, especially in the first years of the labor migration, a significant part of the migrants were highly skilled. Moreover, what was thought to be a temporary phenomenon of labor migration turned out to be permanent as the Turkish workers settled in Western European countries ˙ (Içduygu et al. 2014). The Village Development Cooperatives were also not very successful in attracting skills and investments to the rural areas as they came to be seen only as a bureaucratic mechanism imposed from above (Güven 1982: 26). The 1980s are often seen as an important watershed in the official ˙ attitudes toward migrant populations. Içduygu and Aksel (2013) argue that the “management of social and cultural affairs became increasingly important for maintaining ties.” The shift from economic interests to social and cultural interests is explained with reference to the decline in the remittances by migrant workers, the increase in the Foreign Direct Investment toward Turkey, and a realization that Turkish workers, along with their families, are permanently settling in Western European coun˙ tries (Bilgili and Siegel 2011; Içduygu and Aksel 2013). The 1973 oil crisis has transformed the scene of migration to Western Europe. Labor

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migration based on bilateral agreements was halted. However, emigration from Turkey to Western Europe continued through the family unification process (Abadan-Unat 2002: 47–48). This meant that the individual overseas workers were no more the only unit of analysis for the political rationality. Turkish families and households as cultural and social units increasingly emerged as a process to be maintained, improved, and regulated by the state. The post-1980 coup Constitution included an article (Art. 62) on the “Turkish citizens working abroad” under the Chapter 3 of the Constitution. The Chapter itself dealt with “Social and Economic Rights and Duties” of Turkish citizens. The relevant article was placed under the subheading “Social Security.” The article read: The state shall take the necessary measures to ensure family unity, the education of the children, the cultural needs, and the social security of Turkish nationals working abroad, and shall take the necessary measures to safeguard their ties with the home country and to help them on their return home. (HR-Net n.d.)

The article manifested the social and cultural anxieties that Turkish migrant populations were being assimilated abroad. While the emergence of social and cultural concerns cannot be denied, there are also indicators that an economic perspective on migrants persisted. Migrant remittances were a significant source of foreign exchange for the Turkish econ˙ omy, averaging around USD 1.5 billion in the 1970s (Içduygu 2006: 3). Nevertheless, the fact that the article was placed in the chapter on social and economic rights and duties also showed that migrants were now being conceptualized as rights holders—but not yet as political subjects. It should also be noted that the task of the protection of social security rights of workers is still accorded to the state through the social security agreements between Turkey and host countries, and the social security counselors in embassies. Migrant populations were viewed from other perspectives as well. The parliamentary debates on migrants reflect how the state regarded migrants as a vulnerable population, not only culturally and socially but also politically. In a speech made in the parliament in 1968, Osman Bölükba¸sı, a well-known ultranationalist MP, asserted that “workers’ psychological situation is open to external communist influences” (Artan 2009: 42–43). Interest in the political activities of migrants in European countries escalated especially after the coup in 1980. According to Mügge (2012: 23),

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in the 1980s and 1990s, “the military had a strong influence on the formulation of policies towards its (former) citizens abroad.” The 1980 coup not only installed a military rule that had an overt security-oriented perspective to national policy, but it also led to the transformation of the composition of Turkish migrant populations abroad. The coup has led to the emergence of a considerable number of Turkish asylum seekers abroad, escaping from the persecution of the military junta. Throughout time, these sections of the migrant population also became organized, and the Turkish government started to look for ways to neutralize the impact of these sections on Western European politics. Therefore, especially from the 1980s on, Turkish migrant populations were not only seen as subjects to be protected but also as potentially subversive elements. As a member of the post-coup Consultative Assembly indicated in 1982, Turkish officials not only dealt with the problems of Turkish workers but also “worked on currents against Turkey in cooperation with the embassies and consulates” (TBMM 1982: 460). The relationship between official representations and migrant groups could at times be politically selective, and focused on propping up support from migrant groups that were seen as being closer to the official ideology or government policies (Aydın 2014). It is also argued that in the 1990s, as the Turkish governments became more and more concerned with Kurdish secessionist movement, they looked for new alliances among the Turkish migrant populations (Erkiner 2009). According to Østergaard-Nielsen (2003: 118), Turkey was practicing “longdistance policing” on expats. Through surveillance, stripping citizenship (Kadirbeyoglu 2009: 422–423), and attempts to limit political activities of migrants by leveraging host country authorities, Turkey expanded sovereign practices abroad. Recently, the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (DITIB), which was an institution established to cater to the Turkish migrant population’s religious needs, was accused of collecting intelligence on people living in Germany, including German MPs (Deutsche Welle 2017b). These indicate that Turkey’s diaspora policy at times seeks to discipline and surveil migrant populations and categorize them in terms of their political affiliations. To be sure, these disciplinary processes did not necessarily lead to physical control of bodies, confinement, or imprisonment, as it happens within the national territory. Still, they indicate that the government strategy toward migrant populations was not limited to the protection of social and cultural livelihood of migrants.

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The Discovery of Diaspora The term diaspora had a pejorative and negative connotation in Turkish language due to the lobbying of the Armenian diaspora.2 Gradually, official circles realized that Turkish migrants were settling in host countries, and the need to integrate into the host country emerged as a necessity. In the aftermath of an arson attack in 1993 in the German city of Solingen where five people of Turkish origin were killed by neo-Nazis, the need for political representation of expats in host countries was more frequently suggested as a bulwark against discrimination (Artan 2009). In the mid2000s, the term diaspora came to be used to designate Turkish migrants living abroad. Ironically, this expansion of meaning took place as a reaction to the lobbying activities of the Armenian diaspora. For instance, in 2005, Deniz Baykal, head of the main opposition party CHP, called for the organization of Turkish migrants abroad “as a diaspora” by the government (Hürriyet 2005). This call was made a few days after April 24, a date recognized as the start of the Armenian genocide by the Armenian diaspora. A more official and perhaps expansive conceptualization of diaspora was put forward by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davuto˘glu in his speech in the annual Ambassadors Conference in 2011 (Davuto˘glu 2011). The minister pointed out that the government would “change the meaning of diaspora. Everyone who has migrated from Anatolia is part of our diaspora without regard to religion or sect.” While this statement is often taken as an expansion of the boundaries of Turkish identity, one should note the essential continuity of the conceptions of Baykal and Davuto˘glu. Both the move to organize the diaspora, and the step for constituting a more diverse and comprehensive notions of identity, are actually policies aiming at dealing with the Armenian diaspora. Note that Davuto˘glu was speaking just after the French National Assembly’s decision to recognize Armenian killings as genocide. He sought to demonstrate that Turkey’s history was not limited to these events and that the Ottoman Empire had a policy of toleration where different cultures were able to live side by side in peace. Thus, the attempt to rethink the notion of diaspora was in part related to Turkey’s main foreign policy difficulties. Besides this motivation, however, there was a tendency to rethink the concept and mobilize it for the benefit of both the migrant populations and the Turkish government. A significant development that prepared this trend was the establishment of

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a parliamentary inquiry commission in 2003 (TBMM 2003). After conducting interviews with officials in Turkey and with civil society representatives abroad, the commission delivered its report. The 156-page report included many specific recommendations for the government and state institutions. In its concluding observations, the MPs made several general recommendations (TBMM 2003: 146–147). They concluded that the acquisition of citizenship from host states and participation of Turkish migrants in the political life would facilitate the solution of most of their problems. While the report included many interviews with Turkish state institutions and relevant recommendations, in the end the main solution to the problems of Turkish diaspora was found to be in the host states. Moreover, the problems of Turkish migrants were often conceptualized within a language of rights. It was recommended that the “natural rights” of Turkish migrants arising from the EU law should be defended by the government in all platforms, and that the awareness of the migrants should be raised on these issues. Citizens should be protected against xenophobia, discrimination, and violence. The “full exploitation of their rights” and “protection of identity” should be one of Turkey’s priorities. It was also stated that a state institution responsible for the coordination of official activities was required (TBMM 2003). An institution along the lines of this recommendation was established in April 2010 with Law No. 5978. The duties of the “Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities” (YTB) was not limited to Turkish migrants living abroad, but included “kins and related communities” as well as international students with Turkish government scholarship (YTB n.d.). Article 8 of the Law outlined the main duties of the YTB. These emphatically manifested a language of rights to problematize the conditions of Turkish migrants (TBMM n.d.). According to the article, to ensure the participation of Turkish citizens in the social life of their host countries without losing their authentic culture, the Presidency should engage in “awareness raising” activities. The duties of the Presidency included working to ensure that Turkish citizens living abroad “take full advantage of their legal rights” in host countries. Moreover, the Presidency was to undertake activities for the protection of citizens from discrimination, assimilation, and xenophobia, and to ensure cooperation with individuals and associations who work for the same purpose. As can be seen from this brief overview of the law, the Presidency was given transnational tasks of awareness raising, rights protection, and advocacy.

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During the days running up to the recent Constitutional Referendum on April 16, 2017, the relations between European countries and Turkey went downhill mainly due to the prevention of Turkish political (parties’ campaign) activities in European countries. In a series of public spats, Turkish officials accused European governments of being fascist and totalitarian. The YTB discourse on Europe markedly differs from such a description. Official documents describe Europe as a space of “participatory democratic culture” (YTB 2016b: 2), and by implication the questions of xenophobia and discrimination are seen as tendencies that exist in, but are essentially alien to, European societies. In promoting the rights of migrant populations in Europe, YTB and its officials encourage individuals and NGOs to take advantage of the international and domestic legal frameworks of their European host countries. In this context, the European Convention on Human Rights is seen as an important, if at times deficient, leverage for Turkey’s migrant populations. While the existence of xenophobia and discrimination are seen as significant problems, YTB practices have a transnational character that addresses these problems through Turkish migrants rather than directly dealing with the governments. YTB thinks that one of the effective ways of dealing with discrimination is making the members of diaspora politically more active and vigilant, giving them the instruments to struggle against discrimination at social, political, and legal levels. The mobilization of the Turkish migrant populations necessarily involves a problematization of the diasporic existence. On the one hand, YTB’s discourse emphasizes that Turkish people living abroad are economically and professionally accomplished: “Our citizens who have moved to various countries as workers in the 1960s have now acquired important positions in almost any field today” (YTB 2015a: 7). On the other hand, the diaspora is problematized in at least two dimensions. First, Turkish migrants living abroad are seen as lacking in “active citizenship.” In a speech made to the participants of YTB’s projects in 2015, its director, Kudret Bülbül, indicated that “they want” Turkish people abroad “to be active citizens in all aspects of life with their identities and culture” (Haberler 2015). Similarly, in a meeting held with migrant organizations, the then Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım was even more emphatic: “become a citizen of your host country and benefit from the rights provided. Be in political life and maintain active participation in all aspects of life” (YTB 2017a). The Turkish government encourages migrants living abroad to acquire their respective host country’s citizenship. However, this is seen only as

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the first step. Acquisition of formal citizenship is expected to be complemented with Turkish diaspora members’ active political participation. In this discourse, active citizenship is not about the construction of a cosmopolitan society on the basis of a common humanity. Active citizenship is seen as the mobilization of political opportunities in pluralist societies for the protection of an essential cultural identity and hence a link to the homeland. According to YTB, “a strong embrace of active citizenship and equal participation” is directly related to the maintenance of identities (YTB 2016a). Second, Turkish citizens are problematized in terms of their lack of awareness of their rights. According to YTB, the legal framework of European countries present opportunities to the migrants to address problems of discrimination, racism, and Islamophobia (YTB 2016c). The problem, however, is that Turkish citizens are not always knowledgeable about their own rights. With projects seeking to raise awareness about rights of migrant populations, YTB seeks to construct diasporic individuals as subject of rights. In this attempt, it also seeks to mobilize Turkish lawyers living abroad and create a culture of litigation of human rights abuses. The fight against Islamophobia in European countries is often cited as a prime example of these efforts. In order to facilitate rights advocacy practices of Turkish migrants abroad, this Turkish state institution has also been organizing human rights training. These training programs cover issues such as international protection of human rights and reporting discrimination and hate speech (YTB 2017b).

Concluding Remarks The literature on Turkish migrant populations indicates that there is a resurgence of official interest toward what came to be called the Turkish diaspora. This literature also indicates that there is a shift from economic approaches to social and cultural concerns in Turkey’s “diaspora strategy.” This chapter only partly agrees with this literature and seeks to attract attention to the transnational practices of diaspora building. Turkish diaspora strategy is not simply a response to an already existing and static reality of diasporic existence. Official discourse and practices are actively constructing a specific diasporic identity by problematizing migrants from different aspects. Another departure from the extant literature is the description of the current diaspora policy as purely normative. Transnational practices that seek to construct the diasporic identity are

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implicated in shaping the subjectivities of the migrant populations in specific ways. The members of Turkish diaspora are encouraged to participate in political life. State practices seek to reconstitute them as active citizens and as rights holders. This shaping of subjectivity necessarily involves the exercise of power on Turkey’s migrant populations abroad. Moreover, this attempt to construct a civil society is carried out by an authoritarian government (see Yabanci 2019 for the domestic dimension). The diaspora strategy has implications for the study of Turkey’s foreign policy as well. Turkey’s practices to raise awareness about the rights of migrant populations and to cultivate political participation emerge as a new dimension of foreign policy. Turkish expats living in Western European countries have been part and parcel of Turkey’s foreign policy for a long time. However, in recent years, increasing discrimination against migrants and worsening relations between Europe and Turkey seem to modify the usual matrix of calculations in Turkey’s foreign policy. As the recent tensions with Germany and the Netherlands indicate, Turkey is less reluctant to put the perceived interests of diaspora on the back burner. The relations between the host state and Turkish migrants have become a significant dynamic in Turkey’s relations with European countries and a more visible problem. Another departure from the conventional policymaking in foreign policy is the growing role of actors other than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in this transnational dimension of foreign policy. From the 1960s on, state institutions such as the Ministry of Labor and Presidency for Religious Affairs played a role in relations with migrant populations. However, the establishment of YTB as an institution that is directly related to migrant populations abroad has sometimes been seen as the reduction of the role of the MFA. This chapter has showed that the study of Turkey’s foreign policy cannot be complete without paying attention to the transnational dimension. Foreign policy is not only an interaction between governments but has direct and indirect transnational elements. Turkish foreign policy is attempting to influence governments abroad by mobilizing the Turkish diaspora living abroad. In addition, the diaspora itself has become a part of the foreign policy. The government is attempting to shape the diaspora by constructing it as a political actor. This can be clearly seen in terms of the knowledge, identity, and technology dimensions mentioned above. The types of knowledge that the government is seeking to produce about the migrant population have shifted. Now it is not only the economic and social needs of the diaspora but also its political skills as

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well as demographics of the population. As the activities of the YTB and official statements indicate, the government is interested in the strength of civil society organizations abroad. This is very much in line with the identities promoted by the Turkish government. Human rights training programs and electoral participation in both homeland and host country politics are encouraged. The ideal diasporic individuals themselves are transnational in that they are asked to integrate into the civil and political life at the host, and to also maintain links with the homeland. Awarenessraising programs, visits by Turkish officials, visits organized by the YTB for the youth are some of the technologies deployed in this transnational attempt to construct a Turkish diaspora.

Notes 1. The flotilla organized to deliver relief to Gaza was stormed by Israeli troops leading to the death of 10 people including 9 Turkish citizens. While the role of the Turkish government in the organization of this flotilla was not entirely transparent, it was seen that transnational NGOs like the IHH had a significant capacity to trigger a breakdown in diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey who have once been allies in the Middle East. See also Gonca O˘guz Gök’s chapter in this volume. 2. Armenian diaspora has been lobbying the international community for decades for the recognition of Ottoman Empire’s treatment of Armenians during the First World War as genocide. In Turkey’s popular political culture, diaspora thus has a negative connotation and lobbying is seen as a form of plotting to dismember the Turkish Republic.

References ˙ sçilikten Ulus-ötesi Abadan-Unat, Nermin. 2002. Bitmeyen Göç: Konuk I¸ ˙ Yurtta¸slı˘ga. Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları. Aksel, Damla B. 2014. Kins, Distant Workers, Diasporas: Constructing Turkey’s Transnational Members Abroad. Turkish Studies 15 (2): 195–219. Anderson, M.S. 2015. How to Study NGOs in Practice: A Relational Primer. In The NGO Challenge for International Relations Theory, ed. W.E. DeMars and D. Dijkzeul, 41–64. London: Routledge. Artan, Zeynep Selen. 2009. From Village Turks to Euro Turks: Turkish State’s Perceptions of Turkish Migrants in Europe. MA Thesis, Bo˘gaziçi University.

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Artuko˘glu, O˘guzhan Sökmen. 2005. Yurtdı¸sı I¸sçi Tasarruflarının Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası, Banka Sistemi ve Türkiye Ekonomisi Üzerine Etkileri. Ankara: Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası. Aydın, Ya¸sar. 2014. The New Turkish Diaspora Policy. SWP Research Paper 10, Berlin. Bigo, D., and R.B.J. Walker. 2007. International, Political, Sociology. International Political Sociology 1 (1): 1–5. Bilgili, Özge, and Siegel, Melissa. 2011. Understanding the Changing Role of the Turkish Diaspora. UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series 39. Bulur, Meltem. 2018. Türkiye-Hollanda Ili¸skileri Normalle¸siyor. Anadolu Ajansı. https://www.aa.com.tr/tr/gunun-basliklari/turkiye-hollandailiskileri-normallesiyor/1209383. Accessed 17 April 2019. Çitak, Zana. 2018. National Conceptions, Transnational Solidarities: Turkey, Islam and Europe. Global Networks 18 (3): 377–398. Cohen, Robin. 2008. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Dalaman, Can. 2018. 24 Haziran Seçimlerine Almanya’dan Be¸s Aday. Amerika’nin Sesi. https://www.amerikaninsesi.com/a/haziran-24secimlerine-almanya-dan-bes-aday/4404895.html. Accessed 29 June 2018. Davuto˘glu, Ahmet. 2011. Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanı Sn. Ahmet Davuto˘glu’nun IV. Büyükelçiler Konferansı Açı¸s Konu¸sması, 23 Aralık 2011. T.C. Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/disisleri-bakani-sn_-ahmet-davutoglu_ nun-iv_-buyukelciler-konferansi-acis-konusmasi_-23-aralik-2011.tr.mfa. Accessed 15 May 2017. Dean, M. 2010. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage. Deutsche Welle. 2017a. Almanya ile Türkiye arasındaki toplantı gerilimi büyüyor. http://www.dw.com/tr/almanya-ile-t%C3%BCrkiye-aras%C4% B1ndaki-toplant%C4%B1-gerilimi-b%C3%BCy%C3%BCyor/a-37807891. Accessed 10 April 2018. Deutsche Welle. 2017b. Diyanet Yetkilisi Hakkında Almanya’da Soru¸sturma. http://www.dw.com/tr/diyanet-yetkilisi-hakk%C4%B1nda-almanyada-soru% C5%9Fturma/a-38246087. Accessed 15 May 2017. Devlet Planlama Te¸skilatı. 1963. Kalkınma Planı (Birinci Be¸s Yıl) 1963–1967. Ankara: DPT. Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı. n.d. Yurtdı¸sında Ya¸sayan Türk Vatanda¸sları. Dı¸si¸sleri Bakanlı˘gı. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/yurtdisinda-yasayan-turkler_.tr.mfa. Accessed 10 April 2018. Ergenç, Ceren, and D. Göçer Akder (eds.). 2017. “Uluslararası” Kavramını Yeniden Dü¸sünmek 9–17. Ankara: Heretik. Erkiner, Engin. 2009. Onur Öymen’in Almanya Yılları. Bianet—Bagimsiz Iletisim Agi. http://www.bianet.org/bianet/dunya/118296-onur-oymen-inalmanya-yillari. Accessed 15 May 2017.

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Foucault, M. 1991. Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, eds. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller, 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gamlen, Alan. 2008. The Emigration State and the Modern Geopolitical Imagination. Political Geography 27 (8): 840–856. Güven, H. Sami. 1982. Kırsal Yapıda Bir De˘gi¸sim Aracı Olarak Köy Kalkınma Kooperatifleri. Amme Idaresi Dergisi 15 (2): 21–62. Haberler. 2015. Genç Liderler Sertifikalarını Aldı. https://www.haberler.com/ genc-liderler-sertifikalarini-aldi-7630440-haberi/?utm_source=facebook& utm_campaign=tavsiye_et&utm_medium=detay. Accessed 1 September 2018. HR-Net. n.d. The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey. HR-Net. http:// www.hri.org/docs/turkey/part_ii_3.html#article_62. Accessed 12 May 2017. Hudson, Valerie M. 2012. The History and Evolution of Foreign Policy Analysis. In Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases, eds. S. Smith, A. Hadfield, and T. Dunne, 13–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hürriyet. 2005. Baykal’dan ‘Türk Diasporası’ Önerisi. Hürriyet. http://www. hurriyet.com.tr/baykaldan-turk-diasporasi-onerisi-314757. Accessed 15 May 2017. ˙ Içduygu, Ahmet. 2006. International Migrants Remittances in Turkey. Istanbul: CARIM. ˙ Içduygu, Ahmet, and Damla B. Aksel. 2013. Turkish Migration Policies: A Critical Historical Retrospective. Perceptions 18 (3): 167–190. ˙ Içduygu, Ahmet, Sema Erder, and Ömer Faruk Gençkaya. 2014. Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Göç Politikaları, 1923–2023. Istanbul: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları. Josselin, Daphne, and William Wallace. 2001. Non-State Actors in World Politics: A Framework. In Non-state Actors in World Politics, eds. Daphne Josselin, and William Wallace, 1–20. New York: Palgrave. Kadirbeyoglu, Zeynep. 2009. Changing Conceptions of Citizenship in Turkey. In Citizenship Policies in the New Europe, eds. R. Bauböck, B. Perchinig, and W. Sievers, 419–38. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Kunz, Rahel. 2008. Mobilising Diasporas: A Governmentality Analysis of the Case of Mexico. Working Paper Series, Glocal Governance and Democracy, University of Lucerne: Institute of Political Science. Kunz, Rahel. 2012a. The Diffusion of Power and the International ‘Discovery’ of ‘Diasporas.’ In The Diffusion of Power in Global Governance, eds. S. Guzzini and I.B. Neumann, 203–228. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kunz, Rahel. 2012b. The Discovery of the Diaspora. International Political Sociology 6 (1): 103–107. Larner, Wendy. 2007. Expatriate Experts and Globalising Governmentalities: The New Zealand Diaspora Strategy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32 (3): 331–345.

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Lerner, Daniel. 1958. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: London: Free Press and Collier-Macmillan. Mencutek, Z., and B. Baser. 2018. Mobilizing Diasporas: Insights from Turkey’s Attempts to Reach Turkish Citizens Abroad. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 20 (1): 86–105. Mügge, Liza. 2012. Managing Transnationalism: Continuity and Change in Turkish State Policy. International Migration 50 (1): 20–38. OED. 2014. Diaspora, n. OED Online. Oktav, Özden Zeynep, Emel Parlar Dal, and Ali Murat Kur¸sun (eds.). 2018. Violent Non-State Actors and the Syrian Civil War: The ISIS and YPG Cases. Switzerland: Springer (Online). Okyay, Aslı Selin. 2015. Diaspora-Making as a State-Led Project: Turkey’s Expansive Diaspora Strategy and Its Implications for Emigrant and Kin Populations. PhD Thesis, European University Institute. Oran, B. (ed.). 2001. Türk Dı¸s Politikası. Istanbul: Iletisim. Østergaard-Nielsen, Eva. 2003. Transnational Politics: Turks and Kurds in Germany. New York: Routledge. Özkan, Yusuf. 2017. Bakan Kaya: Hollanda’da Acı Bir Gece Ya¸sadık, Kaba Bir Muamele Gördük. BBC Türkçe, March 12. Ragazzi, Francesco. 2009. Governing Diasporas. International Political Sociology 3 (4): 378–397. TBMM. 1982. Danı¸sma Meclis Tutanak Dergisi. 26 Kasım 1982. https://www. tbmm.gov.tr/tutanaklar/TUTANAK/DM__/d02/c012/dm__02012025. pdf. Accessed 26 June 2018. TBMM. 2003. Yurtdı¸sında Ya¸sayan Vatanda¸slarımızın Sorunlarının Ara¸stırılarak Alınması Gereken Önlemlerin Belirlenmesi Amacıyla Kurulan Meclis Ara¸stırma Komisyonu. https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2003/04/ 20030422.htm. Accessed 27 December 2019. TBMM. n.d. Yurtdı¸sı Türkler Ba¸skanlı˘gı Te¸skilat ve Görevleri Hakkında Kanun Tasarısı. http://www2.tbmm.gov.tr/d23/1/1-0805.pdf. Accessed 15 March 2017. Torpey, John. 1998. Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate ‘Means of Movement.’ Sociological Theory 16 (3): 239–259. Yabanci, Bilge. 2019. Turkey’s Tamed Civil Society: Containment and Appropriation under a Competitive Authoritarian Regime. Journal of Civil Society 15 (4): 285–306. ˙ Politikadan Yaldız, Fırat. 2018. Türk Kamu Yönetiminde ‘Soyda¸s’ Sorunsalı: Iç Dı¸s Politikaya. Amme Idaresi Dergisi 51 (4): 1–20. Yaldız, Fırat. 2019. A Critical Approach to the Term Turkish Diaspora: Is There ‘the’ Turkish Diaspora? Bilig 91: 53–80. Yalvaç, Faruk. 2014. Approaches to Turkish Foreign Policy: A Critical Realist Analysis. Turkish Studies 15 (1): 117–138.

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Ye¸silta¸s, Murat, and Tuncay Karda¸s (eds.). 2018. Non-State Armed Actors in the Middle East: Geopolitics, Ideology, and Strategy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. YTB. 2015a. Birlikte Yeni Türkiye. https://www.ytb.gov.tr/ytbadmin/assets/ uploads/files/ytb_ic_sayfalar-LR.pdf. Accessed 17 April 2019. YTB. 2015b. Türkiye’deki Seçimlere Katılım. Yurtdı¸sı Türkler ve Akraba Topluluklar Ba¸skanlı˘gı. https://www.ytb.gov.tr/yurtdisi-vatandaslar/turkiyedekisecimlere-katilim. Accessed 17 April 2019. YTB. 2016a. Aktif Yurtta¸slık ve E¸sit Katılım. https://www.ytb.gov.tr/aktif_ yurttas.php. Accessed 17 April 2019. YTB. 2016b. Aktif Yurtta¸slık ve E¸sit Katılım Programı Ba¸svuru Rehberi. (https://www.ytb.gov.tr/uploads/ytb/yv/2.pdf. Accessed 17 April 2019. YTB. 2016c. Herkes Için Adalet Programı Ba¸svuru Rehberi. http://www.ytb. gov.tr/uploads/ytb/yv/3.pdf. Accessed 17 April 2019. ˙ sare Toplantısı’ YTB. 2017a. Münih’te ‘Sivil Toplum Kurulu¸sları Isti¸ Gerçekle¸stirildi. YTB. https://www.ytb.gov.tr/fotograf-galerisi/munihtesivil-toplum-kuruluslari-istisare-toplantisi-gerceklestirildi-2. Accessed 1 August 2018. ˙ YTB. 2017b. YTB’den Insan Hakları E˘gitim Programı. https://www.ytb.gov.tr/ haberler/ytbden-insan-haklari-egitim-programi-2. Accessed 25 June 2018. YTB. n.d. Yurtdı¸sı Türkler. https://www.ytb.gov.tr/kurumsal.php. Accessed 16 May 2017.

CHAPTER 9

Jews from Turkey in Israel and Cultural Diplomacy (1996–2006) Ilker Hepkaner

Introduction Approximately 100,000 Jews of Turkey (Türkiyeli Yahudiler) currently live in Israel.1 Scholars have explored their histories of immigration to Israel and integration to the Israeli society, self-identification with Turkish and Israeli national identity discourses and practices, and their similarities and differences to Jews in Turkey.2 Little attention has been paid to how identity practices of Jews from Turkey in Israel contribute to Turkish–Israeli relations. Focusing on the period between 1996 and 2006, this chapter argues that Jews of Turkey in both countries created heritage places3 in the name of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s first president, and other Turkish politicians in order to reproduce Turkey’s cultural diplomacy messages, and as a sign of their ongoing identification with Turkish identity practices. Analyzing these heritage places sheds light on transnational operations of Turkish foreign policy, especially in the way Turkey’s cultural diplomacy messages are disseminated along state–public

I. Hepkaner (B) Independent Scholar, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_9

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(Turkey to the Israeli public) and public–public (Turkish immigrants in Israel to the Israeli public) axes. By critically engaging with the selective historiography embodied in these heritage sites, this chapter also contends that Jews from Turkey in Israel reproduce Turkish cultural diplomacy discourses only when these discourses overlap with Israel’s own cultural and foreign policies and nationalist discourses. Defining cultural diplomacy as a subset of public diplomacy, Simon Mark argues that the state deploys its “culture in support of its foreign policy goals or diplomacy” (Mark 2010: 64). David Clarke defines public diplomacy as “the utilization of channels of communication in order to influence foreign publics and, as a consequence, their governments” (Clarke 2016: 148). Cultural diplomacy is crucial in establishing a state’s foreign relations in countries where public opinion resists rapprochement because “[i]n presenting a national image abroad, cultural diplomacy can overcome audience suspicion of official messages and serve to provide substance to national reputation” (Mark 2009: 1). According to Cynthia P. Schnieder, cultural diplomacy “operates in the long term,” and “works best when it caters to the interests of a host country or region” (Schneider 2006: 196). Mariano Martín Zamorano argues that cultural diplomacy has been practiced and theorized from a state-centric perspective, which focuses on the systematic interventions of the state in its cultural institutions’ cultural diplomacy activities, up until the 1990s (Zamorano 2016: 166). Zamorano further argues that by the end of the Cold War, cultural diplomacy has been “characterized by the multiplication of its intervenient agents at different scales and levels and by the growing importance of supra-national organizations.”4 Mark Leonard suggests that diasporas are among the most effective actors in public diplomacy along with NGOs and political parties (Leonard 2002: 54). In this chapter, I aim to show that cultural diplomacy between Turkey and Israel from 1996 to 2006, not unlike its beginnings, welcomed and encouraged the participation of Jews of Turkey in both countries, while limiting their work within the two countries’ cultural policies, discourses, and practices. This condition also offers a window into transnational elements of Turkish foreign policy, since it documents how the Turkish government cooperated with the immigrant community in Israel as this community replicated a state-centric message despite being not among the members of traditional statecraft. This article further elaborates how the Turkish government interacts with, encourages, and supports the

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immigrant community in Israel despite the contentious history between the Turkish state and this immigrant community. As the definition of “cultural” has expanded, so have states’ tools in practices of cultural diplomacy (Mark 2010: 65). David Clarke argues that a cultural studies perspective needs to be introduced in the study of cultural diplomacy in order to assess the impact of cultural products on their target audiences (Clarke 2016: 158). By taking a critical approach, scholars have noted the utilization of cultural diplomacy for hegemonic purposes.5 Scholarly works on Turkish public and cultural diplomacy have focused on Turkish governments’ cultural diplomacy in the post-Soviet countries in the early 1990s, and the opening of cultural diplomacy institutions in the late 2000s.6 With this chapter, I aim to show how Turkish foreign policy and its cultural diplomacy endeavors were not limited to these areas and institutional initiatives. This study will show that when convenient, the Turkish government collaborated with immigrants from Turkey in its cultural diplomacy endeavors through nonconventional cultural products such as the public spaces discussed in this chapter. Other scholars documented how Jews of Turkey used conventional cultural products, such as films, museums, and publications, in their cooperation with the Turkish government in spreading the latter’s cultural diplomatic messages.7 Beyond expanding the field of culture in the analysis of diplomacy, this chapter also shows that the limits of Jews from Turkey in Israel in regard to cooperation are defined by the Israeli government. I consider the Demirel Grove (established in 1996), the DemirelWeizman Grove (in 1999), and trees planted in the name of Ahmet Necdet Sezer in the Atatürk Forest in Northern Israel (in 2006) as well as the Atatürk Park in Bat Yam (in 2006) as heritage places created with the help of immigrants from Turkey in Israel.8 These heritage places are used by the Turkish government as diplomatic sites in order to disseminate cultural diplomacy messages: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s stature an international figure for peace, Turkey being a symbol for amicable Muslim–Jewish relations, or Turkey as a promoter of peace in the Middle East. These are communicated to the Israeli public.9 Turkey is not unique in its position of having heritage places dedicated to its leaders in Israel. There are other heritage places, especially forests, created in other world leaders’ names in Israel. Carol Bardenstein states that forests were planted in the names of Lord Balfour and John F. Kennedy because of their support to the Zionist cause (Bardenstein 1998). Because some forests are built with the help of Jews outside Israel in different countries, some forests are

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also directly named after countries such as France, Italy, Canada, Great Britain, and Switzerland (KKL-JNF Official Web Site, 2018). Regardless, the Turkish example and the Atatürk Forest as well as additional heritage places named after the Turkish presidents stand out in the Israeli context because Atatürk, Demirel, or Sezer were neither directly involved nor ostensibly invested in the Zionist colonization of Palestine. However, these heritage places in Israel were still named after them. Because heritage places are material edifices in the Israeli natural and urban landscape, the building of heritage places edifies and perpetuates Turkey’s cultural diplomacy messages in Israel. Through these forests and parks, Turkey’s cultural diplomacy messages get a new lease of life, making them an important tool in keeping Turkish–Israeli relations crisis-resistant.

Road to the 1990s Alignment10 Turkish–Israeli relations are not crisis-free, but they are definitely crisisresistant. Despite the 2010 Flotilla Incident, in which the Israeli Defense Forces killed 9 activists from Turkey as they were trying to breach the Gaza naval blockade, and the diplomatic crisis that unfolded afterwards, the Turkish government never closed its diplomatic mission in Israel. The bilateral trade continued and even soared (Akgün et al. 2014), and the two countries “normalized” their relations in the summer of 2016.11 Such resiliency, defined by diplomatic tensions set against continuing economic, political, and sometimes military partnership, is exemplary of the general trend in Turkish–Israeli relations. In this light, Turkish–Israeli relations have been explored through two lenses: Firstly, scholars looked at these relations through Israel’s periphery doctrine, which has been a guiding principle for Israel in seeking alliance since the 1950s with Ethiopia, Iran, and Turkey in the larger Middle East region, against the Arab countries (O˘guzlu 2010). Secondly, scholars studied Turkey’s ambivalence toward Israel due to its policy of striking a balance between Arab states and Israel, and the varying Turkish public opinion on Israel that at times deemed this young state as perpetrator of violence toward Muslims in the region, and at times, due to lack of knowledge on this new state in the Middle East, deemed Israel as a Soviet offshoot because of its agricultural communes (Nachmani 1987: 7).12

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After the State of Israel was declared in 1948, Turkey became the first Muslim-majority country to officially recognize it in 1949. The two countries kicked off a strong alliance in the 1950s, which even resulted in a secret agreement of economic, political, and cultural cooperation in 1958 (Bengio 2004: 20). In the following decades, their relations have fluctuated, mostly at times of conflict between Israel and the Arab states. This tension reached its zenith when Turkey closed its embassy in Tel Aviv following Israel’s unilateral annexation of Jerusalem in 1980 (Bishku 2006: 185). Nevertheless, the two countries never ceased diplomatic relations in the second half of the twentieth century, and a considerable rapprochement started in the late 1980s, due to multiple reasons. In studying these relations, scholars have rarely paid attention to cultural diplomacy between the two countries. However, both countries took their cooperation in the cultural and academic fields very seriously, cooperating at times on multiple issues since the early days of the Israeli state. For example, the Israeli Trade Union Federation, the Histadrut, invited Turkish labor union leaders in the 1960s to Israel in order to promote a positive image of Israel.13 In return, Turkish labor unionists published travel pieces which promoted Israel as a model for Turkish modernization.14 In the early 1990s, when Turkey and Israel were starting their rapprochement, the newly crafted Turkish identity discourses, which emphasized the Ottoman and Turkish tolerance to non-Muslims through the 1992 Quincentennial Celebrations of the Ottoman Welcome to Sephardi Jews (the Celebrations hereafter), played an important role in emphasizing the two countries’ budding alliance.15 In such operations of cultural diplomacy, the Atatürk Forest in Northern Israel, founded in 1953, was an important stage and tool for cultural diplomacy. Historian Rifat N. Bali explored the role of Jews of Turkey in the creation of the Atatürk Forest by the Israeli state in the early 1950s, and stated that the Israeli Foreign Ministry planted the Forest as a token of peace between the two countries. Archival evidence shows that in addition to Foreign Ministry’s attempts, the Forest was planted at the intersection of two operations. The first was the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) large-scale Zionist land transformation campaign in Palestine, in progress since the early twentieth century: changing private Arab land into Israeli public land through afforestation.16 The Atatürk Forest partially covers three abandoned Palestinian villages, ‘Ayn Ghazal, Jaba, and al-Sawamir (Bronstein Aparicio). The second was JNF’s efforts in recruiting Jews of

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Turkey as financial and cultural supporters, laborers, and ideological subjects/creators of modern Israel in the 1940s and 1950s.17 In this context, it is important to keep in mind that the Atatürk Forest in Northern Israel, used as a diplomatic tool and stage, is also a part of Israel’s larger land transformation campaign, and that cultural diplomacy discourses reproduced here, such as Atatürk being an internationally recognized leader of peace (for Turkey and Jews of Turkey in Israel), and Israel stating an appreciation for Turkish history as a token of peaceful bilateral relations (for the Israeli state) are only realized within the host state’s (Israel) domestic cultural policies. As part of the Celebrations, Jews of Turkey in Israel donated a large sum to JNF in order to expand the Atatürk Forest. In this light, it is no surprise that this forest claimed a new place in the bilateral relations in the 1990s Alignment.

The 1990s Alignment Ofra Bengio argues that the Turkish–Israeli rapprochement in the 1990s was the result of the new order in the Middle East, which was defined by the end of the Cold War that had reduced Russia’s impact on the region, and by the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, which had intensified American leadership in the global and regional contexts, eroding Arab countries’ political and economical importance for Turkey. Süha Bolükba¸sı ties Turkey’s abandonment of its former “balanced approach” in favor of Israel to geopolitical factors, which brought Turkey closer to Israel with Iraq’s instability, and Syria’s support to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) (Bolukbasi 1999). M. Hakan Yavuz suggests that in addition to this international conjuncture, Turkish identity politics played an important role in the strengthening of ties with Israel (Yavuz 1997). The 1990s were to be dominated by the domestic rift between Kemalists and Islamists. The Kemalists, consisting of the military and bureaucratic elite, were pushing for an Israeli alliance in order to limit the rising power of the Islamists, consisting of the emerging local and later on national political actors from the Milli Görü¸s (Erbakan’s “National Outlook”) tradition, historically against closer relations with Israel. The power imbalance between the military elite and elected officials even forced Erbakan, the leader of the political Islamist Welfare Party as well as the then Prime Minister, to sign a military agreement with Israel in 1996, before his government was overthrown by the military through a “soft coup” in 1997.

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The two states’ military and economic cooperation continued into the 2000s, even under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP hereafter), which took over power in 2002 as an offshoot of the Milli Görü¸s political Islamist movement. The conflict between the military and bureaucratic elite and the elected government continued until an AKP candidate was elected as president in 2007, completely dismantling the military’s influence in the early 2010s. Even so, AKP governments’ relations with Israel were not severely hurt until 2008, when the Gaza War started, and Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, Prime Minister at the time, took an openly anti-Israeli stance. Although Erdo˘gan paid a visit to Israel in 2005, the 2006 visit of Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the then President who was staunchly opposed to the AKP government, was the last amicable diplomatic visit between two countries’ officials until the 2016 start of their normalization period. Rifat N. Bali interjects into such macro-analyses of Turkish–Israeli relations the willingness of Jewish communities in Turkey and Israel to bring Turkey and Israel closer for their own communal relations with the Muslim-majority society. According to Bali, the bourgeois leadership of Jewish Community of Turkey sought closer relations with the Turkish state despite the latter’s Turkification policies, which had, especially in the first decades of the Republic, dispossessed the Jews along with other religious minorities in Turkey. Bali documents the involvement of Jews of Turkey in Turkey’s foreign policy and Turkish–Israeli relations in the 1970s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) started assassinating Turkish diplomats and bombing Turkish diplomatic and state airlines’ posts abroad in order to corner the Turkish government into recognizing the Armenian Genocide. ASALA’s activities as well as human rights advocates’ campaigns have led the way to a public relations and cultural diplomacy disaster for Turkey, which had systematically denied the existence of, and responsibility for, genocide. The Turkish government sought the help of Jewish lobby groups in the American capital and elsewhere, thus casting a new role for the leaders of Jewish community in Turkey and Israel in Turkey’s cultural diplomacy (Bali 2009). The recognition of the Armenian Genocide, its place in national curriculum, as well as its representation in cultural products have been important topics in domestic and international politics of Israel. Although Israel has avoided recognizing the Armenian Genocide, there has been a lively

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domestic debate on the moral obligation for its recognition, also concerning the reasons why the Israeli government has been deliberately keeping its distance from this political step.18 In this context, the immigrant community in Israel helped the Turkish government perpetuate its denial of the Armenian Genocide multiple times in Israel and elsewhere.19 Since Jews from Turkey in Israel have such a great role in Turkey’s cultural diplomacy in Israel, it is important to understand the history of this immigrant community from Turkey in Israel, its transnational connections with other groups of Jews of Turkey elsewhere, and its approach and contributions to Turkish foreign policy.

Jews from Turkey in Israel Jews of Turkey would migrate to Israel since the foundation of the state in three major waves. Between 1948 and 1951, approximately 30,000 Jews emigrated from Turkey to Israel due to Turkish government’s intense Turkification policies, and the Jewish Agency’s relentless work in the country.20 The post-1967 immigration, which had an international dimension due to Israel’s victory over Arab countries in 1967, kicked off another wave out of Turkey, also exacerbated at times of domestic unrest in Turkey (Weiker 1988). The 2010s provide a third wave of emigration from Turkey due to AKP’s oppressive rule over not only Jews but all religious and ethnic minorities in Turkey (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2017).21 Immigrants from Turkey in Israel have lived in various cities according to their migration patterns. Those who came in the first wave were from lower socioeconomic classes of the Jewish community in Turkey and settled in small cities such as Yehud or in moshavim (agricultural settlements). The second wave, which picked up in the post-1967 era and consisted of more upper-class members of the Jewish community in Turkey, mostly settled in Bat Yam, a city to the south of Tel Aviv. My informants told me that the latest wave of immigrants did not necessarily follow a settlement pattern. However, they have been involved in the immigrant organizations’ events, which mostly take place in cities with high Turkish immigrant population such as Bat Yam, Herzilya, and Holon, regardless of where they live in the greater Tel Aviv area.22 Among multiple immigrant organizations, the “Hitahdut Yotsei Turkiyah,” the Union of Immigrants from Turkey (Hitahdut hereafter), is the most active, and is the one most closely tied with Turkish

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diplomats in Israel. Hitahdut is an immigrant association established in 1960 as a continuation of “Irgun Ole Turkiyah,” the Organization of Immigrants from Turkey founded in 1937.23 It is not the only immigrant organization founded by Jews from Turkey in Israel. However, it has the longest history among them.24 Besides its communal activities such as helping new immigrants, providing scholarship to community’s students, publishing a newsletter, organizing cultural events, and providing a professional network, Hitahdut has been active in cultural diplomacy and heritage placemaking in Israel since the 1950s. For example, its predecessor Irgun Ole Turkiyah was among the leading actors in the plantation of the Atatürk Forest in 1953 in Northern Israel, which was a JNF project. Rifat N. Bali has shown that Hitahdut was especially instrumental in intervening in a number of issues at the state level to save Turkey’s image in European and Israeli public opinion. For example, in addition to their contribution to the Celebrations, Hitahdut has supported exhibitions such as “Synagogues of Turkey” or “Hejaz Railways” in Israeli cultural institutions that were also supported by the Turkish diplomatic mission in Israel.25 In addition to this, Hitahdut is active in charity organizations on a transnational scale. For example, following the 1999 earthquakes in Northwestern Turkey, it collected donations from immigrants in Israel, and built two elementary schools in the areas impacted by the earthquake. Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs even awarded them an “Honor Medal” (“Onur Madalyası”) for their philanthropy in the aftermath of the earthquake. This medal adorned Hitahdut’s walls in 2016. It is in this context that this association took part in the welcoming of Demirel and Sezer to Israel.

“Baba (Father) is in Israel”: Demirel’s 1996 Visit When Süleyman Demirel became the first Turkish President to ever visit Israel in 1996, Turkish–Israeli relations were at their heyday. Demirel’s fifth and last term as Prime Minister between 1991 and 1993 and his presidency between 1993 and 2000 spanned across the 1990s alignment between Turkey and Israel, especially in domains of trade and military partnership. Demirel received Ezer Weizman, the first President of Israel to officially visit Turkey, in Ankara in 1994. Before Weizman, David BenGurion had made a secret visit to Ankara in 1958, with Chaim Herzog coming to Istanbul in 1992 for an unofficial visit during the Celebrations (Bali 2009: 365). In 1996, Demirel embarked on a “Peace Tour” during which he visited Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Egypt.

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Demirel’s 1996 visit was not just any visit to Israel, it was a multipurpose diplomatic event. This tour was crucial for Turkish foreign policy toward Israel because of military and economic partnership agreements, which Demirel signed in Israel, had meanings and impact exceeding Turkish–Israeli relations in the region. Commentators interpreted the economic partnership agreement, which would increase Turkey–Israel trade significantly, as Turkey’s new foreign policy move courting new ˙ economic partners besides European countries (“Türkiye Batı’ya Israil Kartını Açıyor”, 1996). The military agreement was considered the initial response to terrorism that both Turkey and Israel were suffering from, a common policy position that was to be repeated to an international audience in the Terror Summit that Demirel attended in Egypt right after his visit to Israel.26 Turkish–Israeli cooperation was also considered as a new military alliance serving American interests in the region (Dogan 1996). Demirel’s “Peace Tour” included stops in Jordan and the Palestinian Territories, where he met with Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO. These visits were also interpreted as Turkey’s support to the peace process in the region, which had received international recognition after the Oslo Accords in 1993 (“Demirel Arabulucu”, 1996). The state of Israel and the Jews from Turkey living in the country memorialized this important event in the history of bilateral relations through two heritage places, the Demirel Grove in the Atatürk Forest and the Atatürk Park in Bat Yam. The JNF named a grove after Süleyman Demirel, and erected a plaque at the entrance of the Atatürk Forest, along with other plaques indicating the Forest’s name and various donations made since the foundation of the Forest in 1953. The plaque at the Süleyman Demirel Grove memorializes his 1996 visit, but not in its entirety. The information that the JNF chose to feature on the plaque, and the languages used on it, offer clues about the intended audience of the plaque (and hence the memorialization). The Turkish–Hebrew plaque is headed by JNF’s emblem, flanked by its name in Hebrew and its transliteration in Latin alphabet. The plaque primarily defines its audience as Hebrew and Turkish speakers (Fig. 9.1). The Hebrew text on the plaque is slightly different from the Turkish text. The Hebrew text reads: The Demirel Grove Was Dedicated in the Atatürk Forest During the Official Visit of the President of Turkey

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Fig. 9.1 The Plaque at the Süleyman Demirel Grove (Photograph by the author)

Süleyman Demirel and his wife 22 Adar 5756

The Turkish text gives slightly more information: Süleyman Demirel Grove Was Founded at the Atatürk Forest

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In the memory of the Official Visit to Israel of RT [Republic of Turkey] President Süleyman Demirel And his wife Nazmiye Demirel March 13, 1996.

By using Turkish along with Hebrew, JNF’s memorialization of the first Turkish presidential visit to Israel gives visibility to those who speak Turkish among the visitors, who are expectedly immigrants from Turkey. From a diplomatic history point of view, its memorialization is still restrained by Israel putting itself and Turkey at the center of Turkish president’s multipurpose diplomatic trip. The Israeli state writes Demirel’s visit into the history inscribed on the actual site of the Atatürk Forest as an “official visit,” which is not completely wrong but is an incomplete description. Demirel was in Israel on a “peace tour” in which he also visited the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, and Egypt. However, his visit as the president of Turkey, symbolically the pinnacle of Turkey–Israel relations, became a part of Atatürk Forest’s visual economy. In this case, the Forest is both a site where good relations between countries are manifested in diplomatic ceremonies, and a physical archive of positive instances in bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel. I could not locate any direct connection between the Demirel Grove inaugurated in 1996 and the Jews of Turkey. However, Jews of Turkey have been involved in JNF’s multiple operations within the Atatürk Forest, which included but are not limited to the forest’s creation and its inauguration in 1953,27 diplomatic visits of Turkish bureaucrats in the 1960s and 1970s,28 the creation of the 1999 Demirel-Weizman Grove (Barokas 1999), and the creation of the Yoel Ülçer Grove in 2003, a grove dedicated to a Jewish citizen of Turkey fallen victim at the 2003 Synagogue Bombings in Istanbul, commemorated also with annual ceremonies (Bülten, July 2004). Close relations between Jews of Turkey in Israel and the JNF suggest that the inauguration of Demirel Grove in 1996 also serves to social and cultural interests of Jews of Turkey in Israel, contributing to their visibility in the Israeli society through creating sites with JNF’s assistance. After visiting the Atatürk Forest in 1996, Demirel opened a park named after Atatürk in Bat Yam, where Jews of Turkey live in large numbers. “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Adına Manzara Anıt Parkı (Monumental

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Landscape Park dedicated to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; Atatürk Park hereafter)” is located in Bat Yam, at the intersection of Rothschild Street and David Ben Gurion Avenue, right at the boardwalk of Bat Yam Beach. The Atatürk Park is not at a central location for transportation and commerce in Bat Yam, but at one of the intersections where residents of this city pass by on their way to or back from the beach. The linguistic discrepancy of JNF’s memorialization in the Atatürk Forest repeats itself in this instance. In Hebrew, this park is called “Gan Atatürk” (The Atatürk Garden/Public Park). This is the only Hebrew script on the plaque. The rest of this public plaque is in Turkish, describing who Atatürk is and the fact that Süleyman Demirel inaugurated the park in 1996. During my fieldwork in Israel in 2016, I was told by many of my informants that the park in Bat Yam was made possible thanks to the active role of Jews from Turkey in the local politics of the city (Hepkaner 2016). In this sense, the Atatürk Park follows the pattern of the Atatürk Forest, which was realized by the initiatives of Jews from Turkey in Israel, but only under the control of a state organization in Israel. Other than giving visibility to Jews of Turkey in Bat Yam, the park was one of the stages where closer Turkish–Israeli relations were performed during Demirel’s visit. Demirel was welcomed by the inhabitants of Bat Yam with slogans such as “Ho¸s geldin Baba” which translates to “Welcome Father” (this was Demirel’s moniker in Turkish politics). Journalists noted that Demirel responded to this enthusiastic welcome with “I am from Bat Yam, too” (“Ben de Bat Yamlıyım”) (Güven 1996a, b). This episode became a very central moment for Demirel’s image among Jews from Turkey in Israel. When he passed away, Hitahdut’s newsletter Bülten informed its readers on this, mentioning the event in order to show how much he was loved among Jews from Turkey in Israel (Bülten, July 2015). During my interviews in 2016, my informants also recalled this episode as a sign of continued devotion to Turkey among immigrants from Turkey in Israel.29 Demirel’s local reputation in Israel grew beyond this utterance at the inauguration of the Atatürk Park. In fact, when he returned to Israel in 1999, another grove was opened in his name at the Atatürk Forest. This time this grove was dedicated to him and his Israeli counterpart Ezer Weizman, with Demirel personally donating trees to the JNF. On this trip, emphasizing Jews of Turkey’s importance, Demirel even stated that they “functioned as the bridge between two countries” (Barokas 1999).

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These series of diplomatic performances around the groves in the Atatürk Forest and the Atatürk Park implicate a number of understudied issues regarding Turkish–Israeli relations. Military, economic, and political meanings of Demirel’s visit were intensified by cultural diplomacy performances, as symbolic gestures of ameliorating relations were performed by state and non-state actors of diplomacy. Jews of Turkey in Israel may not have been officially included in the military, economic, and political aspects, but they were among the main actors who perpetuated and solidified closer relations between the two countries. Their participation was duly noted by Turkish journalists as proof of Turkish government’s credibility abroad, and helped those journalists paint a human landscape where closer relations were in the making. In 1999, during his speech at the Knesset, Demirel picked the 500 year-long history of Muslim–Jewish relations as one of his points to emphasize the two countries’ close relations (Demirel 1996). The theme of Muslim–Jewish relations also ran through Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s visit in 2006 and the cultural diplomacy performances attended by Jews of Turkey in Israel during that visit.

Ahmet Necdet Sezer and the Atatürk Forest When Ahmet Necdet Sezer became the second Turkish President to visit Israel in 2006, he planted a tree in the Yad Vashem Campus, a compound that has Israel’s flagship Holocaust Museum, Academy, and multiple monuments and installations on the history of the Holocaust. The tree planted by Sezer symbolized 1000 trees donated by Hitahdut in the names of Ahmet Necdet Sezer and his wife Semra Sezer to JNF (Bülten, August 2006). Following in the tradition of memorialization set by Demirel’s visits, Jews of Turkey donated trees to JNF as a diplomatic gesture of close relations. Two copies of the JNF certificate were issued, one presented to Sezer during his visit, and another held by Hitahdut. When I visited Hitahdut’s community center in Bat Yam in 2014 and 2016, I observed that the JNF certificate issued in 2006 adorned the walls of the center, along with the “Onur Madalyası” (The Honor Medal) presented to Hitahdut by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their rehabilitation efforts in the aftermath of the 1999 earthquake in the Marmara Region. Hitahdut’s contributions to Turkish society and to JNF in memorializing good relations between Turkey and Israel were juxtaposed on the walls of the center, which is open every day for daily membership activities such as meetings and Turkish, Hebrew, and Judeo-Spanish

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classes. It hosts multiple cultural events at night throughout the year. Most of these events are attended by Turkish diplomatic officials, with these officials passing by these two central documents every time they visit the center. The JNF certificate visually depicts its role in land transformation through landscape creation, and Jews of Turkey’s contribution to this process. However, as such, the certificate memorializes Turkey and Israel’s closer relations in the early 2000s. Regardless, the visual economy of the certificate underlines some limitations that the Jews of Turkey are subject to in celebrating the close relations between the two countries. The languages in the certificate reflect the ongoing Ashkenazi hegemony in the cultural policies of the Israeli state.30 The certificate is framed by the phrase “The source of it all” and its (mis)translations in Portuguese, Spanish, German, French, Hebrew (thrice), Italian, and Russian. Arabic, Persian, Spanish, Greek, Kurdish, among other languages spoken by Jews who lived in the Middle East before arriving in Israel, are not used—they are disqualified from narrating “the source of it all.” The Turkish language is represented by the text dedicating the certificate to President Sezer, and Hebrew is the second Middle Eastern language on the certificate (Fig. 9.2). One discrepancy between the Hebrew and Turkish texts indicates that the primary audience of the certificate is not Turkish speaking Jews, although the certificate symbolizes their contribution to JNF. The city of Jerusalem is translated in Turkish as “Kudüs”—the Turkish name of the city based on the transliteration of its Arabic name al Quds. Jews of Turkey usually refer to the city as “Yeru¸salaym,” the city’s Hebrew name, while speaking in Turkish. “Kudüs” rarely appears in the publications of Jews from Turkey in Israel. Although I was never corrected when I used “Kudüs” during my interviews, nobody continued our conversation with using the name of “Kudüs,” and they reverted instead to “Yeru¸salaym” (Fieldnotes). Using Kudüs instead of “Yeru¸salaym” clearly indicates a non-Jewish audience of Turkish speakers for the certificate, since the city is known as “Kudüs” by Turkish speakers, and “Yeru¸salaym” is never used outside of Jewish religious and cultural contexts in Turkey. On this certificate, JNF’s audience is primarily Turkey’s political elite, who receive the certificate during their visit in Israel, and secondarily the Turkish public, which is presented a visual and textual artifact disseminating information on JNF’s activities. This certificate reverses the cultural diplomacy trend I

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Fig. 9.2 JNF certificate to Ahmet Necdet Sezer (Photograph by the author)

focused on in this chapter, and allows the Israeli cultural diplomacy messages find their audiences in Turkey. The certificate nevertheless reproduces Zionist land transformation discourses in Israel/Palestine.31 It bears the watercolor painting of the life of a tree that starts with JNF’s famous Blue Box, sent to donors in the Jewish diasporas as a household item to represent their donation to JNF’s cause and their connection to the Israeli homeland. The tree first

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grows as a seedling in a yellow/brown soil. The soil gets more crimson as the seedling turns into a sapling. Once the seedling is fully grown, it is depicted as a pine tree with pinecones that hovers above fertile land with water. The “blooming the desert” myth is visually represented as a consequential evolution, realized by donations to JNF. 53 years after the inauguration of the Atatürk Forest, JNF was still “blooming the desert” in the Atatürk Forest through donations of Jewish immigrants from Turkey in honor of Turkish politicians, Ahmet Necdet Sezer in this case. The physical documentation of this blooming is visually depicted on the certificate as a token of honor. This certificate adorns the walls of Hitahdut’s Community Center in Bat Yam. It shows how JNF made Sezer’s visit a part of the JNF-led land transformation, via the specific case of the Atatürk Forest, with the help of Jews from Turkey in Israel. Closer Turkish–Israeli relations are celebrated by the planting of trees in this Forest, which has been used by JNF in transforming Arabowned private land into Israeli public land, since the 1950s. This shows how the participation of Jews from Turkey in Israel in cultural diplomacy between Turkey and Israel is defined through Israel’s own land policies, with the tool of cultural diplomacy embedded within larger land practices of the Israeli state. Other diplomatic performances attest to the definition of Turkish– Israeli relations based on a common heritage, a theme that runs through Jews of Turkey’s participation in cultural diplomacy between the two countries. During Sezer’s visit, the Knesset held a special session in Sezer’s honor. The speaker of the Knesset, Dalia Itzik made welcoming remarks, telling Sezer to “feel at home.” In order to show Sezer that these were not “empty words,” Itzik told him that Turkish heritage “was ingrained in the landscape” of Israel through Ottomans’ contributions to ancient Jewish heritage in this geography. She added that Israelis learnt a lot from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish nation’s welcoming of Jews, not only since 1492 but also before the World War II, when the Turkish government gave positions to Jewish émigré scholars escaping from Nazi prosecution. Such benevolences of the Turkish government signaled a “common nature” between two countries, an attestation that both Simon Peres, Deputy Prime Minister at the time, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the then head of the opposition, repeated in their respective speeches during the special session. Itzik made the following remarks about the Forest in particular:

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The image of Atatürk, the father of the new Turkey, was an example to us. Atatürk was able to build a modern state on the ruins of a collapsed empire and became a legend in his own lifetime. In the early years a Forest was planted at the foot of the Carmel Forest in his memory. We walked the path. At the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, we have built a modern state and its legs rely on our ancient heritage. (The Minutes of the 20th Session of the 17th Knesset, Thursday, 7 June 2006)

According to Itzik, the Atatürk Forest was not only a token of peace between two countries, but also marked a commonality in the way both young nation-states of the twentieth century coined their nations and recreated their heritages. The forest is a symbol of the common natures of the two states that erased the history and memory of the land’s inhabitants. It also provides a proxy for better and stronger connections between Turkey and Israel. In this case, the expansion of the forest through donations coming from Hitahdut shows one of multiple ways in which Jews of Turkey have contributed to closer relations between Turkey and Israel, having materialized these in a more enduring way than any economic or military partnership. In this sense, these heritage places in Israel assume a double role in addition to their primary roles of changing the land: increasing the visibility of Jews from Turkey in Israel, and serving the Israeli state as a discursive tool in coining Turkish–Israeli relations. The Turkish diplomatic mission’s relations with Hitahdut and Jews from Turkey in Israel are not limited to the production and usage of heritage places. However, cultural diplomacy dominates these relations, whether in performing good relations or organizing cultural events that emphasize the newly restored status in Turkish–Israeli relations. During my fieldwork in spring 2016, I observed many occasions of Turkish diplomatic mission employees supporting Hitahdut’s activities, as they supplied them with Turkish language teaching materials or attended their cultural events. When the normalization process gained traction in 2016, Hitahdut hosted an event at which Turkish and Israeli diplomats and scholars met with Hitahdut members, celebrating the renewed relations between the two countries (Bülten, January 2017). Upon the inauguration of the Turkish Cultural Center in Jaffa in 2017, the then Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Nabi Avcı visited Israel, and Zali Del Toledo, the then President of Hitahdut organized a ceremony welcoming the minister that was also attended by the then Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin (Salom). ¸ As these recent examples show, Turkish foreign policy in Israel,

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and especially its emphasis on good relations between the two countries, still hinges on cultural events at which Jews from Turkey in Israel repeat their active and restorative roles.

Conclusion The heritage places and practices analyzed in this chapter shed light on the role that Jews of Turkey played in cultural diplomacy in the context of Turkish–Israeli relations between 1996 and 2006. In the span of ten years, Turkish presidents officially visited Israel three times, and immigrants from Turkey created or helped to create heritage places in order to edify peace messages between Turkey and Israel that the governments reproduced in these official visits. Such peace messages have been important components of Jews of Turkey’s communal identification practices and negotiation with the larger societies of Turkey and Israel. In addition to identification processes of this community, these heritage places and practices show how Turkey’s cultural diplomacy messages are articulated by diasporic communities from Turkey. As we see in the example of the Atatürk Park, these heritage places, while attesting to Turkish cultural diplomacy messages such as Atatürk’s international stature, contribute to this community’s visibility in the Israeli society— a break from Walter Weiker’s argument of deeming Turkish immigrants as “unseen Israelis” (Weiker 1988: 1). Using their devotion to Atatürk, Jewish immigrants from Turkey are carving out their own spots in Israeli public spaces by edifying their heritage. This process continues as heritage places dedicated to Turkish and Ottoman pasts have multiplied in the last ten years. The Atatürk Bust in Yehud (2007), the Atatürk Plaza in Be’er Sheva (2008), Ottoman soldier monuments in Be’er Sheva and Ramla are just a few examples that have been constructed and/or actively used by the Turkish diplomatic mission, and that have been supported by Jews from Turkey in Israel in this period. As we see in the plantation of groves in the Atatürk Forest, when Jews of Turkey participate in Turkish cultural diplomacy in Israel they materialize in a publicly visible way Turkey’s cultural diplomacy messages, such as harmonious relations between Turkey and Israel within the trajectory of centuries-long Muslim–Jewish relations. This chapter showed that these cultural diplomacy messages are only materialized within the networks and organization mechanisms that the immigrants from Turkey are already working in, i.e., the JNF–Hitahdut relationship spanning the last

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six decades. However, using these networks and organization mechanisms means that Turkish cultural diplomacy is materialized through the Israeli state’s land policies. In this light, Turkey’s cultural diplomacy aligns with Israel’s domestic policies, revealing a sui generis field of cooperation for “good relations” between Turkey and Israel. This context renders Turkish–Israeli relations not only crisis-resistant but also deeply connected at multiple levels of foreign and domestic policies of both states. In sum, the relationship between Jews of Turkey and the Turkish government in the field of cultural diplomacy suggests that crisis-resistant Turkish–Israeli relations are not only due to both countries’ economic, military, and political interests, especially in the heydays of this relationship. There was (and still is) a very viable collaboration in the cultural realm, which brings together state and the civil society in a transnational manner. This collaboration has involved Jews of Turkey in the creation of heritage places that have then become vital to this community’s identification practices. Hence, Jews of Turkey find it in their interest to maintain these heritage places, which materialize the crisis-resistant Turkish–Israeli relations. This process of maintenance and materialization of heritage in the service of diplomacy opens up new areas of questions for transnational aspects of Turkish foreign policy. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Avinash Rajagopal for his feedback in various stages of writing this chapter, and Ezel Sahinkaya ¸ for her assistance in the research stage. Research for this chapter was conducted with the support of Provost’s Global Research Initiatives at New York University.

Notes 1. There is a debate on the terminology regarding how to describe Türkiyeli Yahudiler (Jews of Turkey), a community that consists of three groups due to the course of history in the post-Ottoman era: Jews who live in Turkey, Jews who emigrated to Israel and their next generations, and Jews who were born in Turkey but live in the Americas or Europe. These three groups have remained in connection with each other through familial, political, civic, cultural, and economic ties. I prefer “Türkiyeli Yahudiler / Jews of Turkey” as an accurate category for this tripartite community, especially while investigating their transnational identity discourses and practices. I use the term “Jews of Turkey” also in order to refrain from imposing onto Jews the ethno-religious category of the “Turk/Turkish” that has been reserved for those who are ethnically Turkish and religiously

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Sunni in Turkey. Most Jews in Turkey and Israel use the terms “Türkiyeli Yahudiler / Jews of Turkey” and “Türk Yahudiler/ Turkish Jews” interchangeably in their publications and daily lives. In this chapter, I will refer to them as “the Jewish community in Turkey,” while keeping in mind the diverse dynamics of this community. Most of the Hebrew documents I use in this chapter refer to Jews of Turkey, the transnational community and/or the immigrants from Turkey in Israel, as “Yahudey MeTurkiya” which literally translates into “Jews from Turkey.” For the immigrant community in Israel, which is the focus of this chapter, I will use “Jews from Turkey in Israel.” When I refer to the umbrella organization of “Turkiye Musevi Cemaati,” which orchestrates the activities of multiple associations and functions as the representative of Jews in Turkey especially toward state authorities, I use the term “The Jewish Community of Turkey.” The number of 100,000 was repeatedly mentioned in my fieldwork by my informants, but political scientist Sule Tokta¸s also notes this number in her article (Tokta¸s 2006: 509). 2. In addition to Tokta¸s’s work, there have been multiple studies on Jews of Turkey in Israel. Amy Mills (2010) explored varying memory practices between the Jewish community members in Turkey and Jews from Turkey in Israel, arguing that those in Israel were more critical toward the Turkish political context. For a historical documentation of their immigration in the first years of the Israeli state, please see Bali (2003). Sociologist Walter Weiker studied the immigration patterns and integration stories of Jews from Turkey in Israel, and argued that immigrants from Turkey in Israel reproduce their political position of “unseenness,” a political position they were pushed by the Turkification policies in Turkey (Weiker 1988: 1). 3. According to heritage scholar Rodney Harrison, “[h]eritage refers to a set of attitudes to, and relationships with, the past[.] These relationships are characterized by a reverence and attachment to select objects, places and practices that are thought to connect with or exemplify the past in some way” (Harrison 2013: 14). Harrison divides the concept of “heritage” into heritage objects, places, and practices. Heritage places are physical spaces that self-identifiers attach a meaning to and conserve/restore/restitute while relating to the past. Heritage practices are the human–human and/or human–object relations emerging between actors of heritage. In this chapter, I consider the Atatürk Forest, which houses the Süleyman Demirel Grove, the Demirel-Weizman Grove, and the 1000 trees planted in the name of Ahmet Necdet and Semra Sezer, and the Atatürk Landscape Monument Park in Bat Yam as heritage places, and ceremonies of tree plantation and inauguration organized at these sites by the state of Israel and Jews of Turkey as heritage practices. This chapter does not deal with heritage objects.

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4. Zamorano, 169. Other scholars have also looked into how cultural diplomacy has been guided by state-centric discourses but applied by non-state actors in a transnational fashion. For example, Liping Bu has shown how the American cultural diplomacy state apparatus worked in tandem with universities, professional organizations, and philanthropic foundations in disseminating the American cultural diplomacy discourses and policies (Bu 1999). David Carter argues that scholars, who are critical toward the government, can still work with the government in shaping cultural diplomacy. With this he shows how cooperation between governmental and non-governmental actors unfolds from a scholar’s perspective, with the increasing roles of non-state actors in cultural diplomacy (Carter 2015). 5. For critical perspectives on the concept of cultural diplomacy, see Topic and Rodin (2012). 6. Çelenk (2015), and Kaya and Tecmen (2011). 7. In her ethnographic work, Marcy Brink-Danan argues that the Jewish Community of Turkey, to the dismay of the Jewish community members living in Turkey, collaborated with the Turkish government in staging and performing cosmopolitanism through the Quincentennial Celebrations of the Ottoman Welcome of Jews from Spain in 1992, and helped the government push further its baseless claims to be the protectors of religious minorities in the country despite its disastrous record of human rights and oppression of the minorities (Brink-Danan 2011). 8. In 2005, when Erdo˘gan visited Israel as Prime Minister, his visit was not memorialized, unlike the official visits of Turkish Presidents Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Süleyman Demirel. 9. Although I am using contemporary sources documenting these narratives, it is known that these narratives have been persistently used by the Turkish government since the 1980s. Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs considers Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s maxim “Peace at home, peace in the world,” as “the cornerstone of Turkish Foreign Policy today.” The text emphasizes this point through Atatürk’s peace-pursuing foreign policy (The Official Website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, 2018). On the same site but in a different text, the Ministry states that “Turkey has a comprehensive, peace oriented, and principled vision and is committed to making use of all its means and capabilities towards this twin objective” and one of the regions Turkey is willing to make better relations with is the Middle East. Atatürk’s image as the maker of peace and unity domestically was analyzed for the late 1990s context in Turkey, where the nostalgic remembrance of Atatürk was commodified and mobilized against the rise of political Islam in Turkey (Özyürek 2006: 55). The emphasis on amicable Jewish–Muslim relations in state-sponsored events goes back to 1890s, when the Jews in the Ottoman Empire celebrated

9

10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

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the 400th anniversary of the Ottoman Welcome of Jews in 1492. However, its utilization for Turkish foreign policy starts in the 1970s, against the public pressure over Turkey about accepting the responsibility for the Armenian Genocide. For more on this see Bali (2009: 203). Turkey as the promoter of peace in the Middle East has received a facelift in the AKP era, as Ibrahim Kalın, the current spokesperson for the President of Turkey, showed in his article; see Kalın (2009). In contrast, this chapter will show that Turkey claimed such responsibility in the early 1990s as well. In order to explain the exponential rapprochement of Turkey and Israel after the 1980s, I borrow Ofra Bengio’s term “the 1990s Alignment” to describe the amelioration and deepening of Turkish–Israeli relations from late 1980s into early 2000s (Bengio 2004: 71). In the summer of 2016, Turkey and Israel signed a normalization agreement which concluded the diplomatic crisis that had erupted after the 2010 Flotilla Incident. The Israeli government agreed to pay 20 million USD to the families of activists killed by Israeli soldiers, while the Turkish government agreed to shut down court cases against these soldiers. The Turkish government was granted opportunity to send humanitarian aid to Gaza, while agreeing to prevent Hamas from carrying out activities against Israel on Turkish soil. Both countries, upon passing legislation recognizing the agreement in the parliaments, reinstated their ambassadors (Al Jazeera English, 2018 and Hurriyet Daily News, 2018). Although Turkish and Israeli officials confront each other in the international cyberspace via Twitter, their diplomatic relations are at ambassadorial level by early May 2018. For their confrontations in the summer of 2017 on Twitter see Middle East Monitor, 2018. Turkish President Erdo˘gan opposed the Trump administration’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem in January 2018, but no diplomatic action has been taken against Israel or the United States regarding this decision (Haaretz, 2018). For efforts in convincing Turkish diplomats that Israel was not soft on communism, see Bishku (2006: 181). For more information on this, see: Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA) CZA/KL20M and CZA/KKL5 folder clusters. One of the most intriguing reports of Turkish union leaders on the image of Israel is Sedat A˘gralı’s articles, with A˘gralı praising Israel, on Milliyet in August 1963. Historian Laurant Mallet detailed the importance of the 1992 Quincentennial Celebrations of the Ottoman Welcome to Sephardi Jews and the non-state actors involved in these celebrations in bringing Turkey and Israel closer in the international arena in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Mallet 2008: 335).

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16. Since the early years of the Jewish settlement in Palestine under the Ottoman and British Mandate eras, the JNF has been the primary institution responsible for afforestation in Palestine/Israel. Irus Braverman called the JNF “the Israeli state’s land-laundering body,” which turned Palestinian owned private land into Jewish state-owned, inalienable public land (Braverman, 2014: 52). Relying on legal mechanisms taken over with minor changes from the British Mandate’s legal regime regarding forest land, the JNF’s afforestation ensured that the acquired land was not sold back to Arab private individuals (Forman and Kedar 2004). To this end, the JNF collected financial support from Jewish communities all around the world, including the ones in Turkey, for planting trees and executing afforestation projects in previously Arab-owned land in Palestine/Israel. In addition, as Braverman argued, the JNF’s afforestation campaign created an artificial landscape in Palestine/Israel through planting trees of European origin that served the Zionist imagination of the land. European origin trees, such as pine trees, hold double cultural meanings in Palestine/Israel. Carol Bardenstein showed that European origin trees are primarily part of a Euro–Israeli landscape created by the state of Israel, which sought to “bloom the desert” of Palestine into the Jewish homeland in the Zionist imagination. Bardenstein, “Trees, forests…” Secondarily, as Arieh Bruce Saposnik has shown, planting trees donated to the JNF through Jews’ donation and labor from inside and outside Israel supposedly established a spiritual and material connection between Jewish individuals and the Israeli homeland in the making (Saposnik 2006). 17. For more information on the JNF operations in Turkey and Israel in order to found the Atatürk Forest in Northern Israel, please consult: CZA/KL20M and CZA/KKL5 folder clusters. 18. For an astute analysis of this debate, see Auron (2003). 19. Rifat N. Bali documented the support of Jews from Turkey in Israel in stopping the Israeli TV channels from airing films such as Journey to Armenia and Midnight Express, which had tarnished Turkey’s public image abroad. See Bali (2009: 321–323). 20. In her unpublished master’s thesis, Deniz Nilüfer Erselcan Ben Tov quotes from Fuat Dündar’s work on the demographics of religious minorities in Turkey that 76,965 Jews lived in Turkey in 1945, whereas by 1955, their numbers were down to 45,995 (Dündar 1999: 168, 175). 21. “Rise in Russian, Turkish Immigration to Israel Bucking Western Slump,” 2017, Jewish Telegraphic Agency Website, https://www.jta.org/2017/11/ 10/news-opinion/world/rise-in-russian-turkish-immigration-to-israelbucking-western-slump (accessed 15 January 2018). 22. My fieldwork took place in the spring of 2016 in Israel. I conducted semistructured, in-person interviews and participant observation at immigrant

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26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31.

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community events. I draw on my fieldwork notes and transcripts of interviews that are filed under pseudonyms per the informants’ requests. When I note an observation from the field notes or a concept that has been repeated by more than one informant, I refer to my field notes. If it is drawn from a single interview, I refer to my interview filed under the informant’s pseudonym. All the information regarding the Hitahdut is taken from their website (Barokas). Another organization is Arkada¸s, based in the city of Yehud in Israel. Arkada¸s and Hitahdut’s activities do not intersect, but Arkada¸s has also been recognized by the Turkish diplomatic mission, especially when the organization inaugurated the first Atatürk Bust in Israel in 2007 in their cultural center’s yard. Arkada¸s had a website and e-store which sold publications and ephemera regarding Jews of Turkey and their heritage, but by 2018, their online presence has disappeared. Their institutional profile on professional social media site LinkedIn summarizes their activities. Arkada¸s also had a print publication with the same name, which ran between January 2004 and January 2010. For more information on the Hejaz Railway exhibition, see Ehrlich. For more information on the “Synagogues of Turkey” exhibition, see “Shrines of Tolerance—Synagogues of Turkey”. Mustafa Balbay, “Barı¸s için terör zirvesi,” Cumhuriyet, 14 March 1996. For the involvement of Jews of Turkey in the creation of the Forest, see “Letter Dated 15.02.1953 from S. Baranes of the JNF Jerusalem to Abraham Mayer of the JNF Istanbul,” 15 February 1953, CZA/KKL5/19396. For the involvement of participation of Jews of Turkey in the diplomats’ visits in the 1960s and 1970s, see CZA/KKL5/28762. The majority of my informants above the age of 45 recalled the event during our interviews and casual conversations. When I expressed my interest in heritage places constructed by Jews from Turkey in Israel, the Park was always mentioned with its exceptional inauguration story. For a groundbreaking analysis of the Ashkenazi hegemony in the Israeli nationalist discourses and their cultural reflections, see Shohat (2010). For multiple usages of the Zionist discourse of blooming the dessert in cultural products and state policies, see Shohat (2010). For the role of the JNF and the usage of blooming the dessert in educating Jews inside and outside Palestine/Israel, see Almog (2000). For the JNF utilizing the blooming the desert discourse in raising funds, please see Braverman (2014).

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References Akgün, Mensur, Sabiha Senyücel Gündo˘gar, and Aybars Görgülü. 2014. Politics in Troubled Times: Israel-Turkey Relations. TESEV. http://tesev.org.tr/ wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Politics_In_Troubled_Times_Israel_Turkey_ Relations.pdf. Accessed 17 January 2018. Almog, Oz. 2000. The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew. The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press. “Arkada¸s—The Turkish Community in Israel: Overview | LinkedIn.” https:// www.linkedin.com/company/arkada—the-turkish-community-in-israel/. Accessed 17 January 2018. Auron, Yair. 2003. The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers. ˙ Balbay, Mustafa. 1996. Barı¸s Için Terör Zirvesi. Cumhuriyet, March 14. Bali, Rıfat N. 2003. Cumhuriyet Iıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri: Aliya: bir toplu göçün öyküsü, 1946–1949. Istanbul: Iletisim Yayincilik. Bali, Rıfat N. 2009. Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri: Devlet’in Örnek ˙ Yurtta¸sları, 1950–2003. Ca˘galo˘glu, Istanbul: Iletisim Kitabevi. Baranes, S. 1953. Letter Dated 15.2.1953 from S. Baranes of the JNF Jerusalem to Abraham Mayer of the JNF Istanbul, CZA/KKL5/19396. Central Zionist Archives. Bardenstein, Carol. 1998. Trees, Forests, and the Shaping of Palestinian and Israeli Collective Memory. In Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan V. Crewe, and Leo Spitzer. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth. Barokas, Yakup. 1996. Bölgesel Barı¸sa Önemli Katkı: Demirel’in Ortado˘gu Ziyareti. Salom, ¸ July 21. Barokas, Yakup. 1999. Atatürk Ormanı’nda A˘gaç Dikme Töreni. Salom, ¸ July 21. ˙ Barokas, Yakup. n.d. Kısa Tarihçe. Israil’deki Türkiyeliler Birli˘gi Web Sitesi. https://www.turkisrael.org.il/single-post/2017/11/09/KISA-TAR% C4%B0H%C3%87ET%C3%BCrk%C3%A7e. Accessed 17 January 2018. Bengio, Offra. 2004. The Turkish-Israeli Relationship: Changing Ties of Middle Eastern Outsiders. New York: Springer. Bishku, Michael B. 2006. How Has Turkey Viewed Israel? Israel Affairs 12 (1): 177–194. Bolukbasi, Suha. 1999. Behind the Turkish-Israeli Alliance: A Turkish View. Journal of Palestine Studies 29 (1): 21–35. Braverman, Irus. 2014. Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brink-Danan, Marcy. 2011. Jewish Life in Twenty-First-Century Turkey: The Other Side of Tolerance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Bronstein Aparicio, Eitan. n.d. Most JNF—KKL Forests and Sites Are Located on the Ruins of Palestinian Villages. Zochrot. http://www.zochrot.org/en/ article/55963. Accessed 17 January 2018. Bu, Liping. 1999. Educational Exchange and Cultural Diplomacy in the Cold War. Journal of American Studies 33 (3): 393–415. Bülten. n.d. Newsletter of the Hitahdut Yotsei Turkiya, The Union of Immigrants from Turkey. Carter, David. 2015. Living with Instrumentalism: The Academic Commitment to Cultural Diplomacy. International Journal of Cultural Policy 21 (4): 478– 493. Çelenk, Ay¸se Aslıhan. 2015. Public Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Making: The Turkish Case. International Journal of Turcologia 10 (20): 25–44. Clarke, David. 2016. Theorising the Role of Cultural Products in Cultural Diplomacy from a Cultural Studies Perspective. International Journal of Cultural Policy 22 (2): 147–163. “Demirel Arabulucu.” 1996. Milliyet, March 6. Demirel, Süleyman. 1996. Speech in the Knesset by the President of Turkey Suleyman Demirel. https://www.knesset.gov.il/description/eng/doc/ speech_demirel_1996_eng.pdf. Accessed 17 January 2018. Do˘gan, Yalçın. 1996. “Bombalar Arasında Gerçekle¸sen Rüya.” Milliyet, March 6. ˙ Dündar, Fuat. 1999. Türkiye Nüfus Sayımlarında Azınlıklar. Istanbul: Doz. Ehrlich, Sybil. 2009. Back on the Trails. The Jerusalem Post, December 2. http:// www.jpost.com/Travel/Travel-News/Back-on-the-rails. Accessed 18 January 2018. Erselcan Ben Tov, Deniz Nilüfer. 2009. Perspectives of Turkey’s Jewish Minority and Turkish-Jewish Immigrants in Israel: The Narratives of the MassMigration of Jews to Israel Between 1945 and 1955. Master’s Thesis, Bo˘gaziçi University. “Exploring the Forests in Israel.” n.d. Karen Kayemeth Lelsrael Jewish National Fund. http://www.kkl-jnf.org/tourism-and-recreation/forests-andparks/. Accessed 17 January 2018. Forman, Geremy, and Alexandre Kedar (Sandy). 2004. From Arab Land to ‘Israel Lands’: The Legal Dispossession of the Palestinians Displaced by Israel in the Wake of 1948. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22 (6): 809– 830. Güven, Banu. 1996a. “Demirel Barı¸sın Zirvesinde.” Milliyet, March 13. Güven, Banu. 1996b. “Tarihi Gezinin Ardından.” Milliyet, March 15. Harrison, Rodney. 2013. Heritage: Critical Approaches. London: Routledge. Hepkaner, Ilker. 2016. Unpublished Field Notes for PhD Dissertation Research. “Israel and Turkey Reach Deal to Restore Relations.” 2016. Al Jazeera English. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/israel-turkey-reach-deal-restorerelations-160626190909435.html. Accessed 22 May 2018.

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Kalın, Ibrahim. 2009. Debating Turkey in the Middle East: The Dawn of a New Geo-Political Imagination? Insight Turkey 11 (1): 83–96. Kaya, Ayhan, and Ay¸se Tecmen. 2011. The Role of Common Cultural Heritage in External Promotion of Modern Turkey: Yunus Emre Cultural Centres. Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi. http://openaccess.bilgi.edu.tr:8080/xmlui/ handle/11411/197. Accessed 17 January 2018. Leonard, Mark. 2002. Diplomacy by Other Means. Foreign Policy 132: 48–56. Mallet, Laurent-Olivier. 2008. La Turquie, Les Turcs Et Les Juifs: Histoire, Représentations, Discours Et Stratégies. Istanbul: Isis. Mark, Simon L. 2009. A Greater Role for Cultural Diplomacy. Clingendael: Netherlands Institute of International Relations. Mark, Simon L. 2010. Rethinking Cultural Diplomacy: The Cultural Diplomacy of New Zealand, the Canadian Federation and Quebec. Political Science 62 (1): 62–83. Mills, Amy. 2010. Streets of Memory: Landscape, Tolerance, and National Identity in Istanbul. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Nachmani, Amikam. 1987. Israel, Turkey and Greece: Uneasy Relations in the East Mediterranean. London and Totowa, NJ: Routledge. O˘guzlu, Tarik. 2010. The Changing Dynamics of Turkey-Israel Relations: A Structural Realist Account. Mediterranean Politics 15 (2): 273–288. Özyürek, Esra. 2006. Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. “President Announces Kemal Okem as Turkey’s New Ambassador to Israel.” 2016. Hurriyet Daily News, November 16. http://www.hurriyetdailynews. com/president-announces-kemal-okem-as-turkeys-new-ambassador-to-israel106179. Accessed 1 May 2018. “Rise in Russian, Turkish Immigration to Israel Bucking Western Slump.” 2017. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 10. https://www.jta.org/2017/ 11/10/news-opinion/world/rise-in-russian-turkish-immigration-to-israelbucking-western-slump. Accessed 1 May 2018. Saposnik, Arieh Bruce. 2006. Exorcising the ‘Angel of National Death’— National and Individual Death (and Rebirth) in Zionist Palestine. Jewish Quarterly Review 95 (3): 557–578. Schneider, Cynthia P. 2006. Cultural Diplomacy: Hard to Define, But You’d Know It If You Saw It. Brown Journal of World Affairs 13 (1): 191–203. Shohat, Ella. 2010. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. London: I.B. Tauris. “Shrines of Tolerance—Synagogues of Turkey.” 2008. Beit Hatfutsot, December 25. https://www.bh.org.il/event/synagogues-turkey/. Accessed 17 January 2018.

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“Synopsis of the Turkish Foreign Policy.” n.d. Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/synopsis-of-the-turkish-foreignpolicy.en.mfa. Accessed 17 January 2018. The Minutes of the 20th Session of the 17th Knesset, Thursday, 7 June . 2006/ Accessed 18 January 2018. Tokta¸s, Sule. ¸ 2006. Turkey’s Jews and their Immigration to Israel. Middle Eastern Studies 42 (3): 505–519. Topic, Martina, and Sinisa Rodin (eds.). 2012. Cultural Diplomacy and Cultural Imperialism: European Perspective(s). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. “Turkey, Israel Agree to Stop Twitter War of Words.” 2017. Middle East Monitor, July 28. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170728-turkey-israel-agreeto-stop-twitter-war-of-words/. Accessed 17 January 2018. “Turkey’s Erdogan: Jerusalem is ‘My Top Priority’ in Meeting with Pope Francis.” 2018. Haaretz, February 4. https://www.haaretz.com/middleeast-news/turkey/turkey-s-erdogan-jerusalem-is-my-top-priority-in-meetingwith-pope-1.5788563. Accessed 1 May 2018. “Turkish Foreign Policy During Ataturk’s Era.” n.d. Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/turkish-foreign-policy-duringataturks-era.en.mfa. Accessed 17 January 2018. ˙ “Türkiye Batı’ya Israil Kartını Açıyor.” 1996. Milliyet, March 6. Weiker, Walter F. 1988. The Unseen Israelis: The Jews from Turkey in Israel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Yavuz, M. Hakan. 1997. Turkish-Israeli Relations Through the Lens of the Turkish Identity Debate. Journal of Palestine Studies 27 (1), 22–37. Zamorano, Mariano Martín. 2016. Reframing Cultural Diplomacy: The Instrumentalization of Culture Under the Soft Power Theory. Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 8 (2): 165–186.

PART V

NGOs as Transnational Actors in the Formation and Implementation of Turkish Foreign Policy

CHAPTER 10

“Humanitarianism” Transformed? Analyzing the Role of Transnational Humanitarian NGOs in Turkish Foreign Policy Toward the Middle East in the 2000s Gonca O˘guz Gök

Humanitarianism is no longer the cry of dissidents, campaigners and protesters but a common vocabulary that brings together the government, the army and erstwhile radicals and human rights activists. (Kennedy 2004)

Introduction Humanitarianism has become one of the most important “isms” in the world today (Walzer 2012). There is now an ever-increasing reference to humanitarianism not only in humanitarian relief activities, but also by governments, international organizations (IOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working on various grounds. Humanitarianism has historically held a major place in foreign policy concerns (Tusan 2015:

G. O˘guz Gök (B) Faculty of Political Sciences, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_10

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96). Since the Cold War’s end, two important trends emerged in this field. On the one hand, there are an increasing number of humanitarian crises leading to humanitarian tragedies (e.g., the Bosnian War, Rwandan Genocide, and most recently the Syrian Civil War). On the other hand, Westphalian notion of problem-solving are challenged due to growing difficulties of promoting global public interests or human interests (Falk 2016: 248). Thus there is now a growing web between states, IOs and transnational NGOs in the humanitarian field. New concepts such as human security, human development, and responsibility to protect have been introduced as well as frequently referred by diverse actors. With the organization of the first-ever UN World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 in Istanbul that brought together states, HNGOs and IOs, humanitarianism has proved itself to be the new agenda of global governance, encompassing multiple actors as well as transnational dynamics. The commonly accepted definition of humanitarianism is “the impartial, independent, and neutral provision of relief to those in immediate danger of harm” (Barnett 2005: 724). Humanitarianism emerged as a transnational movement in the nineteenth century. Its activists initially claimed to distance themselves from politics, as humanitarian aid was considered as a form of voluntary act to relieve human suffering from the beginning (Jones 2009: 699).1 Yet, the evolution of international humanitarianism has been much more complicated, encompassing not only kindness, but also assigning responsibilities to states and international organizations particularly in the post-Cold War era (Walzer 2012). A new norm of “Responsibility to Protect” has replaced the humanitarian intervention doctrine, and states are given the responsibility to take timely and decisive action to prevent and halt humanitarian crises. Furthermore, the fast-growing transnational human rights movement in the post-Cold War era pulled humanitarianism from the margins toward the center of the international policy agenda. In this regard, humanitarianism was transformed to become a highly politicized field, or to put it differently, politics has become an integral part of humanitarianism. States have become more willing to act in the name of humanitarianism. On the other hand, some scholars interpret the rise of humanitarianism in the post-Cold War period as part of a decreasing authority of states in international relations encompassing transnational dynamics. According to this view, states’ authority is being transferred upward to IOs as well as downward to NGOs acting transnationally (Price 1998). Although from different views, scholars largely agree that humanitarianism is in the process

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of redefining itself with an increasing network of transnational humanitarian NGOs, often not only “challenging,” but also “sharing” states’ sovereignty (Tusan 2015: 85; Barnett 2005: 724). Furthermore, humanitarian agencies and states began to share agendas in the name of humanitarianism (Barnett 2005: 724). Turkish foreign policy in the 2000s merits special reference in the context of humanitarianism, as the former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto˘glu defined humanitarian diplomacy as being the new diplomacy style of Turkey (Davuto˘glu 2013: 865–870). In fact, humanitarianism’s role in Turkish foreign policy is hardly new. During the 1990s, Turkey has been one of the main actors in humanitarian intervention in Northern Iraq. Its diplomacy throughout the 1992–1995 Bosnian War and the 1999 Kosovo War was remarkable. There has been a growing willingness on the side of Turkey to define itself in terms of a “humanitarian actor” during the 2000s. For instance, its humanitarian assistance reached its peak with Turkey being identified as the most generous country in humanitarian assistance with respect to its Gross Domestic Product in 2017, with nearly US$ 8.1 billion spent in humanitarian aid.2 Moreover, the role of humanitarian NGOs such as Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH)3 has been noteworthy in shaping Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East region, and bilateral relations with states like Israel as illustrated by the Gaza Flotilla Incident (Mavi Marmara) in the twenty-first century. Among many, the Syrian Civil War, as the most tragic humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, has so far been a test case for Turkey’s humanitarian role. As the civil war deepened, Turkey became an important humanitarian actor in the refugee crises, while paradoxically also being criticized on many grounds for fueling violence by supporting the opposition. Drawing on the concept of “humanitarianism,” this chapter attempts to critically access transnational dynamics of Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East by specifically focusing on the nexus between humanitarian NGOs and the AKP government in the 2000s. What is the role of Turkish humanitarian NGOs in Turkish foreign policy during this period? Do both actors share the same agenda in foreign policy, if so how, and how can we explain their role? Last but not least, how can one explain the interplay between Turkish humanitarian NGOs and the AKP government in terms of the changing nature of “humanitarianism” in the twenty-first century? Although there is a growing and rich scholarly debate on Turkey’s humanitarian efforts and the role of humanitarian NGOs in Africa

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(Akpınar 2013; Bacik and Afacan 2013; Baird 2016; Sırada˘g 2015; O˘guz Gök and Dal 2016), few serious attempts were made to theoretically analyze the interplay between Turkish humanitarian NGOs and the government in Turkish foreign policy, particularly toward the Middle East. Furthermore, few existing studies generally took ideational aspects, and thus focused on policy parallelism, rather than on challenges and divergences between humanitarian NGOs and the AKP governments in ˙ seri 2016). Compared to other concepforeign policy issues (Çelik and I¸ tualizations, the humanitarianism literature itself has so far been neglected in depicting the transnational aspects of Turkish foreign policy (Özerdem 2016). Having said that, this study attempts to understand the ambiguous relationship between Turkish humanitarian NGOs and AKP governments in the 2000s, with a special focus on IHH’s role in Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East. Besides data from newspapers, official press releases and speeches at multilateral platforms, two separate face-to-face interviews were conducted with senior IHH officials. By doing that, this chapter aims to provide some provisional answers regarding transnational dynamics of Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East as well as the interplay between humanitarian NGOs and the state in terms of the changing nature of humanitarianism, and state sovereignty. Acknowledging that the apparent rise of humanitarian discourse and practice in Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East could not be fully understood without taking into account global transformations in humanitarianism, the next section will briefly analyze the historical evolution of humanitarianism’s transnational movement, focusing specifically on post-Cold War era transformations.

Transformation of Humanitarianism in the Post-Cold War Era Humanitarianism is not a new concept, although it gained considerable attention in the last decades. While concern for distant strangers is as old as antiquity, humanitarianism started as a transnational movement in the nineteenth century. Eventually, formal organizations began to emerge in a range of areas (Jones 2009: 699). The establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1859 is regarded as the beginning of the humanitarian movement. Its founder Henry Dunant is considered as a humanitarian/norm/idea entrepreneur (Forsythe 2005: 15). With the adoption of the Geneva Convention of 1864, governments

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agreed to help the wounded without any distinction as to nationality in the battlefield, accepting the neutrality of medical personnel.4 Among others, the ICRC was the largest humanitarian organization responsible for monitoring the Geneva Conventions, which codified the laws of war, and established rules for the humane treatment of prisoners of war. The Red Cross adopted in 1965 seven fundamental principles which became the rule-book of humanitarianism: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality (Douzinas 2007: 58). In its pure form, the transnational humanitarian movement embraced three fundamental principles: the obligation to assist, impartiality, and neutrality (Özerdem and Rufini 2005: 167–176). Humanitarianism’s distinguishing feature was supposed to be its apolitical origin. Humanitarianism was defined to be different from human rights. According to David Rieff, “a responsible relief worker knows the difference between the imperatives of human rights and humanitarianism – the former being maximalist, absolutist, and long-term; the latter being limited, flexible, and immediate” (Rieff 2002: 286). Therefore, in its original form, humanitarianism could be defined as “the impartial, independent, and neutral provision of relief to those in immediate danger of harm” (Barnett 2005: 724). Michael Barnett classifies the historical evolution of humanitarianism in three phases, which he categorizes as “the ages of humanitarianism.” The age of “imperial humanitarianism” describes early paternal motivations of European imperial powers in engaging in humanitarian intervention during the nineteenth century. European powers’ humanitarian concerns with regard to minorities in the Ottoman Empire were remarkable. Secondly, the Second World War offers a dividing line when “neohumanitarianism” replaces imperial forms. The establishment of the UN, followed by the initiation of the human rights regime, opened a new era in terms of international humanitarianism. The focus shifted away from states to IOs, which provided forums for the consideration of rights claims on behalf of victims. Finally, the post-Cold War era is defined as “liberal humanitarianism” in which, according to Barnett, humanitarianism has been genuinely transformed (Tusan 2015: 90–91). According to Barnett, defining features of this transformation of humanitarianism are twofold: (1) the organization of humanitarianism is becoming institutionalized, and (2) the purpose of humanitarianism is becoming politicized in the post-Cold War era (Barnett 2005: 724).5

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Before the 1990s there were relatively few NGOs in the humanitarian field, and their interactions and transnational networks were quite weak. Not only in quantitative terms, but also in terms of quality, their operations were frequently staffed by individuals with little or no experience. Over the 1990s humanitarianism has become more recognized as a field, with more donors, deliverers, and regulators in a growing sphere of network and collaborative action (Barnett 2005: 724). For instance, after the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, nearly half of the US$ 14 billion pledged in disaster funding involved programs implemented by NGOs (Osa 2013: 67). In 2008 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, the total value of Global Humanitarian Assistance was estimated to be US$18 billion in which NGOs accounted for US$ 4.9 billion of humanitarian assistance spending (close to one-third of the total).6 In 2016 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, total humanitarian assistance had reached US$ 28 billion, the highest amount recorded in which private donors’ share was US$ 6.2 billion.7 These numbers indicate public and private actors’ growing involvement in humanitarianism. In addition to an increased number of NGOs, humanitarian NGOs after the 1990s have become more sophisticated. Among others, a number of initiatives were started, all representing the first steps in the professionalization and institutionalization of the humanitarian system. One of them was the signing of the “Code of Conduct for International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief,” drawn up in 1992 in order to set ethical standards for organizations involved in humanitarian work.8 HNGOs are gaining greater visibility and profession in comparison with earlier decades, as they now operate in many different fields like mediation, humanitarian diplomacy, development, conflict resolution, postconflict peacebuilding—beyond only providing relief. Therefore, after the 1990s, humanitarianism’s agenda went beyond relief into the political world, and humanitarian agencies began working alongside and with states, which Barnett (2009) interprets as the politicization of humanitarianism. HNGOs have embraced new issue areas like human rights, development, democracy promotion, conflict resolution, and state-building, issues that were once assumed to be only within the sovereign authority of states. This inevitably led them to associate more closely and willingly with states. In other words, as they moved into the world of politics and shared a common agenda with states, HNGOs would become more eager to coordinate their policies with states and/or to influence state policies through various means (Barnett 2009: 623).

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Accordingly, the new understanding of humanitarianism in the post-Cold War era is as follows: If individuals are at risk because of authoritarian and repressive policies, then humanitarian organizations must be prepared to fight for human rights and democratic reforms. If individuals are at risk because of poverty and deprivation, then they must be prepared to promote development. If regional and domestic conflicts are the source of violence against individuals, then they must try their hand at conflict resolution and attempt to eliminate the underlying causes of conflict. (Barnett 2005: 181)

Not only NGOs, but also states became more eager to act in the name of humanitarianism. Beginning in the 1990s, states turned out to be more open to humanitarian action as well as more generous than ever before. Between 1990 and 2000, humanitarian aid9 levels rose from US$ 2 billion to US$ 6 billion. Many states have developed humanitarian units within their foreign and defense ministries (Barnett 2009: 629). Moreover, Official Development Assistance (ODA)10 has become a principal area in international politics. Regardless of their motives, states were providing new opportunities for humanitarian action by funding relief operations, delivering humanitarian aid, authorizing military troops to deliver relief, and considering the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention, and most recently of the responsibility to protect in the post-Cold War era (Barnett 2009: 629). Accordingly, humanitarianism provides an important framework for constructing foreign policies of states. States began to treat humanitarian action as an instrument of their foreign policy goals. Since 9/11 many states, including the United States, have viewed humanitarianism as a crime-fighting partner. In 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a meeting of NGOs that “American NGOs are serving and sacrificing just like soldiers and diplomats” (Barnett 2005: 726). Thus, there is now a new multi-actor environment of international humanitarianism in which humanitarian NGOs and states have begun to share agendas (Barnett 2010: 2).11 Barnett argues that this politicization of humanitarianism is the main reason behind the failure of humanitarianism in the post-Cold War era. In other words, “becoming political has discredited humanitarian NGOs, allowed statism to undermine cosmopolitanism, and sacrificed ethics on behalf of the interests of states” (Barnett 2009: 624). The recent quantitative evolution of humanitarianism in the post-Cold War era, in this view, has led not to progress in

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a qualitative sense, but rather to a crisis of the humanitarian movement (Barnett 2009: 624). On the other hand, scholars like Neil MacFarlane and Thomas Weiss (2000: 115) argue that effective humanitarian action for NGOs depends not on avoiding politics, but rather on creatively participating in political processes of constructing interests. Decision-makers’ and politicians’ perceptions of interest can be restructured so that necessary political support and resources are attained for humanitarian ends. More importantly, HNGOs who attempt to distance themselves from politics are seen as unrealistic, and their approach as self-defeating. In this regard, HNGOs are sharing the agenda with states, and are therefore expected to consciously engage in political processes in order to reach their aims. According to Weiss (1999), humanitarian actors should take initiatives for advocating political programs, and garner support for human rights. In any event, the fast-growing human rights movement in the postCold War era pulled humanitarianism from the margins toward the center of the international policy agenda with an increasing network of human rights NGOs, often sharing and challenging states’ agendas, sovereignty, and vice versa. There is ample evidence not only that humanitarian NGOs are becoming institutionalized and expanding their agendas to move into the political world, but also that states seek to use humanitarian action as an instrument for their foreign policy objectives. Within this context, using Barnett’s classification, the rest of the chapter will analyze how this transformation of humanitarianism—(a) institutionalization and (b) politicization—affect Turkey’s humanitarianism and the interplay between Turkish Humanitarian NGOs and Turkey on foreign policy issues toward the Middle East in the 2000s. In order to better understand the early twenty-first century, there follows now a brief look at the historical evolution of humanitarianism and the changing role of humanitarian NGOs in the history of Turkish foreign policy.

Humanitarianism in the History of Turkish Foreign Policy The term human rights entered into the Turkish lexicon and discussions during the Ottoman times, in the name of saving humans mainly with reference to minority rights (Kabasakal Arat 2007: 2). The idea of humanitarian intervention also arose in European relations with the Ottomans

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(Rodogno 2012). Since the establishment of the republic, Turkey’s foreign policy was formulated on the principle of “peace at home and peace in the world” (Kürkçüo˘glu 1981: 171). Turkey was careful not to interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs. It aspired to participate in international institutions after the First World War by joining the League of Nations in 1932. With the establishment of the UN, Turkey became a part of the UN-led human rights regime. It did not hesitate to embrace the first human rights convention of the UN system, and actively participated in the seven drafting stages of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also joined the European human rights regime by ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1954 (Türkmen 2007: 2). During the Cold War years, there was not much manifestation of a humanitarian role in Turkish foreign policy. Turkey transformed itself into a multi-party regime after 1945, but its democratization was interrupted several times with no less than three military coups. Security issues were at stake, and economically Turkey was an aid receiver for a long time during the Cold War years. In fact, when transitioning from a single-party to a multi-party rule after WWII, official development assistance to Turkey through the Marshall Plan helped it to lay the foundation for its economic development (Murphy and Kazak 2012: 3). The inclusion of international humanitarian issues in Turkish foreign policy, and the growing number of humanitarian NGOs, corresponds to the late 1980s, and mainly to the post-Cold War era. This was not only due to Turkey’s domestic democratic and economic conditions but also due to a slow evolution of international human rights regimes in the post-Second World War period. In the post-Cold War era, several internal reforms and external pressures led to a growing humanitarian agenda in Turkey’s foreign policy. Firstly, Turkey officially applied for EU membership in April 1987, and a democratization process was launched (including the recognition of the right to individual application before the European Court of Human Rights in January 1987, the ratification of the UN and European Conventions against torture in 1988, and the recognition of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights). A State Ministry for Human Rights was created in 1991. An important landmark event that affected Turkish foreign policy toward a humanitarian approach was the declaration of Turkey’s official candidacy for EU membership in 1999. To fulfill the membership commitments, the Turkish parliament adopted in 2001 one of the most comprehensive packages of constitutional amendments

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including human rights (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 233). Historically, there was a desire to regulate religion, as well as to control and regulate civil society in order to strengthen the state apparatus (Sarkissian and Özler 2013: 1018). The EU accession process and civil society organizations had a mutually enforcing impact on each other, creating a wider space of opportunity in the political system, which paved the way for the emergence of a variety of NGOs ranging from faith-based to humanitarian ones (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 233). Therefore, democratization in Turkey after 1983 enabled the emergence of a growing number of humanitarian civil society organizations. In fact, Turkish NGOs’ interest in international humanitarian issues goes back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Sympathy for the Afghan resistance motivated Turkish civilian bodies to organize aid campaigns for Afghan fighters. However, a more systematic humanitarian movement began during the Balkan crises of the 1990s, most notably throughout the 1992–1995 Bosnian War. The public sensitivity for the suffering of Bosnian Muslims enabled and eased the establishment of HNGOs (Çelik and I¸seri 2016: 434). In this regard, being the first transnational Turkish NGO, IHH’s activities began in 1992 as voluntary efforts with regards to the Bosnian War, becoming institutionalized in 1995 (Petersen 2012: 769). With its religious identity, it was the primary actor behind the organization of aid campaigns in the Balkans in conjunction with Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP)12 in Turkey, when the public was highly sensitive to the plight of the Bosnians (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 231–239). On the other hand, in those years RP was also criticized for instrumentalizing the Bosnian War with religious sentiments to receive more domestic support. It was also criticized for the misuse of aid collected through RP and IHH for Bosnians.13 All in all, the Bosnian War, an issue of foreign policy, was a point of hot debates in Turkish politics, becoming more of an issue in domestic politics, which also laid the foundations of IHH during those years. Yet due to many restrictions on civil society in general, humanitarian NGOs were still limited during the 1990s. In all of these conflicts and consequent humanitarian crises of the era, Turkey cooperated with international organizations, most notably the UN (Çetin 2015).

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The Changing Role of Humanitarian NGOs and Turkish Foreign Policy in the 2000s Two trends are worth mentioning during the 2000s regarding the transformation of humanitarianism and the changing role of humanitarian NGOs in Turkish foreign policy. Firstly, with AKP’s coming into power, there has been a growing willingness on the side of Turkish leaders to adopt a humanitarian role in foreign policy issues. Secondly, with AKPled governments, humanitarian NGOs have become more institutionalized, as they expanded their missions onto a global scale. Their nexus and role have grown substantially as they adopted new political roles such as mediation, human rights advocacy, and humanitarian diplomacy during the 2000s. Firstly, with AKP’s coming to power, under Foreign Minister Davuto˘glu’s tenure (2009–2014), “humanitarian diplomacy”14 was set as the new objective of Turkish foreign policy (Erdo˘gan 2017: 62). During the first decade of 2000s, Turkish rulers have used multilateral platforms (most notably the UN) as a means to increase Turkey’s weight as a leading country in humanitarian issues of both regional and international importance. Accordingly, it hosted the Istanbul Somalia Conference organized within the UN framework on 21–23 May 2010. It also hosted the Fourth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries in Istanbul on 9–13 May 2011, where Foreign Minister Davuto˘glu announced Turkey’s ambition to make Istanbul “a major hub for the United Nations on issues of mediation and peace” (quoted in Hurriyet Daily News, 27 September 2012). Furthermore, Turkey initiated the first-ever UN World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 in Istanbul. In terms of regional issues, it hosted the UN’s “International Meeting on the Question of Jerusalem” on 12–13 May 2014, took part in the organization of the UN Seminar on Assistance to Palestinian People in Istanbul during May 2010, and also hosted a “Palestinian Ambassadors’ Conference” in Istanbul on 23– 24 July 2011 (Sever and Gök 2016: 1160). Turkish foreign policy-makers also began to voice their willingness to actively engage in “humanitarianism” in different regions of the world during the 2000s (Gilley 2015: 39). Accordingly, one of the defining aspects of Turkish foreign policy has become the increased role of development cooperation programs, evidenced by an expanding international aid budget. Turkey’s humanitarian assistance reached its peak with Turkey being identified as the most generous country in humanitarian assistance

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with respect to its Gross Domestic Product in 2017, with nearly US$ 8.1 billion spent in humanitarian aid.15 Turkey has become a rising donor. Its development assistance organizations, such as the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), would become one of the most active agents in Turkey’s foreign policy (O˘guz Gök and Dal 2016: 81). In order to adopt this humanitarian role, the AKP government also supported the expansion of Turkish HNGOs on a global scale, with foreign policymakers describing this as a major strength of Turkey’s humanitarian diplomacy (Keyman and Sazak 2014: 10). Turkey’s diplomatic missions embraced this new concept, facilitating the international activities of Turkish HNGOs. The country’s number one humanitarian effort during the 2000s has been its humanitarian engagement in Somalia. Yet, the Syrian crisis became a test case for Turkey’s humanitarian engagement as well as showing the means and limitations of its humanitarian diplomacy in foreign policy (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 231–234). In fact, the “normative turn” in the last two decades in terms of an increasing focus on human rights and democracy issues, and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, have also impacted the way Turkish leaders define themselves in world politics. In this regard, Turkey’s sensitivity with respect to human security and humanitarian diplomacy increased in parallel with the notions of human rights and humanitarian intervention gaining prominence on a global scale. Its humanitarian activities were also argued to be motivated by a desire to open and build new markets for its rapidly growing and globalizing commercial interests (Keyman and Sazak 2014: 10). Therefore, the Turkish case on humanitarianism also exemplifies the instrumental character of humanitarianism in the post-Cold War era. More importantly, the ups and downs in Turkey’s democratization inevitably created dilemmas for the construction of a credible humanitarian role that Turkey vigorously initiated during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In other words, the “human-oriented diplomacy” as defined by Davuto˘glu was built on the expanded scope of basic freedoms at home. Therefore, Turkey’s so defined “humanitarian diplomacy” encompassed not only an increasing willingness for humanitarian foreign policy role, but was also consciously built on a concern for Turkish citizens. In his words, “the priority here is for Turkey to pay utmost attention to problems of its own citizens and to facilitate their lives” (Davuto˘glu 2013: 865). As Turkey became more self-confident about its domestic and international position, it expected to be trusted by its neighbors and the international community at large (Davuto˘glu

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2013). Yet, changes in Turkey’s democratization had their echoes on its humanitarian foreign policy role at both the regional and international levels. In other words, Turkey’s sensitivity on human rights and the prodemocratization posture, adopted toward events at regional and global level, did not easily generate international attention as well as credibility, given the growing belief that its democratic credentials, together with its human rights record, displayed a number of important deficiencies.16 Secondly, with domestic transformations in the first decade of the 2000s, which paved the way toward amendments to the legal framework on the workings of civil society, HNGOs’ activities intensified and became institutionalized (Çelik and I¸seri 2016: 439). The Law on Associations adopted in 2004 allowed HNGOs to form partnerships with NGOs in other countries, and to receive donations from abroad. In 2005, the public interest status (Article 27) granted by the government allowed them to collect donations without prior bureaucratic permission. In 2007, the tax-free status they received further decreased HNGOs’ financial burden (Atalay 2013: 167). In 2007, for instance, the AKP government granted this status to some organizations like Deniz Feneri, the IHH, and Cansuyu. That same year, the Turkish Parliament also awarded Deniz Feneri and IHH with its Outstanding Service Award. All these measures supported the growth of religious HNGOs (Çelik and I¸seri 2016: 434). One should also note here that not only the activities of pro-Islamic HNGOs increased at domestic level, but they have also formed transnational coalitions in order to speak with one voice and to formalize common action plans. In this regard, in 2005 Turkish pro-Islamic NGO leaders initiated the most extensive Muslim global civil society network to date, the Union of the NGOs of the Islamic World (UNIW), which mobilizes organizations from the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia (Atalay 2013: 165). Thus, religious HNGOs obtained both governmental backing, and the ability to act more proactively in the international arena (Tabak 2015: 198). In fact, AKP’s core leadership comes from a political tradition that glorifies the Ottoman past as well as historical and cultural ties with the Islamic world (Altunı¸sık and Martin 2011: 577). Similarly, most of the HNGOs in Turkey have roots in religiously oriented circles as their donations usually come from the more conservative sections of the society (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 235). Çelik and Iseri (2016: 439), in their empirical study, found that sharing the same ideational values, serving the same cause, and propagating the same discourse made HNGOs’

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ties with government elites closer. Thus, the opportunity structure for these organizations to become politically engaged also improved with the AKP-led governments after 2002 (Sarkissian and Özler 2013: 1015). AKP governments’ domestic and foreign policy priorities, role definitions, and activities in the early twenty-first century, in this regard, have been accompanied by certain transnational NGOs’ increased numbers of missions, both in scope and in numerical terms, which contributed to Turkey’s foreign policy objectives. Examples include the increasing role of HNGOs in Turkey’s opening-to-Africa policy which in turn contributed to Turkey’s UNSC non-permanent membership campaign for the 2009– 2010 term. These HNGOs have often emphasized the importance of “representing” and “promoting” Turkey abroad (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 235). This necessarily politicizes these groups, as they become subsumed in the ruling party’s role definitions. In other words, HNGOs also participate in this politicization by framing their activities as being in line with the government’s foreign policy ideology and objectives (Sarkissian and Özler 2013: 1028). Not only HNGOs’ quantitative extent, but also their institutionalization as well as operational experiences and capabilities expanded (Levaggi 2015: 48). For instance, one of the leading HNGOs in the 2000s, IHH expanded its operational capabilities and motives to areas beyond delivering humanitarian relief (Tabak 2015: 198). Our first interviewee, a senior IHH manager, argued that IHH functions in three main fields: humanitarian aid, human rights, humanitarian diplomacy in over 140 states in collaboration with 400–500 NGOs.17 In this regard, its role expanded both in magnitude and in scope by adding human rights advocacy, mediation and humanitarian diplomacy to its missions in the 2000s. IHH leaders argue that 85% of disasters that they struggle to deal with are human-made disasters, requiring more than humanitarian aid.18 Accordingly, with regard to humanitarian diplomacy, the need to take preventive humanitarian actions in crises became the new guiding principle (Tabak 2015: 198). IHH defines its role in humanitarian diplomacy as discovering and eliminating the reasons that lead people to become needy, rather than simply delivering relief to them. Our interviewee, a senior IHH leader, argued that preventive humanitarianism has increasingly become an integral part of humanitarian NGOs missions: “We are not a cargo firm. We are here to change something.”19

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One of the common characteristics of Turkish HNGOs is pursuing advocacy in fields such as human rights. For instance, IHH argues that human rights norms and human rights advocacy should be seen as part of humanitarian missions. Our first interviewee argued that with regard to the Syrian case, “there are hundreds of thousands political prisoners in Syria. This should be and is our concern. We should put our best effort to change this.”20 As Aras and Akpınar assert, the capacity of HNGOs at times goes beyond Turkey’s official engagement, and in some cases, their action encourages governmental actors to take action. At some cases, Turkish HNGOs precede the state in their humanitarian efforts (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 234). One of the concrete examples of these efforts is humanitarian NGOs acting as mediators in disputes and intra-state conflicts. For instance, as a member of the Third-Party Monitoring Team (TPMT), IHH has played a critical role in peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) (Tabak 2015: 193). In this regard, IHH played mediation roles during the Syrian conflict. For instance, it took the initiative to secure the release of reporter Adem Özköse and cameraman Hamit Co¸skun, who had been detained by the Syrian intelligence agency, and consequently, the two journalists were freed after 58 days in detention. IHH also played mediation roles in the release of Idris Çanakçı and Ekrem Ci˘gerli, two Turkish citizens who were living in Syria with their families.21 Similar talks were undertaken with the Syrian regime and the opposition groups, resulting in the release of many Syrian citizens, and six Western reporters in 2013 (Tabak 2015: 203). IHH also took part in negotiations under the mediation of Turkey and Qatar that led to the release of 2130 civilians, including Turkish citizens, who were arrested during the Syrian civil war.22 These examples relate to an increasing flexibility feature of HNGOs, indicating their ability to build extensive networks through transnational channels and to collaborate with multiple actors, including those beyond the reach of official channels. They may even act as intermediaries between local agents and official channels in certain cases preceding the state (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 230). IHH works through direct contact and in touch with local NGOs, political figures, leaders, and even armed non-state actors. As our interviewee, a senior IHH official argued, HNGOs have at times much more reliability and flexibility than governments, something that in turn enables them to “talk” directly with different actors beyond the reach of governments: “We do not have red lines.

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We talk with every actor in the region including some violent (armed) non-state actors. We have extensive networks and reliability in the region. At times, we precede the state actors.”23 This new role definition of HNGOs through human rights advocacy, mediation, and humanitarian diplomacy showcases the politicization of humanitarianism as well as how NGOs and the state share roles in terms of humanitarian crises (Tabak 2015: 211). This also illustrates the increasing use of humanitarianism in Turkish foreign policy as well as an intensified distribution of tasks between humanitarian NGOs and the Turkish government. Furthermore, this new mediation role exemplifies the transformation of humanitarianism as it increasingly becomes institutionalized and politicized. AKP’s involvement in humanitarianism, or strong contact between the government and humanitarian NGOs, also risks generating what Barnett calls “politicization” of humanitarianism (Barnett 2009). As Aras and Akpınar (2015: 230) point out, the sharing of sovereignty creates tensions, challenging the very logic of humanitarianism. Although funding from private donors provides humanitarian NGOs with significant flexibility and independence in their missions, they are strongly affected by the discourse and policies of the government, as they are willing to move into the state realm and attain policy outcomes. Yet, for humanitarian NGOs this politicization is a vital condition to adapt to changing conditions in humanitarianism.24 Our interviewee, a senior IHH official, argued that “states act in tandem with their interests. What we do is to try to shape their interests and move into the state realm to get policy outcomes.”25 Although HNGOs’ objective is to end up with policy outcomes, states may not be willing to share their sovereignty with HNGOs at the official level. For example, although the AKP government welcomed IHH’s mediation efforts in the release of Turkish reporters in Syria, there was not any support for further HNGO activity at the official level. In this regard, HNGOs’ quest to adapt such new roles might create tensions between HNGOs and state actors in terms of role sharing (Aras and Akpınar 2015: 235). Since they have their own agendas and priorities, HNGO activities might challenge states’ sovereignty to act and vice versa. Ideological parallelism accompanied with new shared roles such as mediation, and humanitarian diplomacy, enhanced the role of these HNGOs, as in the case of IHH. Evidence supports the existence of a shared agenda and policy parallelism that enhance the newly adopted roles of both actors in domestic and regional politics. Yet, the question is still:

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do both actors have always the same agendas, and do they support each other? In other words, do these new adopted roles and politicization serve to realize humanitarian NGOs’ humanitarian mission and vice versa? What might be their divergences in terms of both actors’ aims, means they use, and ends they reached? In light of the above questions, the rest of the chapter will focus on IHH’s role in Turkey’s foreign policy toward the Middle East in the 2000s, specifically focusing on the case of Gaza Flotilla Incident (Mavi Marmara).

Humanitarian NGOs and Turkish Foreign Policy Toward the Middle East in the 2000s: The Mavi Marmara Case The 2000s marked a change in the Turkish government and foreign policy decision-makers’ involvement as well as an eagerness to play a prominent role in Middle Eastern issues (Sever and Gök 2016: 1158). Öni¸s and Yılmaz assert that with the AKP government, Turkish foreign policy distanced itself from a strong focus on European Union accession toward a “loose Europeanization” that involves close relations with the Arab world (Öni¸s and Yılmaz 2009). AKP rulers’ ideological orientation also substantially contributed to Turkey’s growing involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. This has also resulted in a cultural demarche toward the region, especially in the pre-Arab Spring period (Sever 2012). Among all, the “Israeli–Palestinian” issue took the lead in Turkey’s efforts to have a leading position in the region. AKP governments initially made some efforts to seek a solution to the long-running Palestinian problem by making use of their ties with both sides. In fact, despite the AKP government’s formation of close relations with Israel’s competitors (Iran, Hamas, Syria), Turkey and Israel maintained their strategic, political, and economic relations for some time. For example, Turkey, Israel, the US, and Italy continued to conduct annual NATO military air force exercise called “Anatolian Eagle” until 2008. Turkey played a facilitator role in Israeli–Syrian indirect peace talks in 2008, which Israel welcomed. The two countries also maintained their close trade relations, particularly in the area of defense (Eligür 2012: 433). However, Turkey’s growing ties with Hamas after the 2005 elections, and particularly its growing reaction

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to Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2009, as reflected in Erdo˘gan’s harsh criticism of Shimon Peres at Davos, gave the first signals that Turkey was tilting the balance toward Palestine rather than sticking to its earlier attempts to mediate in the conflict (Sever and Gök 2016: 1165). Turkish policymakers considered the Palestinian question to be an area of responsibility and opportunity to claim the country’s constructive and trustworthy role in the region. In a meeting on the Middle East held in May 2009, the then newly appointed Foreign Minister Foreign Minister Davuto˘glu affirmed that the “Palestinian problem and the Arab–Israeli conflict are at the top of Turkey’s agenda” (Sever and Gök 2016: 1165). Turkey’s stance during the 2009–2010 period elucidates that Turkey raised the question of Palestine on every possible occasion at the UNSC platform as it was holding a non-permanent seat. AKP governments instrumentalized the Palestinian case also to receive domestic support from its electorate (Altunı¸sık and Martin 2011: 571). In view of all these developments, AKP’s Islamic background became more evident with respect to the Palestinian question and vice versa (Sever and Gök 2016: 1165). The AKP government utilized Islamist media in order to cultivate pro-Palestinian sentiments in Turkish society, while striving to mobilize Islamist civil society associations as actors of Turkish foreign policy toward the region. For example, five AKP parliamentarians26 and IHH Chair Bülent Yıldırım participated in a British-based international assistance convoy called “Viva Palestine” to deliver assistance to Gaza on January 2010 (Eligür 2012: 433). Reflecting the party’s orientation, IHH also embraced the situation of Palestinians in its platforms more strongly. In other words, the AKP government’s clear orientation toward the Palestinian issue and its harsh criticisms toward Israel eased IHH’s effort to raise this item to the top of the agenda. In the same token, IHH’s efforts on Palestinian–Israeli conflict have also been in parallel with AKP’s domestic and regional role definitions that posit Turkey as a leader in the Middle East and as the defender of the Palestinian cause (Eligür 2012: 433). Thus, IHH’s efforts also supported the government’s newly adopted roles.27 IHH senior officials argued that their choice of Middle East in general and Gaza specifically was not just an ideological one, but also a choice of funding concerns: We are funded only by private donations. We do not get money from the government. Thus we have to be in places where our donors expect us to

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be. This is not an ideological choice. We are everywhere; but how can we ignore our neighbourhood when it is on fire?28

As MacFarlane and Weiss argue, agency decisions of HNGOs to engage or to disengage, for example, may be affected by questions of profile and fundraising opportunities (MacFarlane and Weiss 2000: 119). Since decision-makers are sensitive toward their public as their electorate, HNGOs materialize their agency to affect government decisions through public opinion. As our interviewees, both senior IHH officials, argued, HNGOs like IHH aimed to increase the sensibility in public opinion in order to affect decision-makers’ policies and create political change in issues of their concern.29 Therefore, it would not be wrong to argue that the two actors (government and IHH) had a “shared agenda” in both domestic and regional politics as they supported each others’ efforts in the region regarding the Palestinian–Israeli conflict during the 2000s. The most crucial case illustrating the role of transnational humanitarian NGOs in Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East was the Gaza Flotilla Incident, where nine Turkish citizens were killed by Israeli soldiers on their way to dispatch assistance to Gaza via the Mavi Marmara Flotilla in May 2010. The flotilla was the idea of the transnational Free Gaza Movement, which teamed up with IHH. The Free Gaza Movement is a Cyprus-based coalition or alliance formed to oppose Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, and is said to have roots in the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent transnational movement dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory (Spiegel 2010). The Free Gaza Movement managed to reach Gaza by one or two small vessels five times between August and September 2008. Because of the failure in the sixth try, the Free Gaza Movement cooperated with IHH. Following IHH, some other NGOs also joined IHH, e.g., Ship to Gaza/Sweden, Ship to Gaza/Greece, the International Committee to end the Siege on Gaza and European Campaign to end the Siege on Gaza (Koru 2017: 87). Accordingly, in May 2010, many NGOs including the IHH, established an aid flotilla campaign called “Our route is Palestine; our cargo is humanitarian aid” in order to carry donated aid supplies to Gaza and thus to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The flotilla was said to carry around 700 activists from 37 countries and humanitarian assistance, such as construction materials and medical equipment (Eligür 2012: 446–447). The flotilla was attacked by Israeli Defense Forces soldiers in international waters and nine Turkish citizens were killed on Mavi Marmara,

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one of the ships on the flotilla. After the flotilla incident, an HNGO’s, namely IHH’s, activity and its consequences became Turkey’s top agenda at international platforms. In the aftermath of the flotilla incident, on May 31, 2010, the then Foreign Minister Davuto˘glu called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in which Turkey was holding a non-permanent seat for the 2009–2010 term. Turkey also called for NATO permanent representatives in Brussels, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which it chaired, to meet on the issue (Migdalovitz 2010: 5). The Turkish government took a firm stand against Israel and severed bilateral relations to an all-time low level. Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv in June 2010, requesting an official apology from Israel, an international investigation on the flotilla incident, and the lifting of the blockade on Gaza (Huber and Tocci 2013: 6). The UN initiated an investigation on the incident, resulting in the Palmer Report of September 2011. The report was a big disappointment for Turkey in the sense that although it criticized Israeli force as excessive and unreasonable, it also questioned IHH’s motivations, confirmed Israeli reports of “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers,” and accepted Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza as legal.30 Following the report’s publication, Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador and froze military relations. For the first time in history, Turkish–Israeli ties had escalated into a deep bilateral crisis rather than simply being marked by fluctuating divergence with regards to the course of developments in the Arab–Israeli conflict (Huber and Tocci 2013: 6). Davuto˘glu called the Mavi Marmara incident as “our 9/11.” Although the government labeled this as an “NGO activity,” Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs was claimed to have set up a crisis desk, and to be in contact with the Israeli government since the initial phases of the crisis. In this regard, the Turkish government analyzed different scenarios and seemed to be well prepared for the crisis (Koru 2017: 93). The incident was ground-breaking also for IHH, as the campaign to support Gaza openly confronted a government policy and aimed at raising global awareness about Israel’s policies and the humanitarian situation in Gaza (Tabak 2015: 201). Thus, a transnational humanitarian mission under the leadership of a Turkish Humanitarian NGO, namely IHH, has literally become a political issue, which directly affected the course of Turkish foreign policy as well as Turkish–Israeli relations. In the aftermath of the incident, one of the leading figures of Hamas, a Palestinian parliamentarian, Ahmet Bahar, thanked the then Prime Minister Erdo˘gan for supporting the flotilla project.31 Gaza was

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regarded as a popular issue in daily newspapers in those days, and IHH defined as a “GNGO, a governmental-nongovernmental-organization.”32 Both national and international newspapers underlined the aspect of common interest, arguing that the government could have stopped the ship if it wanted to, but that the mission to Gaza served both IHH and the Turkish government by making them both heroes at home and in the Arab world.33 Although there was some strong evidence supporting the existence of a shared agenda between the two actors over the Mavi Marmara case, it is hard to argue that this was always in parallel with the interests of both actors. For instance, IHH’s head Bülent Yıldırım argued that they had to come back from Israel following the Turkish government’s decision in order not to put Turkey in a difficult situation.34 Hakan Albayrak, who had also participated in the flotilla, argued that the government was against the project from the beginning.35 Although some AKP parliamentarians had participated in “Viva Palestine” flotilla of 2009, the government prevented its parliamentarians and officials from participating in the Mavi Marmara-led flotilla of 2010 (Atalay 2013: 182). Murat Yetkin, a Turkish columnist, asserts that one of the leading figures of AKP government was completely against the flotilla. It is argued that the Turkish National Intelligence Agency and Naval Forces were also waiting for a political maneuver to prevent the flotilla at the last minute.36 Davuto˘glu said afterward that the government had tried to convince nongovernmental organizations in charge of the flotilla to take the aid to Israeli ports, but without success (Spiegel 2010). Our interviewee, who was also in the flotilla, argued that they did not ask for the government’s permission because they were an NGO organizing a humanitarian mission. On the other hand, they had “informed” the government about the flotilla.37 Accordingly, in April 2011, IHH’s Yıldırım, the Turkish Islamist civil society association chairman, announced that he was organizing a second flotilla called “Freedom Flotilla 2” in order to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in mid-May. Israel requested Turkey to prevent activists from sailing to Gaza. Davuto˘glu, however, declared his support for IHH’s initiative, warning Israel to lift the Gaza blockade and not to take any action against the flotilla. It was only after the Obama administration and a number of US congress members warned the AKP government against allowing the second flotilla to Gaza, and after Israel announced that it would use force to stop the flotilla breaking the Gaza blockade, that the AKP government asked IHH to postpone its voyage to Gaza. Even though

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IHH initially rejected the AKP government’s proposal, on 17 June IHH’s Yıldırım announced that his organization would not participate in the second flotilla due to “technical issues” (Eligür 2012: 449). Therefore, IHH’s “humanitarian” mission became a political debate between Israel, US, and Turkey. Its capacity to act was limited by political issues involving these three states. The Israeli–Turkish agreement of June 2016 was remarkable in terms of illustrating how an HNGO’s policies were directly affected by the government’s policy preferences. In fact, Israel and Turkey had finalized a deal to end their six-year diplomatic rift in June 2016. The agreement restored full diplomatic ties between the two countries, and opened the path for a major natural gas deal. Israel agreed to pay US$ 20 million in compensation to the families of the dead and wounded activists, and in return the families were expected to agree to drop present and any future claims against the Israeli military operation. Beyond the issue of apology and compensation, the third Turkish demand for the normalization of relations with Israel (the lifting of the Gaza blockade) was not met.38 Following the Turkish–Israeli agreement, IHH officially published a strong criticism of it, stating that an agreement foreseeing the use of Ashdod port “would not weaken the blockade, but rather lead to an official recognition of it.” IHH decided to launch a flotilla following the agreement.39 One of the passengers of the Gaza Flotilla, Ibrahim Sediyani, argued that “Israel killed nine passengers of the ship, and with this agreement Erdo˘gan himself sunk the ship.”40 In June 2016, Erdo˘gan strongly criticized IHH for undermining the reconciliation agreement with Israel, saying the deal is a good development for Palestinians, based upon the principle of mutual benefit.41 Did you ask the then Prime Minister [Erdo˘gan himself] to carry such humanitarian aid from Turkey? We had already sent the necessary aid there to Gaza by that time and we are providing aid [now]. We have sent aid to Palestine and are sending. But while we were doing this, we did everything [within the bounds of diplomacy], not for a show of strength. We will continue to do so. We did these things not with a flourish of trumpets but with decency and propriety, and we are continuing to do this.42

After Erdo˘gan’s harsh criticisms toward IHH, the organization announced an official apology arguing that they did not mean to criticize President Erdo˘gan himself, but aimed at showing their unease with

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the agreement reached between Turkey and Israel.43 Yet, in August 2016, Mavi Marmara Freedom and Solidarity Association (founded in January 2011), published a press release regarding the Turkish–Israeli Agreement, criticizing the official labeling of the parties to the agreement as “Ankara” and “Jerusalem.” This was regarded as the unofficial acceptance of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The agreement was also regarded as a maltreatment of people who lost their lives on the Mavi Marmara and their relatives, since they would not be able to raise any case with regard to the incident. The association regarded this as a violation of their freedom to act in the future.44 Additionally, in December 2016, a Turkish court ended a criminal lawsuit against four senior Israeli military officials (Gabi Ashkenazi, Eliezer Marom, Avishai Levy, and Amos Yadlin) (Almog and Sever 2019). IHH, dissatisfied by the Turkish–Israeli agreement, opened a case on behalf of the State of the Union of Comoros (as the Mavi Marmara ship was waving its flag) against Israeli perpetrators of the attack on Gaza Freedom Flotilla at the International Criminal Court.45 Furthermore, a victim of the incident filed a complaint against Turkey after the agreement, demanding compensation worth 260,000 Turkish Liras in 2017.46 Therefore, Turkey’s direct engagement in the crisis made things difficult not only with regard to its relations to Israel, but also in the area of legal remedies.

Conclusion After the 1990s, humanitarianism has globally institutionalized itself as a field, although a growing number of humanitarian tragedies persist in every part of the world. HNGOs have become influential actors across the globe that both compete with states, and/or complete states’ interests as well as foreign policy agendas. The decreasing role of IOs like the UN, and states’ unwillingness to take responsibility toward humanitarian crises through IOs, opened the way toward increasing transnational networks, and for a growing role of HNGOs in various parts of the world in the last two decades. International developments in the sovereignty regime in general, and the transformation of humanitarianism specifically, created a normative space that encourages a greater range of actors to strengthen their transnational networks. The Middle East remains crucial for the future of humanitarianism studies in general, and Turkish foreign policy more specifically, for two

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reasons. First, it is witnessing the largest humanitarian tragedy and migration after the end of the Second World War, namely the Syrian Civil War. Secondly, the region also showcases what Hedley Bull called “multiple loyalties and overlapping authorities” (Bull 1977), highlighting a tendency toward a dispersion of state authority to non-state actors. As Fawcett (2017) asserts, most citizens of the Middle East today identify with “their” state alongside other tribal, religious or ethnic associations. States continue to survive with their borders despite the myth about the “end of Sykes-Picot.” Furthermore, as Sever underscores, Middle Eastern politics increasingly incorporates regional groups and transnational networks as well as interstate arrangements and organizations, opening up the possibilities of bottom-up regionalization (Sever 2018). These make it even more crucial to understand the nexus between states and transnational non-state actors in the future of regional politics. This chapter has addressed the question of one of the most popular “isms” today: the changing nature of humanitarianism with a specific reference to the interplay between Turkish HNGOs (in this case IHH) and the AKP government in foreign policy issues toward the Middle East in the early twenty-first century. Using the framework offered by Michael Barnett on the “transformation of humanitarianism” in the post-Cold War era, the article aimed to access the implications of (1) growing institutionalization, and (2) politicization of HNGOs in Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East with reference to the relationship between IHH and AKP governments in the 2000s. It argued that the case of Turkey’s humanitarianism and the nexus between HNGOs and AKP governments contribute to a rethinking of the nature of humanitarianism, emphasizing the centrality of states to this field as well as their limitations. Turkish humanitarian NGOs, in our case IHH, had a close relationship with the state. This showcases what Barnett calls the politicization of humanitarianism. Although there is some strong evidence supporting a shared agenda between the Turkish government and IHH over humanitarian issues toward the region in the 2000s, it is hard to argue that their interests are always in parallel. As Almog and Sever (2019) assert, the influence of non-state actors in Turkey’s foreign policy toward the Middle East reached its peak with the Gaza Flotilla (Mavi Marmara) incident. Furthermore, for the first time, Turkey and Israel became the two opposing sides of an international legal dispute. The Mavi Marmara crisis illustrates how a transnational humanitarian mission has become an item

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on the political agenda of states, and simultaneously something that challenges official state policies as well as bilateral relations. Thus, humanitarian NGOs’ activities might both contribute to, but also challenge, states’ policies. Furthermore, although the politicization of HNGOs like IHH helped them to garner state’s support and increase their visibility in global politics, it also posed a risk to their ability to act independently in the messy world of politics. Whether it has ever been pure humanitarianism without politics is a question that is difficult to answer. However, the transformation of humanitarianism in contemporary politics has neither been positive nor negative, but rather “incomplete.”

Notes 1. For instance, in her study on the humanitarian action during the First World War, Heather Jones emphasizes transnational dynamics of early humanitarian action by demonstrating that national charities evolved very similarly all across wartime Europe, because of the movement of aid “knowledge” across national borders, and between the international realm and the national state level (see Jones 2009: 699). 2. In 2018 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, with respect to international contributions of government donors, Turkey was the second largest donor of humanitarian assistance following the USA. See Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2018, http://devinit.org/post/globalhumanitarian-assistance-report-2018. 3. IHH (The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief ) was established in 1992 in Freiburg, Germany, by a group of volunteers and opinion leaders who delivered humanitarian aid to Bosnia during the war. After Turkey-based IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation’s establishment in 1995, the previous Germany-based IHH ceased its activities and was shut down in 1996. Later on in 1997, a completely different group of people, who had never taken part in the previous Germany-based original IHH, established a separate organization called Internationale Humanitäre Hilfsorganisation (International Humanitarian Aid Organization) in Frankfurt, Germany. See https://www.ihh.org.tr/ en/news/we-have-no-links-with-the-ihh-in-germany-168. 4. ICRC, Treaties, State Parties and Commentaries, https://ihl-databases. icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/120?OpenDocument. Accessed 21 May 2018. 5. There are also critical approaches to “western” or “liberal” humanitarianism in the sense that “Western humanitarian movement’s sense of concern for distant others has not been converted into a more egalitarian set of political practices of global solidarity.” See Kurasawa (2013).

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6. http://fic.tufts.edu/assets/Professionalising_the_humanitarian_sector. pdf. Accessed 20 May 2018. 7. Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, 2016. See http://devinit.org/ wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Global-Humanitarian-Assistance-Report2016.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2018. 8. http://fic.tufts.edu/assets/Professionalising_the_humanitarian_sector. pdf. Accessed 20 May 2018. 9. According to the definition of World Health Organization (WHO), humanitarian aid is assistance designed to save lives and alleviate suffering in the aftermath of natural or man-made disasters. See http://www.who. int/hac/about/reliefweb-aug2008.pdf?ua=1. Accessed 18 May 2018. 10. OECD defines Official Development Assistance as: “Government aid designed to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries. Loans and credits for military purposes are excluded. Aid may be provided bilaterally, from donor to recipient, or channelled through a multilateral development agency such as the United Nations or the World Bank. Aid includes grants, ‘soft’ loans (where the grant element is at least 25% of the total) and the provision of technical assistance.” It maintains a list of developing countries and territories; only aid to these countries counts as ODA. See https://data.oecd.org/oda/net-oda.htm. Accessed 18 May 2018. 11. International humanitarian order extends beyond “humanitarianism.” Humanitarianism is generally understood as assistance that occurs in the context of disasters; consequently, it is most readily applied to emergency relief and post-conflict recovery. However, international humanitarian order includes other professional fields and communities of practice such as human rights, development, and public health. See Barnett (2010: 2). 12. Welfare Party (RP) was a political party noted for its Islamic orientation, founded in 1983, and led by Necmettin Erbakan. 13. Gul Ozbay, “Refah Bosna Olayını Kullanıyor”, Milliyet, 11 December 1994. 14. Humanitarian diplomacy entails any humanitarian action or assistance to help people in urgent situations and conflict-ridden areas. See Erdo˘gan (2017: 62). 15. See footnote 2 above. 16. For instance, among others, Turkey’s contradictory foreign policy approaches toward some Middle Eastern countries’ human rights policies like Saudi Arabia and its silence toward Sudanese government’s human rights violations in Africa have increasingly been criticized on normative grounds for having double standards. See O˘guz Gök (2014: 96).

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17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

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40.

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Interview with 1st senior IHH manager, 13 November 2016. Interview with 1st senior IHH manager, 13 November 2016. Interview with 2nd senior IHH official, 8 April 2017. Interview with 1st senior IHH manager, 13 November 2016. http://www.ihh.org.tr/en/main/pages/humanitarian-diplomacy-insyria/314. Accessed 22 May 2018. “Suriye’de Fla¸s Geli¸sme”, Milliyet, 9 January 2013. Interview with 1st senior IHH official, 13 November 2016. Interview with 2nd senior IHH official, 8 April 2017. Interview with 1st senior IHH official, 13 November 2016. Turkish Parliament Foreign Affairs Commission Chair Murat Mercan, Mehmet Hıdır Nil, Seracettin Karaya˘gız, Cemal Yılmazdemir and Hüsnü Tuna. “IHH Türkiye’nin Elitleriyle Ba˘glantılı”, Hürriyet, 17 July 2010. Interview with 1st senior IHH official, 13 November 2016. Interview with 2nd senior IHH official, 8 April 2017; Interview with 1st senior IHH official, 13 November 2016. Ibid. See also the original UN Palmer Report, September 2011, http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/middle_east/Gaza_Flotilla_ Panel_Report.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2018. “Gazze Filosu Akdeniz’i Kaynattı”, Hürriyet, 27 May 2010. “Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey”, The New York Times, 15 July 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/world/middleeast/ 16turkey.html. Accessed 17 May 2018. Ibid. “Hükümeti zora sokmamak için döndük”, Hürriyet, 10 June 2010. “Mavi Marmara Yolcularından Hakan Albayrak: Erdo˘gan ba¸sından beri kar¸sıydı”, T24, 2 July 2016. Murat Yetkin, “IHH da tamam, sıra ‘Hoca’da mı?”, Hürriyet, 1 July 2016. Interview with 2nd senior IHH official, 8 April 2017. “Israel and Turkey Agree to Restore Diplomatic Ties”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/world/middleeast/ israel-turkey-mavi-marmara-gaza.html. Accessed 15 May 2018. “IHH Declares Objection to Turkey-Israel Normalization”, H¨urriyet Daily News, 26 June 2016, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default. aspx?pageID=238&nid=100904. Accessed 17 May 2018. ˙ “Mavi Marmaradan Kurtulan Sediyani: Israil dokuz ki¸siyi katletti, Erdo˘gan gemiyi batırdı”, Diken, 28 June 2016, http://www.diken.com.tr/mavimarmaradan-kurtulan-sediyani-israil-dokuz-kisiyi-katletti-erdogan-gemiyibatirdi. Accessed 17 May 2018. “Erdo˘gan criticizes Gaza flotilla organizer group IHH for undermining deal with Israel”, Daily Sabah, 29 June 2016.

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42. “Turkey’s Erdo˘gan Slams Gaza flotilla organizers over Objection to Israel Deal”, Hurriyet Daily News, 30 June 2016. 43. “Israil Çıkı¸sı için IHH’dan özür”, Diken, 3 July 2016, http://www. diken.com.tr/israil-cikisi-icin-ihhdan-ozur-sozlerimiz-yanlis-tarafa-cekildierdogan-kastedilmedi. Accessed 14 May 2018. 44. http://mavimarmara.org/tr/turkiye-cumhuriyeti-ve-israil-arasindaanlasmaya-dair-basin-metni_296.html. Accessed 27 May 2018. 45. https://www.ihh.org.tr/en/news/after-turkey-israel-now-on-trial-at-theinternational-criminal-court-1709. Accessed 24 May 2018. 46. “Gaza Flotilla Victim Sues Turkey, Demands Compensation”, Hurriyet Daily News, 2 October 2017, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ gaza-flotilla-victim-sues-turkey-demands-compensation-120248. Accessed 17 May 2018.

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Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: Macmillan. Çelik, Nihat, and Emre I¸seri. 2016. Islamically Oriented Humanitarian NGOs in Turkey: AKP Foreign Policy Parallelism. Turkish Studies 17 (3): 429–448. Çetin, Hikmet. 2015. Humanitarian Intervention, Responsibility to Protect, and Turkey’s Approach. The Journal of Turkish Weekly 13 (2): 2015. Davuto˘glu, Ahmet. 2013. Turkey’s Humanitarian Diplomacy: Objectives, Challenges and Prospects. Nationalities Papers 41 (6): 865–870. Douzinas, Costas. 2007. Human Rights and Empire. London: Routledge. Eligür, Banu. 2012. Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations (December 2008–June 2011): From Partnership to Enmity. Middle Eastern Studies 48 (3): 429–459. Erdo˘gan, Birsen. 2017. Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Turkish Foreign Policy Discourse. London: Palgrave. Falk, Richard. 2016. Navigating in Strong Winds: Turkey Challenged. Rising Powers Quarterly 1 (2): 247–259. Fawcett, Louice. 2017. States and Sovereignty in the Middle East: Myths and Realities. International Affairs 93 (4): 789–807. Forsythe, David P. 2005. The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilley, Bruce. 2015. Turkey, Middle Powers, and the New Humanitarianism. Perceptions 20 (1): 37–58. Huber, Daniela, and Nathalie Tocci. 2013. Behind the Scenes of the TurkishIsraeli Breakthrough. IAI Working Papers. https://www.iai.it/sites/default/ files/iaiwp1315.pdf. Accessed 21 May 2018. Jones, Heather. 2009. International or Transnational? Humanitarian Action During the First World War. European Review of History-Revue Européenne D’Histoire 16 (5): 697–713. Kabasakal Arat, Zehra F. 2007. Collisions and Crossroads: Introducing Human Rights in Turkey.” In Human Rights in Turkey, ed. Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, 1–16. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kennedy, David. 2004. The Dark Side of the Virtue. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Keyman, E. Fuat, and Onur Sazak. 2014. Turkey as a Humanitarian State. Project on Middle East and Arab Spring Policy Paper. http://research.sabanciuniv. edu/31364/1/keyman-turkey-as-a-humanitarian-state.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2018. Koru, Tu˘gçe Kafda˘glı. 2017. Insights on Mavi Marmara Confrontation: Analyzing the Turkish Crises Management Process. In Analyzing Foreign Policy Crises in Turkey: Conceptual, Theoretical and Practical Discussions, ed. Fuat Aksu and Helin Sarı Ertem. UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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Kurasawa, Fuyuki. 2013. The Sentimentalist Paradox: On the Normative and Visual Foundations of Humanitarianism. Journal of Global Ethics 9 (2): 201– 214. Kürkçüo˘glu, Ömer. 1981. An Analysis of Atatürk’s Foreign Policy, 1919–1938. The Turkish Yearbook of International Relations 1980–1981 (20): 133–187. Levaggi, Ariel González. 2015. Forced Humanitarianism: Turkey’s Syrian Policy and the Refugee Issue. Caucusus International 5 (1): 39–49. MacFarlane, S. Neil, and Thomas Weiss. 2000. Political Interest and Humanitarian Action. Security Studies 10 (1): 112–142. Migdalovitz, Carol. 2010. Israel’s Blockade of Gaza, the Mavi Marmara Incident, and Its Aftermath. Congressional Research Service. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/ mideast/R41275.pdf. Accessed 21 May 2018. Murphy, Teri and Onur Kazak. 2012. Turkey’s Civilian Capacity in Post-Conflict Reconstruction. I stanbul Policy Center Paper. Sabancı University. O˘guz Gök, Gonca. 2014. Tracing the Shift in Turkey’s Normative Approach Towards the International Order Through Debates in the UN. Perceptions 19 (4): 77–106. O˘guz Gök, Gonca, and Emel Parlar Dal. 2016. Understanding Turkey’s Emerging “Civilian” Foreign Policy Role in the 2000s Through Development Cooperation in the Africa Region. Perceptions 21 (3–4): 67–100. Öni¸s, Ziya, and Suhnaz ¸ Yılmaz. 2009. Between Europeanization and EuroAsianism: Foreign Policy Activism in Turkey During the AKP Era. Turkish Studies 10 (1): 7–24. Osa, Yukie. 2013. The Growing Role of NGOs in Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Assistance in East Asia. In A Growing Force: Civil Society’s Role in Asian Regional Security, ed. Rizal Sukma and James Gannon. http://www.jcie.org/ researchpdfs/growingforce/5_Osa.pdf. Accessed 21 May 2019. ˙ Özerdem, Alpaslan. 2016. Insaniyetçilik ve Türk Dı¸s Politikası. Uluslararası ˙Ili¸skiler 13 (52): 129–149. Özerdem, Alpaslan, and Gianni Rufini. 2005. Humanitarianism and the Principles of Humanitarian Action in Post-Cold War Context. In After the Conflict: Reconstruction and Development in the Aftermath of Conflict, ed. Sultan Barakat, 167–176. London: I.B. Tauris. Petersen, Marie Juul. 2012. Trajectories of transnational Muslim NGOs. Development in Practice 22 (5–6): 763–778. Price, Richard. 1998. Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines. International Organization 42 (3): 613–644. Rieff, David. 2002. A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster. Rodogno, Davide. 2012. Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815–1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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˙ Sarkissian, Ani, and S. ¸ Ilgü Özler. 2013. Democratization and the Politicization of Religious Civil Society in Turkey. Democratization 20 (6): 1014–1035. ˙ skileri. Istanbul: Derin. Sever, Ay¸segül. 2012. Türkiye’nin Ortado˘gu Ili¸ Sever, Ay¸segül. 2018. Globalism, Regionalism and the Middle East. E-IR. https://www.e-ir.info/2018/10/12/globalism-regionalism-and-the-middleeast/. Accessed 20 May 2018. Sever, Ay¸segül, and Gonca O˘guz Gök. 2016. UN Factor in the ‘Regional Power Role’ and the Turkish Case in 2000s. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29 (3): 1150–1185. Sırada˘g, Abdürrahin. 2015. Benevolence or Selfishness: Understanding the Increasing Role of Turkish NGOs and Civil Society in Africa. Insight on Africa 7 (1): 1–20. Tabak, Hüsrev. 2015. Broadening the Humanitarian Mission: The IHH and Mediation. Insight Turkey 17 (3): 193–216. Türkmen, Fusün. 2007. Turkey’s Participation in Regional and Global Human Rights Regimes. In Human Rights in Turkey, ed. Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, 249–261. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Tusan, Michelle. 2015. Humanitarianism, Genocide and Liberalism. Journal of Genocide Research 17 (1): 83–105. UN Palmer Report, September 2011. http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/ middle_east/Gaza_Flotilla_Panel_Report.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2018. Walzer, Michael. 2012. On Humanitarianism. Foreign Affairs. https://www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/2011-07-01/humanitarianism. Accessed 29 May 2018. Weiss, Thomas G. 1999. Principles, Politics, and Humanitarian Action. Ethics & International Affairs 13 (1): 1–22.

News stories and interviews Confrontation at Sea: Turkey Seeks U.S. Solidarity. Wall Street Journal Europe, 2 June 2010. Erdo˘gan Criticizes Gaza Flotilla Organizer Group IHH for Undermining Deal with Israel. Daily Sabah, 29 June 2016. Gazze Filosu Akdeniz’i Kaynattı. Hürriyet, 27 May 2010. Gaza Flotilla Victim Sues Turkey, Demands Compensation. Hurriyet Daily News, 2 October 2017. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gaza-flotillavictim-sues-turkey-demands-compensation-120248. Accessed 18 May 2018. Hükümeti zora sokmamak için döndük. Hürriyet, 10 June 2010. IHH Declares Objection to Turkey-Israel Normalization. Hürriyet Daily News, 26 June 2016. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?pageID= 238&nid=100904. IHH Türkiye’nin Elitleriyle Ba˘glantılı. Hürriyet, 17 July 2010.

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Interview with 1st senior IHH manager, 13 November 2016. Interview with 2nd senior IHH official, 8 April 2017. Mavi Marmara Yolcularından Hakan Albayrak: Erdo˘gan ba¸sından beri kar¸sıydı. T24, 2 July 2016. Refah Bosna Olayını Kullanıyor. Milliyet, 11 December 1994. Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey. The New York Times. http:// www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/world/middleeast/16turkey.html. Accessed 17 May 2018. Spiegel, Peter. Confrontation at Sea: Turkey Seeks U.S. Solidarity. Wall Street Journal Europe, June 2, 2010. Suriye’de Fla¸s Geli¸sme. Milliyet, 9 January 2013. Turkey’s Erdo˘gan Slams Gaza Flotilla Organizers over Objection to Israel Deal. Hurriyet Daily News, 30 June 2016.

CHAPTER 11

Business Actors as Holders of Transnational Relations: What Role for Them in Turkish Foreign Policy?

Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel

Keohane and Nye defined transnationalism as “contacts, coalitions, and interactions across state boundaries that are not controlled by the central foreign policy organs of governments” (Keohane and Nye 1972). Already by the mid-1970s, transnational perspectives would provide a deeper understanding into a number of globally contingent social, economic, and political processes such as economic globalization, multinational corporations, social movements, governance and politics, terrorism, political violence, and organized crime. To that list migration issues would be added as one of the most fruitful areas of studying transnational approaches, further widening thereby diaspora studies. Independent from the impact of these areas on studies of transnationalism, the main interrogation was on the place of the state. The vague definition of International Relations (IR) scholars was revised when the disciplines of

M. Özdemirkıran-Embel (B) Faculty of Political Sciences, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_11

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anthropology and migration studies adopted the term “transnational” and made “transnationalism” a new analytical focus in their fields.1 Therefore, the role and the place of the state, as well as its ability to control transborder actors and relations became a more precisely debated aspect. This debate could be summarized by the idea of the “retreat of the state” that is also the title of Susan Strange’s work (Strange 1996). Scholars started to put emphasis on the retreat of the state in international relations, and the growing importance of non-state actors, and their ability to interact across borders without any (or limited) governmental control. In the 1990s, the term transnational was coined in conjunction with lasting relationships and repeated movements across borders, in which the agents were not states or nations, but individual actors or associations (Kokot et al. 2004). As a result of this theoretical and conceptual transformation, transnationalism and transnational relations gained a larger definition also in IR. As Badie and Smouts assert, transnational relations include all relations that, whether by deliberate will or by destiny, take place in a global space beyond a state’s national framework, which produces itself by at least partially escaping the control or the mediating actions of states (Badie and Smouts 1995). In current literature, particularly in IR, global terrorism is intensely discussed, and studies also focus on transnational security.2 As frequently associated with the international security dimension, the international migration phenomenon follows these two subjects. In certain studies where IR and sociology converge, migration and diaspora issues seem to be still dominant. On the other hand, transnational activities of religious groups or political parties are obviously covered in various studies. Although the number of studies on business actors is relatively low, they are still visible in transnationalism literature. All these studies, especially on subjects related to national and international security, point to transnational actors that are described as parallel to the state, at least deliberatively or inherently abstaining from state control, as underlined in the definitions of Badie and Smouts above. In other words, transnational actors are understood as actors who pose a threat to the state, are rivals to it, tend to constrain its domain, and take advantage of the areas in which the state is a rather weak player. However, this tendency to pit transnational actors against the state in an absolute way has been criticized. State’s relations with transnational activities and its place and role in these activities have been analyzed in transnationalism literature. This approach, defined as a challenge by Aksel in terms of

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transnationalism studies, actually restored the state as an actor, which was already discussed in early stages of IR literature (Aksel 2014). The state, seen as a definitive actor for analysis, has consequently become a significant part of migration studies, for it is approached as an actor increasingly involved in practices, structures, and discourses of migrants (Aksel 2014). This situation, observed by international migration literature, has gradually become of particular concern to foreign policy issues. As Özgür-Baklacıo˘glu points out, subjects such as kin and migrants remittances, investments and capital, kin enterprises, extraterritorial elections, multiple citizenship, lobbying, transnational extension, and enlargement of national borders and transnational expansion of national identity, borders, politics, etc., entered foreign policy agendas (Özgür Baklacıoglu 2015: 48). Indeed, transnational studies are gradually becoming a hybrid field, putting together an approach that mainly focuses on interstate relations with an approach that analyzes non-state actors at the transnational level. The points of junction of these two fields are too numerous to confine to only one field. In Risse-Kappen’s words “…it is more fruitful to examine how the inter-state world interacts with the ‘society world’ of transnational relations” (Risse-Kappen 1995). This chapter asserts that business actors provide an efficient case in explaining the relationship between the state and transnational actors, in its analysis of state’s inclusion into the transnational domain. The chapter focuses on the intersection of foreign policy, where states are dominant actors, and the activities of non-state transnational actors. In terms of Turkey and Turkish Foreign Policy, transnational business actors, business organizations, companies, workers abroad (laborers, white-collar workers or entrepreneurs and investors abroad) have to be readdressed as tools or elements to be “supervised” or “guided” in states’ inevitable involvement in transnational domain. In other words, they must be included in Turkish Foreign Policy’s “transnational account,” as a relevant case to explain its “transnationality.” This chapter looks at two major business associations: the Turkish Industry and Business Association (Türkiye Sanayici ˙ ˙ s Insanları ˙ ve I¸ Derneˇgi, TÜSIAD) as the oldest business organization in Turkey still representing the biggest secular capital of the country, and the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (Müstakil ˙ ˙ , adamları Derneˇgi, MÜSIAD) rapidly consolidated under Sanayiciler ve Is Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) rule and representing the pious capital.

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Business Stakeholders in Turkey as Transnational Actors Economic actors can be characterized as transnational actors with regard to their internationally created networks, their organizations at national and international levels, with regard to, as well as due to, their capacity to influence international bodies. They form, in certain circumstances, a rival to the state (Özdemirkiran 2015). Their transnational character, that is their capacity to act beyond all borders (physical, legal, social, psychological, etc.), permits them to develop a strong capacity to orient or determine state foreign policy strategies, while creating a parallel space to international relations, a space dominated by transnational relations (Keohane and Nye 1972). Transnational activities of business actors take dominantly place in industrial production and financial markets. While multinational corporations (MNCs), over 7000 today, dominate a remarkable part of overall welfare in the world, their economic volume is bigger than the GDP of many nation-states (Greer and Singh 2000). For instance, these transnational corporations have an enormous effect on the economic growth and hence economic conditions of the host country, especially in developing countries and developmentalist economies in Southeastern Asia, thanks to their bargaining relations established with the state (Clark and Chan 1995). Yet, states’ relations with transnational capital directly affect their economic policies as well as their economic choices in foreign policy. In fact, it would not be misleading to say that foreign policy choices of countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan cannot be determined independently from transnational capital (Dent 2003: 246). In terms of transnational capital, taking only MNCs into account would mean to ignore the diversity in transnational domain. As mentioned above, as the leading study field of transnationalism, migration literature also includes economic migrants affecting economies of home and host countries and their transnational capital.3 Ethnic entrepreneurship studies, as an extension of especially the diaspora literature, provide substantial information on transnational economic actors.4 Besides, lobby activities organized by companies and entrepreneurs operating abroad, and diaspora and ethnic entrepreneurship, can also be included within the scope of transnational relations in terms of their working style and products. They often come into prominence at junction points where the transnational domain and state domain coincide. For example, the

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Japanese lobby in the United States is largely private in character, including individual corporations, business associations, and the Japan External Trade Research Organization (JETRO) (Katzenstein and Tsujinaka 1995: 82). As transnational actors, business stakeholders, and their organizations are characterized by their relatively privileged position and specific relations with states. In the present global economic system, business actors can be said to more directly affect state policies compared to other transnational actors. In other words, they have more access to the sphere of the state, and more precisely to state authorities (Özdemirkiran 2015). The era of globalization, and most importantly, the progressive integration of the Turkish economy with international markets following the transformation of Turkey’s national economy to a free market in the 1980s, provided Turkish business actors with a new position in national politics and a new access to foreign policy issues. This situation has started to change the unbalanced structure between the state and business people, offering the business community the opportunity to define its interests in a stronger voice and affect the policy-making process. Many studies on the state and business community relationship and on the history of the political economy in Turkey argue that the state controls economic policies, determines the country’s economic objectives, and manifests itself as the principal economic player.5 As a result of Turkey’s modernization process where the bureaucracy was the predominant actor, the bourgeoise has been shaped by the state (Keyder 2008: 9). At the time of the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the main actor in charge of the construction of the nation-state and the process of modernization of this emerging state was not the bourgeoisie, but the bureaucracy. The lack of land ownership in agriculture has prevented the emergence of a powerful landlord class against the state within the Empire. At the time of the foundation of the Turkish Republic in the early twentieth century, it was the bureaucracy that began the nation-state building process, while the bourgeoisie was almost absent. The predominance of the state was reinforced with the introduction of statism6 in shaping the national economy during the 1930s (Keyder 2008). According to Waterbury, although the leaders of the young Republic7 have kept the hope of witnessing the emergence of a nationalist bourgeoisie, enlightened and far-sighted, they nevertheless continued to implement strategies of political economy imposed by the state. Despite

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this goal of the leaders, the bourgeoisie would gradually become a rival of the state (Waterbury 1993: 36–37). Keyder points out that in its struggle against the dominance of the bureaucracy, the bourgeois class has given rise to a populist opposition to state bureaucracy, beginning to threaten its power (Keyder 2008). This struggle took place in the political field, with bureaucracy, which had founded the nation-state, having thus to cede political power in the 1950s to this new bourgeois class gathering around the Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti, DP). On the other hand, the state bureaucracy retained its supremacy and control in the determination of economic policies, and continued to be the main actor of Turkey’s political economy. The bourgeois class (formed largely by the notables of small towns in western Anatolia), who got a political victory over the bureaucracy in the 1950s, followed the same goals of the founding ideology of the nation-state by embarking on the formation of a national bourgeoisie, that is to say, a Turkish–Muslim bourgeois class. After the 1980 coup that profoundly transformed the country’s social and political structure, the bourgeoisie came under the control of the military regime that remained in power until the 1983 elections, which would keep its influence even in the following decades. Entrepreneurs, especially large corporations, began to integrate into the international economic system in the 1980s through new laws that came into effect, which aimed at opening the Turkish economy to international markets. As Keyder noted, in the 1980s, after comparing the effects of the weakness of its class to political losses caused by an authoritarian regime, the bourgeoisie would opt for a limited democracy, accepting the ideological hegemony of the regime, and applying a strict strategy of production (Keyder 2008: 264). The state, which gave a “liberal orientation” to the economy after the 1980 coup, managed to maintain its hegemonic place in the economy, especially ensuring the industry’s dependence on politics. It is for this reason that the development of the economy, and especially of the industry, remained dependent on the state. Until the 1990s, only large groups like Koç and Sabancı8 formed a real capitalist class thanks to their close relations with the state and the political sphere. Small and middle-sized enterprises (SMEs) that had very limited relations with the political sphere developed rather later, during the 1990s. Therefore, the Turkish state traditionally defines the scope of entrepreneurs and economic interest groups. Indeed, it was able, at least until the 1990s, to impose control, predominantly in the economic sphere, to limit the emergence of new “fields of power.”9 Fearful of all

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types of rivalry from capital holders (for example intellectuals, artists, and above all entrepreneurs) who can endanger its monopoly over the control of resources, the Turkish state limited the autonomy and the space of action of (private) holders of economic capital, the business community. Therefore, Turkish authorities could not use the economy as an effective foreign policy tool (Özdemirkiran 2015). The Turkish economy has developed steadily since the 1990s, with foreign trade occupying a prominent place. It increased some 15 times in the last twenty-five years while being profoundly modified, constituting now the fulcrum of the Turkish economy. Whereas Turkey used to export agricultural and mining products in the early 1980s (57% of exports came from agricultural products, for example), nowadays 90% of Turkish economic exports come from industrial products (textiles and clothing, intermediary goods, and consumer goods such as cars and household appliances) (Insel 2008: 131). This economic expansion has made foreign trade an increasingly valuable foreign policy tool, turning Turkey into a trading state,10 a state able to use its international economic exchange as an integral element for determining its foreign policy. Moreover, as noted by Kiris, çi, the nature of the trading state requires the involvement of many stakeholders in the formation of foreign policy or diplomatic games. However, the priorities and interests of these stakeholders sometimes differ from those of traditional foreign policymakers in Turkey (Kiri¸sc¸ i 2009). Actor diversity in foreign policy, as pointed out by Kiri¸sçi, also brings about competition among state and non-state actors. Operating in foreign policy arena, where state is the hegemon, or trying to have an impact on this arena leads to serious honoring and legitimacy problems on the side of private actors. At this very point, the legitimacy problem on the side of business actors is not only related to foreign policy, but it also becomes the primary dynamic in state–business community relations in Turkey, which had been balanced for the good of the state. Bu˘gra employs legitimacy as a basic concept to analyze state and business community relations in Turkey. It can simply be accomplished if economic activities of businesses follow the state’s interests and objectives. In other words, different from rational business people’s behavior that would be primarily dependent on their interests in Western economy and sociology, Turkish business people do not only endeavor for profit maximization, but act in a particular manner that is shaped by the sociocultural values of Turkish society (Bu˘gra 2007). In Heper’s words, general characteristics of state

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and business community relations determined in a top-down fashion lead to the opinion that Turkish business people owe their capitals as well as their social status to the state (Heper 1991: 12). This legitimacy requires full compliance of business people with interests determined by the state, and only thanks to this compliance can they carry out business activities and earn a reputation in the society. Following Turkey’s incorporation into free-market economy in 1980s, and the integration of foreign expansion and export with state interests after the end of the Cold War, the Turkish state started to consider the business world as a natural part of this foreign expansion. In other words, especially during the presidency of Turgut Özal,11 who privileged a personal interaction with business people (Atlı 2011), the Trading State policy was initiated. Becoming an element and even an actor of Turkish Foreign Policy has strengthened the legitimacy of Turkey’s business community in comparison to other private actors. Paradoxically, foreign policy, where states are main actors, has provided the business community, as non-state actors in terms of their basic characteristics, with a new area of liberty and legitimacy. Through their recognition by the state as legitimate foreign policy actors, they also became stronger actors in domestic policy, able to, or candidate to, influence foreign policy-making processes. Therefore, foreign policy, with a few exceptions (e.g., Önis, ) an underresearched domain in the existing literature on state and business community relations in Turkey, becomes a key variable for analyzing relations between the Turkish state and business people through transnational lenses. The new critical role of economic stakeholders in the international system with the development of transnational relations supports Turkish business actors, especially since successive AKP governments have set a foreign policy goal of turning Turkey into a regional power, even a global player, due to its economic growth. The domestic transformation of Turkey’s political economy has brought the political and economic spheres closer together. As Kutlay argues, the restructuration of domestic business actors, and the emergence of a new competitive capitalist class, underpinned the economic arm of Turkish foreign policy, with the economy becoming “the practical hand” of Turkey’s new foreign policy (Kutlay 2011).

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Cases of Transnational Business Actors in Turkish Foreign Policy As stated above, this part will especially focus on effective business actors, ˙ ˙ TÜSIAD and MÜSIAD, which have gradually become actors of Turkish Foreign Policy following the country’s incorporation into the international market economy in 1980s. When these actors do not have direct relations with the state, thanks to their transnational characteristics, they can reach fields in which the state has no access, is isolated or overlooked. They may get out of state control from time to time, although they preserve their legitimacy by acting in compliance with the interests and objectives defined by the state. Moreover, they can develop their characteristics as non-governmental organizations thanks to their status in foreign policy. As a matter of fact, these actors have been observed to contradict with public actors, at least to a limited extent, and to suggest alternative policies at times when they dissent with the policies of the government. ˙ TÜSIAD: A Dedicated Civil Society Organization for Turkey’s European Union Membership The EU’s influence increased significantly after the Helsinki summit in December 1999, during which Turkey obtained the status of an official candidate for membership. The summit’s outcome has led key players in the political and economic field in Turkey to take initiatives for institutional change. Indeed, Turkey’s EU accession process is of interest to Turkish entrepreneurs, especially large companies and large groups from the Republican bourgeoisie, mostly founded in Istanbul. As noted by Hadjit and Moxon-Browne, Turkish economy could benefit from foreign direct investments (FDI) from EU countries provided the continuation of the democratization process undertaken by structural reform legislation. For this reason, business people became quickly the most involved actors in the process of Turkey’s EU membership. They were even perceived as such. In a study that analyzes the attitudes of Turkish citizens toward the effects of Turkey’s candidacy in the economic, political, and cultural fields, business people stand out for their commitment to the accession project (Hadjit and Moxon-Browne 2007). They support Turkey’s candidacy and future EU membership, while at the same time putting pressure on the national level in order to push the leaders to pursue reforms. Macroeconomic stability, EU support in the field

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of development, FDI, enlargement of the market for Turkish products exported through preferential trade agreements with EU member states are sources of motivation for the business community, leading them to push political leaders to focus more on the membership goal (Hadjit and Moxon-Browne 2007). ˙ TÜSIAD considered Turkey’s EU accession process as a determining factor for Turkish economy. By its attachment to Turkey’s candidacy and accession process, it continued to be a leader in this project on the domestic front, thanks to its influence on the state and the political actors (Öni¸s 2006: 284–292). Founded in 1971 and counting 4500 members, including the leaders ˙ of the largest Turkish companies, TÜSIAD represents the most powerful employers’ organization in Turkey. Its members represent in 2018 50% of the overall amount of values added, 85% of Turkey’s total foreign trade, more than 50% of nonagricultural, nongovernmental workforce, and 80% of corporate tax revenue.12 It is firmly defined as liberal, democratic and westernized; and works itself to spread this image.13 Through its state˙ ments, press campaigns, periodicals, and other publications, TÜSIAD fulfills the role of an influential think tank, its profiling having gradually shifted from that of an interest group to that of pressure group (Aybar et al. 2007: 337–347). Its activities are aimed at creating social cohesion based on competitive market economy, sustainable development, and participatory democracy.14 It plays a mediating role between the Turkish private sector, Turk˙ ish governing bodies, and international bodies. TÜSIAD’s statements on human rights issues are aimed first and foremost at speeding up Turkey’s democratization process, as well as to respect the Copenhagen criteria15 and thus the country’s EU accession. Its lobbying of EU bodies and economic and political leaders of the member countries takes various forms, the first of its objectives being naturally to inform the European partners of the economic, political, and social reality of Turkey (Gangloff 2003: 142). ˙ The EU membership was standing in the center of TÜSIAD’s future vision as it addressed the desire of further global integration and political stability that were deemed necessary to attract foreign capital and investments. Also, as Yaka notes, the project fits well with the neoliberal transformation of the social formation, which was in need of institu˙ tional regulation by the end of the 1990s (Yaka 2015: 93). For TÜSIAD, the EU-related economic criteria were complementing the IMF program,

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functioning as an external anchor to “lock-in” the reform process (Öni¸s 2003). At the same time, the EU membership prospect was capable of addressing different demands and desires of the majority of Turkish people, ranging from economic prosperity to human rights, and the solution of the Kurdish question (Yaka 2015). ˙ TÜSIAD launched mass “information campaigns” with international bodies. Its members also have a broad network of commercial and political contacts, directly or via the association. To supervise and manage this ˙ relational network, TÜSIAD opened in 1996 and 1998 offices in Brussels and Washington. Thus, thanks to these primary steps abroad, in the 1990s the association would start to develop transnational relations. In ˙ terms of Turkey’s EU integration process, TÜSIAD can be considered as the most active and influential pressure group working with the EU institutions. It is fully integrated into the Eurogroups, and a permanent member of the Union of Industries of the European Community (BusinessEurope) (Visier and Polo 2005: 11). The association is also a member of other international organizations such as the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD (BIAC), Global Compact Network,16 the Union of Mediterranean Confederations of Enterprises (BusinessMed), the Belt and Road Industrial and Commercial Alliance (BRICA),17 Global Business Coalition,18 Major Economies Business Forum on Energy Secu˙ rity and Climate Change. TÜSIAD’s international commitment to these organizations shows once again its ability to act independently of state control, and its potential to influence the state through these connections. In other words, all these memberships reflect its transnational character. ˙ Apart from its EU (Brussels) and US (Washington) agencies, TÜSIAD has three representative offices in European capitals, in Berlin, Paris, and London and one office in Beijing. On the other hand, the association carries out effective works for Turkey’s EU membership process thanks to its collaboration with universities and research agencies such as The Brookings Institute (Washington, DC), German Marshall Fund, and St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Moreover, the Institut du Bosphore, launched as “the key player in bolstering links between France ˙ ˙ and Turkey” is a TÜSIAD initiative started in 2009. TÜSIAD’s aim was to set up a think tank designed to bolster Turkey–France relations and bring them to the attention of the general public.19 ˙ TÜSIAD’s interest in foreign policy issues can also be accounted for by considering the Foreign Policy Forum jointly established with Bo˘gaziçi University. Besides, this business organization not only has contributed to

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objectives determined by the government and the state, but has also tried to have an impact on the transformation in domestic policy thanks to its transnational links and methods, further making use of its transnational capacity in order to steer the government for policy changes. For instance, ˙ TÜSIAD issued two different reports in 1997 and 2001 (Tanör 1997, 2001) in order to support project development in the democratization process that has gained speed with the EU membership process that is not directly related to business world but to Turkey’s development. Furthermore, the association published a complete report on political reforms in Turkey with regard to EU membership (Batum 2002). In terms of Turkey–EU relations that have rapidly deteriorated after 2013, reaching a ˙ freezing point in 2017, TÜSIAD continues to provide several policy suggestions for policymakers, endeavoring to improve and reaccelerate the process both in Turkey and in Europe. Although EU membership has not been much appraised among state interests and objectives compared to previous periods of the AKP govern˙ ment, however, TÜSIAD continues to provide policy suggestions in order not to jeopardize the “legitimacy” mentioned by Bu˘gra.20 It is able to undertake activities in European business environment, nongovernmental organizations, and even with the public, which Turkish state authorities or institutions face difficulty in accessing. Therefore, it contributed, and is still contributing, to the achievement of national objectives by means of transnational links and methods mentioned above. ˙ MÜSIAD: An Empowered Business Association Under the AKP Rule As well as willingly supporting the work of business people and asso˙ ciations like TÜSIAD in the European project, AKP governments also favored business activities in targeted regions (the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia) as part of their foreign policy strategy. It has a close relationship with the “pious” business community of Anatolia that has for over ˙ ten years constituted the “new bourgeoisie” in Turkey. MÜSIAD, made up of representatives of this new pious bourgeoisie, has been progressively ˙ taking the place of the TÜSIAD, which is now considered as representing “Istanbul’s former, secular and Western bourgeois class.” This newly emerging bourgeoisie currently accomplishes the tasks assigned to Turkish business people within the framework of the diplomatic goals of Turkey’s political leaders.

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˙ ˙ , adamları MÜSIAD is the acronym for Müstakil Sanayiciler ve Is Derneˇgi, founded in 1990 in Istanbul. It now represents 60,000 enterprises involved in all economic sectors, which produce 15% of national income and employ more than 1.6 million employees.21 This association is composed of entrepreneurs who define themselves as “pious” and con˙ servative, generally from Anatolian cities. The “MÜ” in MÜSIAD means “müstakil ” (independent) yet lets itself be known as “müslüman” (Muslim in Turkish), and refers to this newly emerging class of the bourgeoisie. According to Yankaya, as an Islamically oriented business association, ˙ MÜSIAD is a group that must be studied within the context of both the business associations that constitute an essential element of the civil society, and with regard to Islamic movements in Turkey (Yankaya 2009). ˙ Due to its links with political Islam in Turkey, MÜSIAD, as a nongovernmental organization, presents a favorable case for this study in terms of both state’s foreign policy and its transnational effectiveness. From its foundation until its transformation into an efficient actor thanks to AKP’s consolidation, and its own compliance with government poli˙ cies, MÜSIAD has kept itself away from foreign policy due to state’s sensitivity to secularism, and toward reactionary activities. This distance led ˙ MÜSIAD to rather use its transnational characteristics as business people for sustaining and improving its presence. Considering this characteristic, ˙ MÜSIAD abstains from state’s scope of control, complying more with the definition of classical transnational actors. In fact, it had to adapt to conditions of the EU membership process, as one of the most important subjects and objectives of Turkish Foreign Policy that formed the basis for the transformation of a business actor/association into an active for˙ eign policy actor as seen in the TÜSIAD example above. Moreover, this “adaptation process” can be explained through political opportunism and the impetus of taking advantage of Europe’s economic resources. This has directed it toward a moderate Euroscepticism. Although this Euroscepticism seems to have been easing off, this Islamic Euroscepticism not only ˙ jeopardizes MÜSIAD’s support for Turkey’s complete compliance with secular universal norms but also reproduces the clash of civilizations thesis that Turkey’s accession project to the EU initially aimed to obliterate (Yankaya 2009). In other words, while the EU membership process dynamizes a transnational business association both in the transnational arena and before the state, it acts as an obstructer for another business association due to its distance from the state.

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˙ As stated above, MÜSIAD has started to appear in foreign policy during AKP period, following the ruling party’s consolidation in power especially after 2007. This association, which it is impossible to consider independently from the political Islam movement, is in perfect harmonization with the government, representing its values, and dominating various positions of the state. The fact that this business association hardly challenges the government makes it worthy to question its role as a non-state transnational actor, when one takes into account the definitional framework of transnational actors in this study that analyzes the role of transnational actors and state domain. However, when we read these juncture points between transnational actors and the state ˙ backwards, MÜSIAD emerges as able to access areas that the government has difficulty accessing, thanks to its transnational character, networks, ˙ and methods, just as in the case of the TÜSIAD for Europe, with ˙ MÜSIAD deriving benefits for the state through its activities. Paradoxically, the association is inspired by the EU model of regionalization in the construction of an Islamic platform of economic cooperation. From its founding on, the association had an international vision, which was realized through two transnational networking strategies: establishing representations in foreign countries, and creating a platform ˙ for international cooperation (Yankaya 2014: 2). While MÜSIAD has 86 communication offices in Turkey, it has 201 in 74 different countries.22 Among its aims, foreign relations are stated as the first in importance among its activities. The association carries out its foreign relations by three commissions: Foreign Organizational Development Commission, Fair-Forum and Organization Commission, and International Relations ˙ founded the International Business Commission.23 Moreover, MÜSIAD Forum (IBF) at a conference held in Lahore, Pakistan in 1995 in collaboration with leading Islamic intergovernmental organizations such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC),24 the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), the Islamic Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (ICCIA). IBF is managed today by business people, heads of business associations from 22 different countries.25 ˙ This international commitment of MÜSIAD actually fits with AKP’s foreign policy goals, and the association firmly affirms its loyalty to the government. For example, during the 2007 parliamentary election campaign, the AKP set 2023, the centenary of the establishment of the republic, as the deadline for the fulfillment of its public and foreign policies. Officials from the Ministry of Defense, present at Hightech Port, also

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introduced it as a concrete illustration of the “2023 goals” by exhibiting the development of defense industries and national security. MÜSIAD shows great loyalty to this policy, and explicit commitment to the gov˙ ernment: “For us, Hightech Port is a part of MÜSIAD’s aspirations for Turkey. So, we position our actions according to the objectives that Turkey has set for 2023” (Yankaya 2018: 162). ˙ As was mentioned above, MÜSIAD is committed, and able, to introduce new areas for AKP’s policymakers who want to expand into new territories in Turkish Foreign Policy (Middle East being in the first place, followed by Central Asia and Africa) through its international and transnational business networks and secondary activities in various fields (espe˙ cially such as humanitarian aid). MÜSIAD gathers business actors of different sizes from MENA countries in various cities of Turkey, Istanbul being in the first place, and facilitates Turkish investments in these countries, and also Turkish Foreign Policy’s intensification in these regions. ˙ MÜSIAD’s activities are highly supported by the state as the association ˙ held the High Tech Port by MÜSIAD Qatar and 19th International Business Forum (IBF) on 6–8 October 2015 under the auspices of the President Tayyip Erdo˘gan and Qatari Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha.26 ˙ One of the most significative examples of MÜSIAD’s transnational actions that contribute to the trading state policy is the IBF and the International Trade Fair, jointly organized with the forum. IBF members come from “countries with which Turkey shares historical and cultural ties with the aim of developing commercial and industrial relations.” Its goal is therefore to bring together economic and political elites of Muslim countries in an economic and political bloc with the aim of taking better ˙ advantage of globalization. MÜSIAD defines IBF as “a global business network among Muslim businessmen,” and considers it as an alternative to the Davos World Economic Forum.27 The IBF’s congress is organized ˙ jointly with an International Fair. MÜSIAD International Fair (MIF), ˙ known also as MÜSIAD Expo, has taken place every two years in Istanbul since 1993, with visitors from African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries. Its aim is to promote association member companies’ access to foreign markets, especially to those of Muslim countries. For the association, this fair is an influential tool in developing the export capacities of ˙ Expo of 2016 gathered 72,000 visitors, its community.28 The MÜSIAD taking place for the 17th time in Istanbul in November 2018.

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˙ Furthermore, MÜSIAD’s transnational actions and its contribution to Turkish Foreign Policy are not limited to great international organizations such as IBF and MIF. Following a transnational perspective of binding together like-minded business actors sharing a common Islamic vision, it has intervened into the creation of two associations of “Islamic business people”: the Egyptian Business and Development Association (Ebda, “Start!” in Arabic), linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Tunisian Namaa (Rise) close to Ennahdha Party (Vannetzel and Yankaya 2019). These activities show once again how a business association with a transnational network performs as a practical hand for the state.

Conclusion By analyzing the cases of two established business associations in Turkey, ˙ ˙ TÜSIAD and MÜSIAD, this chapter focused on the specific area where activities of the state and transnational actors converge. Business actors provide an efficient case to explain relations between state and transnational actors, particularly in the analysis of state’s inclusion into the transnational domain. As transnational actors, business stakeholders and their organizations are characterized by their relatively privileged position and specific relations with states. In the present global economic system, it can be argued that the actions of business actors, and the results of their activities, affect state policies more directly than other transnational actors. In other words, they have more access to the sphere of the state. In Turkey’s insertion process into the global economy, becoming an element and even an actor of Turkish Foreign Policy has strengthened the legitimacy of business actors. Paradoxically, foreign policy, where states are main actors, has provided the business community, non-state actors in terms of their basic characteristics, with a new area of freedom and legitimacy. As one can see, despite different sociological structures, worldviews, ˙ ˙ and values of the members, both TÜSIAD and MÜSIAD, notwithstanding their transnational potential, are relatively dependent on interests and objectives determined by the state in their relations with governments and the state. However, as typical non-state actors, they use their transnational links in directing the state, developing or changing policies when their sociological structures and values are at variance with the government. It can be stated that the relatively pessimistic situation generated against business people and associations, and business people’s subjection to the

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state have started to change, even if slowly, thanks to emerging transnational characteristic and links. In other words, despite the inclusion of the state into the non-state actors’ area through its ability to subordinate business actors, the increasingly transnational character and capacity of these business actors allow them to counterbalance the state supremacy, and to contribute to the transnational account of Turkish Foreign Policy.

Notes 1. For example Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach; Arjun Appadurai. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”, Theory, Culture & Society 7; Peggy Levitt. 2001. “Transnational Migration: Taking Stock and Future Directions”, Global Networks 1: 195–216. For an account of the evolution of the literature see Damla B. Aksel. 2014. “Kins, Distant Workers, Diasporas: Constructing Turkey’s Transnational Members Abroad”, Turkish Studies 15 (2): 197. 2. See for example Phil Williams. 1994. “Transnational Criminal Organizations and International Security”, Survival 36 (1): 96–113 and Fiona Adamson. 2006. “Crossing Borders: International Migration and National Security”, International Security 31 (1): 165–199. 3. See for example, Jocelyn M. Armstrong, Warwick R. Armstrong, and Kent Mulliner. 2012. Chinese Populations in Contemporary South East Asian Societies: Identities, Interdependence and International Influence. London: Routledge. 4. See for example Russell King. 2001. “Immigrant entrepreneurship”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27 (2); Min Zhou. 2004. “Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Convergences, Controversies, and Conceptual Advancements”, International Migration Review 38 (3). ˙ , adamları. Istanbul: Ileti¸sim; Metin 5. See Ay¸se Bu˘gra. 2007. Devlet ve Is Heper. (ed). 1991. Strong State and Economic Interest Group: The Post1980 Turkish Experience. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter; Korkut Boratav. 2012. ˙ Türkiye Iktisat Tarihi 1908–2009. Istanbul: Imge. 6. It is a form of state economy that is not against free-market economy, and that does not represent any socialist element. 7. Turkey was formally proclaimed a republic in October 1923, with Mustafa Kemal as its first President. During the 15 years of his rule, Turkey underwent a great transformation, which changed the religious, social, and cultural bases of Turkish society as well as its political and economic structure.

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8. Koç and Sabancı are traditionally the two major Turkish trading companies (holding/corporation) founded by the Koç (Vehbi Koç, the founder started his trading career in 1917 in Ankara, and the Koç group was founded in 1926) and Sabancı (Hacı Ömer Sabancı started his career as a cotton trader in 1925) families. These two groups have become, in the history of the Republic, the representatives of the Turkish bourgeoisie. 9. According to Pierre Bourdieu, these “fields of power” (champs du pouvoir) are formed by the holders of other kinds of capital, be it cultural, symbolic, or economic. These fields of power construct themselves as a game—space, at the center of which the holders of different kinds of capital struggle, particularly for power over the state. By exerting power over state capital they gain power over other kinds of capital and their reproduction. See Pierre Bourdieu. 1993. “Esprits d’Etat, Genèse et structure du champ bureaucratique”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 96–97: 49–62. 10. This concept was coined by Rosecrance in the 1980s to describe an economy-based foreign policy approach. See R.N. Rosecrance. 1986. The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World. NewYork: Basic Books. 11. It would be important to nuance the Özal era. Although the president (1989–1993) attached great importance to business people and was committed to liberal economic policies (even neoliberal), his attitude did not immediately change the nature of relations between the state and the business community. As Atlı notes, the bureaucracy recognized the capacity of the business community, yet it was also determined to maintain its control by limiting the public status given to business associations. As a result, instead of transferring its functions, the state subcontracted them to business associations in the expectation that they would perform these duties in a more efficient manner, with the state determining the conditions of the contract itself. The case of Foreign Economic Relations Board ˙ (DEIK), which was founded in 1986, is a relevant example to illustrate this argument. See Atlı (2011: 181). ˙ 12. See the official web site of TÜSIAD: www.tusiad.org. 13. See www.tusiad.org. 14. www.tusiad.org. 15. The accession criteria, or Copenhagen criteria (after the European Council in Copenhagen in 1993 which defined them), are the essential conditions all candidate countries must satisfy in order to become a member state. These include the following political criteria: stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities; the following economic criteria: a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and market forces; and administrative and institutional capacity to effectively implement the acquis and the ability to take on the obligations of membership.

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21. 22. 23. 24.

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See https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/policy/glossary/ terms/accession-criteria_en. It is a voluntary initiative based on CEO commitments to implement universal sustainability principles to take steps to support United Nations (UN) goals. For further information about the organization see https:// www.unglobalcompact.org/about. The Belt & Road Industrial and Commercial Alliance (BRICA) is a multilateral cooperation mechanism established by China Federation of Industrial Economics (CFIE) in May 2015 in Beijing, in order to vigorously advance the Belt and Road Initiative of China on the Ancient Silk Road. BRICA currently has 25 industrial and commercial organizations from 23 countries of Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Established in 2012, the Global Business Coalition (formerly known as the B20 Coalition), operates as a worldwide platform of exchanges between national business communities, and aims at building consensus, and developing common positions on issues critical for enterprises. For further information see the organization’s official web site: http://www. globalbusinesscoalition.org. See Institut du Bosphore’s official website on http://www. institutbosphore.org/en/contentDetail.php?id=6. ˙ For example, see speeches of TÜSIAD presidents, Cansel Ba¸saran Symes criticizing the impact of the state of emergency in Turkey on the econ˙ omy, December 1, 2016, “TÜSIAD’dan Hükümete çok a˘gır ele¸stiriler”, Cumhuriyet, http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/ekonomi/638569/ TUSiAD_dan_Hukumete_cok_agir_elestiriler.html and Ümit Boyner on ˙ September 14, 2012, “TÜSIAD’dan hükümete uyarı”, Milliyet, http:// www.milliyet.com.tr/tusiad-dan-hukumete-uyari-ekonomi-1596243/. ˙ See the official web site of MÜSIAD: www.musiad.org.tr. www.musiad.org.tr. www.musiad.org.tr/en/foreign-relations. The organization changed its name on 28 June 2011 during the 38th Council of Foreign Ministers Meeting from Organization of the Islamic Conference to its current name: Organization of Islamic Cooperation. ˙ MÜSIAD Press Release, 10 November 2016, www.musiad.org.tr/tr-tr/ etkinlik/16-musiad-expo-240. ˙ See MÜSIAD Expo official website: www.musiadexpo.com/en/why-expo. ˙ ˙ “MÜSIAD Türkiye’nin Yüz Akı”, MÜSIAD publication, Istanbul, May 2015, 133. ˙ See MÜSIAD Expo official website: www.musiadexpo.com/en/why-expo.

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PART VI

Conclusion

CHAPTER 12

Conclusion Deniz Kuru and Hazal Papuççular

This book has aimed to question the weight of state-centric approaches in explaining TFP. In doing this, it did not limit itself to a single pathway, but made use of a number of different, but complementary, frameworks that all shared a commonly employed structure: looking at actors other than the (center-based) state actors. This meant going beyond the usual focus on the Turkish decision-makers, from the President (or until the abolishment of the position in 2018, the Prime Minister) to Minister of Foreign Affairs, from the diplomatic or military bureaucracies to parliamentary actors. With regard to the institutional actors, it signified a willingness and preparedness to look beyond the central organs, including the executive, legislative, or bureaucratic mechanisms. All in all, the aim has been to include into our analyses those agents who were/are active

D. Kuru (B) Department of Political Science, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail: [email protected] H. Papuççular Department of International Relations, Istanbul Kültür University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_12

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contributors to the processes in which Turkish foreign policy was/is taking place, and who were not a part of this central state apparatus. At the same time, our broad understanding of transnational dynamics and/or transnational(ist) approaches related to a framework in which we underlined two different dimensions in various chapters. One of the options was to deal with the way in which non-state local actors play a role in TFP. In this regard, the subsequent dynamics of these processes illustrate a significant element of transnational features, as such actors were usually tied to international, or transnational, non-state actors, or they trigger visible shifts so that the emerging policy includes an important extent of interaction and/or results that are interpretable from a transnational perspective. The other option was to keep, to a certain extent, the central state as one of the actors, but to simultaneously emphasize how its action frames were constrained by, at times contingent, dynamics of transnational factors. From diaspora policies to globally active Turkish or non-Turkish NGOs, it was possible to demonstrate how these interactions could not be grasped by merely remaining at a level of analysis that derives from state-centric insights. A major challenge to the accounts provided in this book could originate from an approach that would refer to a visible tendency in present world politics, to wit, a re-emphasis on the state and its pertinence as a global actor. Not only the latest developments in the context of early twenty-first-century “refugee crisis” or the problematic consequences of weak statehood, but also the populist reaction to the liberal international order, domestically and globally, reiterate the existence of a global condition, in which the state and its role in foreign policy processes are seen as elements of primary significance. Our answer to these claims would be twofold. On the one hand, we share some of these evaluations; especially, we recognize the relevance of the state as such. Previous suggestions about the end of a state-centric world politics have not been realized. Under such conditions, the realm of foreign policy, anyway a traditional bastion of state’s actorhood, becomes a dimension in which our kind of approaches could be more easily challenged. However, we want to remind that our framework does not in fact require the transnational actors and factors to be the single players involved in the foreign policy processes. On the contrary, the chapters and the overall structure in this volume kept the focus on the aspects of transnational dynamics and actors without necessarily leaving aside the state, be it its actors or its structures. For this reason, a renewed emphasis on the state should not lead us to throw

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away the baby with the bathwater. The state remains with us (perhaps in a stronger way compared to the 1990s or 2000s), but it does not wipe out the transnational factors and actors in foreign policy. A second point pertains to the aspect of history when it comes to studying foreign policy. In the case of TFP, we were able to illustrate that a transnational emphasis was not merely an approach to be employed when one focuses on the “good days” of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, basically, “les trente glorieuses of transnationalism” between the 1970s and 2000s. From the 1920s and 1930s to examples that focus also on the 1970s, and the temporally closer periods of the 1990s and on, the chapters in this volume present different narratives, which all underline the existence of transnational actors and/or dynamics in these decades. Employing a transnational(ist) approach on TFP of the 1920s and 1930s was an atypical orientation given the glorification of the Turkish state in historical accounts in addition to the general characteristics of the period. Although this posed several challenges to the authors of our volume, it also offered a new mindset about TFP to figure out these challenges. We strongly believe that this novel perspective will pave the way for further studies in this regard, concerning different periods of Turkish diplomacy. It means a further interaction of Turkish scholarship with the international one, which reflects a “transnational turn” in historical accounts of foreign policy. Therefore, our call is for studies of TFP, and also in other country cases, to offer accounts that at least recognize the role and impact of such actors and factors. In this regard, we want to reiterate the relevance of using transnational(ist) lenses, and to conclude by providing a list of useful points to take into consideration. Based both on our initial starting assumptions and the insights we gained in the process of preparing this book, this could be seen as sharing a few guidelines that would be of help in transnationalizing our accounts of foreign policy. There follow three aspects that we find particularly important. First, a proper engagement with non-state actors is a most welcome issue for our research agendas. Second, understanding the state and statal actors’ dependence (to different degrees) on transnational dynamics when it comes to processes of foreign policy formulation and making is a must. Third, the interaction between state and non-state actors domestically, internationally and itself transnationally needs to be considered, as these developments reiterate the relevance of transnational processes when one

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needs to explain a state’s foreign policy choices, decisions, and implementations. A first point pertains to the importance of thinking about other actors beyond the state. Most decisively, the agency of non-state actors should be recognized. They need to be taken seriously as entities with their own agential capacity in the processes of foreign policy. Domestic or global NGOs, prominent non-political individuals, business corporations, national or international think tanks, scholarly epistemic communities, various branches of the media, and many others would be considered, if such a re-configuration were to take place for approaching a country’s foreign policy. Even in a study that deals with bilateral relationships between two states, in a way that prioritizes state-to-state connections, considering these non-state actors would bring in additional benefits. At times, this can even be a question concerning the instrumentalization of these actors by the state. In our understanding, such a condition does not directly mean that non-state elements do not matter. To the contrary, the very entanglements that emerge in these processes require scholars’ attention in order to provide a more comprehensive account of these foreign policy dimensions. To put it shortly, non-state actorhood matters—even if/when they are instrumentalized, the consequent developments are not easy to foresee, pointing to the contingent dynamics to which these interactions give rise. Some of the chapters in this volume can be read in this way, demonstrating results of actions in which non-state actors’ unforeseen contributions shifted certain previously conceptualized foreign policy frameworks. On a related level, the richness of these different actors should remind us that studying foreign policy should never be seen as a process of reifying the state. Keeping in mind the significant scholarly advances brought about by Foreign Policy Analysis, we could remember that black boxing the state is not the most suitable means of trying to understand processes of foreign policy. However, in the structure we aimed to highlight in this volume, our desire was also to add into our research actors who go beyond, below, or beneath the state(s). In this regard, ranging from Fridtjof Nansen during the Lausanne Conference to Turkish nationalists in the Sanjak of Alexandretta, from TÜSIAD and MÜSIAD to Turkish diaspora groups in different contexts, it was possible to note the overlaps and divergences between the interests of various individuals or collectivities and the way in which these positions influenced TFP, be it its formulation or implementation.

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A second point that we want to emphasize relates to the structural constraints imposed by the various transnational actors. This means that these players play at least a co-determining role in Turkish foreign policy, as their choices, actions, or policies present a dimension that needs to be taken seriously by Turkish decision-makers. From the civil society’s critical attitude to Turkish policies in the case of Northern Cyprus to IHH’s ambiguous position in the context of the Middle Eastern conflicts, from AKP-related think tankers’ policy-making and policy-legitimizing attitudes to 1920s’ Christian minority representatives, we were able to foreground how distinct actors were able to create a framework that changed the overall environment. These influences can generate smaller structural changes, as in the case of generational dynamics shaping Turkish diplomats, who would go on to work in a distinct way, following the educational models to which they have been socialized into. This can also pertain to Erasmus-trained students who gradually advance in their careers in diplomacy or elsewhere, thereby bringing in a new mindset that could in the mid-term influence Turkish practices in foreign policy. On a more global level, the relevance of social media, with its individual stars and icons, provides another example, in which a single song can challenge multiple reference points of Turkish foreign policy (see “Susamam,” (I cannot remain silent) a 2019 rap song with multiple contributors that has reached dozens of millions of viewers on YouTube that criticized the current state of affairs in Turkey, underlining the inconsistency between the dominant foreign policy narratives of the government and the way these are also questioned via domestic political criticism). Based on these points, it becomes essential to understand that, paraphrasing Wendt, foreign policy is not what states make of it. Rather, foreign policy comes into being at all these various points that are not separate from non-state actors on a transnational level. While the significance of these actors changes from time to time, it is possible to contemplate of a whole study devoted to TFP that would not at all deal with the Turkish state. One could develop it by taking nonstate actors from domestic, international, and transnational spheres into consideration and by analyzing their positions with regard to certain Turkey-related points. A hypothetical case would be Turkish diaspora groups defending or criticizing a decision of the Turkish government— with the heterogeneity of these groups made more visible under the impact of Turkey’s internal polarization reflected abroad, it is probable that the diaspora would not serve as the mouth-piece of the

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government—and the way in which they interact with other non-state actors in their environment, e.g., Amnesty International, Greenpeace, or alternatively with their host state governments. In all these cases, it would be possible to extract new account concerning TFP, but without making the Turkish government or other state actors the main actors of these frames. All in all, such an approach does not aim to forego the role played by (Turkish) statal units, but offers to go beyond the usual narrative that anyway focuses on what one tends to call “Ankara.” In this regard, we want to underline once again the pertinence of the transnational framework in reminding us about the actual constraints faced by an excessively “Ankara”-focused research agenda. As a third aspect, it is important to highlight how the resulting interactions (between the various non-state actors, foreign states, and Turkish decision-makers studied in this volume) take place on different levels, from the domestic to the international, but also on the transnational dimension itself. Even when pointing back to the significance of the state, it becomes important to show how a domestic actor can “coact” in TFP, as for instance demonstrated in the case of two Turkish business associations (of secular Western and Islamist persuasions). Obviously, co-actorship does not always translate into co-authorship. However, the agential capacity of these players, and the contingent dynamics that emerge in their transnational ties with their fellow business communities abroad, do matter when it comes to TFP. The same is valid for the cases in which various Turkish diaspora or kinship groups or NGOs are involved. The way their preferences and actions interact with Turkish or other statal actors and other international or transnational players is important, as studying these levels could provide us with a more comprehensive research agenda for TFP. Following these guiding points, we want to offer five distinct research strategies that would substantially help us in overcoming the extant statecentric approaches in the context of studying TFP. In fact, these suggestions, in combination with the above explained aspects, could be used for any country-region case, with regard to researching their foreign policy processes. First, transnationalizing foreign policy accounts could be made easier if our scholarship takes a more global turn. This means that a researcher should be not only geographically but also thematically more inclusive in developing her/his research agenda. Such a move includes primarily going beyond a mere focus on interstate relations in the context of foreign policy. From diplomatic incidents triggered at the individual

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level to crises generated by the actions of a non-state actor, it becomes important to see the involvement of actors other than the state in a virtually limitless number of fields. At the same time, this would signify looking for actions and development in geographically different areas of the world so that it becomes easier to show instances, in which the presumed reach of statal actors is giving way to non-state actors in more visible ways. A second aspect could be to understand the pendulum-like role of transnational dynamics in foreign policy processes. Stated differently, we need to be conscious of historical change, including times of more and less pertinence for non-state actors. Whether borders and more strictly defined state actions become popular or not, this aspect also depends on a certain era, with its broadly perceivable socio-political dynamics. In this regard, researchers of foreign policy should ensure to engage at times in a synchronic, and sometimes in a diachronic manner, with their study material. Comparisons and finely structured process tracking could underline the role of transnational actors and factors, without necessarily prioritizing them at the cost of the state, or vice versa. A third strategy could be to attempt to integrate transnationalism more with the history of foreign policy, in a broader sense with the international/diplomatic history, as this volume tried to show in one of its sections. The inclusion of non-state actors in historical cases of foreign policy, concerning different periods, would probably yield different results as suggested above. Experimentation with them in the context of the late nineteenth century as the age of “first globalization” is intrinsically different than the 1930s, as the zenith of nationalism. However, regardless of the conclusion over the strength of the transnational factors and actors, their very incorporation in the historical narrative has the power to expand the boundaries of diplomatic history, which has been criticized throughout the twentieth century for its rigid methodology and restricted content. While the transnational approach to history of foreign policy not only changes the nature of historical scholarship, it also brings this scholarship, which becomes more interdisciplinary and theoretically driven in this way, closer to IR, thereby making both fields more fruitful and mutually beneficial for each other. The fourth element of importance would be to carefully deal with transnational dynamics, but also to clarify the more transnationalist aspects that matter. As certain actors are of a transnationalist nature, it

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becomes essential to underline their immanent interest in transnationalizing foreign policy processes. What should be kept in mind is that not all transnational processes lead to transnationalism, as some of the former can indeed even hinder the later outcome. However, transnationalist actors can be more easily dealt with by considering their transnational roles and ties. Distinguishing between these two is relevant, even though the broader idea of transnational dynamics can cover both transnational processes and actors and transnationalist forces. In the specific frameworks of foreign policy, especially in the Turkish context, transnationalist elements were of a weaker nature, whereas transnationally shaped dynamics, as shown in this volume, played, and continue to play, a significant role. In other cases, a closer interaction between transnational actors and transnationalist forces could be expected to shape a given country’s foreign policy processes. The last point concerns a chosen openness for different epistemological and methodological choices. Taking the transnational actors and elements (or transnationalist forces, for that matter) in does not require us to merely contain ourselves with a single scholarly framework. In this regard, we think that the different and at times conflicting choices of the individual chapters, with their range from constructivist to realist, from historicist to liberal approaches, allowed us to pinpoint how the common framework can still be formed by reliance on the significance of the transnational(ist). This way, we were also able to provide a complementary list of issues as well as a number of ways through which to transnationalize such a foreign policy-related research agenda. To put it shortly, looking beyond the state can be done without necessarily acquiring a liberal framework, or by leaving aside a realism-guided approach. However, neither does this mean that transnational dynamics are a mere addition to our list of analysis. To the contrary, we showcased at times the primary role played by these aspects when it comes to provide a comprehensive account of Turkish foreign policy. For this reason, we want to conclude by emphasizing the importance of transnational dynamics, which should better be taken into consideration in studies of various theoretical frameworks so that an essential aspect of foreign policy does not remain “unaccounted (for).”

Index

A accidental diaspora, 13, 121, 122, 124–127, 129–131, 133, 134, 137 Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP), 14, 70–72, 76–78, 80, 82–84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 150, 151, 160, 201, 202, 217, 229, 230, 237–240, 242–244, 247, 248, 250, 261, 266, 270–273, 289 advocacy networks, 44, 46, 47 Anatolian tigers, 75, 78 Ankara government, 97, 98, 106, 107, 110–112, 114, 116 Arabic (language), 71, 74, 209 Arab Spring, 83, 86, 243 Armenian diaspora, 107, 185, 190 Armenian Red Cross Society, 105 Armenian refugees, 107–109, 112 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal (Pa¸sa), 15, 37, 106, 127, 133, 134, 136, 195, 197–200, 203, 204, 206–208, 211–213, 215, 216, 218, 219

B Beck, Ulrich, 11, 45, 46, 49–55, 63, 64 Bilim ve Sanat Vakfı (Science and Arts Foundation), 78–81 bourgeoisie, 75, 88, 263, 264, 267, 270, 271, 276 Boy Scouts International, 105, 110, 111 Business association, 261, 263, 270–272, 274, 276, 290 Business community, 16, 263, 265, 266, 268, 270, 274, 276 Business Europe, 270 business people, 263, 265–267, 270–272, 274, 276

C Cairo, 74, 83, 90 Çandar, Cengiz, 74, 77 competitive market economy, 268 cosmopolitan condition, 42, 49–53, 55, 56, 60, 63

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle East Today, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6

293

294

INDEX

cosmopolitanism, 11, 49, 50, 57, 123, 216, 233 cultural diplomacy, 15, 195–203, 208–214, 216 Cyprus, 26, 30, 289

D DAESH. See the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Davuto˘glu, Ahmet, 70–72, 78–89, 148, 151, 185, 229, 237, 238 Demirel, Süleyman, 197, 198, 203–208, 215, 216 Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yetkiya Demokrat, PYD), 58, 143, 152, 153, 157, 160, 163 diaspora, 10, 13–15, 26, 45, 47, 57, 62, 64, 69, 101, 104, 111, 122–125, 130, 132, 134–136, 162, 175–179, 181, 184–190, 196, 210, 259, 260, 262, 286, 288–290 domestic global politics, 11, 41, 42, 52, 55–57, 59, 60, 62–64

E epistemic communities, 43, 47, 79, 80, 83, 89, 288 Erasmus, 34, 35, 289 Erdo˘gan, Recep Tayyip, 73, 78, 81, 87, 90, 151, 159, 201, 216, 237, 244, 246, 248, 252–254, 273 European Union (EU), 16, 77, 186, 235, 236, 243, 267–272 Euro-Turks, 176

F foreign direct investment (FDI), 182, 267, 268 foreign policy experts, 69, 72, 77, 86

foreign policy forum, 269 Free Gaza Movement, 245 G Gaza Flotilla Incident, 229, 243, 245 Germany, 99, 103, 124, 125, 136, 179–181, 184, 189, 251 globalization, 5, 25, 26, 48, 64, 122, 123, 259, 263, 273 global politics, 35, 44, 56, 62, 251 governmentality, 178 great powers, 99, 100, 102, 103, 108, 109, 112, 115, 144, 145 Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, 105, 107, 111 H Hatay, 121, 122, 126, 127, 132–134, 136–138, 147, 150, 152, 164 humanitarian diplomacy, 58, 229, 232, 237, 238, 240, 242, 252 humanitarianism, 115, 227–234, 237, 238, 240, 242, 249–252 Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), 16, 58, 83, 90, 155, 179, 190, 229, 230, 236, 239–251, 253, 289 human rights, 25, 37, 43, 122, 179, 180, 188, 190, 201, 216, 227, 228, 231–242, 252, 268, 269, 276 I Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association ˙ (MÜSIAD), 261 Inönü, Ismet (Ismet Pa¸sa), 107, 113, 132, 134 Institut du Bosphore, 269, 277 International Business Forum (IBF), 272–274

INDEX

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 105, 111, 112, 230, 231, 251 interwar period, 123, 125, 126 Iraq, 61, 62, 76, 83, 86, 90, 102, 124, 125, 143, 144, 146, 162, 200, 229 the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), 143, 152, 155–158, 161, 164 Israel, 15, 16, 74, 76, 83, 190, 195– 204, 206–219, 229, 243–250, 253, 254

J Jerusalem, 199, 209, 217, 219, 249 Justice and Development Party (JDP). See Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP)

K Kalın, Ibrahim, 89, 217 Keohane, Robert, 43, 46, 53, 101, 259, 262 kin-state, 13, 121, 122, 125–127, 129–131, 135, 137, 143–145, 147–151, 156, 157, 159–161

L Lausanne Conference, 13, 99–101, 103, 104, 112, 128, 288 Lausanne Treaty, 97, 98, 103, 116, 128 League of Nations, 13, 98, 100, 102, 110, 111, 115, 122, 132, 134, 135, 138, 235 League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (LNCHR), 102, 105

295

legitimacy, 73, 74, 106, 113, 161, 233, 265–267, 270, 274 liberal humanitarianism, 231 lobby, 13, 86, 104, 107, 111, 114, 116, 185, 190, 201, 261–263, 268 Lord Curzon, 100, 113, 114 Lord Mayor’s Fund, 105, 107 M Mavi Marmara, 178, 229, 243, 245–247, 249, 250 Melek, Abdurrahman, 129, 130, 132 methodological cosmopolitanism, 42, 49, 50 methodological nationalism, 11, 41, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 56, 62, 64 Middle East, 11, 16, 32, 69–73, 75–85, 87, 88, 121, 143–146, 149, 160, 161, 181, 190, 197, 198, 200, 209, 216, 217, 229, 230, 234, 239, 243–245, 249, 250, 270, 273 migration, 48, 53, 124, 144, 178, 181–183, 202, 250, 259–262 multinational corporations (MNC), 43, 259, 262 N Nansen, Fridtjof, 105–107, 109, 110, 112, 288 national condition, 42, 47, 49, 50, 53, 54, 59, 63 national customization, 103, 116 National Pact (Misak-ı Milli), 112, 113, 116, 126, 127, 138 Netherlands, 180, 181 new diplomacy, 84, 100, 114, 115, 229 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 5, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16,

296

INDEX

25, 26, 31, 35, 36, 44, 58, 59, 70, 83, 97, 98, 101, 103–106, 109, 110, 112–116, 122, 155, 178, 187, 190, 196, 227–230, 232–237, 239–243, 245–247, 250, 251, 267, 270, 286, 288, 290 non-state actors (NSAs), 4–10, 12, 13, 16, 21, 25–29, 35, 36, 44, 47, 48, 69, 70, 72, 84, 143–147, 149, 152, 161, 162, 176, 177, 208, 216, 217, 241, 242, 250, 260, 261, 265, 266, 274, 275, 286–291 Nye, Joseph, 33, 43, 46, 53, 101, 259, 262

O official development assistance (ODA), 233, 235, 252 Operation Euphrates Shield, 61, 157, 163, 164 Ortado˘gu Ara¸stırmalar Merkezi (ORSAM), 82, 83, 86, 89, 90 Ottoman Empire, 27, 31, 32, 72, 87, 107, 112, 124, 126, 144, 185, 190, 216, 231, 263 Özal, Turgut, 75, 78, 84, 87, 266, 276

P Palestine, 83, 84, 198, 199, 210, 218, 219, 244, 248 Palmer Report, 246, 253 People Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG), 58, 144, 153, 154, 156 Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB), 152, 180, 186–190

R Red Crescent, 106, 107 remittances, 178, 181–183, 261 Russia, 58, 99, 155–157, 200 S Sanjak of Alexandretta, 13, 121–123, 126, 127, 129, 132, 133, 136, 137, 288 selective reconciliation, 114, 116 Sezer, Ahmet Necdet, 197, 198, 201, 203, 208–211, 216 Siyaset, Ekonomi ve Toplum Ara¸stırmaları Vakfı (SETA), 81–83, 89 Sökmen, Tayfur, 127, 128, 134 statism, 233, 263 subjectivity, 176, 178, 189 Syria, 14, 57–62, 65, 74–76, 83, 86, 88, 122, 126–128, 130–135, 143–163, 200, 241–243 Syrian civil war, 42, 57–60, 62–65, 145, 146, 149, 150, 159, 161, 228, 229, 241, 250 Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), 153, 154, 156, 163 Syrian National Council (SNC), 57, 150, 151, 160 Syrian Turkoman National Assembly, 151–153, 158 Syrian Turkomans, 143, 145–164 T think tank, 11, 71, 79–83, 86, 87, 89, 90, 268, 269, 288 trading state, 265, 266, 273 transnational actors, 6, 9, 12, 15, 27, 43, 44, 46, 47, 51, 54, 63, 104, 112, 122, 123, 176, 260–263, 271, 272, 274, 286, 287, 289, 291, 292

INDEX

transnational capital, 262 transnational ethnic ties, 149, 161 transnational governance, 44 transnationalism, 48, 69, 78, 80, 84, 85, 87, 101, 122, 123, 146, 161, 178, 259–262, 291, 292 transnational relations, 41–44, 46–49, 53, 54, 56, 63, 64, 260–262, 266, 269 Turkey-Israel relations, 15, 16, 195, 198, 201, 203, 204, 206–208, 211–214, 246. See also Israel Turkish History Thesis, 136 Turkish Industry and Business Associ˙ 261, 267–272, ation (TÜSIAD), 274, 276, 277 Turkish migrants, 179, 183–189 Turkish nationalism, 137 Turkish National Struggle (Milli Mücadele), 133, 137 Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), 29, 30

297

Turkoman, 58, 71, 73, 85–87, 90, 144, 146–148, 151, 153–161, 163 U unintended cosmopolitanism, 49, 53, 63 United States of America (USA), 61, 71, 76, 79, 81, 99, 105, 116, 143, 152, 154, 178, 217, 233, 243, 247, 248, 263, 269 W workers abroad, 176, 182, 261 Y Yunus Emre Institute, 31, 32 Z Zionism, 197–199, 210, 218, 219