World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th – 24th 2010

 < NOT_DEFINED backto Politics

Turkey's Transformation under the Justice and Development Party: Elites, Minority Politics and Foreign Policy (037) - NOT_DEFINED activity_field_Panel
 

· NOT_DEFINED date: MON 19, 5.00-7.00 pm

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Ankara University (Turkey)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Ilhan Uzgel

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: This panel aims to shed light on some specific aspects of the transformation that Turkey has undergone during the rule of the Justice and Development Party (JDP). There will be four presentations trying to grasp both internal and external dimensions of the transformation process. The four presentations will focus on political elites, minority politics, main foreign policy orientation and Middle East policy of Turkey during the JDP era respectively.

Chair: Ilhan Uzgel (Ankara University)

Paper presenter: Fethi Acikel (Ankara University), “The Making of a New Conservative-Islamic Elite: The Case of JDP”
In the face of republican ethos and institutions, the Islamic-conservatism has long been in an ideological winter sleep. At least until mid-1960s even though the social bases of Islamic-conservative parties were already available and the networks of traditional intellectuals were reconsolidating after the first shockwaves of secular republicanism, a political party of the Gramscian type and an organic political elite to lead it were missing. The foundation of National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi) in the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan created a new political channel alternative to the center-right tradition, and paved way for an emerging a new type of political conservative-political elite in Turkey. In spite -and partly because- successive military interventions and party closure cases that severely eclipsed Turkish democracy and centrist parties, this new generation of conservative-Islamic political elite was born in the early 1990s. The remarkable success in local elections, particularly in big metropolitan cities, made this new elite visible as well as independent of center-right parties and contributed to their gaining autonomy and further diversification, a process which even overshadowed the centrist-conservative tradition and its elite. Via a birdseye analysis from the National Order Party to Justice and Development Party, this paper aims at focusing on the birth and the rise of conservative-Islamic political elite. Departing from the profiles of the JDP MPs gathered after 2007 General Elections, this paper will attempt to compare the new generation of political elites within its own tradition and with other party elites. An analysis of this kind can also be expected to give us some conceptual and analytical instruments in understanding other relevant elite formation cases.

Paper presenter: Elcin Aktoprak (Ankara University), “Minority Politics of the JDP Government in Turkey”
This paper suggests that the national identity conception of the JDP government is not based on the civil citizenship as the leadership of the Party argues, but it is inspired by a reconfigured millet system. Because the minority politics of a central authority is one of the most significant indicators of the nation-building process, the paper explores the codes of the continuing nation-building process in Turkey by focusing on the politics and rhetoric of the JDP government toward the minorities. There have been significant reform efforts in terms of minority and human rights through the EU accession process. However, implementation of these reforms has been far from satisfactory. The reason for this, the paper argues, is that the JDP government while on the one hand adopts the EU’s conditionality on human and minority issues, it on the other hand, is trying to pursue its own perspective which approaches to the issue from a religious based multiculturalism. By focusing on the rhetoric of the JDP government this paper illustrates these contradictions between laws, acts and identity perceptions.

Paper presenter: Ilhan Uzgel (Ankara University), “The Neo-Ottomanist Tendencies in Turkish Foreign Policy”
Turkey has engaged in an active foreign policy orientation during the JDP government. Dubbed as Turkey’s “soft power” or “emerging regional power”, the JDP government has been pursuing a foreign policy orientation which envisages a restoration of Turkey’s sphere of influence in the formerly Ottoman dominated regions. The intellectual roots of this new and growing interest in the former Ottoman hinterland can be found in Professor Ahmet Davutoglu’s “The Strategic Depth” doctrine, which draws the outlines of Turkey’s foreign policy in the 2000s. Starting with an sophisticated criticism of traditional Turkish (domestic and) foreign policy in the Cold War and Post-Cold War era, this approach suggests the revision of Kemalism as the founding ideology of the Turkish state, the restructuring of the domestic politics with a reference to the Ottoman period, an active foreign policy and subsequently a regional power position for Turkey in the international system. However, the paper argues that contrary to the widespread perception and criticism at home and in the West, this foreign policy vision has not necessarily been developed as an alternative to Turkey’s traditional Western orientation, but in practice it is complementary to it.

Paper presenter: Nuri Yesilyurt (Ankara University), “Turkey and the Arab World during the JDP Era”
After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the influence of Iran in the Middle East is growing more than ever, which in turn gives rise to anxiety among most of the Western-oriented states and movements in the Arab world. As the distance between the Western-oriented and Iranian-oriented camps in the Arab world grows, Turkey’s recent activism in the region is interpreted in a number of different ways. Some observers, stressing its growing relations with Iran, Syria and Hamas, argue that Turkey has been changing axis in its foreign policy. Others, including the pro-government commentators, are contending that Turkey is acting in the region on its own account and is not bound up with either camp. The foreign policy discourse of the JDP government which has an implicit neo-Ottomanist notion supports this argument as well. It is this second contention that will be scrutinized in this paper: To what extend Turkey can be considered as a third party in the Middle East? Is it possible to talk about the emergence of a Turkish sphere of influence in the Arab world, in addition to Western and Iranian spheres of influence? The paper will try to answer these questions by focusing on Turkish policy in the major regional conflicts which took place after 2003 in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. The main argument of this paper is that Turkey’s recent diplomatic activism in the Arab world, rather than creating a Turkish sphere of influence, generally ended up favoring the interests of the West in the region.