Imagining Turkey in a re(de)territorialized world: Turkey, the Orient and the Occident

---

Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2010

Öğrenci: SONER ÇELİK

Danışman: NECATİ POLAT

Özet:

This thesis analyzes the construction of geopolitical imaginations of Turkey in the post-September 11 era on the basis of critical geopolitics and in the frame of a center (the United States and the European Union)-margin (Turkey) relationship. The dissolving of the relatively stable concepts of the Cold War era by globalization and the demise of the Soviet Union -such as state integrity, sovereignty, inside/outside dichotomy and state identity- has created deterritorialization in the global space of territorial states. However, territorial states have continued to exist via reterritorialization on the basis of new enemies/others/boundaries borrowed from old concepts, narratives and dramas. Following the September 11 attacks, the attempts to construct self/other dichotomy based on the geopolitical imaginations of the globe and Turkey in the US and the EU political circles have changed geopolitical imaginations of Turkey. Their discourses over Turkey have encountered counter-discourse of Turkish policymakers presenting Turkey as a “bridge” between civilizations to increase the “strategic” value of Turkey. In this study, taking into consideration the geography as a product of a specific power/knowledge alignment rather than something naturally given to determine foreign policy, the geopolitical (geocultural) imaginations of Turkey are being examined and the power-knowledge relationship is exposed.