A POSTSTRUCTURALIST APPROACH TO IDEOLOGY AND FOREIGN POLICY: KEMALISM IN THE TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY DISCOURSE By Özlem Demirtaú Bagdonas Submitted to Central European University Department of International Relations and European Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Philosophy of Doctorate in Political Science Supervisors: Nicole Renee Lindstrom and Paul Roe Word Count: 90,082 CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2008 DECLARATION I hereby declare that no parts of the thesis have been submitted to no other institution different from CEU towards a degree. To my knowledge nor does the thesis contains unreferenced material or ideas from other authors. Özlem Demirtaú Bagdonas CEU eTD Collection ABSTRACT The foreign policy literature witnesses a renewed interest in the so-called ideational factors in foreign policy. Most of these works aim to show the independent impact of identities and ideas on a specific foreign policy action or orientation. In contrast, poststructuralist research agenda employs a discursive and indeterministic approach to study how interests and identities are reconstituted through foreign policy making. Building on this approach, this dissertation presents a theoretical framework for studying the role of ideology in foreign policy and argues that the relationship between foreign policy and ideology is discursively constructed; it is co-constitutive, rather than causal. Being a construct of the foreign policy discourse, ideology is not intrinsically suggestive of a particular policy, identity or rationality. The dissertation examines the role of a particular ideology, Kemalism, conceptualized here broadly as the set of ideas and objectives attributed to following Atatürk’s path. It focuses on the question of how Kemalism has served as a template in the Turkish official discourse to reconcile and counterpoise Turkey’s Western/European-orientation and the Cyprus policy – two allegedly incompatible foreign policies. In order to investigate the role of Kemalism in this relationship, the study follows a discursive epistemology and conducts an in-depth discourse analysis to analyze the way the leaders of government parties and the military establishment linked these policies to each other by recourse to Kemalism during three periods – 1960-1979, 1980-1989, and 1997-2007. It is found that both policies have been reconciled and counterpoised by means of CEU eTD Collection competing constructions of the objectives of Kemalism, rather than a single Kemalist template. There were remarkable differences between the governmental discourse and the individual party discourses, as well as between what is identified as the defensive and integrationist approaches to the role of Kemalism in Turkish foreign policy, followed by the party leaders regardless of their political affiliation. While the same elements of Kemalism were used in the legitimization of policies, each discourse ascribed competing definitions to these elements as well as to the relationship between the Cyprus policy and the Western/European orientation. This process, as the study reveals, has also contributed to the construction and the continuous change of the ideology of Kemalism. Thus, it is problematic to claim that Kemalism directs Turkish foreign policy towards a specific goal and that these policies are inherently opposite to or compatible with each other. CEU eTD Collection TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................1 The theoretical approach.....................................................................................................5 Methodology ....................................................................................................................11 Research design................................................................................................................15 Structure of the dissertation ..............................................................................................16 CHAPTER I: CONCEPTUALIZING IDEOLOGY:KEMALISM AS AN IDEOLOGY AND BASIC APPROACHES TO KEMALISM.................................................................................................21 Introduction......................................................................................................................21 1.1. The origins of Kemalism............................................................................................24 1.1.1. The ‘six arrows’ of Kemalism and Atatürk’s reforms ..........................................26 1.2. Beyond the ‘six arrows’ and reforms: the objectives of Kemalism and the principles of Kemalist foreign policy.........................29 1.2.1. Full-independence and the realist foreign policy..................................................31 1.2.2. Modernization/ civilizationism/ Westernism and the idealist foreign policy.........36 1.3. Conceptualizing Kemalism ........................................................................................39 1.3.1. Conceptualizing ideology and Kemalism as an ideology .....................................41 CHAPTER II: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN FOREIGN POLICY: FROM THE RATIONALIST/IDEATIONALIST DIVIDE TOWARDS A POSTSTRUCTURALIST FRAMEWORK .........47 Introduction......................................................................................................................47 2.1. Ideas as a ‘trifle’ of foreign policy..............................................................................48 2.1.1. (Neo)realist approaches to Turkey’s Western-orientation and Cyprus policy .......51 2.2. Ideas/ideologies as factors in foreign policy ...............................................................56 2.2.2. Ideationalist approaches to Turkish foreign policy...............................................61 2.3. From the rational/ideational dichotomy to their discursive construction .....................69 2.3.1. Poststructuralist approaches to foreign policy......................................................72 2.3.2. Methodological considerations in poststructuralism and the use of discourse analysis.........................................................................................................................75 2.3.3. A poststructuralist approach to ideology and foreign policy.................................76 CHAPTER III: THE CLASH OF KEMALISMS?THE FOREIGN POLICY DISCOURSE ON THE WEST/EUROPE AND THE CYPRUS ISSUE (1960-1979).........................................................80 Introduction......................................................................................................................80 3.1. The official discourse (1960-1979).............................................................................82 3.1.1. Peace at home, generals in the parliament: the officers’ take on Kemalism..........82 3.1.2. ‘Peace in the world, Turkey in the West’.............................................................84 3.1.3. The Cyprus issue: a brief overview of the discourse ............................................87 CEU eTD Collection 3.2. Deconstructing the official discourse..........................................................................91 3.2.1.1. Kemalism from the ‘left of center’ to the ‘democratic left’: the view of the Republican People’s Party (RPP) ......................................................91 3.2.1.2. Flexible foreign policy and Turkey’s role as a guardian of democracy..........95 3.2.2.1. Demirel’s ‘Justice Party’: Western democracy to fulfill Atatürk’s vision ....100 3.2.2.2. A pro-Western foreign policy: Western and/or national interests?...............104 3.2.3.1. The discourse of the Nationalist Action Party (NAP): the Turkish-Islamic synthesis ..................................................................................111 i 3.2.3.2. A multi-directional foreign policy: towards anti-Westernism......................115 3.2.4.1. The path towards ‘national salvation’: the discourse of the National Salvation Party (NSP)................................................120 3.2.4.2. The ‘national view’ and orientation towards the Muslim world...................122 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................126 CHAPTER IV: KEMALISM AND FOREIGN POLICY IN THE 1980S............................................129 Introduction....................................................................................................................129 4.1. The military era (1980-1983) ...................................................................................131 4.1.1. Kemalism from a ‘battle-zone’ to a ‘buffer-zone’..............................................131 4.1.2. Kemalism and foreign policy during the military era .........................................136 4.1.2.1. Reconstituting the elements of the ‘peace at home, peace in the world’ principle..................................................................................................................136 4.1.2.2. Domestic unity through Kemalism against the ‘divide, dismember, and swallow policy’ of the imperialist West...................................................................138 4.1.2.3. Kemalism, non-submission, and the Western-orientation............................140