Constructing Turkey's “Western” Identity during the Cold War

Abstract

Throughout the republican era, membership in Euro-Atlantic institutions has provided Turkey's policymakers with the opportunity to assert the country's identity. Indeed, Turkey's westernness has been expressed, not only through the adoption of ideas and manners from the west (as happened in Ottoman times), but also through joining western institutions, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This one of the reasons why the US project of promoting democracy in the greater Middle East received with enthusiasm by some in Ankara. Notwithstanding the concerns of those who worry that taking an active part in this project would undermine the carefully constructed role Islam plays in shaping political processes in Turkey, others seem to consider this scheme an opportunity to entrench Turkey's position within NATO and (re)assert its western identity.1Leaving aside the somewhat paradoxical nature of seeking to assert western identity through posing as a model for the Middle East, what should be emphasized here the first premise of this article: that state identity in Turkey and elsewhere is always potentially precarious, it needs constantly to be stabilized or (re)produced.2 It through the representational practices of state and nonstate actors (including policymakers, scholars, and journalists) that state identity produced and/or reproduced. Such representational practices include state officials' discourses on a particular foreign policy issue, scholarly writings on lands far away, writings and speeches of policy makers and journalists, geopolitical discourses of myriad actors, and even popular film.'A second premise of the article that what makes foreign policy (i.e., relations between states) possible a political practice that makes certain events and actors foreign, that is, the politics of exclusion and inclusion, processes of constituting particular objects as part of them (foreign), and other objects as part of us. Viewed as such, representational practices constitute a significant component of the process of making something foreign. Foreign policy practices of states, in turn, reproduce the constitution of identity made possible by [the foreign policy practices of states] and...contain challenges to the identity which results.4 Stated with reference to Turkey's case, representational practices of various actors have constructed Turkey's identity as western as opposed to eastern. After defining itself and others, Turkey's foreign policy has been conducted upon these specific actors. Such diplomatic conduct, in turn, has helped to (re)produce Turkey's western identity and has sustained a pro-western orientation.The significance of NATO membership to Turkey's claim to belong to the west cannot be overemphasized. The efforts of Turkish policymakers to locate Turkey in the west as opposed to non-west can be traced back to the early republican era when westernization became one of the cornerstones of Kemal Ataturk's foreign and domestic policies. In the aftermath of the second World War, this policy was pursued through the search for US assistance (which came in the form of the Truman doctrine in 1947) and its institutionalization in the form of NATO membership. Later still, Turkey began to pursue membership in the European Economic Community, now the European Union, a goal that still a keystone of the country's foreign policy.Joining NATO in the early Cold War era proved difficult not least because of considerable suspicion regarding Turkey's commitment to western security-a suspicion that was raised by Ankara's decision to remain outside the second World War. Although that decision had served Turkey's purpose at the time, it was not without ramifications for its postwar relations. Writing in 1947, five years before it acceded to the Atlantic alliance, Ambassador Cevat Acikalm sought to offset such suspicions by reminding the readers of International Affairs, the flagship journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, of the country's contribution to the allied war effort:[A]t a moment when the Allies were in great difficulties, Turkey played the role of a temporary shield behind which the Russians and the British were able to use their forces more freely against the aggressors in various theatres of operations. …