Elite Framing and Conflict Transformation in Turkey

Abstract

This article examines the effects of elite framing on conflict transformation. It utilises debates from the Turkish Grand National Assembly as the main source of empirical evidence and demonstrates the differences in the way Turkish parliamentarians framed national and foreign policy issues in the 1990s. For the most part, elite framing of Kurdish issues was predominantly monolithic and adversarial towards ‘ethnic others’, demonstrating few challenges to dominant nationalist narratives and discourses, while framing of Greek–Turkish disputes was diverse, with moderates cautiously challenging hardliners on the necessity of cooperating with Greece. The article unravels these elite framing strategies and illustrates how framing becomes embedded in public identities, opportunity structures and definitions of national interest, influencing crisis escalation and conflict management in the Eastern Mediterranean region.