From the Kemalist Love-Hate Relationship with the West to the Erdoganist Anti-Western Conspiracy Theories

Abstract

Since the Gezi events, the West (EU, USA and some other European countries such as Germany and the UK) has been presented by Turkey’s rulers as the mischievous Other that keeps plotting against Turkey. On the other hand, the ruling AKP still insists that they want to join the EU, that they do not want to jettison Turkey’s NATO membership and that the USA is a strategic ally. Nevertheless, Turkish ambivalence towards the West is not something new and it is not limited to the Islamists. Turkish Republic’s founding elite, the Kemalists, who enthusiastically endeavored for decades to Westernize, modernize and secularize Turkey also had deep suspicions about the West that is called the Sevres Syndrome or Sevres Complex. Turkish history curriculum has always included sections on Crusaders, invader Europeans viz. Gallipoli & Dardanelles and Turkey’s independence war against the Western powers in early 1920s. Schools kids have been made to memorize songs that included lyrics like “there are no friendly nation to the Turks other than the Turks”. Even when the AKP about a decade ago was an enthusiastic supporter of Turkey’s EU membership, surveys showed that %75 of Turks believed the EU is trying to dismember Turkey and 81% believed the EU’s goal was to spread Christianity. However, 57% said they wanted full EU membership for Turkey. The Islamists led by Erdogan is now both using this national cognitive dissonance and also exacerbating it deliberately to delegitimize their opponents, to consolidate their electoral powerbase and tackle allegations of corruption. What is more, this presentation argues, the reconstruction of the West as the ultimate Other through conspiracy theories helps also the Erdoganists to socially engineer a new Turkist and Islamist national consciousness and identity as opposed to the Kemalists’ secular Sunni Turkish national identity. This new national identity that seems to have less love and more hate towards the West will impact upon Turkey’s regional and international relations in the decades to come.