The Role of Republican and AKP Elites in the Construction and Reconstruction of Turkiye’s Foreign Policy Identity: A Critical Narrative Analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Building on the argument that foreign policy identities are discursively constructed by the dominant elite, this study analyzes the construction and reconstruction of Turkiye’s foreign policy identity during the Early Republican and AKP periods in a comparative way, focusing on political narratives as discursive practices. Adopting a critical narrative analysis method, the study first distinguishes the linguistic construction of a common past, a common geopolitical imagination and a common perception of the international environment as substantive contents of foreign policy identity. It then addresses different strategies used within these three thematic areas. Finally, narrative analysis is adopted to extract the repeated themes and storylines used in the narratives of the Republican and AKP elites about history, geopolitical location, and the international environment as means of linguistic realizations.