Abstract
One of the most common tropes about Turkey is that it is a “bridge” between “East” and “West”. This characterisation informs most of the narratives about Turkey’s engagement with the international. The present chapter aims to problematise the underlying assumptions of these characterisations through situating Turkey within the colonial/modern international. The first section presents an overview of the concept of coloniality and discusses how it has been expanded upon throughout the years. The section underlines how the concept should not be taken as explaining processes in a linear manner but rather as providing a useful entry point to making sense of the structural forces and hegemonic knowledge systems. The second section focuses on the coloniality of international relations and how approaching the “modern” international as the colonial/modern makes visible hidden histories and power relations of the international. The third section then moves on the example of Ottoman Empire/Turkey to demonstrate how the study of the coloniality of the international and production of sameness/difference can be approached in a manner that problematises the binaries through which the international is narrated. As such, the section underlines that there is no one moment of interaction that defines the production of sameness/difference but a multitude of moments that constantly redefine and renegotiate the sameness/difference but also in that renegotiation also redefine the spatio-temporal hierarchies of the colonial/modern international.
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Çapan, Z.G. (2022). Turkey and the Colonial/Modern International. In: Erdoğan, B., Hisarlıoğlu, F. (eds) Critical Readings of Turkey’s Foreign Policy. Palgrave Studies in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97637-8_2
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