The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a literature that placed emotions as a unit of analysis at the centre of political studies. The study of emotions and politics as interrelated phenomena is considered quite novel,Footnote 1 yet reading classical political philosophy from today’s vantage point, one may be surprised to see the distinct place that emotions occupied in the corpus of many thinkers, from Plato to Aristotle, Machiavelli to Hobbes, Locke to Rousseau.Footnote 2 Even so, in politics, especially in the field of political science, emotions have largely been neglected. Beneath this tendency in modern political science, which has been described by some as ‘emotions-proof’, lie a number of presuppositions and assumptions, chief among them assumptions about the nature of emotions. Scholars have debated whether emotions, as a part of human existence, are immanent or rather socially shaped and learned. Emotions occupy the negative position as reason’s ‘other’ in a binary framework (Calhoun, 2001, 52). Considering that forms of Western political and social thought in the modern period have been based on oppositions such as reason/body, order/chaos, man/woman, agent/structure and individual/society, it comes as no surprise that emotions have long been perceived as private rather than public, irrational rather than rational (Heaney, 2013, 244).

In particular, the public/private dichotomy, which emerged alongside modernity, is thought to be one of the main reasons emotions have been overshadowed or eclipsed in political analysis, both conceptually and historically. Relatedly, in basing research into the nation-state, the law, voting behaviours and political parties on the concept of rationality, political scientists tend to consider emotions aberrant categories of analysis. The conceptualization of politics as by definition a collective phenomenon, together with the assumption that emotions are experienced individually and are ontologically momentary, drives this tendency (Berezin, 2002, 34–36). For instance, Jack Barbalet argues that the concept of emotion has long been tethered to a pejorative framework, both in the sciences generally and in the social sciences in particular (2002, 1). Going one step further, Nicolas Demertzis claims that studies in politics and sociology are characterized by a form of ‘emotion blindness’, the principal reasons for which he lists as: (a) the marginalization of emotions as romantic or utopian elements believed to be unrelated to the modern public sphere and, thus, to the political; (b) the prevalence in political science, since the eighteenth century, of analyses focused on ‘interest’ (taken as the adverse of emotion); and (c) the adoption of a rational choice paradigm in both North American and European schools of political science, and the concomitant perception of emotions as obstacles to the rational thought of political actors (2013, 1–2).

Among the arguments countering reductionist claims about emotions as rooted in biology or as solely individual phenomena are those that apprehend emotions as the result of socialization within the culture into which one is born—as ‘patterns of learned behavior’. According to this perspective, which is known as the social constructivist approach, emotions are significant elements of social relations, arising from interactions with others. In this view, far from being biological or universal entities, emotions are social constructs that vary from culture to culture and context to context, and change over time (Clarke et al., 2006a, 6–7).

In both political science and sociology, the claim that emotions are cultural and social constructs gained acceptance only gradually.Footnote 3 In the second half of the twentieth century, Western political science began to abandon both the dichotomy of emotion/reason and the assumption that emotions are subjective and biological, thanks to new approaches and research from various disciplines, in tandem with particular political, economic and cultural developments. Among the forces that moved the scholarly perspective away from an understanding of emotions as purely individual, psychological and internal phenomena were: in psychoanalysis, theories of the subject and the problem of subjectivity; in post-structuralist feminist theory, notions of the body and materiality; the emergence of queer studies; and an increase in sociological interest in matters such as melancholy and trauma (Athanasiou et al., 2008, 5). Furthermore, thanks to the cultural turn and its focus on language, meaning and discourse, the field of political science began to expand its categories of analysis. Studies emphasized the importance of understanding struggles over culture and lifestyle, in addition to those over political and economic power. At stake in these works is the acceptance of culture—composed of traditions, beliefs, values, symbols and rituals—as the core issue underlying struggles over identity and recognition (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006, 616). In making sense of the processes of these struggles, emotion now appears as an inevitable category of analysis. Increasingly, emotions are seen as determinative elements that characterize social movements and collective behaviour. Claims that emotions constitute or transform ties between the social structure and actor, and as such play a central role in social interactions, have increasingly gained ground in the literature (Barbalet, 2002, 3–4). Studies carried out in this framework consider themes including the effect of emotions on voter behaviour, their role in conflict and post-conflict processes, their potential to define the emergence and course of political and social movements, their importance in political campaigns and political communication, their effect on governance and policy-making processes and their close ties to international relations and to ideologies such as nationalism (Clarke et al., 2006b, 4–6).

The literature on social movements has also begun to attend to emotions as a central category of analysis. However, the fact that such studies tend to look at emotions solely in terms of how they mobilize and characterize movements against those in power means they also risk labelling such movements as somehow beyond or outside of formal power and thus less rational; they risk associating formal politics with interests and reason, and social movements with emotion (Ost, 2004, 236). Some approach emotions in politics as though emotions were peculiar to the people subject to them, and not experienced by ruling elites (Barbalet, 2006, 32). Against this trend, David Ost argues that emotions occupy a powerful place in both authoritarian and democratic systems, and that political parties assure the mobilization of the people by producing or activating certain emotions, or by attempting to suppress them (2004, 237).

The growing tendency to focus on emotions is the product of certain intellectual efforts. For instance, at the heart of the paradigm that Patricia Clough has conceptualized as the ‘affective turn’ (2007, 206–228) are the views of Spinoza, the first thinker to write in depth about emotions as both a concept and a social phenomenon. Writing, remarkably, in the seventeenth century, Spinoza is a point of departure for a school of thought—one that we would today call the sociology of emotions or affect studies—based on the relationality, sociality and political nature of emotions. Spinoza’s Ethics is a classic, presenting profound philosophical propositions not only about God, humankind, the mind and freedom, but also the body and affect. In a lengthy section of the book, Spinoza puts forward his views on the nature, origins and force of affect. He holds affect as something that increases or diminishes the body’s ability to act, as an enabling or disabling force (2011, 317). In his view, anything that causes an increase or decrease in the body’s capacity to act, or that brings about or inhibits this potential, also causes an increase or decrease in the thinking capacity of the mind (2011, 347). Consequently, for Spinoza, mind and body (or thought and emotion) are not opposite notions. Indeed, he rejects any premise that implies a superiority of mind over body (Deleuze, 2011, 26).

According to Spinoza, the emotion that increases the mind and body’s capacity to act is joy, whereas sadness decreases it. He asserts that emotions such as hope, trust, anger, hate and jealousy, which derive from the aforementioned two central emotions and yet which are assumed to arise spontaneously, actually have clear causes, and are only intelligible through such causes (2011, 315). Yet underlying Spinoza’s understanding of emotions—as phenomena emerging from causal relations—are the notions of contact and encounter. When bodies encounter other bodies, or ideas other ideas, they sometimes unite to form a more powerful whole, though sometimes one dissolves and dissipates the other. Emotions therefore make their presence felt primarily as the singular traces that contact and encounters—whether with others, images or ideas—leave on the body and mind.Footnote 4 Emotions assume an image or an idea, yet appear to be irreducible to these images or ideas (Deleuze, 2011, 66–68).

Spinoza’s claims about the nature of emotions are striking for their relationality and their particularity, and are an early example of a scholar asserting the social and political nature of emotions. Therefore, though it can be asserted that political science began to focus on emotion as a crucial analytical category in the second half of the twentieth century, this can also be understood as a rediscovery. Today, many scholars working in the fields of political philosophy, the sociology of emotions or affect studies base their approach to emotions on Spinoza’s intellectual legacy. One of the central inspirations for this book, Sara Ahmed, whose work takes seriously the ties between emotions and politics, translates a philosophical Spinozan approach into the field of sociology and politics through her theses on the stickiness of emotions; how they scatter and spread, how they adhere to individuals or groups. For Ahmed, emotions should be considered less in terms of what they are or whom they belong to, and more in terms of what they do to us (2014). Emotions, which are shaped by our contacts with other people or objects, are relational. However much they may invite assumptions about interiority, due to the influence of psychology, emotions are, at base, social and cultural practices. They are not things we possess or hold; rather, they circulate—and produce, and create—on the surfaces and borders of the objects to which our bodies gravitate. Emotions act between our bodies, spreading through contact with others (2014, 13–20). ‘Collective emotion’ is Ahmed’s term for a mood that has spread to a group in such a way as to affect this group’s way of thinking, feeling and acting. This concept stems from the commonality not of emotions, but of the objects of emotions: whereas collective emotions appear as the result of the collectivity in which we exist, fundamentally they constitute its cause because what makes us part of a collective is our feelings about objects or about others. The emotions we feel together with others surround us ‘like a thickness in the air, or an atmosphere’ (Ahmed, 2014, 21).

One can perhaps make Ahmed’s thinking on the collective nature of emotions more concrete through Raymond Williams’s notion of ‘structures of feeling’ (1990). Williams approaches structures of feeling as phenomena that come about through the active experience of historically and socially constructed meanings and values. According to Williams, feelings are not the opposite of thought, but should be conceived of as the felt form thought takes. Structures of feeling are processes, rather than something static. They are socially shared and often go unnoticed because they are embedded within social relations, though they become recognizable when they are reshaped by institutions (1990, 105). Collective emotions, as long as they are managed by ruling elites and institutions or by social actors, create a pathos, which Ahmed attempts to explain using the metaphor of atmosphere, suggesting that the objects of emotion make it possible for this pathos to emerge.

2.1 Symbols as Objects of Emotional Investment

What is it, then, that we speak of when we address objects that prompt the formation of collective emotions and allow these emotions to ensconce us, like a thickness in the air? Might political symbols ensure that members of a collective feel a sense of belonging, and make it possible for them to see themselves as part of the collective; might political symbols mobilize their emotions and become the objects of their emotional investment? In this attempt to explore the relationship between politics and emotions, can we see political symbols as reservoirs of emotion?

In order to conceptually ground this claim, let me first consider how symbols function, as well as the many meanings they harbour politically. This will facilitate a discussion of the significance of symbols in politics, as well as of the function of symbols in producing and channelling political emotions. The etymology of ‘symbol’ hints at its nature: the Greek root syn means alike, jointly or together with, while the word symbolon signifies an earthenware pot broken in two, the pieces serving as material evidence of an agreement between two people. That which establishes a tie between these two, which unites them, is at the same time what separates them from others (Tuğrul, 2010, 135). Thus symbols influence relations between people, they can be used to articulate what separates ‘us’ from ‘them’, they are the concrete, material, visible or utterable manifestations of this relationality. David Kertzer claims that politics performs mostly in indirect ways; rather, it is largely expressed and carried out through symbolism. He argues that comprehending political processes necessitates understanding how the symbolic is enmeshed in the political, how political actors make use of symbols and how people are bound by political symbols (1988, 2–3).

Nevertheless, most studies carried out in the field of political science tend to overlook the vital role of the symbolic in political processes, and of processes of emotional investment in symbols. The symbolic field is rarely read critically in analyses of political phenomena due to the neglect of cultural and symbolic dimensions in politics (Aydın, 2015, 214; Demirer, 2015, 67). Yet understanding political phenomena requires developing theories and methods regarding the modes of carrying out symbolic politics. This is the case because ‘symbolic politics, which operates through culture and historical consciousness […] is related to such concepts as memory, information storage, collective joy, and mourning’ (Demirer, 2015, 67).

Upon further inspection, one reason for the lack of attention to symbols in political science literature is that many studies treat politics as a matter of ‘give and take’ driven by self-interested people. However, people are not only material beings; they also produce and use symbols. Indeed, at times, and in ways contrary to their material interests, people even choose to die in the name of various symbols. Kertzer bemoans rational choice arguments that prioritize politics as the ‘real stuff’ and designate the rest effluvia,Footnote 5 arguing that this ‘effluvia’ is actually what makes up political symbols, the basic determinants of politics (1996, x–4). Similarly, Stuart J. Kaufman, in another critique of the rational choice paradigm, notes that people’s political actions are motivated more by feelings than any cost-benefit calculations. He proposes an alternative: symbolic choice theory, arguing that people make political choices in response to emotionally loaded symbols. In his view, political choice constitutes an emotional expression, and symbols constitute the principle objects of such expression (2001, 27–28).

To be sure, as societies grow more complex, people increasingly turn to symbols as a means of relating to the world, partly because ‘the claim to dominance of modern forms of power and the volume of social and economic actors they aim to control [have expanded] to a degree incomparable to what came before’ (Aydın, 2015, 211–212). As a consequence of this expansion, political authorities have used and diffused symbols to shape collective memory and collective emotions. They did this by systematically repeating the symbols they use. Thus emerged what we now call symbolic politics, a style of conducting politics that has been so effective as to make it impossible to approach the political field solely through materialist and rationalist modes of thought. In order to make sense of this style, while being cognizant of the deficiencies of both the positivist perspective and rational actor models (Kaufman, 2006, 201), analysts have begun to investigate how the production of social meaning and value (as important drivers of social and political transformation) is entangled with political consciousness and political action. In seeking to answer this question, symbols have become an indispensable unit of analysis (Brysk, 1995, 560–561).

One of the main claims made by contemporary studies of symbolic politics is that emotionally laden symbols, and not individual interests, determine political behaviour (Kaufman, 2006, 202). Yet what we term ‘interests’ are not fixed needs but stories crafted and adopted to fulfil these needs. Political actors create new political opportunities for themselves, challenging existing narratives about interests and identities and putting forth new ones. Symbolic politics fundamentally aims at the establishment and transformation of power relations through normative emotional representations. Consequently, its practitioners strive to construct a collective political identity and a sense of belonging through the configuration and reinterpretation of narratives and through the emotional convection of experiences, for instance, through an evocative speech. It is here that collectives are established, as new narratives are put into circulation and activated through a range of symbolic and practical performances—the tools and mechanisms of persuasion that ensure the adoption of such narratives. The successful operation of symbolic politics renders possible the transformation of what came before, the reconstruction of collective identities, the reformulation of the social agenda and the challenging of prior forms of political legitimacy. Symbolic politics creates legitimacy by articulating narratives about justice, rights and identities in a society. In so doing, it hails first hearts, then minds (Brysk, 1995, 561–564).

And indeed, the basic function of symbols in politics appears to be the creation of a certain emotional state in people. Emotions surface when the predispositions of both ruling elites and the people are channelled into political symbols thought to fit them. In electing to adopt the symbols they are presented with, people establish ties to other symbols or transfer their emotions from one symbol to another. Symbols chosen by either ruling elites or the governed increase people’s capacity to act, and mobilize them by calling upon certain values and ideas. As such, the process of symbolic politics seems to be primarily concerned with the orientation of reflexive and emotional responses to symbols (Mach, 1993, 37; Sears, 2001, 14–17).

The chief actors in ensuring the effective implementation of symbolic politics are political and social institutions. Institutions create memories through a range of mnemonic symbols such as texts, rites, spaces and monuments (Demirer, 2002, 54). In this way, in addition to cultural identities, they also shape emotional experiences (Robinson, 2014, 190). The execution of symbolic politics does not stop here, however. Approaching politics strictly as a field of political actors and institutions and thereby confining symbolic politics to a fixed top-down framework amounts to treating the people as ‘sheep’ prone to manipulation and deceit. It is certain, though, that members of a society respond to social situations through the very symbols that institutions put into circulation, and the meanings with which these symbols are freighted.

The meanings attributed to symbols are broadly accepted, and allow subjects to adopt certain roles and develop shared emotions. Yet at the same time, social actors also willingly create meanings and narratives related to the symbols they have chosen and the identities they have taken on. These meanings and narratives are never fixed, but vary according to context (Robinson, 2014, 191–192). Emotions spread and disseminate through mutual interaction, through the dynamics in operation between institutions and people, and through the processes of symbolic meaning-making.

Indeed, most studies on symbolic politics presume that symbols and emotions move from those who hold power to the people (a top-down model) or that they are even imposed on the people (Bechhofer & McCrone, 2012, 547). Alison Brysk sees this approach as one of the main limitations of studies of symbolic politics. Instead, her focus is on how collectives own and act on such symbols and emotions (Brysk, 1995, 571). Murray Edelman, meanwhile, argues that the processes of meaning making between ruling elites and people can only be holistically interpreted by looking at language (political discourse), action (ideological activities), actors (leaders), space and people. He notes that one of the basic methods for bringing out the dialogical interaction between these elements involves the analysis of ritual and myth, two of the most important symbolic forms in political institutions. According to Edelman, rituals and myths exist not to deceive the people, but to act on what they want, what they fear, what they see as possible and who they wish to see themselves as (1967, 20). Through a selective reading of the past, rituals and myths establish narratives about the future and legitimize interests/desires/gains in the present. People live by perpetually reconstructing and representing their pasts, presents and futures in light of the rituals and myths that appeal to them: they create their own worlds around shared images.

Examining the nature and function of powerful political symbols can thus expose what people wish to believe, both about themselves and about states (Edelman, 1967, 187–191). Kertzer notes that, in the absence of symbols, the past is chaotic. Symbols are what render the past tangible, translate it into meaningful themes and allow us to find a place within it (1996, 7). Particularly in periods of political transformation, ruling elites may come into conflict with the past, rewriting it and challenging current identities; they tend to symbolically reconstruct the past. It is here that ritual and myth step in. Myths give shape to the past, presenting a narrative configured in relation to it. Rendering the past in the form of a story, they constitute the basis of rituals. Rituals, meanwhile, function as a powerful mechanism for myths to circulate and spread. They create a stage for the performative act within which myth materializes. They do not simply echo the myths in circulation; they produce them (Kertzer, 1996, 7–16). Furthermore, the shared emotions and ideas that make up a political community’s sense of togetherness are strengthened through rituals (Tuğrul, 2010, 140). The reason for this is that ritual invites participants to what is, in a symbolic sense, a shared act. Creating a feeling of accord and harmony among the members of a community, ritual ensures a kind of emotional satisfaction and joy between community members (Edelman, 1967, 16–17). By offering participation without requiring expertise, rituals reflect the people’s modes of self-recognition and their commonalities, while also presenting a stage on which people experience a sense of ‘identity satisfaction’ (Demirer, 2002, 77–78).

One could say, then, that politics is characterized not just by rational choices but by the creation and maintenance of moods, for which both rulers and the ruled feel a need. Political symbols are the fundamental instrument for bringing about these moods. Some emotionally invested symbols are based on reason, and some on an imaginary or a conscious fantasy. Yet in both cases political reality is created chiefly through symbols. Of course, the power to circulate, manipulate and popularize symbols also bestows the privilege of constructing reality, the distinguishing feature of power. People, meanwhile, develop a symbolic attachment to the language, practices, actors, spaces, rituals and myths circulated by those in power (Edelman, 1967, 179–184). As a consequence of this entanglement, symbols enable individuals and collectives to recognize themselves and to identify with a political group; symbols ignite social action. They provide people with an instrument to give meaning to political processes.

2.2 Nation-State, National Identity, Symbolic Politics and Emotions

In modern nation-states, symbols make the nation more tangible by attributing a certain character to it, linking the institutional with the everyday. Once the designs, emblems, objects and written or oral signs that make it possible for the nation to be seen and understood by all its members—that make possible the imagination of the nation in their minds—are chosen and set in motion, they acquire social and cultural worth: to even a small piece of cloth, priceless value can be attributed (Bechhofer & McCrone, 2012, 546). In a nation-state, symbols are circulated through objects, spaces and signs that refer to an idealized past, and when they circulate in the social and cultural field, a process of ‘emotional contagion’ results (von Scheve et al., 2013, 5). The more visible that symbols become, and the more they are embraced in the cultural field and in everyday life, the more likely this process is to occur. Ultimately, as emotionally laden entities, symbols are powerful instruments to spread and make concrete the abstract imagining of a nation (von Scheve et al., 2013, 4–5).

We know that the development of nation-states since the 1800s has resulted in such symbols of national identity as flags and marches. In the work of modern theorists of nationalism who analyse it in relation to the socio-cultural field and not solely as a political ideology, nearly all touch on symbols in different ways, yet neglect to consider in detail the determining role of emotions in the construction of national identity in particular. For instance, Anthony Smith notes that national identity can be considered a meaningful category in the sense that it fosters shared understandings, hopes, feelings and ideas with which people might identify and thus experience a sense of belonging (2009). He claims that foundational elements of national identity present a multi-dimensional and complicated structure, as symbols like flags, money, anthems, uniforms, monuments and celebrations remind individuals in a community of their shared heritage and cultural proximity. For Smith, nationalism should be approached as ‘a form of culture, an ideology, a language, a mythology, symbolism and consciousness’ (2009, 147). Only then can national identity be examined as something more than an expression of the shared characteristics of a political community: as a category of belonging apparent across an entire cultural field. Yet, however much culture, symbols and emotion feature in Smith’s theses on national identity and nationalism, he makes no strong claims concerning the emotional dimension as an analytical unit in its own right. Another modern theorist of nationalism, Eric Hobsbawm, takes up national identity through such concepts as the invention of national identity and social engineering, and he does mention collective belonging as a category (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 2007). Yet he does not focus in any depth on what sorts of emotional needs cause feelings of collective belonging to emerge. Benedict Anderson, meanwhile, underscores the modular structure of national identity and nationalism, and analyses national identity as a particular kind of cultural construct. Among these theorists, he perhaps most clearly articulates the need to scrutinize the cultural and emotional dimensions of nationalism when he discusses imagined communities and the affection that members of a community feel for one another, and the fear and anger they feel for others (2009, 20, 159).

Contemporary studies that emphasize the need to analyse politics, symbols and emotions together show that, emotions have also been neglected in the literature on nationalism. Still, none of the leading theorists mentioned above exclude emotions from the foundational elements of national identity. Although they may not have attended sufficiently to the determining role of emotions in their analyses, their arguments nevertheless constitute an instructive foundation for zooming in on the emotional dimension of national identity. A contemporary thinker who does focus on the production and circulation of emotions in the context of the nation-state and nationalism is Mabel Berezin. She notes that the feeling of national belonging is perpetually produced anew by both institutions and symbolic practices. According to her, the feeling of national belonging, which is generated by mandatory institutions such as the education system and the army, must be continuously sustained through images, words, symbols, art and other practices that characterize national identity (2002, 43). Consequently, the imagined communities produced by nation-states manifest as ‘communities of feeling’. The making of communities of feeling is enacted through marches, official holidays and public rituals fabricated by the state or by political powers (Berezin, 2002, 39).Footnote 6 In particular, political rituals organized in public space are vital for citizens to develop collective feelings of national identity. National identity appears, then, as a practice-based category; in determining thoughts and experiences, it organizes political actions and discourses—and emotions (Heaney, 2013, 249, 252).

Jonathan Heaney has pointed out that emotions have not been given sufficient consideration in conceptual debates on the construction and maintenance of national identity, arguing that they are treated, particularly in empirical studies, as an ambiguous and static category imposed from above. For Heaney, national identity forms a structure that can be fabricated from below, whether by local networks or institutions of civil society, and adapted to different contexts. That said, this concept seems to have lost something of its explanatory force due to the effects of rationalist and modernist paradigms. Thus, Heaney proposes the concept of national habitus rather than national identity, to capture at the empirical level the contextual and emotional aspects of contemporary processes of national belonging (2013, 255). The notion of habitus points to a process of continuous reconstruction through the use of various emotional, cognitive and symbolic elements. In referring to national states of mind, he conceptualizes national habitus as a fluid, variable and practice-based dynamic process. So understood, national habitus appears to be far more useful than the concept of national identity.

2.3 Towards a Neo-Ottomanist National Identity

In Turkey, the definition of national identity is coloured by context and influenced by various historical developments. Additions and subtractions are made here and there to its content. As such, it generally presents a slippery and flexible structure (Smith, 2009, 164). One of the main premises and points of departure for this book is that in Turkey, the narrative of Neo-Ottomanism—which refers to a new collectivity and national mood, one which has been particularly influential in the past decade—functions as a new national habitus. In this particular historical period, the narrative of Neo-Ottomanism has gained powerful legitimacy and visibility in Turkey. The discussions above present us with a theoretical basis from which to consider this narrative as an emotional reservoir with its own symbolic materialization. Throughout this book, I approach symbols as emotionally laden objects that contain the discourses, myths and performative rituals evoked by the narrative of Neo-Ottomanism and its selective view of history and territory. What undergirds the adoption of this narrative by individuals and groups? How has Neo-Ottomanism come to form the basis of a new national identity? The answer lies in the fact that the narrative contains a great many emotions, which are experienced socially and have been transmitted across generations. The production and circulation of political symbols, those primers of the establishment of Neo-Ottomanism, function in a dialogic and emotional process between those in power and the people. Which historical and social experiences led to the emergence of this narrative? How and through which symbols has this narrative been pressed into service and transformed into a foundational element in the creation of an alternative national mood? To better understand these processes, one must begin by examining the political journey of this narrative.