Search

Following a poststructuralist theorising of identity in international relations, which argues that identity is relationally and discursively constructed through foreign policy, this article attempts to analyse the way in which the European Commission discursively constructs European identit(ies) in its relations with Turkey around the theme of ‘security’. The study utilises the methodological tools of critical discourse analysis in analysing the speeches and field interviews conducted with European Commission officials, in examining the way in which they construct ‘Europe’ in relation to the security implications of Turkish accession. The article’s findings challenge the argument that Europe is moving beyond the modern state to resemble a postmodern order, and problematises the designation of the Commission as a ‘cosmopolitan’ actor in EU enlargement policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study is based on the argument that globalism is a product of nationalism. I argue that globalism, understood as the imagination of the world as a single place, was made possible by and accompanies the emergence of nationalism, defined as the formation of an imagined community in a given (local) discursive space. Focusing on the specific ways in which globalism is understood and experienced locally in Turkey, this study examines how the world-at-large is seen from Turkey as part and product of the founding national ideology during the 1920s and 1930s, particularly as expressed in cartoons, and how these visions and images of the globe are produced, mobilized and disseminated locally as part of ongoing nation-building efforts. I argue that during these years the global was invariably imagined as the West, referring mainly to Western Europe, and this imagining was mobilized toward the creation and projection of Turkey as a modern, Western, secular country. I argue that the founding national ideology projected an image of the West as the global-other to be taken as a model and imitated, setting norms for the creation of a new national identity and new norms of citizenship around the principles of secularism, modernity and civilization, which could only be attained by the erasure of the local. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'Balkanization' has found entry in the social sciences vocabulary as a metaphor for diversity at best, social and political instability for the most part, and genocidal war at worst. And yet it is precisely the emergence of a variety of national states and the Ottoman Empire's disintegration that are frequently portrayed as processes of 'modernizing' as well as 'naturalizing' the international system of the Balkans and the Middle East. By offering a historical sociological re-construction of early modern Ottoman history up to the Greek Revolt in 1821, I argue in this article that the national secessions were not synonymous with the creation of a 'modern' international system in southeastern Europe. National independence cannot therefore be understood as a functional derivate of an expanding European Modernity mediated through global capitalism or geopolitical competition. Rather, the various secessions were the result of a series of conservative reactions to the modernization efforts of the Ottoman central administration. National state formation and Ottoman disintegration, on the one hand, and capitalist development and modern sovereignty on the other, have thus to be seen rather as having historically and socially distinct origins than as representing two sides of the same coin of a totalizing form of European international modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the press in four countries - three EU members (France, Britain, Greece) and Turkey - covered the run-up to the discussions surrounding Turkey's bid to become a member of the European Union in October and December 2004. Given contemporary debates about the nature of Europe and European identity, the prospect of Turkey - a large, poor, Muslim country - joining the EU was likely to generate much discussion. The data show important differences in the coverage from one country to the next, with some countries reflecting significant concerns about differences between Europe and Turkey and others much less so. Overall, many of the differences in coverage that were found in the analysis could be attributed to the ways in which the press in different countries reflected domestic political, cultural and historical considerations. Such differences, it is argued, may not be surprising given the complexity of the subject matter and need not necessarily be seen as antithetical to the construction of a European public sphere or a European identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of ethnic minorities in post-1989 Central East and Southeast Europe (CESE) has been characterized by an apparent paradox between, on the one hand, well-integrated minority parties at the national level, on the other hand, strong demands for decentralization and local self-government. This article examines the impact of post-communist reforms, since the late 1990s taking place within the frame of European integration, on ethnic politics and state-minority relations in CESE focusing on the case of ethnic Turks in Bulgaria. It argues that liberalization cum European integration in CESE states fundamentally transform inherited national divisions, and integrate minorities in existing political and state institutions. At the same time, such integration is constrained by the legacy of state socialism that consolidated ethnic differences by embedding them in economic-territorial structures. In doing so, it set the frame for the growth of a fundamentally distinct minority politics on a regional basis that diverges as much from the traditional nation-state model as from the liberal approach to post-communist democracy, market reform and European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]