"Economic nationalisms" and the immediacy of war: Turkey's Syrian policy.

This article examines the current economic nationalisms in Turkey through the lens of the effects of the Syrian war. The empirical focus of my discussion is Gaziantep, an export city bordering Syria. The city has been radically shaped not only by the migration waves from Syria in the wake of the Syrian war but also by the broader re/structuring effects of the Iraq war and a low-intensity war in the last 30 years. In Turkey, wars have always been essential reference points for local and national economic agents to build different nation-framed economic discourses. In the last decade, we observe a new form of economic nationalism that is expansionist and outward-oriented - contrary to discussions associating the term with inward-oriented economic policies. Turkey's assumed role in the reconstitution of the Syrian economy and its aspired position in the Middle East as a political, economic, and military center constitutes a crucial symbolic horizon in this nationalist economic discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]