Bringing the Empire Back In: The Gradual Discovery of the Ottoman Empire in Turkish Foreign Policy

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 466-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lerna K. Yanık

This article traces the emergence of references to the Ottoman Empire in the discourse and practice of Turkish foreign policy since the late 1940s. It argues that present-day emphasis on the Ottoman Empire and its legacy in Turkey has not happened in a vacuum, but rather has been a gradual process that has taken place over decades, helping to justify Turkey’s foreign policy. The article also shows that politicians from different sections of the political spectrum were crucial in reclaiming the Ottoman past in foreign policy. The consequences of this reclamation have been twofold. First, foreign policy, both in terms of practice and discourse, has become yet another venue, among many, for the continuous framing and reframing of Turkey’s past, paving the way for further Ottomanisation of the Turkish identity. Second, this Ottomanisation, or reclaiming of aspects that characterised the Ottoman Empire, has helped Turkey’s political actors justify and legitimise Turkey’s policies not only externally but, at times, also internally – as was the case in the 1990s, when some of these political actors tried to deal with Kurdish separatism by using the legacy of the Ottoman Empire.


2019 ◽  
pp. 78-103
Author(s):  
S.A. Romanenko

The article is devoted to the analysis of representations about AustriaHungary in Russia in political and publicists societies including Bolsheviks, Social Democrats, liberals (cadets), as well as MFA analysts from February to October. On the basis of the materials on foreign policy and the correlation of revolution and world war, from Russian daily press and journalists, which have not been studied before, the author comes to the conclusion that the representatives of the left flank of the political spectrum had neither information nor conceptually built ideas about the situation in AustriaHungary, about the perspectives for the development of revolutionary processes in the multinational state and its direction and aims. On the other hand, this was also largely characteristic of the moods of the AustroHungarian politicians, whether progovernment or opposition,Статья посвящена анализу представлений об АвстроВенгрии в России в политических и публицистических обществахв том числе большевиков, социалдемократов, либералов (кадетов), а также аналитиков МИД с февраля по октябрь. На основе материалов по внешней политике и соотношение революции и мировой войны, из российской ежедневной прессы и журналистов, которые до этого не изучались, автор приходит к выводу, что представители левого фланга политического спектра не имели ни информации, ни концептуально выстроенных представлений о ситуации в АвстроВенгрии, о перспективах развития революционных процессов в многонациональном государстве и его направленности, а также о том, что они не могли цели. С другой стороны, это было также в значительной степени характерно для настроений австровенгерских политиков, будь то проправительственные или оппозиционные, для которых цели национального движения уже в 1917 году играли гораздо большую роль, чем для русских. Для сравнительного анализа на основе архивных материалов приводятся позиции Министерства иностранных дел (Временного правительства) и Петроградского Совета.


Author(s):  
Hazel Gray

This chapter contrasts the way that the political settlement in both countries shaped the pattern of redistribution, reform, and corruption within public finance and the implications that this had for economic transformation. Differences in the impact of corruption on economic transformation can be explained by the way that their political settlements generated distinct patterns of competition and collaboration between economic and political actors. In Vietnam corrupt activities led to investments that were frequently not productive; however, the greater financial discipline imposed by lower-level organizations led to a higher degree of investment overall in Vietnam that supported a more rapid economic transformation under liberalization than in Tanzania. Individuals or small factional networks within the VCP at the local level were, therefore, probably less able to engage in forms of corruption that simply led to capital flight as happened in Tanzania, where local level organizations were significantly weaker.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaia Delpino

AbstractThis essay analyzes the political dynamics involved in the construction of belonging in the case of African Americans’ “return” from the diaspora generated by the Atlantic slave trade to a town in Southern Ghana. Given the articulated belief of common ancestral origins, such arrival was initially welcomed by all the three groups of actors involved: thereturnees, the local authorities, divided by a chieftaincy dispute, and the Ghanaian government that was supporting homecoming policies. The concepts of origins and kinship and the way to validate them, though, were differently conceived by the various political actors; furthermore each of them held dissimilar reasons and had different expectations behind this return. All these differences created a mutual, mutable and dynamic relation between the actors who were involved in the arrival and aimed to assert their authority.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Fabio Wolkenstein

In addition to summarizing the book’s main themes as described, this Introduction places special emphasis on connecting the problem animating the book—the apparent incapacity of contemporary parties to mediate between citizens and the state—to current political developments in established Western democracies, showing that the issues the book addresses are not only of academic interest but also directly relevant to ongoing public debates about the state and health of representative democracy. Chief amongst the themes foregrounded here is the rise of so-called ‘populist’ parties on the left and right of the political spectrum, as well as the re-branding of established political actors as ‘movements’ (think, e.g. of Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche). These phenomena are interpreted as part of a larger ‘revolt against intermediary bodies’—meaning first and foremost a rebellion against political parties. The Introduction suggests that this ‘revolt’ brings with it only a temporary shift in how representative politics looks, without actually reversing the disconnect between parties and voters or compelling established political parties to give up their privileges and de-colonize the institutions of the state. This argument sets the stage for the book’s core contention that more thought has to be put into finding ways to reconnect political parties with society.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-223
Author(s):  
Claus Scharf

Not only in Soviet patriotic historiography the conduct of war and the foreign policy of Alexander i were regarded as heroic only from the battle of Borodino onward. The earlier years of the Napoleonic Era and the retreat of Russian armies during the summer of 1812 appeared in a negative light. Revisionist research in Russia and abroad offers another interpretation. When the French army in 1807 after some victorious battles reached the Russian border Alexander maintained a much better bargaining position in talks with Napoleon than disappointed critics among the Russian elite recognized. The emperor of the French was not prepared to continue the war on Russian soil and did not make territorial demands on Russia. Napoleon wanted not only an armistice and peace, but also an alliance with Russia against Britain. Thus Alexander, using the power of the weak opponent, succeeded in winning time. Russia was able not only to maintain her strategic goals against the Ottoman Empire in the Rumanian principalities and in the Black Sea, but also to defend the political existence of Prussia as a possible Russian ally in a future coalition with Austria against Napoleon, which meant a sacrifice of Polish interests by Russia.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Parthe

This article attempts to reconstruct the khod myshleniia (thought process) of the ultra-nationalist, ultra-conservative camp, not just because it is interesting in and of itself but also because of the way that some of their ideas, concerns, and ways of seeing Russia and the world are shared by a growing number of people in the middle of the political spectrum. The extremists' ideas about russifikatsiia may not spread very far, but russkost' is a powerful and attractive concept.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 739-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayşe Zarakol

Given its economic success and the political transformations of the last decade, it is not surprising that Turkey is now charting an ambitious course in foreign policy. This article provides a sober assessment of some of the shortcomings becoming evident in Turkish foreign policy, and argues that if these problems are not addressed, Turkey is due to fall short of its regional leadership ambitions.


Author(s):  
Orlando Coutinho ◽  
◽  

The way in which an unknown virus has moved from a local to a global case, taking on a pandemic outline, has caused significant changes in the lives of all human beings. Firstly, for that reason, it is unknown, then because behind the ignorance comes mistrust and fear. Nowadays, these ingredients are - in the political-social space - substance for the biggest factors of action and decision of the actors of the power. Have we been in a war context, as some have said? Was confinement, global and so prolonged, really necessary? Was decreeing a state of emergency essential? Were the exception measures proportional? And are they reversible? This article aims, in the way of the ideas of several authors that thinking about the political philosophical role of health contexts, of exception state, and of political control of the State, in face of public health issues and not only, understand the “state of the art” in the way of governing western democracies, in the firstly, but flying over other geographies and systems as the virus has assumed global contours. And, by means of the concrete measures, politically adopted, by the different political actors, what real impacts they had on the life and the institutions working, and on the psychology of the persons individually or socially considered.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-107
Author(s):  
Paul Dumouchel

Focusing on existing ‘autonomous’ weapons systems and their uses replaces speculations about future developments and about what robots will or will not be able to do, with attention to the way these weapons are changing and have already changed warfare. The aspects of these transformations that will interest me in this paper are some of the political, organizational and social consequences of the introduction and deployment of various automatic and autonomous weapons systems. Beyond the questions of responsibility and legality, I want to look at the ways in which these weapons change countries’ ability to project power, on how they affect the composition of armed forces, the power relationships within them, and their relations with other major political actors.


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