Non-Western Theories in International Relations Education and Research: The Case of Turkey/Turkish Academia

Non-Western Theories in International Relations Education and Research: The Case of Turkey/Turkish Academia

This study examines the usage of non-Western theories in research and education by International Relations (IR) scholars in Turkey. Our primary purpose is to understand the level of engagement with the non-Western IR debate, with its prospects and variations, in Turkish academia, and to evaluate the familiarity of Turkish IR scholars from different schools with non-Western IR theories. Relevant data were obtained from a questionnaire with 47 items designed to let participants, consisting of 116 academicians at IR departments from 57 Turkish Universities, provide their teaching experiences, views, and perceptions concerning non-Western IR Theory. While our findings based on this data confirm the literature on the scarcity of non-Western theories in Turkish IR scholarship, we have also furthered it with many details. Firstly, according to the findings, respondents who study and teach IR Theory at Turkish universities think that the IR theories of Western origin dominating the literature are not universal or objective in terms of their function as interpreters of IR issues. But interestingly, those considerations direct scholars to Western critical IR Theory schools rather than non-Western theories. The other key conclusion of this study confirms our expectations. The thoughts, concepts and theories emanating from the Turkish-Islamic world have much more recognition than other non-Western IR theories among Turkish IR scholars.

___

  • Acharya, Amitav. “Advancing Global IR: Challenges, Contentions, and Contributions.” International Studies Review 18, no. 1 (2016): 4–15.
  • ———. “Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds: A New Agenda for International Studies.” International Studies Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2014): 647–59.
  • Acharya, Amitav, and Barry Buzan. The Making of Global International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
  • ———. Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and Beyond Asia. New York: Routledge, 2009.
  • ———. “Why Is There No Non-Western International Relations Theory? An Introduction.” In Acharya and Buzan, Non-Western International Relations Theory, 1–25.
  • Andrews, Nathan. “International Relations (IR) Pedagogy, Dialogue and Diversity: Taking the IR Course Syllabus Seriously.” All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy & Peace 9, no. 2 (2020): 267–82.
  • Aydın, Mustafa, and Cihan Di̇zdaroğlu. “Türkiye’de Uluslararası İlişkiler: Trip 2018 Sonuçları Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme.” Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi 16, no. 64 (2019): 3–28.
  • Aydınlı, Ersel, and Onur Erpul. “The False Promise of Global IR: Exposing the Paradox of Dependent Development.” International Theory (2021): 1–41. doi: 10.1017/S175297192100018X.
  • Ayoob, Mohammed. “Inequality and Theorizing in International Relations: The Case for Subaltern Realism.” International Studies Review 4, no. 3 (2002): 27–48.
  • Bilgin, Pınar. “How Not to Globalise IR: ‘Centre’ and ‘Periphery’ as Constitutive of ‘the International’.” Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi 18, no. 70 (2021): 13–27.
  • Bilgin, Pınar, and Zeynep Gülşah Çapan. “Introduction to the Special Issue Regional International Relations and Global Worlds: Globalising International Relations.” Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi 18, no. 70 (2021): 1–11.
  • Biltekin, Gonca. “Understanding Turkish Foreign Affairs in the 21st Century: A Homegrown Theorizing Attempt.” Ph.D. dissertation, İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University, 2014.
  • Blaney, David L, and Tamara A Trownsell. “Recrafting International Relations by Worlding Multiply.” Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi 18, no. 70 (2021): 45–62.
  • Cox, Robert W. Universal Foreigner: The Individual and the World. Singapore: World Scientific, 2013.
  • Cox, Robert W. “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory.” Millennium 10, no. 2 (1981): 126–55.
  • Escudé, Carlos. “Peripheral Realism: An Argentine Theory-Building Experience, 1986-1997.” In Concepts, Histories and Theories of International Relations for the 21st Century: Regional and National Approaches, edited by José Flávio and Sombra Saraiva. Brasília: IBRI, 2009.
  • Friedrichs, Jörg, and Ole Wæver. “Western Europe: Structure and Strategy at the National and Regional Levels.” In Tickner and Wæver, International Relations Scholarship around the World.
  • Gelardi, Maiken. “Moving Global IR Forward—a Road Map.” International Studies Review 22, no. 4 (2020): 830–52.
  • Goh, Evelyn. “U.S. Dominance and American Bias in International Relations Scholarship: A View from the Outside.” Journal of Global Security Studies 4, no. 3 (2019): 402–10.
  • Hagmann, Jonas, and Thomas J. Biersteker. “Beyond the Published Discipline: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of International Studies.” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 2 (2014): 291–315.
  • Hendrix, Cullen, Julia Macdonald, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers, and Michael J. Tierney. “Beyond IR’s Ivory Tower.” Foreign Policy, September 28, 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/28/beyond-international-relations-ivory-tower-academia-policy-engagement-survey/. Herbst, Jeffrey. States and Power in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.
  • Hobson, John M. The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760-2010. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  • Hoffmann, Stanley. “An American Social Science: International Relations.” Daedalus 106, no. 3 (1977): 41–60.
  • Huang, Xiaoming. “The Invisible Hand: Modern Studies of International Relations in Japan, China, and Korea.” Journal of International Relations and Development 10, no. 2 (2007): 168–203.
  • Hurrell, Andrew. “Beyond Critique: How to Study Global IR?”. International Studies Review 18, no. 1 (2016): 149–51.
  • Inoguchi, Takashi. “Are There Any Theories of International Relations in Japan?” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7, no. 3 (2007): 369–90.
  • Krippendorf, Ekkehart. “The Dominance of American Approaches in International Relations.” Millennium 16, no. 2 (1987): 207–14.
  • Kristensen, Peter M. “Revisiting the “American Social Science”—Mapping the Geography of International Relations.” International Studies Perspectives 16, no. 3 (2015): 246–69.
  • Kristensen, Peter M. “Dividing Discipline: Structures of Communication in International Relations.” International Studies Review 14, no. 1 (2012): 32–50.
  • Kuru, Deniz. “Homegrown Theorizing: Knowledge, Scholars, Theory.” All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace 7, no. 1 (2018): 69–86.
  • Lake, David A. “White Man’s IR: An Intellectual Confession.” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 4 (2016): 1112–22.
  • Mahajan, Sneh. “International Studies in India: Some Comments.” International Studies 47, no. 1 (2010): 59–72.
  • Makarychev, Andrey, and Viatcheslav Morozov. “Is “non-Western Theory” Possible? The Idea of Multipolarity and the Trap of Epistemological Relativism in Russian IR.” International Studies Review 15, no. 3 (2013): 328–50.
  • Maliniak, Daniel, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers, and Michael J. Tierney. “Is International Relations a Global Discipline? Hegemony, Insularity, and Diversity in the Field.” Security Studies 27, no. 3 (2018): 448–84.
  • Mearsheimer, John J. “Benign Hegemony.” International Studies Review 18, no. 1 (2016): 147–49.
  • Milner, Helen, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers, Michael J. Tiernay, and E. Voeten. “Future of the International Order Survey (Fios).” Princeton University, September 2020. https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/hvmilner/files/survey-report-milner.pdf.
  • Powel, Brieg. “Blinkered Learning, Blinkered Theory: How Histories in Textbooks Parochialize IR.” International Studies Review 22, no. 4 (2020): 957–82.
  • Qin, Yaqing. “A Relational Theory of World Politics.” International Studies Review 18, no. 1 (2016): 33–47.
  • Rathbun, Brian. “Politics and Paradigm Preferences: The Implicit Ideology of International Relations Scholars.” International Studies Quarterly 56, no. 3 (2012): 607–22.
  • Ringmar, Erik. “Alternatives to the State: Or, Why a Non-Western IR Must Be a Revolutionary Science.” All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace (2020): 149–62.
  • Salter, Mark B. “Edward Said and Post-Colonial International Relations.” In International Relations Theory and Philosophy, edited by Cerwyn Moore and Chris Farrands, 129. London: Routledge, 2010.
  • Shani, Giorgio. “Toward a Post-Western IR: The Umma, Khalsa Panth, and Critical International Relations Theory.” International Studies Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 722–34.
  • Shilliam, Robbie. International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity. London: Routledge, 2010.
  • Smith, Steve. “The Discipline of International Relations: Still an American Social Science?” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 2, no. 3 (2000): 374-402.
  • Tickner, Arlene B. “Core, Periphery and (Neo) Imperialist International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 19, no. 3 (2013): 627–46.
  • Tickner, Arlene B., and Karen Smith. International Relations from the Global South: Worlds of Difference. London: Routledge, 2020.
  • Tickner, Arlene B., and Ole Wæver. International Relations Scholarship around the World. London: Routledge, 2009.
  • Turton, Helen. International Relations and American Dominance: A Diverse Discipline. New York: Routledge, 2015.
  • Voskressenski, Alexei D. Non-Western Theories of International Relations: Conceptualizing World Regional Studies. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
  • Wæver, Ole. “The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations.” International organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 687–727.
  • Wemheuer-Vogelaar, Wiebke, Nicholas J. Bell, Mariana Navarrete Morales, and Michael J. Tierney. “The IR of the Beholder: Examining Global IR Using the 2014 Trip Survey.” International Studies Review 18, no. 1 (2016): 16–32.
  • Xinning, Song. “Building International Relations Theory with Chinese Characteristics.” Journal of Contemporary China 10, no. 26 (2001): 61–74.