The Turkish Nation as a Bridge: Imagining a Nation in Turkish Parliamentary Discourse

This article analyses Turkish parliamentary discourse about Turkish communities living outside of Turkey from 1988 to 2016. It focuses particularly on the usage of the bridge metaphor in discursive strategies towards these communities; concentrated mainly in former Ottoman territories and parts of Eurasia. The article argues that Turkish parliamentarians used the bridge metaphor to frame Turkish communities as part of both the Turkish nation and the nation where they lived, thereby constituting their liminal and in-between identity. Parliamentarians continuously (re-)imagine, (re-)construct, and (re-)produce the Turkish nation by using different discursive strategies that included uniqueness, sameness or difference. They used identity markers as ethnicity, language, geography, history, and religion to address these strategies. Metaphorically framing Turkish communities as a bridge provided them a dominant bridge role, namely that of friendship and peace. By transforming Turkish communities into a bridge of friendship and peace, through different dimensions, they believed that they would have a positive and crucial role for the country where they live and for Turkey. This bridge role provided opportunities as well as limits, illustrating the interplay between discourse and foreign policy developments.

Keywords:

Bridge Metaphor, Imagined Turkish Communities, Discursive Practices, Turkish Parliament Foreign Policy,

PDF

___

Anderson, B. R. O. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Rev.ed). Verso.
Aykaç, E. (2021). A Bridge with Multiple Faces: Competing Identities in Turkish Parliamentary Debates (1988-2016). DIYÂR, 2, 279–301. https://doi.org/10.5771/2625-9842-2021-2-279106
Baser, B. (2014). The Awakening of a Latent Diaspora: The Political Mobilization of First and Second Generation Turkish Migrants in Sweden. Ethnopolitics, 13(4), 355–376. https://doi.org/10.108/17449057.2014.894175
Bilgin, P. (2007). “Only Strong States Can Survive in Turkey’s Geography”: The uses of “geopolitical truths” in Turkey. Political Geography, 26(7), 740–756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo. 2007.04.003
Brubaker, R. (2000). Accidental Diasporas and External “Homelands” in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present. IHS Political Science Series 71, October 2000. [Working Paper]. http://www.ihs.ac.at/vienna/IHS-Departments-2/Political-Science-1/Publications-18/Political-Science-Series-2/Publications-19/publication-page:6.htm
Chapin, W. D. (1996). The Turkish Diaspora in Germany. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 5(2), 275–301. https://doi.org/10.1353/dsp.1996.0015
Davutoğlu, A. (2011). Teoriden Pratige: Turk Dis Politikasi Uzerine Konusmalar. Küre Yayınları.
Eligür, B. (2010). The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511711923
Faist, T. (2010). Diaspora and transnationalism: What kind of dance partners? In T. Faist and R. Bauböck (Eds.), Diaspora and Transnationalism (p. 9–34). Amsterdam University Press.https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46mz31.4
Hall, S. (1999). Un‐settling ‘the heritage’, re‐imagining the post‐nation. Whose heritage? Third Text, 13(49), 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528829908576818
Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Taylor and Francis.
Kaya, A. (2010). Constructing communities in the Turkish diaspora: A quest for politics. In Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey. Routledge.
Küçükcan, T. (2007). Bridging the European Union and Turkey: The Turkish Diaspora in Europe. Insight Turkey, 9(4), 85–99.
Papuççular, H. (2020). The Sanjak of Alexandretta (Hatay) in Turkish Foreign Policy: A Case of “Accidental Diaspora” and Kin-State Politics. In H. Papuççular and D. Kuru (Eds.), A Transnational Account of Turkish Foreign Policy (p. 121–140). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42897-6_6
Rumelili, B. (2008). Negotiating Europe: EU-Turkey Relations from an Identity Perspective. Insight Turkey, 10(1), 97–110.
Rumelili, B., and Suleymanoglu-Kurum, R. (2017). Brand Turkey: Liminal Identity and its Limits. Geopolitics, 22(3), 549–570. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2016.1270269
Sirseloudi, M. (2012). The Meaning of Religion and Identity for the Violent Radicalisation of the Turkish Diaspora in Germany. Terrorism and Political Violence, 24(5), 807–824. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2011.644105
Varadarajan, L. (2010). The Domestic Abroad: Diasporas in International Relations. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199733910.001.0001
Wodak, R. (2017). Discourses about nationalism. In The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. Routledge.
Yabanci, B. (2021). Home-State Oriented Diaspora Organizations and the Making of Partisan Citizens Abroad: Motivations, Frames and Actions Towards Coopting the Turkish Diaspora in Europe (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3823997). Social Science Research Network. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3823997
Yaldiz, F. (2019). A Critical Approach to the Term Turkish Diaspora: Is there ‘the’ Turkish Diaspora?
Bilig, 91, Article 91. https://doi.org/10.12995/bilig.9103
Yanık, L. K. (2009). The Metamorphosis of Metaphors of Vision: “Bridging” Turkey’s Location, Role and Identity After the End of the Cold War. Geopolitics, 14(3), 531–549. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/14650040802693515
Yavuz, M. H. (2020). Turgut Özal’s Neo-Ottomanism. In M. H. Yavuz (Ed.), Nostalgia for the Empire: The Politics of Neo-Ottomanism. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197512289.003.0005