Authors
Murat Yeşiltaş, Ali Balcı
Publication date
2013/5/7
Issue
07
Publisher
Center for Strategic Affairs (SAM)
Description
Concepts are not free of the historical context in which they emerge. In this sense, producing a conceptual map is to picture the dominant and formative language of the era. One of the rare academic issues on which almost all Turkish foreign policy scholars agree is that the traditional language of Turkish foreign policy has changed conspicuously during the AK Party era. he “new” concepts that have been introduced or have found an area of usage are the most significant markers of this change. herefore, these new concepts give this period of history a meaningful pattern in the context of Turkish foreign policy language and differentiate it from others. Having said this, we are by no means arguing that these concepts were necessarily discovered by AK Party cadres. We are cognisant of the fact that concepts like “historical dimension”(tarihsel boyut),“vision deficiency”(vizyon yetersizlĭi),“good relations with neighbours”(komşularla iyi ilişkiler),“cooperation among civilisations”(medeniyetler arası işbirlĭi) and “opening”(açılım) were used by one of the most influential names of the pre-AK Party period, namely İsmail Cem. By the same token, when we look at the historical continuity of Turkish foreign policy, it is possible to see attempts that had been made by various actors in different periods of the history to re-conceptualise foreign policy. herefore, we do not assume that these concepts were mere AK Party’s discoveries; instead we argue that they yield both continuity within themselves and also significant discontinuity at the conceptual level.
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