University of Lyon
Institute of Political Studies
The Liminality of Turkey The Construction
of a Liminal Position Between Asset and
Liability, Challenges and Opportunities
HAFFAR Zakaria
Master in Contemporary International Relations
Seminar Liminality: From Anthropology to Geopolitics
Under the supervision of Dr. Stéphane Corcuff
Defended on August 29, 2013
Defence Committee: Pr. Jean Marcou, Ass. Pr. Stéphane Corcuff
Table des matières
Introductory remarks . .
Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics . .
1) Liminality: theorizing in-betweenness . .
A- Origins of liminality: Van Gennep and the rites of passage . .
B- Liminality: the interest of un-definedness: Victor Turner . .
2) Challenging the structure: liminality in geopolitics . .
A- Expansion of the concept of liminality . .
B- Liminal entities in geopolitics: what use for a new tool? . .
3) Turkey: a liminal country . .
A- Construction of Turkey as the Other: European-Turkish history in the long haul
..
B- Drawing boundaries: on Europe's limits and Turkey's position . .
Conclusion of Part I . .
Part II- Turkey's liminality, a challenge to structure ? AKP and Europe in the political
discourse and the EU process . .
1) Analysing official discourse: what liminality for Turkey? . .
A- An official definition of Turkey's liminality by the AKP . .
B- Islam as a referential: a shift in Turkish foreign policy? . .
2) Turkey and the European Union . .
A- The EU adhesion process: a rite of passage? . .
B- Structural resistance to liminality: European and Turkish opposition to the
admission process . .
C- Turkey's conundrum: towards endless liminality? . .
Conclusion of part II: . .
Part III- Liminality: Opportunity or weakness? Analysis of the New Turkish Foreign policy,
and the “Occupy Gezi” movement . .
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A- The new Turkish foreign policy: “neo-ottomanism”? . .
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B- AKP's discourse of in-betweenness: a real alternative to previous world views?
..
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1) Liminality, asset or liability? . .
C- Liminality and the handling of plural identities: towards polarisation of Turkey?
..
2) 2013 protests analysed at the light of liminality . .
A- From an ecological protest to the affirmation of identities and plurality . .
B- Governmental reactions: scorning liminality, marginality and plurality? . .
C- Impact on Turkey/Europe relations . .
General conclusion . .
References . .
References for part I . .
Other sources . .
References for part II . .
References for part III . .
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Summary . .
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Introductory remarks
Introductory remarks
Although this master's thesis has mainly been put in form in the months from June to August
2013, in the context of an internship within the Turkish Ministry of European Affairs in Ankara,
my work on the topic started almost one year before that date. It is therefore obvious that
the wide movement of protests and unrest known worldwide as Occupy Gezi was in no
way expected in my original reasoning: however, the richness of the movement, the variety
and number of international reactions and the declarations from the AKP officials and the
government fuelled my reasoning and somehow met the ideas I was already developing.
The movement concurred with my arrival in Ankara almost day for day, and it gradually
came to my mind that I could in no way ignore it in my devising about Turkey's situation and
challenges that the country faces.
When using liminality, as with every concept, and even more with a concept that had
only scantily been applied in geopolitics, it was essential to come back to the root and ensure
the that the concept was well defined and delimited before applying it to Turkey, hence an
extensive part on the concept's origins in anthropology and the angle through which it can
and should be used in the study of international relations. The ethnological framework of
the analysis of rites of passage that allowed for the creation of the concept of liminality
might, when quickly described, conjure up to the listener images of primitive societies or
contexts, leading to the idea that applying liminality to Turkey may be a judgemental stance,
notably towards Turkish Muslim identity and/or the Middle-East, as one of the poles between
which Turkey is straddled. I therefore warn the reader, in case this were not clear enough
through the course of this work, that it should in no way be seen as an assessment of
Western European/Occidental identity and Turkish/Muslim identity respective value and
advancement or degree of “civilization” as I could meet some reactions along the lines by
uninformed or misunderstanding interlocutors. All the contrary, this work should be seen as
the description of Turkey's rich potential in international relations, both in the field and in
academic research, and as a questioning on traditional East-West, Europe-Islam categories
that when dealing with Turkey, are clearly insufficient.
As for what concerns Occupy Gezi, I tried to express my own political views as scarcely
as I could, focusing on the analysis of AKP's dialectic and discourse when treating with the
movement, in such a way that I felt could be seen through the light of liminality. This should
not be seen as a political statement, out of academical reserve, but also due to the lack of this
hindsight that we have as it will probably take months and years to assess the consequences
of the movement, apart from the present strain on Turkish/European relations.I for myself
have come to the conclusion that Turkey, for its past, its geographic position, its recent history
and positioning vis-à-vis Europe and the European Union, can be defined as a typical casestudy of liminality. As far as I am concerned as an individual, a student, and a European
living in Turkey, the concept of liminality encompasses, enlightens and explicates a great
part of the paradoxes and dynamics that I had already noted and studied in Turkey, as well
as it may hopefully give some keys to a more positive outcome to this liminal situation, that,
as I try to demonstrate in this work, is both an asset and a liability.
All my thanks to my tutor professor, M. Stéphane Corcuff, for his advice, insight and
documentation on the vast concept of liminality, during his thesis seminary “Liminality: from
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
anthropology to geopolitics”, and along my research work up until the last day, and to
professor Mr. Jean Marcou who accepted to evaluate my thesis as member of jury. All my
thanks go to my Turkish friends who generously hosted and accompanied me in Ankara
and Istanbul. All my thanks to my colleagues and co-interns that helped me and nurtured
my intellectual research and professional perspectives in any way, through interviews or
casual debate, in this, and for the welcoming environment of the Turkish Ministry for EU
affairs, where everyone works towards the tremendous objective of bringing Turkey closer
to Europe than it already is. All my thanks too to everyone, Turkish or other, that took the
time to sit and listen through the long explanations of liminality and my work. I hope this
master's thesis can be a humble testimony of my attachment to the complex country that
Turkey is, and that it can help shed some much needed light in the debates over Turkish
adhesion to the EU, and more broadly in the perception and the image of Turkey in the
collective minds of Europeans, a field where, like everywhere else, ignorance and shortsightedness can harm more than one can imagine.
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HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics
Part I – Liminality: a new concept in
geopolitics
“Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as
in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility
1
whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise”
1) Liminality: theorizing in-betweenness
A- Origins of liminality: Van Gennep and the rites of passage
The concept of liminality has recently migrated from its original field of anthropology to find
a new use in geopolitics and the analysis of international relations, starting in the 1990's.
However, in whatever field it is to be used, one is to understand the roots of the concept
from the anthropological perspective, before applying the theoretical framework of liminality
as an analytic tool in other sciences. Liminality was first defined in the field of anthropology
as a concept related to rites of passages in small societies, in the seminal opus Rites of
Passages, by the French anthropologist and folklorist Arnold van Gennep, in 1909. Rites of
passage, as defined by Van Gennep (1873-1957) are “ceremonies whose essential purpose
is to enable the individual to pass from one defined position to another which is equally well
2
defined” . Rites of passage are milestones in the life of individuals that allow their transition
between social structures and statuses in events such as birth, marriage, pregnancy or
childbirth, funerals... These rites of passage are the condition required to the acquisition of
a new social status as individuals grow older, in which case every individual is expected to
fulfil them, but they can also take place when joining exclusive groups or secret societies.
3
In order to define and describe these rites of passages, Van Gennep divides them
in three consecutive phases. First, rites of separation, a phase implying the detachment
of the individual from his previous place in the social structure or his previous condition.
Then, after he has been stripped of his previous social status, the individual undergoes
a period of transition where he performs prescribed rites, often in physical seclusion from
the community or within a symbolic separation or dissimulation. Finally, the passage is fully
confirmed by rites of incorporation whereby the individual is once more integrated into his
group, henceforth enjoying a new, higher status within the framework of hierarchical and
rigid social structure. These three phases form together a theoretical blueprint of how a
typical rite of passage takes place, but the importance of each phase may differ with each
1
2
3
Turner, 1967
Van Gennep, 1960, p.3
Turner, 1967, p.95
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Challenges and Opportunities
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context and each ceremony, with the emphasis or the downplay of a particular phase :
funeral ceremonies insist on rites of separation whereas rites of transition are prominent in
pregnancy and initiation.
Dynamics of spaces and movement have an important role in rites of passage as such
rites are often conceived as the crossing of a symbolic or material frontier or space, “the
territorial passage”. Van Gennep notes the recurrent motive of the threshold, the portal,
or the door in rites of passage; he also makes a reference to the “marches”, these large
swathes of land that separated the Roman Empire or Christian medieval kingdoms from
their “barbaric” neighbours before the advent of precisely defined borders as yet another
5
threshold-like space . Hence he coined the words liminal/liminality from the Latin limen, that
he translates as “threshold”. It is to note that in recent works we can note some indecision
as far as etymology is concerned, limes or limus being evoked as the root of liminality,
6
alternatively or even indistinguishably , sometimes on a specific purpose, orientation or
bias, although always referring to a transitional space, be it a threshold or a border. Being
unqualified in these precise linguistic matters, I shall refer to the original definition of Van
7
Gennep, shared by Turner too , referring to threshold, for the sake of simplicity, clarity,
and respect to the original concept. From there he defines the rites of separation as preliminal, while the rites of transition constitute the liminal period properly speaking, and the
incorporation rites can be defined as post-liminal.
The transitional period between a social status A and a social status B is at the core of
the rite of passage, and liminality as a frame, a period of un-definedness of the individual's
status is the key of the rite of passage (one could actually rather speak of a “non-status”
vis-à-vis the traditional structural division of society). The initiate having been stripped from
his original social status while not being endowed with a new one yet, his liminality is a
parenthesis in which the individual is immersed and where he has to perform the required
rites before he can enjoy his new, higher social status. It is a most sacred moment where
initiates are the closest to the tutelary divinities or ancestors, where they are to become new
individuals endowed with new responsibilities.
B- Liminality: the interest of un-definedness: Victor Turner
This un-definedness state has been elaborated upon by the British scholar Victor Turner,
whose opus on the rites of passage, Forest of Symbols, Aspects of the Ndembu Ritual is
widely credited with bringing the concept of liminality to a wider scope and a further use
in other social sciences, more than half a century after the first works by Van Gennep on
this topic. In his 1967 work, he defined the individual in the liminal phase as being not
of the state A any more but still not being B yet. The “liminal persona”, subjected to this
transitional phase, embodies a series of contradictions, is “at once no longer classified and
not yet classified, neither one thing nor another, or may be both; or neither here nor there;
or may even be nowhere”. Hence this “transitional-being” is, as long as the liminal phase
endures, “betwixt and between” social standings and statuses, defined by Turner as “all
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8
Van Gennep, 1960, p.11
Van Gennep, 1960, p.17
Jasper, 2008, p.2
Turner, 1969
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Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics
the recognized fixed points in space-time of structural classification”. Turner, in his work ,
when defining rites of passages by evoking Van Gennep's definition, includes under the term
“state” (as opposed to the term “transition”) all the terms used by the latter such as “status”,
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“social position” or office” .
Turner defines liminality as a period of transition between “states” that can as such refer
“to any type of stable or recurrent condition that is culturally recognized” (such a precision
already opens the possibility of the extension of the concept beyond the boundaries
of anthropology (and rites of passage properly speaking) into the scope of other social
sciences, such as we will expose it later on). It is, however, to be distinguished from
marginality, which is another concept frequently used in anthropology and social sciences:
the idea of liminality intrinsically conveys the idea of a positive process, whatever ill-at-ease
the initiate himself may be during the period. Liminality brings the prospects of a higher,
better social standing, and is a transitional period, while marginality is a permanent condition
that doesn't imply a resolution by joining a fixed structure, and that is not a temporary state
as liminality is supposed to be.
From that situation of in-betweenness arises the status of the liminal individual as
a challenge to established formal structures by proving the possibility of an interstitial
existence, even temporary. As Turner describes it, the initiate submitted to a rite of passage
is hidden away from the community which despises him, precisely for being the embodiment
of un-definedness, a status associated with impurity and threat. The “liminal persona” is
structurally indefinable for as long as he undergoes rites in a liminal state: he is for a moment
outside of the grasp of his peers' traditional set of denominations -what Turner calls “a
society's secular definitions”, and may be designated by a variety of names and symbols
specific to the initiates. Turner notes that these terms might be applied to the liminal persona ,
notwithstanding which one of his society's prescribed rites he's undergoing: rather than the
future or previous state, it is the transition itself that is described (akin to terms such as
“initiate” or “neophyte”). Turner contrasts liminality with the status system through a set of
binary oppositions: the liminal is characterized by transition versus state, anonymity versus
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system of nomenclature, absence of status versus status, totality versus partiality ...
Consequently to the unclear, inter-structural nature of the liminal persona, they are
attributed a variety of symbols ranging from death and other negative biological processes
to gestation or birth. In the contradiction that the liminal being embodies, lies a perceived
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danger, pollution, threat to the other individuals anchored in well-defined social states . It
is as a reaction to that perceived pollution expected from them to stay hidden or secluded, or
to wear specific masks or attires. Nevertheless, liminality is also a space of rebirth, creation,
and potentiality unbound by the traditional limitations of social structures. As Turner states,
“liminality is the realm of primitive hypothesis, where there is a certain freedom to juggle with
the factors of existence”. As we can see, liminality opens new perspectives, as it can serve
as a time of reflection and examination of identities, structures, and traditional categories.
8 Turner, 1969
9
10
Turner, 1969, p.106
Turner, 1969, quoting Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, 1966
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2) Challenging the structure: liminality in geopolitics
A- Expansion of the concept of liminality
As we have seen already, Turner elaborated a wider framework on Van Gennep's original
definition of liminality, insisting on the in-betweenness and un-definedness induced by the
liminal situation of the individual undergoing rites of passage. In doing so, he allowed for the
use of the concept in field others than anthropology, with the term “liminality” migrating to
other sciences. This prompts us to ask the question: to what degree of pertinence have
liminality been used, especially in our field of choice, geopolitics?
Apart from the aforementioned field that constitutes our focus in this study, we can
quickly evoke the use of liminality in other fields not related to ethnology: for example, it
was used to describe the experience of foreign migrants: in South Africa queuing for Home
affairs, as a parallel between administrative and detention facilities and liminal spaces,
where migrants applicants/initiates are to perform the required steps and wait for a better
situation
11
; in the United States with the liminal legality experienced of illegal Guatemalan
and Salvadoran migrants
12
. Liminality was also applied to the situation of patients suffering
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from cancer, who are put in a state of alienation by their permanent illness
. However, this
migration to other fields also raises the question of the range of the concept: does it retain its
original meaning, in what new situations can it be used and up to which concessions to the
original context of rites of passage? Indeed, it has been argued that the latter perspective
retains only the negative aspects of an existence betwixt and between social structures,
notwithstanding the absence of a positive outcome which is desired, implied and achieved
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through rites of passage . These questions are to keep in mind both when assessing the
range of a concept that now spans various contexts and disciplines and when trying to use
that concept, as we will intend now.
As we already defined it, liminal experiences refer to a territorial passage, a
transformative space where transition between statuses and life stages can be performed.
It is therefore not surprising that geography and geopolitics invested that concept when
dealing with dynamics of space and territories in situations of in-betweenness. One of the
first occurrences of liminality in geopolitics was in the work of Higgott and Nossal. The two
scholars characterized the situation of Australia in the international scene of Pacific Asia as
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liminal . They argued that Australia had, over the course of the decade 1990, shifted away
from its historical referential of the Anglo-Saxon sphere, defined by an economic, cultural,
strategic and military alignment with first Great-Britain then United States. Indeed, Higgott
and Nossal described the Australian attempts at redefining the country in a new perspective,
replacing it into the Asian sphere of politics and economy. The two scholars hold that
liminality is inscribed in a constructivist vision of international relations, stressing sociological
11 Sutton, Vigneswaran, Wels, 2011
12
13
14
Menjivar, 2008
Thompson, 2007
Jasper, 2008, p.3
15 Higgott, Nossal, 1997
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Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics
factors over economic and strategic ones, and they define this constructivist vision as based
on the “inducement of change by active intellectual and ideational intervention”.
However, other Asian countries appear wary of Australia's intended move, as Higgott
and Nossal describe it, and do not seem to be willing to integrate their neighbour fully into
Asia; while at the same time, efforts by the then newly elected Conservatives to tilt back
Australia into the previous, US/UK-aligned axis cannot be successful as the change has
already been consummated, even though they had pledged to do so. It is interesting to
note that Australia's position triggers from Asia a discourse of rejection that can be seen
as the reaction to Australia's in-betweenness and un-definedness, in the same way as the
liminal persona is rejected and despised as undefined and thus impure. This conundrum was
described by Gareth Evans, Minister of Foreign Affairs under Keating's Labour's government
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as going from being “odd man out to man in”
: more integrated yet still perceived as
different and as such, not really part of Asia. Higgott and Nossal argue that in geopolitics
liminality may become a static position when the contradictions between the two worlds are
too strong to allow for a full crossing of the threshold. Indeed, they argued that although
constructivism allows for processes of identity-building and learning, Australia's liminality
doesn't allow for the completion of the move engaged by Labour in their 1990. Assessing
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the evolution of the situation after 11 years in a more recent paper , they maintained their
position: although the new conservative coalition has (paradoxically) even included further
Australia into Pacific Asia, Australia remains “a politico-cultural oddity in Asia”, being a liberal
country committed to the liberal principle of equality. Back to the theoretical questions that
concerns us, they conclude: “Australia is clearly not in the kind of liminal position that is
commonly ascribed to Turkey, with its fraught relation with the countries (and peoples) of
Europe and its divided identity”. Indeed, Turkey is another country that's been described as
liminal, a country often represented between Middle-East and Islam, and Europe and the
European Union, yet willing to integrate the UE. Lerna Yanık analysed the official discourse
of liminality in Turkey, that describes that position as positive, and as a new strategy for the
country after the Cold War that saw Turkey's clear adhesion to the Western-aligned countries
through NATO. Now that Turkey is no longer seen as a rampart against communism,
it is trying to define a new foreign policy that is voluntarist and more adventurous with
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its neighbour, on the basis of Turkey's double identity, that is perceived as an asset .
We can already see here a definition that is closer to Turner's approach of liminality as
empowering, as a springboard for dialogue that also allows questioning of the traditional
categories, a subject that we will widely discuss in this work: as Turner notes, “liminality is
the realm of primitive hypothesis, where there is a certain freedom to juggle with the factors
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of existence.”
Liminality has also been used in cases of transitions underwent by countries at the
margins of the European Union: Eastern European countries and notably Romania in their
process of adhesion to the EU following the fall of the USSR. It was then argued that, during
the years following the decay of the Eastern Bloc, such countries engaged in reforms and
underwent a strategic realignment on Western Europe EU: in the course of these process,
16 Higgot, Nossal, 2008
17 Higgott and Nossal, 2008
18 Yanık, 2008
19
Turner, 1967, p.106
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
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they were described and-constructed as being liminal states, for example Romania
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and
Estonia . Europe and the European construction, especially since the end of the cold War,
is facing a debate on admission of new members: as Lerna Yanık puts it, “much of the recent
literature has devoted attention to Europe's identity formation and “othering” practices and
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to the ability of the European “self” to shape the “other” , thus opening up the field for cases
where liminality can be used.
As a first conclusion, it would appear that the concept lost some of its original meaning
when applied to geopolitics, in some cases retaining only specific aspects of the definition
of liminality as formulated in anthropology by Van Gennep and Turner, be it in-betweenness,
un-definedness, or transition, in space or time. Without denying the interest of these works,
and having noted the previous point, the following question can be asked (and has already
been): does the use of liminality retain an interest in geopolitics, and along which lines?
B- Liminal entities in geopolitics: what use for a new tool?
Such a reasoning has been done in the case of Taiwan: while trying to define Taiwan’s
relation and position vis-a-vis China, Stéphane Corcuff discards traditional concepts such
as hegemony, margin, periphery, dependency, that do not fully represent the reality of the
relationship between Taiwan and the mainland arguing that liminality presents a better
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description of the situation of the island
. While defining Taiwan’s liminality, Stéphane
Corcuff attempts to qualify cases where liminality could be applied while retaining an
analytical and explanatory potential. He argues, as we illustrated before, that liminality in the
study of international relations has often aimed only at describing a transition or a period of
change in time; liminality could actually be brought back closer to its original meaning, “by
reconnecting the notion with its spatial dimension, as suggested by the Latin origin of the
word”, aiming to “construct a time- and space-based tool”. He defines several cases where
liminality could be applied to the study of international relations: transition between two
states, as a time-based transition (Australia's trajectory in the works of Higgot and Nossal),
in-betweenness (the bridge position of a country between two civilizations, for example
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Turkey
), a state of limbo of unclear self-definition and self-identity (modern Taiwan),
a situation of margin of a larger entity, while trying to adapt to it (Romania vis-a-vis EU
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), and being a historically constructed place of contact that has something to say to a
hegemonic neighbour, which is how Stéphane Corcuff defines Taiwan's liminality. The cases
are not restrictive and may overlap, in any case, they call for a wide analysis of both the
spatial and temporal frames. This is the method he uses to define the position of Taiwan as
liminal, as a result of a 400-years long history with the mainland and a complex relation with
Chinese identity. Taiwan, he argues, although dwarfed by the military and economic power of
mainland China, retains a dialectic and discursive power that allows it to dialogue and treat
20 Ruxandra Stoicescu, 2008
21
22
Mälksoo, 2009
Yanık, 2011
23 Corcuff, 2012
24
25
12
See Yanık, 2011, Rumelili, 2012
See for example Ruxandra Stoicescu, 2008
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Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics
on par with Beijing. It is also both a laboratory and a place of conservation of Chinese culture,
and Taiwan can benefit from this cultural legitimacy in their relationship with the mainland.
However, it is important to keep in mind not to essentialise the liminal situation: the
study of liminality should precisely attempt to de-construct traditional categorisations by
focusing on the importance of discourse in the political practice of definition of the other,
notably through the historical construction of categories. Liminality in geopolitics relies on
the importance of space, time, and the political discourse, articulating these points as an
entry to the study of structures and the construction of identities. When we see how the
concept of liminality was handled in the field of international relations, we have to note this
underlying thematic that is identity. Per Turner's definition, the liminal persona challenges
conceptions of the self and of the axioms that define the social structure and statuses by
offering a mirror that reflects, through the initiate unclear status, one's own conception of
his identity. The liminal persona is the Other, through the rejection of which one can define
his own nature, a “we” to which the undefined can and should not belong: for wouldn't his
inclusion in the group shatter its identity and thus its very existence?
3) Turkey: a liminal country
A- Construction of Turkey as the Other: European-Turkish history in
the long haul
We have now defined more precisely the theoretical framework of liminality in geopolitics.
How can we apply that concept to Turkey? What factors can contribute to the definition of
modern Turkey as a country in a liminal position? As we defined it, it is necessary to refer
to a large spatial and temporal frame when studying a country's liminal position, if possible.
When defining today's Turkey's relationship with Europe, one must understand the way
this relationship unravelled and developed throughout history on the long haul, beginning
with Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. Even though the legal continuity between
the two entities is another question, as far as identification with this Ottoman past matters,
Turkey as well as the other European countries generally associate them in a historical
continuity, be it as a celebration of a fantasized, glorious Turkish past made of conquests and
flourishing civilization
26
, or in a parallel criticizing Turkey's political practices and positioning
in the international scene
27
, and the exactions of the Ottoman polity against its minorities.
th
The conquest of Constantinople on May 29 1453 marked the intrusion of the Ottomans
in the foreground of the European scene. Threatening to European Christian kingdoms if
anything, this seminal event marked the beginning of an ambivalent relationship between
this new empire -that was de facto becoming a European power through its dashing
26
The multiplication of cultural references that shed a positive light over the Ottoman past illustrates this positive vision: one could
analyse the success of the film Fatih 1453 (The Conquest, narrating the events of the conquest of Constantinople), or the television
show Mühteşem Yüzyıl (The Magnificent Century, centred on the court intrigues of Sultan Süleyman) as manifestations of a revival
of an imperial past, dubbed “ottomania” - see Rousselin, Turkish Soap Power: International Perspectives and Domestic Paradoxes,
Online Journal of the Centre for Governance and Culture in Europe, p.19, and more broadly as a part of Turkey's “soft power”
27
Thus the controversial term “neo-ottomanism”, see Somun, 2011, Türbedar, 2011, Laçiner, 2003 Petrovic, 2011
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
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conquests in the Balkans and Central Europe, up until the watermark of the Second Siege
of Vienna in 1683- and Europe. For one, the Turks, perceived as a menacing enemy (mostly
legitimately up to a certain point in history), came to represent the quintessential Other, everthreatening precisely because he was not fully alien amongst other “barbarian” peoples but
representing a faith, Islam, that constituted a rivalling tradition and world view; a competing
28
narrative too close to Christianity not to represent a threat . Both religions are “rooted in
essentially the same Near Eastern and unitary doctrine […] this similarity, however, does not
connote harmony. Just as siblings often fight with appalling brutality, the very resemblance
29
and historical proximity of the two faiths created a bitter rivalry”. The menace of the “Turk”
pushed at times for a closer relationship between the otherwise ever-belligerent Christian
kingdoms, gathered in ecumenical holy alliances when facing the Ottoman enemy at the
Second Siege of Vienna in 1683 or at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Indeed, when analysing
the construction of European identity, we can argue that it was mostly what Europe was
not that defined what it was in the end. In other words, the Other, i.e. the non-European
barbarian or savage, played a decisive role in the evolution of the European identity and in
the maintenance of order among European states. The Ottoman Empire played that role of
the non-European Other after other peoples in history, as the Greeks and the Romans had
discarded neighbouring people as barbarian before, consolidating their vision of themselves
as the one “civilization”, thus securing their own identity.
Nevertheless, as these two worlds came in contact, a more complex relationship started
to develop, with cultural exchanges, carried by trade and embassies, each one being an
occasion for each culture to rediscover itself through the mirror of the other. The FrancoOttoman alliance is a famous example of the importance of strategic considerations put
before the supposed incompatibility and quintessential enmity between Europe and the
Ottoman Empire. As diplomacy developed, Turkish ambassadors were looked upon as
30
curiosities and spurred intellectual reactions in European literature . Goffman describes a
“Euro-Ottoman symbiosis” as “the various religions, ethnicities, and aliens within the empire
31
co-existed and commingled virtually at will” under the regime of Islamic law and taxes
.Islamic laws actually blended into a mould of Byzantine customary law and tax structures,
Persian financial and political tradition and Arab spiritual legacy that somehow showed that
the Ottoman Empire had a certain continuity with the past when viewed from the West, as
an Empire that “seemed to have arisen like a monster out of the Byzantine ashes”, hated
yet impossible to ignore.
32
th
As the Ottoman Empire started its long recess in the turn of the 17 century, it started
looking in the direction of its European neighbours to find the reasons and the cure for its
decline. The Ottomans started lagging behind other European nations, as they had risen
from the status of diplomatic and military equals to suddenly overpower the old empire that
despite its efforts could not bridge the ever-widening gap in scientific, military and technical
28
29
30
31
32
14
Neumann, 1998, quoted by Kylstadt, 2010
Goffman, 2002 p.9
Renda, 2006
Goffman, 2002, p.9
Goffman, 2002, p.11
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics
skills.
33
The “sick man of Europe” gradually became the focus of Europe's foreign policy
th
and diplomatic strategies amidst the Eastern Question in the 19 century; no longer “the
terror of Europe”, the Ottoman Empire's perception as an alien threat was replaced with
a more inclusive image that was still negative as interested “contempt replaced fear in
34
the minds of many Christian Europeans”.
Reforms carried out in the Empire strove to
apply the French, German of British models of administration, army, even the very idea
of nationalism, in the Ottoman lands, while still maintaining the Islamic background of the
caliphate and Islamic institutions, notably due to the important weight of the Islamic scholar.
The Ottoman Empire was included into the Concert of Europe, on the notable occasion of
the Paris Conference of 1856 that called for the preservation of the Empire's integrity as a
key to Europe's stability. Reformists called for the adoption of a Constitution and a parliament
akin to Europe's constitutional monarchies but the attempts were short-lived
35
.
With a weakened empire, European powers actually started scheming to share, invade
and occupy parts of the Ottoman lands at the turn of the First World War, when the goal of
the Allies had become:
“the liberation of the peoples who now live beneath the murderous tyranny of the Turks,
and the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire, which has proved itself radically
alien to Western civilization”.
36
This goal was mainly achieved, although not fully up to the hopes of the European
powers: by the end of the war, the empire had lost almost all its territory in Europe and MiddleEast. Yet a Turkish nation-state was secured by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after a lengthy
independence war and was rebuilt on the principles of Kemalism with an alignment on
many European/Occidental principles: strict secularism, adoption of the latin alphabet, of
the Western Gregorian calendar, abolition of the sultanate and the caliphate with the goal to
37
“unite multi-ethnic regions of the former Ottoman Empire into a westernised nation-state”
. This was a definitive and irrevocable shift in Turkey's future, identity, principles and relation
with Europe: as David Fromkin put it
38
:
”Thus in 1922 the centuries-old Ottoman Empire came to an end; and Turkey, which for
500 years had dominated the Middle-East, departed from Middle-Eastern history to seek to
make herself European”.
This led to the creation of a European elite concerned with principles of laicity and
occidental culture, coexisting with a population that arguably cared less for such principles
and didn't assimilate as deeply this new rationale, and that lived on with the ways of Islam
as the main referential, while the kemalist elite and ideology tried to curtail Islam's influence,
33
34
35
36
Hourani, 2002, pp. 258/262
Goffman, p.19
Ansary, 2009, p.286/287
Lovell, 2011, quoting Fromkin, A Peace to End all Peace: The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern
Middle East. The quote is from the correspondence between Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson, October 1916.
37
38
Banani, 2003
Lovell, 2011, quoting Fromkin, A Peace to End all Peace: The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern
Middle East, 1989, New York, Henry Holt and Company, p.254.
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
15
The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
although kemalist ideas gradually spread in the society and became the foundations
of Turkish national identity. Turkish version of secularism implies that the state actually
intervenes in religious matters, (instead of the strict separation between state and religion
that is normally the definition of secularism): this is viewed by the kemalists as the safeguard
of democracy in a country that used one of the strictest theocracies in the world 90 years
ago.
39
During the Cold War, due to the strategic importance of the control of the Straits that
fuelled a diplomatic crisis between East and West until 1953, Ankara was integrated into
the Western pole, joining the US-aligned countries and becoming a part of NATO in 1952 in
a then widely-accepted consensus that Turkey's European-ness had not to be questioned
for strategic reasons. Turkey was to be a bulwark against any Soviet expansion in the
Middle-East, the warm seas and in the country itself. Turkey also became one of the
founding members of the Council of Europe in 1949. However, the country's full attachment
to Europe's democratic values could be questioned, despite this alignment: one must recall
that Turkey was quite hesitating to ratify the Council of Europe conventions on human rights
and was actually one of the last states to do so.
40
Still, with the European Community building itself, Turkey reinforced this move towards
Europe and applied in July 1959 (just two weeks after the historical rival, Greece) before
obtaining an Association Agreement in 1963, also known as the Ankara Treaty, the beginning
of an ambivalent partnership with the EU. Indeed, the text of the agreement comprised the
41
prospective adhesion of Turkey , although not clearly guaranteed in the terms of the Treaty,
but still, evoked as a possibility. The general consensus among European nations at the
time was clear, as declared by the then Commission President Walter Hallstein in 1963:
42
“Turkey is a part of Europe”.
Nevertheless, the political turmoil, namely military coups
that repeatedly ousted governments in Ankara, strained the relationship, to the point that
the Community temporarily cut the ties with Turkey in 1980 after a military coup.
It is only in 1987 that the country, under the leadership of Turgut Özal (Prime Minister
between 1983 and 1989 and President from 1989 to 1993), formally applied for a full
membership in the European Community, that was met with refusal by the Council in 1989,
instead opening the way for a Customs Agreement in 1995.
43
Status of candidate was
rd
recognized at the Helsinki summit of 1999, and the negotiations started on October 3 2005,
the last important step of Turkey's peculiar relationship, which will celebrate (if one could
th
find reasons to celebrate such a rocky process) its 50 anniversary this year, half a century
after the Ankara Treaty. No country has ever been candidate for so long as Turkey, yet the
more time passes, the more its adhesion appears a complicated issue: the consensus on
39
40
41
Wing, Varol, 2003, p. 6/7
Servantie, 2012, p.33
Agreement Creating An Association Between the Republic of Turkey and the European Economic Community, September
12 1963, article 28: “As soon as the operation of this Agreement has advanced far enough to justify envisaging full acceptance of
Turkey of the obligations arising out of the Treaty establishing the Community, the Contracting Parties shall examine the possibility
of the accession of Turkey to the Community.”
42
43
16
Quoted in Müftüler-Baç, 2004, p.31
Müftüler-Baç, 2004, pp.31/32
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics
Turkey's European-ness is far from being the same as the one voiced by Walter Hallstein
fifty years before.
B- Drawing boundaries: on Europe's limits and Turkey's position
History on the long haul explains the liminal position of modern Turkey: a Muslim country,
with a long history of antagonism with Europe and representing for centuries the menacing
Other, yet at the same time a secular democracy built on modernist principles at the birth
of the Republic, looking forward integration into the EU for decades. But today, as the
EU process is taking place, the question of geographically situating Turkey becomes as
important as defining it in cultural and political terms, and the two perspectives, time and
space, are actually closely linked as regards Turkey's liminality: the formally simple yet
complex questions “Where is Europe?”, “What are the boundaries of Europe?”, “Where
is Turkey?” or “Is Turkey European?” take a new dimension, as the answer to these
interrogation is often the answer to another dilemma: “Should Turkey be part of the European
Union”?
As regards the past, it was obvious that the Ottoman Empire was part of geographical
Europe as it was defined then -or, for what matters, that part of the Ottoman Empire was
th
in Europe- and it was so since their first conquests in the Balkans in the 14 century,
although the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was the real beginning of the Turkish threat,
perceived in Europe as a religious, political or even civilizational earthquake. However, when
considering the question of situating modern Turkey on a map, the answers are varying
and it is clear that no definite answer is possible. The project EurobroadMap, carried out in
2009/2011, was lead with the intent of studying the mental representations of Europe and
its boundaries as a continent. In this perspective, surveys were undertaken in EU and third
countries, including Turkey, collecting samples drawn by surveyed students, and producing
a mental image of the limits of Europe, a cognitive map that can be studied.
First used in psychology, mental maps can be a tool in sociological studies as they allow
to study visions of the world: “A cognitive map is a mental spatial image, a structured map
of part of a human's spatial surroundings. Yet a cognitive map is mainly a representation
which shows the world at a particular point in time. It reflects the world as a human believes
44
it to be ”.
They are specific to each person, but a collective study allows to highlight
some common points and tendencies when mapping the surrounding world, as they reflect
a society's symbolic and cultural definition of space: “cognitive maps are also function of
45
culture-bound systems of references” . As such, they echo widespread representations
such as schoolbooks, that undeniably form a specific representation of space. While we can
see that representations of the borders of Europe vary wildly depending on the country, few
schoolbooks dismiss the idea of “natural continents”, and as such perpetuate these mental
maps, and the associated vision of Europe.
Indeed, the results show that inclusion of Turkey in Europe varies in the mental maps
produced by the students, depending on their country of origin. Unsurprisingly, countries
that include less Turkey in Europe in their mental representation of the continent tend to
be less in favour of the entry of Turkey into European Union: thus, according to the 2008
Eurobarometer polls, the Swedish, who are at 45% “rather not in favour of Turkey into
44
45
Reynolds 2013 p 35, quoting Claudia Redtenbacher: Kognitive Karten im Spielfilm
Reynolds p.35, quoting Kevin Lynch
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
EU”, are almost 50% to place Turkey in Europe in the EuroBroadMap survey; Belgians
are 63% to be “rather not in favour of Turkey into EU”, when Belgian students are less
46
than 30% to situate Turkey in Europe.
Of course, many factors are evoked apart from
geography: for example in a 2011 French poll, to the question “For which reasons principally
are you not in favour of the adhesion of Turkey to the European Union?”, 44% stated to
“there is too much cultural and religious differences with the countries of the European
Union”, more than the 38% that stated that “Turkey is not geographically situated in Europe”.
47
However, we could argue that this confirms the widespread vision of a Union based
on the belonging to a defined continent with strict borders and to “cultural and religious”
characteristics forming a hypothetical yet valued “European” identity, that is obviously a
product of historical and political narratives. These two arguments are closely similar, if not
purely the same enunciated in different words: as we try to demonstrate, the geographical
conception of Europe as a continent is partly a product of the historical opposition between
religions and cultures and political and strategic projects.
Still the borders of Europe, although omnipresent in the political discourse, appear as
fuzzy. Mental maps define clearly Europe in the West and the South: the natural limit of the
Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, with the border cutting on the straits of Gibraltar,
are present in most of the drawings gathered by the EuroBroadMap project, demonstrating
the common conception of Europe's natural frontier. However, the delimitation is more fuzzy
at the East, notably when Russia and Turkey are concerned, hence demonstrating the lack
of consensus on how to fix Europe's limit in the absence of natural borders. Ural mountains
and the Bosporus are drawn as a limit in many mental maps, but they are in no way as
widely agreed upon on as Gibraltar is. We can see the example of the mental map drawn
by Swedish students in the project EuroBroadMap: many of the lines actually cross the
Anatoliadn peninsula at various places, in addition a majority of the lines crossing at the
Bosporus, illustrating the student's difficulty to situate Turkey clearly.
Situating Turkey in, out, or across Europe's eastern border then becomes part of a
political discourse and popular posture -the two intimately linked- regarding its identity,
the identity of Europe, and Turkey's right to access to a full membership of the European
Union. Mental maps are closely linked to history, as they stem from representations from the
past: “The orientation function which the practices of mapping enable cannot be understood
without its relationship to representations of the past and the continuation of symbolic
structures from the past into the present”
48
.
As the borders of Europe are not clearly defined naturally in the East of the continent,
students set them referring to their own set of cultural, memorial and historical references.
Continents could actually be defined as intellectual constructions: Christian Grataloup
describes “the invention of continents”, highlighting the fact that the delimitations of the
landmasses into continents is arbitrary, not universal, and a consequence of history: the
domination of the European powers and their role in the exploration of the world through
the great discoveries diffused their conception of continents, largely inherited, in the case
of Europe, Asia and Africa, from a Judeo-Christian perspective, illustrated by the T-O maps
that were the standard for centuries, reflecting and justifying the biblical story of Noah's three
46
47
48
18
IN-COGNITA website, document La Turquie et l'Europe
TNS-Sofres, 2011, “les Français et l'adhésion de la Turquie à l'UE”
Reynolds, p.37, quoting Sabine Damir-Geilsdorg/Beatrice Hendrich
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics
49
sons that begot three peoples, sent to inhabit the then-known three continents . Today's
definition of the Eastern boundaries of Europe, placed on the Ural Mountains, stems from
Peter's the Great vision of Russia to be anchored to Europe, as translated on maps by the
50
Russian geographer Tatischev.
Yet the Ural mountains, albeit a long chain, remains
lower in altitude than many other European massifs with heights no higher than 1894m, and
lower even that many mountainous chains in Anatolia; but Ural precisely and not another
geological formation was chosen as the Eastern limit of Europe and perpetuated since then,
with General Charles de Gaulle's famous definition of a Europe “from the Atlantic to Ural”.
As for the Bosphorus, this limit dates back to the time of the Greeks who defined everything
beyond the Eastern Seas (Aegean, Marma, and Black Sea) as Asia, although they had
colonies implanted all the way to modern-day Georgia (Colchidia by then).
These continental visions have since then been assimilated by the populations, but
on a varying scale. For example, the idea of South America or Africa as socio-economic
realities, marked by the common past of colonisation and the struggle for independence
and democracy is firmly integrated in the South American or Sub-Saharan countries, but
not that much in the Maghreb countries, or Egypt... As Grataloup, says, “there are some
places where we know precisely where we are: Rio de Janeiro is without a doubt in South
51
America, Shanghai in Asia, Kinshasa in Africa...”
Similarly, some countries show some
relative independence within their “traditional” continent by their sheer size: Russia, India
for example. Grataloup establishes an alternative vision of space reflecting the unclear
52
status of some territories . He defines “hard continents” such as Western Europe, South
America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and “soft continents” with an unclear status. Thus we can
note some autonomous regions: Australia, Madagascar, India, some “shared” regions such
as North Africa, Turkey, New-Guinea, some intermediate regions, like the Middle-East,
Central America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and some peripheries: New-Zealand
or Greenland. Continents thus appear as deeply biased categories and products of a
Eurocentric history.
Still, the vision of continents is perpetuated in the textbooks, as shown by the
EuropeBroadMap project. Very few textbooks, when focusing on Europe, mention the
historical creation of borders as an intellectual process often dictated by political and
53
strategic interests. Still, they maintain these artificial border in a presentation that induces
their location as self-evident and natural, materializing it in different ways. In a French
textbook, a red line marks the limit of Ural, but also excludes Anatolia by passing through the
Turkish Straits, suggesting a tight, physical barrier (the same line is used continuously from
Ural to Bosporus). In American textbooks, Turkey, Russia, or even former USSR-republics
are sometimes excluded from Europe. Russian textbooks tend to exclude Eastern European
countries and Turkey: the textbook presented defines such a map as “Foreign Europe”, in
49
Grataloup, Interview in Sciences Humaines, L'invention des continents, rencontre avec Christian Grataloup, 15/06/2011.
Personal translation
50
51
Eurobroadmap project part 4.1, p. 16, quoting Foucher 1998, 1999, Lévy 1997)
Grataloup, Interview in Sciences Humaines, L'invention des continents, rencontre avec Christian Grataloup, 15/06/2011.
Personal translation.
52
53
ibid.
EuroBroadMap, 4.1, p.16
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
“an implicit way to suggest that there would exist another, placed under the influence of the
Russian power and including Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova”.
54
The point of this retrospective look on the “idea” Europe is to demonstrate the role of
historical conceptions perpetuated in the common discourse in transforming a peninsula
of Asia into a full-fledged continental physical reality encased into borders conceived as
“natural”. As Grataloup notes, “the genealogy of continents if not a gratuitous curiosity, but
the possibility to come aware of a conception of the world that became subliminal, but that
55
can still surreptitiously influence our gaze on today's globalised humanity.”
In our case,
“the infinite repetition and replication […] of the same iconographic structure leads to a
globalised and standardised representation of what Europe is or can be”.
56
Conclusion of Part I
We have defined liminality, first in its anthropological context of creation, and then through
its migration to other sciences. As we have seen, liminality in geopolitics can be a useful tool
in some cases, when entities are attributed an in-betweenness or un-definedness character,
that can be observed in the political discourse, and that ought to be studied with history on
the long haul. Actually, in the case of Turkey, the attribution of liminal traits concurs with
the definition and elaboration of the very space structure (as a parallel with Van Gennep's
and Turner's “social structure”) from which the country is deemed excluded or marginal.
Indeed, the construction of Europe as an idea was cemented by the opposition to the Turkish
Ottoman Other perceived as a threat, a vision that still influenced politics even after the
brittling empire was no longer a threat militarily and strategically speaking. This position was
th
reaffirmed at the highest level regularly in the course of history, up until the 20 century.
In June 1919 during the Paris Conference that followed the First World War, the so called
Council of 10 (composed of heads of state and government of France, Britain, United States,
Italy and Japan) issued the following declaration on the Turkish people:
“History recounts Turkish victories and defeats (…). However, in all these changes,
we don't find any instance, be it in Europe or in Africa, where the establishment of Turkish
domination has not lead to a diminution of material prosperity and a drop of the level of
culture; we don't find an instance either where the end of Turkish régime has not been
followed by a raise of prosperity and an augmentation of culture. Neither among the
Christians in Europe nor among the Muslims of Syria, Arabia or Africa has the Turk brought
anything else than destruction. Never did he show himself able to develop in peace what
he had conquered by war”.
57
Such a vision arguably never disappeared totally from the collective mind, especially
in the debate on the adhesion of Turkey to European Union. The weight of history and
54
55
56
57
20
ibid, p.17
Grataloup, 2009, p.41, personal translation
Eurobroadmap p. 23
Quoted from Kafyeke, 2006; personal translation
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
Part I – Liminality: a new concept in geopolitics
reference to the otherness of Turkey are pervading even when not voiced publicly, when
it is, it can hardly be clearer than the declarations of Fritz Bolkestein, then Commissioner
for the Internal Market, that in September 2004 declared that if Turkey was to join the EU,
“the liberation of Vienna in 1683 would have been in vain” (referring to the siege led by the
Ottoman armies, routed by a joint army of Polish and Austrian forces). History becomes
the reference, as it actually is the source of the idea of Europe, transmitted to the present
day through the common doxa, of which textbooks are the spearhead. They produce an
“federative and providential narrative, considering Europe as the product of a number of
essential principles that history would have revealed”.
58
As a consequence of this discourse, Turkey is stuck in a liminal position that is
less a consequence of a geophysical reality than a elaborate historical narrative, that
defined Europe as a continent which fixed limits to which Turkey doesn't belong: Turkey's
liminality is the product of history and the intellectual construction of the Europe-continent.
Paradoxically, Turkey – and the Ottoman Empire- has had a most complex history with
Europe that doesn't fit this monolithic vision of European limits, especially since Europe
accepted Turkey's candidacy to the EU, thus recognizing to Turkey a place in the European
project, but opening up the wide debate of identities, culture and religion under the light of
the EU enlargement.
58
EuroBroadmap 4.1 p.26
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21
The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
Part II- Turkey's liminality, a challenge
to structure ? AKP and Europe in the
political discourse and the EU process
“Turkey has become more European, more democratic, more conservative and
59
Islam-friendly, and more nationalist simultaneously”
1) Analysing official discourse: what liminality for
Turkey?
A- An official definition of Turkey's liminality by the AKP
As we've already seen, Turkey's position of liminality is fundamentally discursive and not
purely physical, as it is perpetuated in political rhetoric from European leaders that we could
define as tenants of a fixed structure that Turkey threatens due to it's unclear position: these
leaders conceive Turkey as marginal. However, this negative liminality is now at the centre of
a new discourse from Turkish leaders, willing to accept this position and actually revindicate
this liminal position that has been imposed on Turkey, by turning back on Islam, the MiddleEast and central Asia, that previously didn't fit in the kemalist project of a European Turkey,
and integrating them in a positive liminality, as described by President Abdullah Gül in 2008:
“Turkey is a modern Eurasian country that bridges the East and the West and has
successfully managed to synthesize the culture and values of both equally. Our roots in
Central Asia and interaction with the Western world that dates back to centuries, grants us
the exceptional situation of fully belonging to both continents at the same time”
60
Hence, we see the appearance of an official discourse of liminality, that obviously
doesn't mention the concept itself but nevertheless presents a constructed thought placing
Turkey as a go-between, an intermediate between East and West. This discourse is carried
by the party AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Party of Justice and Development), that leads
Turkey since the legislative elections of 2002, and was comforted in power, with a wider
61
popular vote each time, in 2007 and 2012 . AKP, albeit an Islamic party, adopted a stance
towards Europe that radically differs from his spiritual predecessors, the previous parties
th
of Turkish political Islam (from which AKP is the 5 one in modern Turkey after a string
of interdictions and suppressions). Indeed, one can argue that AKP led a U-turn from the
59
Cizre, Walker, 2010
60
61
22
Lerna Yanık 2003, p. 81 , quoting Gül 2002
Çarkoğlu, 2011
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Part II- Turkey's liminality, a challenge to structure ? AKP and Europe in the political discourse
and the EU process
previous parties, notably the Refah Partisi (Party of Prosperity) led by Necmettin Erbakan,
that was ousted by a military coup in 1997 (after its victory in the 1995 elections that had led
for the first time an Islamist party to present a government). Erbakan had always strongly
62
voiced his opposition to the European Union, as a Christian club, and a Zionist project
a
position someone coherent with his own geopolitical vision centred on Muslim countries and
on Islam as the main referential for society, economy and international relations. Indeed,
63
he was instrumental in the creation of the D-8, a group of developing Muslim countries
, intended to achieve economic cooperation among Muslim countries, in a move typical of
Turkish political Islam as it developed during the 90's and then with the AKP during the
2000's: conception of the traditional Muslim Umma modernized and transcended through
themes such as international trade, economic development, and a claimed attachment to
democracy.
AKP, led by Erdoğan, made a synthesis of two different narratives, one that links Turkey
to Europe due to the “interaction with the Western World that dates back to centuries”, and
another one, Turkey's “roots in Central Asia” and Islam. This second narrative is itself a
a synthesis, that was defined as Turco-Islamic synthesis, associating the Turkish people
of Central Asia, on their arrival in Middle-East and Anatolia, with Islam, as a religion that
became their only true and revealed faith, instrumental in accomplishing their destiny. The
turco-islamic synthesis is more a political discourse, a set of references and an intellectual
64
posture than an homogeneous and clearly defined ideology
. It rose during the postwar years as a conservative reaction to Marxism and as a revival of religiosity: it could be
defined “an anti-occidental reaction. It is a form of ideologisation of Islam, but instead of
offering a retreat only on the coranic values, it prescribes a return to Turkish 'national culture',
considered as the product of a synthesis between the Turks own past on one hand and Islam
65
on the other.”
Islam is expressed as a central to the Turkish identity that existed without
that religion yet “without it it would have not survived”. Symmetrically, “the Turkish culture
protected and fortified Islam which without it would have shrivelled up and declined”.
66
This ideology is the key to understanding the new relation and interest between Turkish
political parties and Islam. Far from being only expressed in AKP, the turco-islamic synthesis
found a tribune within many parties and religious foundations (vakif), that all participate in
integrating Islam in a policy, in the same ways as Christian values acted as the frame for
some European conservative parties and movements (CDU in Germany, Action Française
during the French entre-deux-guerre). Understanding turco-islamic synthesis is crucial when
trying to grasp the deep motivations of AKP, but it was also defended by Prime minister and
President Turgut Özal before them: it is not a coincidence that he was the first one to truly
expand Turkish foreign policy beyond the European and Occidental horizons at the end one
the 1980's, the so-called “Özalism”.
62
63
67
Servantie, 2012, p.34
Comprising Turkey, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan, the D-8, for Developing 8, was
created on 15 June 1997 by Necmettin Erbakan in Istanbul, where the first summit took place the same year.
64
65
66
67
Bayart, p.7
E. Copeaux, Espaces et temps de la nation turque, op. cit., p. 234.149 in Bayart, p.7
ibid
See Laçiner, 2003
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Challenges and Opportunities
Özal, not hailing from an Islamist party but from the Anavatan Partisi (Party of the
Motherland), is nevertheless a reference for AKP, and economic policies also paved the way
for the emerging of a new middle class of entrepreneurs, dynamic and energized by Islam.
68
This new capitalist classes, especially in central Anatolian cities, the so-called “Anatolian
Tigers”, is now the heart of AKP's electoral and political machine and ensure their presence
within the economic elites, benefiting in return from their proximity with power. Yet Özal is
also the man who revived the EU process by officially presenting Turkey's candidacy in
1987. The coexistence of a turco-islamic religious revival movement and the growth of a new
capitalist class that sees in Europe the opportunity of new markets allows us to understand
the apparent paradox of AKP's agenda towards Europe, as an Islamist party that almost
single-handedly allowed for Turkey's acceptance as a candidate country and carried out the
necessary reforms of the adhesion process. Thus, we have an official definition of a liminal
position for Turkey, that allows for the apparent dialectical reconciliation of Turkey's Altaic
roots, Ottoman past, Islam, and Turkey's economical and institutional integration into the
Europe Union, by the elaboration of an discourse of exceptionalism in the Turkish elite.
Turkey, under AKP, has been an active member of the Alliance of civilizations project,
officially promoting dialogue between East and West, Europe and Islam, hosting in Istanbul
the 2009 meeting of this group and presenting itself as the key of the dialogue between
civilizations: we must note indeed that, contrary to the liminal vision of not fully belonging
to any category, only “betwixt and between fixed points of social structure”, AKP officials
describe Turkey as being fully part of each ensemble, both Europe and Middle-East, West
and East, a historical and geopolitical tour de force. Erdoğan thus declared in 2004:
“We in Turkey have reconciled our traditional Islamic culture with our traditional Islamic
culture with our secular and democratic structures. We have demonstrated that a country
with an overwhelmingly Muslim population could turn its face to and integrate with the
Western World […]. The idea of “Christian Europe” belongs to the Middle Ages. It should
69
be left there.”
This is conceived as the basis for an increased status and role of Turkey in international
relations, allowed by its liminal position. As Lerna Yanık puts it, “after all, as Turner put
it, liminality is a much-preferred status compared to marginality, and the 'liminality of the
70
strong is weakness, of the weak is strength' “
; the liminal persona possesses a power
in addressing questions of identity as a he can act as a go-between between two worlds
that are usually perceived as different if not incompatible, and that is clearly perceived as
a strength.
We can take as an example Turkey's bid for a temporary seat in the United Nations
Security Council for 2015, that emphasises Turkey's position as a go-between that is also
fully part of both Europe, and the Middle-East, or more largely, the Arabo-Muslim world seen
as a whole and a coherent entity, consistent with the islamist vision.
“T urkey stands out not only as a country that has achieved a harmonious blend of the
rich and diverse cultural heritage of its lands, but also as one of the two co-sponsors of the
68
69
70
24
See Özcan and Turunç, 2011
Speech by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “Why the EU needs Turkey”, Oxford, 28 May 2004
Yanık, 2008, p. 82 -, quoting Turner, 1969, p.200
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and the EU process
UN Alliance of Civilizations , which has quickly become the leading international initiative in
71
the area of cross-cultural dialogue and tolerance.”
The current Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2009, Ahmet Davutoğlu, is an prominent
actor in the definition of this new Turkish foreign policy, not only through his tenure as
minister, but as a scholar of formation that influenced Erdoğan for a long time, namely since
March 2003 and his nomination as a counsellor for international affairs for the Prime Minister.
Throughout his speeches as Minister, he consistently exposes Turkey's exceptional position,
that he defined as a doctrine in his book “Strategic Depth”, that has become a staple among
the AKP's corpus of intellectual references. The goal here is to craft a prominent place for
Turkey in the post-Cold War, chaotic, multipolar and unstable world, where Turkey can fill
power vacuums while at the same time acting as an efficient go-between and example both
for other Muslim countries and Europe
72
This in-betweenness and Turkey's new policy is seen as the core of Turkey's strength
and as the source of a worldwide, widespread popularity, as assessed by Foreign Minister
Davutoğlu: “Why did we receive […] 151 votes in the UN Security Council-election -which
was a record? […] Because the image of Turkey has changed. Now everybody in every
corner of the world believes that Turkey can contribute to peace not only as a peace-keeping
73
force like in the past” . More recently, Erdoğan positioned himself and Turkey as “the voice
of the oppressed […], that voice opening up to the world […], we are a country that grows
74
as it shares”.
B- Islam as a referential: a shift in Turkish foreign policy?
This new stance on the political scene is not only a shift on the identity dimension, but
also on the notion of sovereignty. A bounded, clearly unitarian Turkish Nation (millet) is a
key characteristic of kemalist nation-building and was enforced even harshly against non75
Christian and non-Turkish elements.
Yet, by retaining only the supreme reference of
Islam in the discourse, as the key element of Turkish identity (the afore-mentioned turcoislamic synthesis), AKP also weakens this traditional Westphalian, kemalist conception
of the nation, blamed for social fragmentation and responsible for an artificial division
between Muslim people
76
, as stated by prime Minister Erdoğan: “We will tear down artificial
boundaries and superfluous walls between Turkey and the Middle-East”
77
.
AKP is leading its foreign policy on two fronts that are seemingly contradictory: pursuing
the process of adhesion to the European Union, and establishing or strengthening ties
71
72
73
Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Website
Groc; 2012,
Speech delivered by the Minister of Foreign Affairs H.E. Ahmet Davutoğlu at the 28
th
Annual Conference on US-Turkish
Relations Organized by ATC-DEIK: “Turkey-US relations: A Model Partnership, Global and Regional Dimensions”, Washington DC,
02/06/2009
74
75
76
77
Hürriyet Daily News, “Turkey is the voice of the oppressed in the world”, says PM Erdoğan, 19/07/2013
Yanık, p 84
Aslan, 2013,
As quoted and translated by Aslan, 2013, p.44
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
with Muslim countries through an active cooperation, on the basis of an anti-Westphalian
subjectivity. Stressing Turkey's proximity with Middle-East countries, viewed as a cradle of
instability and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, is an argument often used by the opposition
to Turkey's entry in the Union. We could make a parallel here between the then opposition to
78
the UK's entry, criticized (still today) as a Trojan Horse introducing US interests in Europe ,
and to the entry of Turkey into the EU, perceived as opening the dam between Europe
and Middle-East's (real or fantasized) instability, violence, immigration, and fundamentalist
Islam. An EU with a border with Irak, Iran, Syria, especially in the present day context, is
to some a vision of apocalypse, voiced by many politicians: former French President Valéry
Giscard d'Estaing warned of the “strangeness for Europe to wake up with a common border
79
with Syria, Iraq and Iran”.
Still AKP maintains this Islamic transnational reference, likening the victories of AKP to
victories for Islam, and thus for every Muslim countries, as occurred after the June 12 2011
victory in the legislative elections, when Prime Minister Erdoğan declared:
“Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul. Beirut won as much as Izmir. Damascus
won as much as Ankara. Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, [and] Jerusalem won as
much as Diyarbakır.”
80
AKP is viewed, and conceives itself, as a model for other Muslim countries, by promoting
an image of a political Islam respecting rules of democracy, free market, and still abiding
by Muslim values and actively defending, promoting and expanding the interests of Islam in
Turkey and in the world. Turkish diplomacy and strategy in the international scene now relies
heavily on international assistance to countries such as Somalia through Muslim charities
and on a worldwide net of Turkish schools. Turkey became in 2012 the fourth largest donor
of international assistance, with over a billion dollars of funds, mainly channelled to Muslim
countries: Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq (67% of Turkish humanitarian funds between 2007 and
81
2011) . The new regimes born of the Arab Spring, when adopting political Islam as in
Tunisia, Morocco or Egypt or looked upon Turkey as a model and a reference.
Internally, the emphasis on Islamizing the society is undeniable, coherent with the
ideological background and their grass-root core of voters; albeit not so coherent with the
image of openness and tolerance projected to the West in the official discourse, presenting
82
Turkey as “a secular state where all religions are equal” . Under Erdoğan, the Islamic
Affairs Ministry spendings rose four-fold since 2006, up to 2.3 billions dollars, more than
83
1% of national budget, and benefited from 40% of the newly created civil service posts .
In 2013, its official budget even exceeds the ones of ministries such as Interior, Foreign
78
Even Recep Tayyip used this comparison, obviously arguing in favour of Turkey's admission at the light of Britain's contribution
to the European Union after the country had been refused it, notably due to French opposition, in a speech given 30 years after its
admission. “In that sense, I find similarities in the discussions on Turkey's and Britain's relations with the EU”. Why the EU needs
Turkey, Speech at Oxford, 28/05/2004
79
80
81
82
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, “Turquie: pour le retour à la raison”, Le Figaro, 25/11/2004
Quoted in Taşpınar, 2012
Hürriyet Daily News, “Turkey becomes 4
th
largest donor of international assistance”, July 19 2013
New York Times, Turkey's Elephant in the Room, Religious Freedom, 28/09/2011, quoting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan
83
26
Laurence, J., Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt: Dismantling the Islam State? Brookings,03/07/2013
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84
Affairs, or Heath. However, this enormous structure still only finances Sunni worship, with
no consideration to the Alevi minority, among others.
Although the official discourse of AKP pleads for a tolerant Islam, integrated within
the framework of European Union as a demonstration of vivre-ensemble, with Turkish
and Muslim immigrants in Europe as ambassadors of integration and collaboration, some
declarations, notably in more private contexts, oppose of different vision of Islam and its
relation with Europe. Notably when, addressing Turks in Germany in a 2011 meeting,
Erdoğan was criticised for a speech against integration, assimilation, and the exaltation of
85
Islam and Turkish values . At the same time, many statements by AKP officials insist on
86
Islam as a European reality, unavoidable because of immigration. , yet we could question
the status of non-Muslim minorities in Turkey, which is not as open as these officials would
want the condition of Muslims to be in Europe.
We could thus argue that despite this discourse of dialogue between civilisations,
internal politic manoeuvring and statements are actually aimed at strengthening and
bolstering the traditional Sunni values against other minorities inside Turkey, and in Europe.
It is interesting here to observe the tension between norms and values. On the point
of norms, Turkey did indeed adopt an official position of alignment with Europe through
the requirements of the EU process, in fields such as law and the economic liberalisation
of the country. However, on the point of values, that we would define as what one deems
worth fighting for, it appears that AKP maintained its attachment to the rationale of its core
constituency: the narrative of political Islam, tinted with neo-liberalism, aimed at maintaining
the Turco-Islamic synthesis. In the current situation, we can point to a double discourse,
and thus a double movement if we are to consider Turkey's situation as a dynamic one in
the context of its liminal position: one official, in the field of norms, towards the European
Union, and one more informal, more diffuse as a set of political practice and discourses,
on the field of values, aimed at re-centring Turkey on Islamic values and hinting at a panIslamic solidarity with neighbouring Arab countries, possibly at the expense of secularism,
pluralism, democratic values and the rights of minorities, especially the religious ones.
2) Turkey and the European Union
A- The EU adhesion process: a rite of passage?
As we have seen, the situation is apparently paradoxical: the EU process, logical
continuation of a country yearning for European-ness since its re-foundation in 1923, was
pushed forward by a Turkish party built on political Islam as a referential and clearly claiming
its belonging to Middle-East as well as Europe through the elaboration of an official discourse
of exceptionalism, that contributes to set Turkey in a position described as liminal. Could
we push the comparison further, and compare the EU process to a rite of passage ? The
interest of the comparison is to make the parallel between the difficult progress in a rite of
84
85
Hürriyet Daily News, “Religious Affairs to receive larger budget share than 11 major ministries”, 23/10/2012
Reuters, Erdogan urges Turks in Germany to Integrate, not assimilate, 28/02/2011, SpiegelOnline, Turkish Diaspora:
Erdogan's Paternalism Proves Counter-Productive, 07/05/2013
86
“Islam is a reality in Europe”, 05/04/2013, Minister for EU Affairs Egemen Bağış's official website
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
passage, and the dynamics and dialectics involved, and the case of Turkey that is kneedeep into the adhesion process.
Turkish pro-European leaders have presented the adhesion to EU as a natural step on
Turkey's history, a logical continuation of the country's relation with Europe, and especially
as a positive process accompanied by progress and development, as a vocation for Turkey:
“I would like to insist on Turkey's European vocation and its attachment to European
87
unity and the ideals that gave birth to the treaties instituting the European Communities”
“I assure you that we do not perceive the EU process solely as a foreign policy process.
On the contrary, we see the EU process as a part of our endeavors to reform Turkey and
harmonise with necessary international standards during the last 200 years, i.e. as a part of
88
our domestic political, social and economic reform process”.
As in a rite of passage, the EU adhesion process conveys an idea of progress,
better status and new responsibilities. The 33 different chapters of the EU process are
intended to transform the initiate -as we can call the candidate state in our perspective of
comparison- into the same as the other member states. The abundance of criteria defines
clear obligations, statuses and rights, a definition of the nature of the member state as
a status in international law. Once a member, the state has to abide by thr vast set of
obligations and to comply to the criteria of the European Union. We can compare this new
status with the description given by Turner of the re-aggregation phase, when:
“the passage is consummated. The ritual subject, individual or corporate, is in a
relatively stable state once more and, by virtue of this, has rights and obligations vis-à-vis
others of a clearly defined and “structural” type; he is expected to behave in accordance with
certain customary norms and ethical standards bindings on incumbents of social position in
89
a system of such positions”.
It is also interesting to note the widespread symbolic of the door, notably in the media,
articles and caricatures, reminiscent of the importance of the door as a territorial passage,
in the original definition of the rite of passage. Turkey is represented at the symbolic door
of Europe, be it closed, or far away.
Once the passage, here the adhesion process, is fully complete, the liminal persona
(member state) has to comply with the rules of his new social position, the European
Union: democracy (the Copenhagen criteria), economy, the acquis communautaire , and
all the various rules described by the European texts, that constitute a well defined set
of “customary norms and ethical standards bindings”. The adhesion process corresponds
to the function of rites of passage in the anthropological context of pre-modern societies,
90
namely “managing and ordering liminality”, transposed to the context of international
society, through “the establishment of graded schemes of transitional categories”, intended
to minimize uncertainty and interstitiality. In our case, European Union, it has thus been
argued that “the EU's scheme of neighbours, associated countries, candidates, negotiating
countries, and new member states is a brilliant ordering ordering scheme which in many
87
Turgut Özal, 14/04/1987, Letter to Leo Tindemans, Belgium Foreign Minister and acting President of the Council of European
Communities
88
Speech delivered by the Minister of Foreign Affairs H.E. Mr. Ahmet Davutoğly to EU Ambassadors on the Occasion of Europe
day, 08/05/2009, Ankara
89
90
28
Turner, 1969, p.95
Rumelili, 2012, p.504
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ways ameliorates the uncertainties and ambiguities of the liminal spaces constituted by the
91
process of enlargement”.
However, some considerations must be kept in mind while we intend this comparison:
when Turkish leaders define Turkey's liminality and defend the EU process, that we compare
here to a rite of passage, the first state from which they intend the passage to the EU
membership is not specifically Islam or the Middle-East, but rather the symmetrical image,
the negative image of Turkey's fantasized future membership as a developed, democratic
and prosperous country: the EU process is viewed as the riddance of previous Turkish
demons, political instability, military coups, and it is a central point in the AKP endorsement
of the adhesion process as a lever against the power of the military, whose power they have
successfully curtailed since their arrival in power. In no case however, in is conceived in the
mind of AKP leaders as the departure from their Islamic values and from their attachment
to the Middle-East. Turkey's rite of passage, in the context of the EU admission process, is
the final adoption of the set of values, practices, concerns, human rights, that constitute the
European definition of democracy.
The adhesion process does thus indeed share some similarities with the rites of
passage as described in the literature of Van Gennep and Turner. However, it is nevertheless
only one facet of the complex relation between Turkey and Europe and has to be considered
alongside other dynamics, mainly the importance of the Islamic referential in the very path
that AKP is trying to build for Turkey. It is important to clarify one point: Turkey already existed
as liminal as an anomaly of the traditional space structure, and in any case its liminality predated the rite of passage that could constitute the admission process.
However, by publicising and bringing to the political debate in Europe and Turkey the
core question of Europe's identity, limits, by scrutinising Turkey's nature and ambitions, and
for the first time by presenting a real crossroads for the EU project, the Turkey admission
process fully revealed the ambiguities and the challenge to structure that Turkey's liminality
represent: such points that could have been muffled by other geo-strategic considerations
during the Cold War now clearly rise, and explain the important debate over the question,
such as we will describe it now.
B- Structural resistance to liminality: European and Turkish
opposition to the admission process
We have already evoked the question of structures, when we exposed the construction in
time and discourse of a space-structure through history in the long haul, in which Turkey
finds itself in a liminal position that clearly is the source of the length of the adhesion process
engaged with the European Union. European opposition to Turkish adhesion is unusual for
a candidacy process, especially when compared to adhesions that occurred in 2007 for
central European countries, or Croatia that joined the EU in July 2013 while it began its
negotiation process at the same time as Ankara. Today, Turkey's GDP per capita is superior
92
to Bulgaria and Romania , that were accepted into the EU (albeit in a move now often
criticised as hasty), but still its negotiations are not progressing much. One of the reasons
for this is a political and institutional resistance from leaders, stakeholders and population
of the EU that are reluctant to allow Turkey in for various reasons. From the point of view of
91
92
Rumelili, 2012, p. 505
International Monetary Fund, 2012 figures, World Economic Outlook Database, 2013
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
liminality, this is what we can define as the resistance of the upholders of structure against
the liminal persona, as we already defined in the first part of our work.
The perspective of Turkey's adhesion leads to a increasing structural resistance in
the population, the political discourse and the media, as the expression of an identitarian
subjectivity on the matter of Turkish adhesion to the EU. As far as population is concerned,
there is a clear tendency to the rise of an opposition to Turkey's adhesion to EU among
the population: the part of Europeans against Turkey's admission was of 42% in 1997,
93
up to 55% in 2008. As we can see, this concerns more countries than other: the core
of historical EU; countries with an experience of Turkish immigration that associate the
experience of defected integration to the Turkish nation in general, and countries historically
and politically in tension with Turkey, ranging from Austria, to Greece and Cyprus, these
three countries usually topping the polls in terms of opposition to the admission of Turkey
94
among the population.
Two of the most prominent nations opposed to Turkey's entrance in the EU are France
95
and Germany. The concern about Turkey can be noted in polls (although they vary
96
notably ), and is heavily present in the political debate and discourse. In France, Turkish
adhesion became one of the themes of the debate on the referendum for the new European
Constitution in 2005, even though the draft made no allusion to Turkey: France is already
97
one of the countries that is the most wary and opposed to enlargement of the EU in general .
Opposition to Turkey in France is marked by the weight of the debate on Islam, the veil,
98
identity and laicity, whereas in Germany the weight of Turkish immigration and the question
of the integration of the Gastarbeiteren (guest workers that came to settle in Germany,
starting in the 1960's) is a heavy one in the political debate. Turkey, in its process of adhesion
to the EU, is becoming the proxy for other resentful problems that EU citizen experience:
joblessness, immigration perceived as negative, general mistrust towards EU in the wake
of austerity measures, fear of Islam and terrorism...
In both countries, the conservative parties have expressed their opposition to the
admission of Turkey into the EU. The perception of Turkey's admission is actually
conditioned to the perception of EU, depending on whether EU itself it is conceived as
a foreign policy or a domestic policy matter: “where the EU is viewed through the lens
of domestic policy, the focus of attention rests on the “inside”: on factors affecting the
99
EU's internal set-up in terms of institutions, society, economics, identity and culture”. This
explains the importance, in the case of French and Germany, of the questions of identity
and supposed impact of Turkey's on migration flows. However, countries that view the EU
“primarily through the lens of foreign and security policy tend to focus on different issues and
93
94
Eurobarometer Standard n°69, 2008
Part of population “rather not in favour” of the admission of Turkey into EU: Cyprus, 85%, Austria 85%, Greece 78%.
Eurobarometer Standard n°69, 2008
95
96
Yılmaz, 2007
See Eurobarometer standard n°69, 2008, with 71% of French “rather not in favour to the admission of Turkey”, compared to
a 2011 national poll setting this figure at 53% (TNS-Sofres, Les Français et l'adhésion de la Turquie à l'Union Européenne)
97
98
Eurobarometer Poll, Views on European Union Enlargement, Analytical Report, 2009
2011 TNS-Sofres poll puts, with 44% French stating as their first reason for opposition “there is too much cultural and religious
differences with EU countries”, and 38% for “Turkey is not geographically situated in Europe”.
99
30
Tocci, p.98
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lead the debate on different grounds, such as the Turkey's potential weight in the European
institutions, Europe's economic future, or defence.
The case of Austria is representative of the weight of history. The Eurobarometer of
November 2008 showed that 16% only of Austrians were in favour of Turkey's membership.
Historical opposition with the Ottomans is deemed so important in Austrian identity that the
questions “When was the second siege of Vienna warded off?” and “Who attacked Austria
100
hard in 1529, 1532 and 1683?” are to be answered in the Austrian citizenship exam. The
historical opposition is regularly revived in a vivid imagery, combining concerns about the
adhesion process, rejection of immigrant population and negative perceptions about them,
101
and the rhetoric of the never-ending clash of civilisations.
The FPÖ far-right party is
particularly active on this topic, with election slogans such as “Vienna must not become
Istanbul”. The declarations show clearly the concerns of upholders of structure: the very
102
nature of Europe would be threatened , it would be a treason to how Europe was forged
103
in history, or it would weaken Europe.
But politicians insist also on purely theoretical arguments, that refer to the conception of
Europe's construction as a political, mythified project that ought to be the destiny of Europe
alone, here meaning the historical European, Judeo-Christian countries. Discourses often
refer to what is considered the foundations of European identity: Greco-Roman intellectual
heirloom of democracy and philosophy, Judeo-Christian culturo-religious continuity, and the
spirit of Enlightenment and French revolution, as the ferment of a European civilization,
embodied by the European Union as the paramount and exclusive realisation of this
civilisation, and although it could be argued that the values of democracy, liberty, human
rights could be expressed universally, in this precise point “the European Union is a
104
civilization project and within this civilization project, Turkey has no place”. These points, it
could then be argued, could actually be a seemingly elaborated way of expressing the same
historical mistrust and opposition between West and East, Europe and Islam, European
Union representing a emanation of the first, not only through geography but through culture,
thus excluded for any country deemed as a representative of the second: “With the full
integration of Turkey, not only would Europe change its geographic dimension, it would also
change its nature. Neither by geography, history or culture can Turkey belong to the political
105
project of European Union”.
This cultural and civilisational aspect of European Union through the angle of religion
and culture, a “European identity” is a new debate. “Google Ngram Viewer” is a tool that
allows to quantify the occurrences of words in over 5.2 millions books published between
1500 and 2000, and analyse this data in graphs. When analysing the words “European
identity” and their occurrence in publications, we can see that the percentage of books
100
101
Matzka, p.2
Traynor, In 1683 Turkey was the invader. In 2004, much of Europe still sees it that way, The Guardian, 22/09/2004
102
“That would be the end of the European Union. It would be the beginning of a Euro-Asian-African Union, which goes
completely against the project of peace in Europe and must therefore not be allowed”, Heinz-Christian Sträche,quoted by AFP,
European far-right parties want referendum on Turkey in EU, 23/10/2010; “It would be the end of the EU”, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
103
As we can see in the recurrent declarations referring to the historical opposition between Europe and the Ottoman Empire
104
As declared on March 4 1997 by Helmut Kohl, German chancellor, on behalf of the European People's Party, meeting
in Brussels
105
Declaration of Françoise Grossetête, European People's Party member of European Parliament, March 2004, as quoted
by Servantie, 2012
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evoking it was almost multiplied by 10 between 1985 and 2000, while it had been more
106
or less stable between 1970 and 1985. After Cold War, opposition to communism could
not be evoked any more in Europe, allowing for the development of cultural and religious
antipathy and conflictuality, especially as Islam came to be more and more associated in
the European psyche with fundamentalism, terrorism, violence, and perceived as a direct
threat to European stability and security, not only to human rights of local Arabo-muslim
populations. As former president Süleyman Demirel had put it: “When the defence of
European civilisation [against communism] was at stake, they didn't say we were Turks and
107
Muslims”. It is therefore not surprising that the churches have also voiced their position on
the debate, generally ranging from stern opposition to conditional admission, insisting on the
topic of the cultural difference and on the rights of Christian minorities in Turkey, although
their influence in the debate vary according to their general weight in the country, and it is
108
hard to define a general position for the churches.
The proposition of an intermediate status, that is widespread in the discourse of refusal
of Turkish full membership of the EU, is also representative of a discourse of structure.
Indeed, it has been argued that “social structures of international politics respond to liminality
mainly by attempting to “domesticate” it, either by constructing new social categories, or
109
by repositioning the liminal in one of the existing categories” . Turkey's liminal status is
hedged around by defending an intermediate status with EU (even though Turkey already
enjoys a partnership with the EU more advanced than most neighbouring countries): this
can be described as the construction of “new social categories”. Of course, these new
categories intended to bypass a full membership are fuzzy:”Special Agreement”, “Privileged
Relation”, “Alliance of Partnership and Cooperation”, “Agreement of Partnership”, “Privileged
110
Cooperation” , are some of the denominations suggested, rarely with more than vague
propositions.
As for “repositioning the liminal in one of the existing categories”, there is a discourse
that intend to push Turkey in other ensembles, such as the Union for the Mediterranean, the
European Free Trade Association, or along with other Middle-Eastern or Asian countries
where it is argued that Turkey would be more in its place (even though the argument of
cultural differences, so present in European discourse in a continent so wildly diverse as Asia
is no longer evoked when such a hypothetical alliance or Union between Asian countries
and Turkey is suggested, after all, being less of the concern of European leaders). Many
discourses dismiss Turkey as another space, another category, often insisting on slight
geographic distinctions intended to exclude Turkey from the continent Europe: thus Nicolas
111
Sarkozy, former French president, declaring that Turkey is in Asia Minor , or “If you explain
106
107
108
109
110
111
Google books Ngram Viewer, books.google.com/ngrams
As quoted by Müftüler-Baç, 2000, p.23
Tocci, 2010, p.95
Rumelili, 2012, p.488
Dedeoğlu, Gürsel, 2010, p.2
Nicolas Sarkozy in TV debate “A vous de juger”, March 2007 “Turkey being in Asia minor, is not in Europe. Turkey's place
is not within the European Union […] Let's do a common economic market with her, but let's not integrate Turkey because Europe,
sorry to remind it, is made for European states”
32
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to the inhabitants of Cappadocia that they are European, you will strengthen Islamism”
113
or alternatively “If Turkey were in Europe, we'd know it” .
112
,
Interestingly, this is accompanied by a symmetrical rise in anti-European sentiment in
the Turkish society, variously ascribed to a nationalist, defensive attitude against a perceived
scornful Europe (a reaction to the declarations of opposition to the adhesion, that is also
accompanied by a reject of the country from where the declarations emanated), or mistrust
of European institutions and their obscure functioning (consequence to both the lack of EU
114
as a subject study in Turkish curricula and the convoluted process of adhesion).
The 2012 standard Eurobarometer poll for Turkey showed that only a small minority of
Turks trust the EU, in numbers actually lower than the European citizens themselves, and
have more trust in their government and parliament, the exact opposite of the European
115
citizens perceptions . Here too, the popular mistrust is symmetrically joined by resistance
from Turkish parties and political leaders, especially voiced internally, in the Turkish media
and national political scene, but not only. Some political actors don't appreciate what they
perceive as a shift from being applicant to supplicant in the lengthy adhesion process,
especially when the EU endures economical hardships, that expose her to criticism for
116
Turkish officials: in November 2011, Abdullah Gül qualified EU as “miserable” , in what has
become a common discourse of pitying and noting the European economic difficulties next
to Turkey's present perceived prosperity. Consequently, adhesion to EU seems less and less
desirable for Turks, as only 36% were in favour of EU membership in 2012 and 33% against
117
118
it , compared to 62% thinking that membership of the EU was “a good thing” in 2004.
There is a common discourse of disinterest to the European project while developing
and dynamic Turkey is rejected by an increasingly fragile Union, but also an increasingly
discourse of opposition between Western and Islamic culture amidst the affirmation of
Turkey's imperial past and Muslim values. It is no surprise that the highest-budget ever
Turkish 2011 film, Fatih 1453 (The Conquest 1453), tailored for the box-office and for
exportation, mainly to the Balkans and the Arab world, treated the seminal event of the
conquest of Constantinople, central in the imagery of historical greatness often evoked by
119
120
the AKP. The production was derided by most Western media but even some Turkish
titles (notwithstanding purely artistic aspects) for its historically false depiction of Greeks
and their last emperor as blood-thirsty, inconsiderate, lavish and sinful crusaders, religious
overtones (when as much as half of the Ottoman army was Christian) and idealist depiction
112
Then-presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, in a televised debate with rival candidate Ségolène Royal for the presidential
elections, 02/05/2007
113
114
115
Nicolas Sarkozy on TV channel France 2, 18/12/04
See Project Eurobroadmap
Eurobarometer standard poll, November 2012: Turks are only 21% to tend to trust the European Union (a drop of 6 points
between Spring 2012 and Autumn 2012), compared to 33% in the EU 27, 61% not to trust it, and 18% who don't know (compared to
57% and 10% in the EU 27). In comparison, they trust their parliament and government way more than other Europeans, by 44% and
45% respectively, compared to EU 27 results of 28% and 27%.
116
117
118
119
120
Quoted by Kohen, AB'ye karşı söylenmek..., Milliyet, 09/12/2011
Standard Eurobarometer 78, Public Opinion in the EU, Autumn 2012
Eurobarometer n°62, Public Opinion in the EU, National Report Executive Summary, Turkey, Autumn 2004
Gibbons, Turkish delight in epic film Fetih 1453, The Guardian, 12/04/2012
Yıldırım, “Fetih 1453”: Istanbul, not Constantinople!, Today's Zaman, 20/02/2012
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
of Sultan Mehmet's entrance into the city, as propaganda and a hateful discourse of
stereotypes, . Unsurprisingly, the film was met with great success in Turkey and the
neighbouring Muslim countries, and Prime Minister Erdoğan stated that he had appreciated
121
the movie, despite denunciation of the film's aggressive undertones by Greek media
Disinterest, if not mistrust, towards the European Union was confirmed when the Prime
Minister, in a lengthy speech at an AKP Congress in September 2012, didn't evoke the topic
of the process. Although AKP official programme still mentions the objective of adhesion,
they also attribute the lagging process to obstacles put up by European states for motives of
internal politics, electoral motivations, and xenophobic or islamophobic attitude that would
prevent Turkey's full inclusion into the EU. Although this position is not totally detached from
reality, it contributes to the deep incomprehension between Turkey and EU, prompting to ask
the question: What future can we then expect for the admission process given the structural
resistances?
C- Turkey's conundrum: towards endless liminality?
Given the increasing resistance from the upholders or structure against the process of
Turkey's admission into the European Union, and the resulting anti-European feeling that
is on the rise in Turkey, the perspective of it integrating the Union seems distant, if not
impossible. While other candidates passed successfully the adhesion criteria in a matter of
years, some of them having submitted their candidacy after or at the same time as Ankara,
Turkey's admission seems regularly postponed, with a projection in decades, usually after
2020. The motif of the permanent limbo, the endless candidate status and the never122
ending adhesion process are prominently expressed in the media and in the academic
production, where we can find numerous expression of Turkey's un-definedness during rite
of passage/admission process, as well as the various statuses, desired or suggested, by
politicians concerned by the Turkey adhesion process. As Turner describes, “the passage
123
from lower to higher status is through a limbo of statuslessness” , in this case the
consequence of an elaborate discourse of differentiation by European actors.
Also recurrent are the interrogation on Turkey's real model, motivation and direction for
the next years, as the country is seen at a crossroads where its next steps are not clear, or
the image of a backwards-march or a full stop:
Turkey at the crossroads, (France Soir, 18/05/2010), Tiger Turkey at the Crossroads
(The Independent, 28/01/2012) Turkey: which model? (Le Temps, 29/11/2011); Storm over
the Turkish “model” (Le Point, 13/06/2013)
With Europe's discursive resistance to this out-of-the-structure neighbour, stalling the
EU proces, one may ask the question: could Turkey actually stay in that liminal position
indefinitely ? The concept of endless liminality has indeed already been used. We already
evoked the case of Australia as described by Higgott and Nossal. When analysing the
country's position, they define it as the consequence of the fundamental differences between
two structures, Asia and Anglo-Saxon culture, that don't allow for Australia's integration
124
into Asia , although in a way subscribing to the very discourses that maintain Australia in
121
122
123
Turkey and the European Union: The ever lengthening road, The Economist, 07/12/2006
Turner, 1969, p.97
124
34
Hacı, Greeks express outrage at “Fetih 1453” film, Today's Zaman, 12/01/2012
See Higgott and Nossal, 1997
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
Part II- Turkey's liminality, a challenge to structure ? AKP and Europe in the political discourse
and the EU process
this liminal position (namely by asserting a differential in democratic and political practices
125
described as an incompatibility ).
The concept was evoked more recently by Stephane Corcuff. Applying Van Gennep
and Turner's framework of liminality to the processes of integration and identification of
the Waishengren, or Mainlainder Taiwanese, he described the possibility of this integration
process to fail, leaving these liminal persona in an undefined status, in this case a
126
conflictuality in their identification to a national narrative: an endless liminality.
Can this perspective be the fate for Turkey? In this case, it is the maintenance of a
discourse of difference, other and un-definedness central in the practice of differentiation in
European-Union that explains this sustained position of liminality as a discursive production.
Actually, it is not identities that are incompatible, but the perception of them in the
construction of a identity for European union that is perceived as mutually exclusive to
Turkey, at least in the current balance of forces. However, it could also be argued that
this opposition is closely linked, and mutually dependent, on a double discourse inside
of Turkey led by the AKP government that despite an official movement towards Europe
through norms and democratisation, actually more and more plays too on the string of
essentialism, maintenance of compulsory unitarian Islamic identity, and finally mistrust and
scorn to Europe, a process that as we can expect doesn't help at all the EU process.
Turkey's specificity is that it is actually situated as a liminal in two different perspectives.
In international relations, we can differentiate categorisation of social structure through two
hierarchies: one temporal, based on universalist narratives of modernity and development,
that allow transition and evolution in the hierarchy, and one spatial, that consists of “fixed
127
and bounded categories that preclude such transitions”. Turkey's fate is to be situated
at the intersection of these two discourses: the first one is the historical narrative of the
construction of Europe; the other one is the universalist Occidental discourse on democracy
and the rule of law.
We can hence draw two conclusions. On the topic of space, as we described it, structural
resistance, propped by a centuries-long construction of Europe's limits, for now prevent
any evolution from Turkey outside of this affixed liminality. Thus, as for what concerns
the European Union, as long as its members will not have taken a decision, through a
real existential debate, on the question of the spatial limits and the reach of the European
construction, Turkey will remain, through this categorisation, an Other excluded from the
game. However, we could argue that, in an hypothesis where European nations depart
from the spatial emphasis, Turkey's accession could remain open, albeit on different criteria,
those of democratic values and practices, and humain rights. This brings us to the second
categorisation, the temporal one, based on modernity, democracy, freedom, or development.
On the topic of democracy, is also categorised as a liminal democracy, that according to
Europe still doesn't meet the standards of modernity, and thus Turkey could kept away from
the European Union in such a perspective, even if its spatial situation could be resolved
through a debate on Europe's limits and the European project.
125
126
127
Higgott and Nossal, 2008
Corcuff, 2012
Rumelili, 2012, p.502
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Challenges and Opportunities
Conclusion of part II:
When we analyse the recent evolution of the relationship between Ankara and Europe,
we see that Turkey's liminality raises many questions not present in other processes of
admission, as “Turkey's accession process has been complicated by the fact that it has
interlocked with a multiplicity of debates, conducted by a multiplicity of stakeholders for
128
multiple critical motivations grounded in interests, perceptions as well as prejudices”.
Mapping, documenting and exposing the wide spectrum of opposition to Turkey's
admission to the Union is obviously a enterprise way wider than this work, as they are at least
129
as many discourses on this topic as how many country compose the Union : the purpose
was to expose the importance of the perpetuation of the historical structuralist discourse in
the context of Turkey's admission process.
These debates are the materialisation of the concern of the upholders of structure
vis-a-vis liminality, viewed as a threat against the European structure, from which it is
excluded by the permanency of a historical, civilisational narrative that effectively acts as
an othering mechanism. However, beyond assessing this process of marginalisation in
itself, analysing Turkey's position at the light of liminality “unearths [the] actual incapacity
130
to fully categorise and manage ” of this international order with an all-encompassing
categorising vision, which explains the tension that the question of Ankara's admission into
the European Union brings up when it is conceived as a civilisation enterprise by some
European politicianss. Structure-wise, Turkey is a challenge, and as such, its very existence
addresses this incapacity of the concept of geographic or cultural Europe as a bounded
continent to categorise such a country, especially since it is engaged in the admission
process. Yet this historical narrative is also closely linked with a variety of other debates, the
main one being the question of democracy in an universalist vision.
128
Tocci, 2008, p.101
129
Such a wide task has already been undergone: see for example Akşit, Şenyuva, Üstün, Turkey Watch – EU Member States'
Perceptions on Turkey's Accession to the EU, Center for European Studies, Middle-East Technical University, 2009
130
36
Rumelili, 2012
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
Part III- Liminality: Opportunity or weakness? Analysis of the New Turkish Foreign policy, and the
“Occupy Gezi” movement
Part III- Liminality: Opportunity or
weakness? Analysis of the New Turkish
Foreign policy, and the “Occupy Gezi”
movement
1) Liminality, asset or liability?
A- The new Turkish foreign policy: “neo-ottomanism”?
Previously in this work, we have described the definition of a liminal position as a shift in
the Turkish foreign policy. Was this position really a new deal in Turkey's relation with its
neighbours?
For the first years of AKP's tenure in power, the tables were actually not radically turned
as for what concerns the previous, traditional alignments of Turkey in foreign policy towards
the West. As Erdoğan engaged the EU admission process, then-CHP-leader Deniz Baykal
even dismissed it as a capitulation to Europe on the topics of Armenia, Cyprus or the Kurdish
131
question. We can of course note the resounding refusal from the Turkish parliament to
send troops in Irak in 2003, (against the will of Erdoğan's government) however, we can say
that it is only after a few years, during the second AKP term between 2007 and 2011, that
the real shift occurred with certainty, with Ankara departing from the traditional stances of a
now-weakened military, military that had before weighted heavily on Turkish foreign policy,
132
pushing it towards the West. Instrumental in that shift was Foreign Minister Davutoğlu,
whom we already mentioned, who conceptualized this new policy as “zero problems with
neighbours”, intended to “eliminate all the problems from her relations with neighbours or at
133
least to minimize them as much as possible”. Indeed, relations with Syria, close to armed
conflict in the end of the 90's, were successfully revived with a free trade agreement in 2004,
and regular meetings between Erdoğan and Assad.
Davutoğlu was thus developing a real regional project of free trade and circulation
of individuals, with facilitation of visa procedures and projects such as a “Shamgen
Space” (Sham being the Arabic and Turkish word for Damas and thus the region, in a
reference to the Schengen Space in Europe). Turkish-Arab trade was indeed bolstered by
131
132
133
Servantie, 2012, p.37
Burdy, Marcou, 2013, p.10
Official definition of the “Zero problems with our neighbours” policy, Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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134
the new stance. Turkey not only renewed and sometimes revived bilateral relations with
its neighbours, it also intended to act as a regional force for dialogue and cooperation.
Assuming the role of a go-between linking West and East, Turkey placed itself as a platform
of negotiations, almost a new Switzerland of relations between Europe and Islam and the
Middle-East, with Istanbul as the Geneva of international negotiations and a global city,
hosting summits, discussion groups such as in the Syrian crisis case, but also a European
capital of culture and a candidate for the 2020 Olympic Games, all in the same vision of
openness to the world and modernity.
This new policy was quickly dubbed “neo-ottomanism”, notably by its detractors,
however, this easy mental short-cut should not hide the realities of the complex relations
between Arab countries and Turkey. Yes, there has been a reaffirmation of Turkey's
presence in the Middle-East, concurrent with and based on the strengthening of Islamic
values and at times a revival of Ottoman history and narratives. However, this new position
was also linked to a new appreciation of Turkey by the Arab states, not foreign to the success
of the so-called Turkish model. The term of “model” is also a term to moderate, after having
been widely used in the media even though it was denied by the very actors of the new
135
Turkish foreign policy themselves . Although it is undeniable that AKP's Turkey intends
to offer to the world a pleasant demonstration of cohabitation between Islamic values,
democracy and economic prosperity -that did indeed find an echo in the Arab countries- the
complexity of Arabs' assessment of the Turkish new deal, and the obviously wildly diverging
views about democracy and laicity in the Arab world should temper this vision. Indeed,
while the concept of “Muslim democracy” did find an echo South of the Mediterranean,
136
Erdoğan's declarations on secularism in a speech in Egypt were heavily criticised. The
mere singularity of both Turkish and Arab history , or rather histories, should draw strong
caution when handling the idea of a “Turkish model”.
This new position, more problematically for Turkey's relation with her traditional Western
137
allies, also comprised an tense escalation in the diplomacy with the Israelian state.
Turkish movement of opposition to Israel, most notable during the 2009 Davos “one minute”
episode and the crisis of the Mavi Marmara boarding by Israeli forces, marked a strain in
Turkey's relation with the West, while bringing popularity to Erdoğan and the AKP in the Arab
world (Erdoğan even winning the 2010 “Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights”),
illustrating the difficulty to conciliate different partners, most notably on such cleaving issues
such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where Turkey nevertheless intends to appear as a
force of negotiation and conciliation. The permanency of the solidarity with the Palestinian
cause is maintained as a crucial element of Muslim, and thus Turkish (in the AKP referential)
identity, as we can for example see in this speech from Foreign Minister Davutoğlu:
“We will continue to exert every effort to maintain the Islamic legacy in Palestine […] Our
struggle in defending Palestine and the Islamic heritage on the occupied territory including
in Al-Quds Al-Sharif (sic) will continue unabated […] And on behalf of the Turkish nation
134
135
136
137
38
Gürsel, 2013
Billion, 2012, p.61
Kirisçi, 2012, p.44
Encel, 2013
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Part III- Liminality: Opportunity or weakness? Analysis of the New Turkish Foreign policy, and the
“Occupy Gezi” movement
I would like to emphasize that Turkey will never let Quds al Sharif down. The Palestinian
138
people will never be alone”.
Turkey-US relationship was also strained when in May 2010, Brazil, Turkey and Iran
proposed through a common agreement alternatives to the very sanctions that were being
prepared against Ahmadinejad to restrain the nuclear program; Ankara, then a temporary
139
member of the Security Council, voted against the sanctions, angering Washington.
However, as for every other regional powerhouse, the earthquake of the Arab Spring
surprised Turkey. Slow at first to react on Egypt and Tunisia's case, it finally embraced
political uprisings that didn't represent much of a threat, especially after actually bringing
Islamist parties in power. However, the more violent and bloody crisis in Libya and Syria
represented a bigger challenge to Turkey's patient building of economic and diplomatic ties:
Ankara had important contract with Gaddafi's regime, and had to repatriate 20.000 nationals.
As for Syria, it arguably represented the hardest challenge to the “zero problems with our
neighbours” policy, as in only few months, Turco-Syrian relations were brought back to nearconflict stage, as they were at the end of the 90's, as Turkey hosts hundreds of thousands
of Syrian refugees. The Syrian crisis also puts a strain in yet another relation for Turkey:
the one with Russia, firmly opposed to any intervention and sanctions since the beginning
of the crisis.
A new development further eroded Ankara's position in the region, with recent events at
the end of June in Egypt. The Muslim Brothers regime of Mohammed Morsi, had developed
close ties with Turkey, and was often described as being inspired by AKP's example
(although as we already evoked, the idea of secularism seems way out of consideration for
many Egyptian leaders). Reciprocally, Turkey had funded the Muslim Brothers Egyptian new
140
regime with an aid package worth 2 billions dollars in 2012 . However, it could not prevent
the Egyptian military from seizing back the power, after enormous protests against Morsi,
and now actively defends it the toppled Muslim Brothers regime, refusing to recognize the
141
interim government appointed after the crisis and the coup . Political Islam in Turkey is in
a way afraid of the consequences of a coup, as it recalls bad memories for Turkish Islamist
142
143
parties in recent history. Although the other main parties also condemn this coup, they
don't voice such a strong support to Morsi as AKP, or the Saadet Partisi have done. A protest
was even organized in Istanbul on July 14 by the Saadet Partisi, AKP's more radical “cousin”
138
Address by H.E. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, at the OIC Donor Conference in
Support of The City of Al-Quds, Baku,Azerbaijan, 11 June 2013. Note the use of the term Al-Quds Al-Sharif, and not Jerusalem
139
140
141
142
143
Burdy, Marcou, 2013, p.16
Anadolu Agency, Turkey and Egypt agreed on a 2 billion dollar financial package, September 15 2012
th
Ahram Online, Erdoğan refuses to speak to Egypt's El Baradei, July 18 2013
Marcou, La chute de Morsi est un nouveau déboire pour la Turquie, Le Monde, 08/07/2013
CHP (Republic People's Party) communicate on official website: “President Morsi, the first freely-elected President of Egypt,
was at his lowest in terms of popularity, having failed to deliver on the democratic promises he was elected to fulfil. Last December
he granted himself un-challengeable powers, [...] and then rushed through a referendum on the new constitution despite a lack of
agreement among the political forces. Since then, discontent and national discord have intensified, leading to a deeply divided and
polarised nation. The economy has deteriorated, unemployment and inflation continue to rise, and GDP growth has severely shrunk.
A military coup, however, is out of step with democracy and the Socialist International calls on the interim authorities to uphold the rule
of law and to immediately restore democracy, pressing ahead with presidential and parliamentary elections without delay.” We could
possibly see here a veiled critic towards undemocratic practices, and a referendum on a new constitution... which are critics CHP also
emitted about Turkey's evolution over the last years.
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
party , on the theme “No to coups, with the Egyptian people”. In such a situation, the Prime
Minister Erdoğan criticised harshly the EU's leaders' different position on the crisis, as the
European capitals didn't clearly condemn the coup. Such a position could possibly further
144
isolate Turkey in the region.
Turkey is now aware of its intermediary position and can indeed benefit from it to assert
its new power through a renewed foreign policy. However, Ankara also seems to face a
difficult task: conciliating a wide array of partners and objectives that can all raise resistance
to this new Turkish quest for regional leadership, but that may also appear as contradictory.
In a way, Turkey, with this new assumed liminal position, could be seen as trying to chase
on two fronts, raising the issue of not really succeeding in both of them. Although the new
posture reaped some fruits, notably in the two years before the Arab Spring and immediately
following it, when Turkey could position itself as a local challenger to the USA-Israel-Gulf
145
monarchies axis, it appears now more difficult to hold. Indeed, the EU process achieved
little progress since 2005, and at the same time, the Turkish influence that was thriving
through new alliances emerging after the Arab Spring appears contested as these regimes
are weakened, the most recent example being the ousting of the Muslim Brothers based
regime in Egypt. Turkey's foreign policy, showcasing in this instance solidarity with similarilyminded parties with an Islamic, Sunni reference, appears fragile as these parties still did not
fully integrate in the democratic framework of their respective countries. With the departure
of Morsi, AKP lost an ally in the region, and its sternness in refusing the new government
146
in Egypt could lead it to further isolation. Ultimately, the volatility of the region will force
147
Turkey, in the next years, to reconsider its relations with most of its partners.
B- AKP's discourse of in-betweenness: a real alternative to previous
world views?
Ankara's new definition of foreign policy appears, as we presented it before, as a intended
shift from the previous dialectics of an almost autistic pro-Occidental Turkey often opposed
in the official discourse to Turkey's present openness and dynamism. Turkey's new position
of empowering liminality has indeed been presented as an alternative to other concepts and
world views, most notably, the “clash of civilisations”, Samuel Huntington's much publicised
world view and analysis of international relations, so present in the Western political
discourse at the end of the millennium. This vision is frequently opposed to an idealized
148
“dialogue of civilisations” or “alliance of civilisations” (as in the eponymous organisation) :
Huntington's idea has already been thoroughly discredited and criticised, to the point
that opposing it is today a common standard, especially in a context of criticism of
American interventionism in the 2000's decade. However, one must be productive in that
opposition. Deeply ensconced in AKP's rationale of “bridge” between civilisations still lies
the idea that there are civilisations out there, encompassing peoples into fantasized sets
of denominations such as “Islam”, “Europe”, “Christianity” or “Occident”, which finally differ
from Huntington's vision only by the fact that Turkey could benefit from that by acting as a
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145
146
147
148
40
Today's Zaman, “Turkey risks alienating itself wth dubious foreign policy choices”, 21/07/2013
Today's Zaman, “Strategic respite: back to reality in the Middle-East”, 18/07/2013
USNews, “The Biggest Loser of Cairo's Coup: Turkey”, 18/07/2013
Burdy, Marcou, 2013
Yanık, 2008
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Part III- Liminality: Opportunity or weakness? Analysis of the New Turkish Foreign policy, and the
“Occupy Gezi” movement
go-between, maintaining peace between two civilisations that otherwise still are expected
to be doomed to fight to death, especially in the a context of islamophobia in the West and
fundamental Islam in the Middle-East. Another ground from criticism is that in his typology,
Samuel Huntington defined Turkey as a “torn country”, divided between Islamic culture,
history and society and the elite's attempts to anchor it to the West. As a first criticism, we
could tone down the negative charge of a peremptory statement, that furthermore doesn't
render the dynamic evolution of the country's international position, societal evolutions and
identity. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu offered an alternative vision, stating that Turkey,
instead of a torn country was now “the country that brings closer and gathers different
149
cultures like glue”, describing Turkey as a role model for collaboration and mediation.
However, in a sense, it could be argued that AKP actually perpetuates in the discourse
the very idea of the civilisational difference that they claim to undermine and challenge.
First, because the very mention of Europe and Islam or West and East as two distinctly
and delimitable ensembles, be it as “a meeting of civilisations” rather than “a clash
of civilisations”, is already a structuralist and essentialist statement. West and Islam
are defined are clearly different entities even in the official discourse, be it from good
intentions or not: Turkey is represented as “a country which is a member of Western and
150
Islamic organisations” . In this discourse, Turkey is expected to “act as a “litmus test”
demonstrating that Islam and democracy can be compatible, and can thus represent a
“model” or an “inspiration” to other “Islamic” countries”. Yet this position, in addition to
inferring a supposed original incompatibility between Islam and democracy, perpetuate the
traditional categories, “the same forms of othering, as negative arguments shunning Turkey
151
in view of its identity ”. In such a perspective, every single instance of Turkey getting
sidetracked on the road to Europe's mental image of a perfect democracy can thus be
raised by detractors of the country's EU process as the much-awaited proof of essential
incompatibility between democracy/Europe and Islam/Arabo-Muslim world; while Ankara's
democratic advances, on the other hand, can be raised as incontestable demonstrations
of liberalization for the whole Arabo-Muslim countries, which is of course an equally hasty
simplification.
In this situation, a word frequently used is the one of “bridge”; even in the political
discourse, but what is described positively is actually an hard position: this categorisation
is actually scarcely empowering and prevents a real debate and understanding of the EUTurkey relation, and as such can be criticised, less for the initial good will that it demonstrates
152
than for the implications of the continuation of a categorising discourse . Liminality should
allow us to contest such insuperable contradictions of the cleaving political discourses, by
discarding such static images to convey the importance of dynamism, plural identities, and
obviously, gradients and differences in every one of the artificial ensembles constructed by
the structuring political discourse, by showing rather a continuum of differences in cultures,
and democratic practices.
Although it is true that liminal position can be a challenge to essentialist discourse,
we could argue that in a way, Davutoğlu's very discourse is actually failing on two points
compared to liminality's potential. First, by essentialising Turkey's own position while
liminality is a dynamic state, and second by maintaining the categorisation of East and
149
150
151
152
Ahmet Davutoğlu, 03/01/2013, quoted in Marcou, 2013, p.14
Information leaflet from the Ministry of EU Affairs, “TurKEY to Europe's future/Avrupa'nın geleceğinde Anathar Türkiye”.
Tocci, 2008, p.101
Hürriyet, “Turkey should change bridge rhetoric”
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The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
West, paradoxically while intending to present his country as an alternative to traditional
categorisation. While, from Turkey's point of view, the current position is certainly way more
positive than assertions of “torn country” or “marginal country”, one should nevertheless be
careful as soon as concepts such as East and West are handled, especially in an official,
political discourse, that arguably doesn't do much to deconstruct these conceptions. The
current positioning of Ankara is a step forward for what concerns relation with the MiddleEast, but it is not a real attempt to question the historical categories of Europe, and as such,
“hinder a deeper understanding between the EU and Turkey, necessary for the accession
153
process to succeed”. In a way, officialisation of discourse represents an essentialisation of
liminality, which is actually not productive, especially when, internally, it is actually coupled
with a polarisation of identities.
C- Liminality and the handling of plural identities: towards
polarisation of Turkey?
The construction of Turkey through stern secularism during the first years of the Republic,
regularly enforced by military coups, set the scene for a variety of positions on the topic.
One could argue that the historical construct of a staunch secularist nation, challenged by
the emerging of a large conservative middle class following Özal's policies in the 1980's and
1990's, are the source of a possible polarisation of today's Turkey, over debates and tensions
over spatial, symbolic, social and political tensions between two challenging narratives and
views of the Turkish identity. Before anything, we shouldn't define this situation as “two
Turkeys”, implicitly suggesting the existence of an kemalist elite concerned with secularism
and a vast majority still attached to Islamic values, as many definitions of identities and
political affiliation fluctuate, and overlap, most notably in the case of religious practice, that is
nevertheless the bone of contention of debates on Turkish identity. This would constitute an
essentialisation of the question and actually worsen polarisation as an alarmist statement:
we shouldn't present too much of a caricaturization of opposition between a kemalist elite
and a pious mass, oppressed until now and finally set free in their values with the arrival of an
Islamist party. Kemalism, mainly advocated by CHP, mobilized massive public as recently as
2007, with “Secularist rallies” before the elections, over the concern about a member of AKP
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(Abdullah Gül), becoming President of the Republic: This strong, popular mobilisation
was a new deal in the traditional kemalist camp, and shows that attachment to secularist
values is not an elite trait. Furthermore, a class vision is no longer pertinent, as along strata
of revenue now runs a new fracture line defined to identification with Islam values and the
155
ensuing practices and way of life.
However, the consequences of Turkey's historical shift of paradigm at the creation of
the Republic, and the internal manifestation of its unclear position of liminality is observable
today with the new competition between two main different and competing narratives that
struggle to seize -or retain- political, economical, cultural and symbolic power. On one
hand, the kemalist, secularist, nationalist vision of Turkey, historically defended by the
CHP party and the army. On the other hand, political Islam, as represented today by AKP
(but seamlessly defended and advocated before them by former or present other parties,
movements or sensibilities) considering Islam as the legitimate framework for political rule
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154
155
42
Tocci, p.100
Somer, 2007
Seni, 2013, p.122
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“Occupy Gezi” movement
and social interactions in Turkey. The second should be not be considered as a new
contender in the scene of politics in Turkey: what is new is the strength of a movement
that is now successfully established in every field of the public life, administration, economy,
media, and even the judiciary system, after a fruitful syncretism between political Islam,
societal conservatism and neo-liberalism, empowered by economic successes and a string
of landslide electoral victories. Both these narratives are striving for hegemony in the fields of
political discourse, social and cultural life and even urban space. Cities, especially Istanbul,
became the theatre of this opposition between the traditional kemalist society, with its own
established hierarchy, traditionally Istanbul-based and Westernized, and a symmetrical,
rising conservative population, with its own elite, middle-class, and lower class, hailing from
Central Anatolian cities, and aiming at imposing its new economic and political power in the
urban space. The city plays an important role as Islamist parties and conservative groups in
Turkey have used Istanbul as a tool to affirm their own Ottoman-Islamist version of history,
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challenging Turkey's official history at the domestic level.
Thus, to the traditional kemalist bulwark of state workers, businessmen, secularist
middle-class now answer a “middle class bis”, educated, prosperous and even now mirroring
some of the way of life and consuming of the other part of the electorate, shattering the
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traditional “paradigm that associated in Turkey poverty, ignorance and religion”.
This
rivalry is mirrored into economy, where this new class of pious Muslim businessmen benefit
from their link with the power to contest public call for offers, construction projects and the
media sector. It is revealing to know that there are even two rival business association
trade unions, one dominated by the secular elite and the other one by the conservative
new business, closer to political power. Culture-wise, there is also a rising polarisation as
the two groups rarely mingle, and each enjoys his own spaces of of leisure, a segregation
deepened by the rift between private and public institutions, as each defends his own
narrative. It is actually the confrontation between two different habitus. Istanbul's vibrant and
multiplying festivals, art galleries and modern museums and cultural centres don't seduce
the conservative Muslims, who flock towards the “official” culture promoted by the Ministry
of Culture and Tourism, the municipalities, the Muslim associations and foundations, along
the lines of exaltation of Islamic values and Ottoman past. Symptomatically, while many new
museums opened with private funding in Istanbul during the 2000's decade, only one was
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funded by the State: the Museum of Conquest (of Constantinople).
Furthermore, as these two competing narratives are increasingly pitted against one
another, other minorities that constitute yet other narratives actually find very limited space
and rights. and despite AKP's publicised opening to their cause, the situation didn't really
change for them, and they can hardly express their voice in a Turkish public space that
is confiscated by the 10% threshold in legislative election. This 10% line, inherited from
the military constitution of 1981 and then intended indeed to obstruct leftist and pro-kurdist
parties, remained up until today and AKP, despite its long criticism of the military constitution,
is actually way less enthusiast about suppressing this clause, that allowed him to carve
out vast majorities in successive parliaments while never actually winning an majority in
the elections, be it in 2002, 2007, 2011. Despite AKP's “democratic opening” of 2009 (an
euphemistic way to refer to what was intended as an opening to minorities, notably the
Kurdish one), improvements for the Kurdish minority were scarce, and AKP didn't gain
more vote in the South-East. Amidst arrests of BDP representatives (Barış ve Demokrasi
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157
158
Yanık, 2008, p.84
Seni, 2013, p.123
Seni, 2013, p.126
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Partisi, main pro-Kurdish political party), Erdoğan and AKP maintained a staunch nationalist
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discourse. The negotiation process which had advanced in the beginning of 2013 now
seems stalled, and he situation of the Alevi minority is also concerning, as they still aren't
recognized by the Ministry for Religious Affairs, and they are still marginalized in the political
discourse, as in September 2011 when AKP Deputy Chairman Hüseyin Çelik alluded to
“solidarity out of sectarian affinity”, inferring that Alevi CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu
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defended the Syrian Alawi regime. The public was also shocked with incidents of doormarking and death threat graffitis against Alevis in Adıyaman, Izmir and Gaziantep.
One can indeed worry about the polarisation of Turkish society and political discourse,
whether we could consider it advanced already or not, as the current political situation
doesn't seem to be easing this competition between the two different narratives and sets
of values.
2) 2013 protests analysed at the light of liminality
A- From an ecological protest to the affirmation of identities and
plurality
The intricate, complex relationship between conceptions of politics and of Turkish identity and identities- that arise from Turkey's position as a liminal country, furthermore scrutinised
as an EU candidate, was put one more time under the light of the international community
with recent events: namely, the Occupy Gezi protests.
The movement was sparked at the end of May, when a local park, adjacent to the
emblematic and central Taksim Square, was defended by a few dozens of militants against
destruction, in order to leave place for a project of reconstruction of Ottoman barracks,
complete with a shopping mall. When the ecological militants camped to protect the trees,
they were expelled with an iron hand, gathering more popular support to them, thus more
protesters, more repression, and thus the movement was launched. However, this single
event doesn't explain alone the protests, and was not even the first source of motivation
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evoked by the protesters , but is more the continuation of a climate of increasing tension
162
between communities and perceived authoritarianism in the AKP's practice of power .
One can indeed question the durability of Erdoğan's professed attachment to democracy undeniably materialized by a democratization of the government-military relationship during
its first years in power- when we see him declare:”The principle of the separation of powers
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is a hindrance”.
159
160
161
Seni, 2013, p.134
Al-Monitor, “Turkey's Sunni identity test”, 21/06/2013
An online questionnaire led by members of Bilgi University, Esran Bilgiç and Zehra Kafkaslı, with 3000 answers, was
published in the newspaper Radikal, showing that for 9 out of 10 protesters, the main reason was the Prime Minister's authoritarianism,
then the violation of democratic rights, followed mediatic silence (about the same proportions), and then only the uprooting of Gezi
Park trees for 56%.
162
163
44
Tayla, 2012
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a meeting in Konya, 17/12/2013 quoted in Seni, 2013, p.136
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“Occupy Gezi” movement
Despite Turkey's economic successes under AKP administration since 2002, there
has been rising voices against a perceived Islamist agenda and what is perceived as an
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undermining of the democratic values since the last two or three years , illustrated by
165
various trials, notably against journalists , and new laws enforcing strict Islamic values,
166
such as laws aimed at restricting the sale of alcohol , or attempts to restrict abortion
(compared to murder by the Prime Minister), to enforce chaste comportments in the public
167
sphere , and LGBT rights.
At the same time that the Gezi movement started, another moment had marked Turkish
rd
public opinion: the beginning of the construction of the 3 Bosporus Bridge, and the
th
announcement of its name. The date, 29 May was not randomly chosen, as it coincided
th
with the 560 anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, a
symbol frequently celebrated by the AKP, and marked for example by declarations on Twitter
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celebrating the date and the memory of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror. But even more
strikingly, the name of Yavuz Sultan Selim (Sultan Selim the Stern in Turkish, more known
as Selim the Grim in English) that was chosen as the bridge's name angered the Alevi
Muslim community, amongst whom Selim, who reigned from 1512 to 1520, is perceived
as a genocidal despot responsible for numerous massacres against the Kızılbaşı religious
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community with whom Alevi tend to identify.
The same posture of harkening back to the
Ottoman past was present in the project to rebuild Ottoman barracks, complete with a project
of commercial mall. Erdoğan, mayor of Istanbul before his present position, had also for long
projects of building a mosque on Taksim Square. Criticism, however, was also addressed
on the sustainability and the ecological footprint of such enormous mind-boggling projects,
another one being the third international airport, planned to be.... the largest in the world
with 150 millions passengers every year. The third bridge would cut large swathes into the
remaining green patches of the Belgrade Forest, north of Istanbul's western side. The project
is not new: it had already emerged under Prime Minister Tansu Çiller in the mid 90's, already
meeting heavy criticism: “A third bridge is a murder for Istanbul. It is nothing but massacring
the remaining green areas in the city's north by zoning the area for construction.“
Interestingly enough, this protest was voiced by none otherthan the Mayor of Istanbul,
170
at that time... Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
This conjunction and accumulation of events over the course of the last months
explained the beginning of a wide movement that opposes this face of AKP, considered
164
165
DailyStar, Turkish Protesters have long list of complaints, 03/06/2013
See Marcou, “La 18e vague d'arrestations de l'affaire “Ergenekon” soulève de vives inquiétudes en ce qui concerne la
liberté des médias en Turquie”, Observatoire de la Vie Politique Turque, 06/03/2011; “Charges against Journalists Dim the Democratic
Glow in Turkey”, The New York Times, 04/01/2012
166
167
168
Alcohol laws in Turkey feared to represent Islamic agenda of Muslim ruling party, Huffington Post, 05/06/2013
Hürriyet Daily News, “A kiss is not just a kiss in Turkey”, 28/05/2013
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, @RT_Erdogan, 29 May: “On the occasion of the 560
th
anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul,
I once more commemorate the heroic sultans of Istanbul and their soldiers”.
169
170
Richard, J., Un troisième pont nommé Yavuz Sultan Selim, Observatoire de la Vie Politique Turque, 14 Juin 2013
Quoted in Today's Zaman, “Istanbul becoming uninhabitable with mega construction projects”, 30/05/2013
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as a mix of shallow consumerism , Islamic values, and glorification of Ottoman past,
172
delivered through opaque and increasingly authoritarian politics, and criticised modes
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of urbanisation.
The fact that the renovation concerned Taksim Square reveals the
ideological weight of the project. As explains Jean-François Pérouse:
“Beyoğlu (the neighborhood nearby, center of Istanbul's occidentalised way of life),
and above all Taksim, in the nationalist and conservative imagination, remain places of
perdition and of erasure of the national values, that repulse and fascinate. The Ottoman
barracks should thus permit to regain ground n in a suspicious context. Whether it is alcohol
consumption or relations between sexes, the project in Gezi is clear: putting back the places
and their use in a conservative order, assigning to each a precise and immutable role, and
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magnifying family as the sacred bedrock of any social life.”
The opposition to the project of renovation by the Occupy Gezi movement thus also
marked the opposition to a wider project of a new conservative power intending to gain
ground in the symbolical urban landscape of Istanbul, as well as politically with measures
perceived as authoritarian and divisive. As the opposition between protesters grew violent
and spread to many Turkish cities, the movement was quickly branded in the official
discourse with accusations of vandalisms, or even terrorism: “Where and when can a mob
hijack a well-meaning environmentalist protest and turn it into a terror-fest? And which
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government would permit that?” declared the EU Affairs minister Egemen Bağış , who also
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warned that everybody entering Taksim Square would be considered as a terrorist.
However, the movement actually adopted these codes with what began as a tonguein-cheek reference against this negative branding, to finally become a revindicated title: the
term of çapulcu (marauder/vandal in Turkish), and its diverse translations (chappuling or
chapulleur) and variants, were widely adopted and are heavily present in the social media.
It is interesting here to draw a parallel with the notion of communitas that Turner developed.
Protesters now gather under this single term (as are initiates during rites of passage),
notwithstanding their differences, and are united in this marginal position. Indeed, the
protests were mostly attending by non-affiliated individuals: one of the first polls conduced
among members of the movement showed that 79% had no affiliation with any organisation,
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and a further 47% thought that no party in Turkey could deserve their vote.
For being subversive to the traditional social and political order, the protesters finally
pervaded the essentialist denominations attributed to them by the upholders of structure,
represented here by the AKP establishment.
We can actually go further, with the comparison of the protesters with a liminal
communitas, using Turner's series of binary oppositions between attributes of the liminal and
171
Wikipedia lists more than 100 shopping malls in Istanbul, with more than 30 new ones scheduled between 2013 and 2015.
A list of 114 shopping malls in Istanbul is disponible in Istanbul'da Kaç Tane AVM var?, on website Emlakkulisi, 06/06/2013
172
173
174
175
Benhabib, S., Turkey's Authoritarian Turn, NY Times, 03/06/2013
See the independent documentary movie Ekumenopolis, 2011; also Pérouse, 2013
Jean-François Pérouse, “Le parc Gezi: dessous d'une transformation très politique”, Métropolitiques.eu, 24/06/2013
Message by H.E Egemen Bağış, Minister for EU Affaires and Chief Negotiator Regarding the Latest Article Published by
the Economist, 17/06/2013
176
Egemen Bağış, quoted in “Police to consider protesters in Istanbul's Taksim Square terror organisation members: Minister”,
Hürriyet Daily News, 16/06/2013
177
46
Poll conduced 06-07 June 2013 in Gezi Park amon 4411 participants, conduced by KONDA
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those of the status system . Some are traits of the movement that constitue political and
social revindications per se: communitas vs structure, anonymity vs system of nomenclature,
absence of property vs property, absence of rank and absence of status vs distinctions of
rank and status, equality vs inequality, no distinctions of wealth vs distinctions of wealth.
Some other definitions are actually intended to be enforced and defended by the structure
itself, here through repression and control of the media: silence vs speech, foolishness vs
sagacity, total obedience vs obedience only to superior rank (obviously, in such a case,
the only superior rank those in charge being Islamic values and God -although He may be
rivalled with the international community and organisations in such a context).
Of course, liminality is just one of the many possible point of entry to analyse such
a complex and dynamic movement as Occupy Gezi. However, here too, it does offer an
interesting perspective when trying to understand and define the government's reaction to
this process, as we can indeed argue that it was marked by mistrust and scorn for this
manifestation of communitas.
B- Governmental reactions: scorning liminality, marginality and
plurality?
Interestingly enough, AKP government, prone to seeking to reap benefits from Turkey's
liminality on the international scene, has been unable to discuss with the liminal communitas
that the protesters of Occupy Gezi can be argued to represent. Indeed, both the police
crackdown on protests and the communication from the leaders of the party demonstrated
their own mistrust and scorn for such a leaderless, anti-hierarchical and creative movement:
ironically, using the same simplifying mental schemes and essentialist rhetoric to dismiss
the movement as the discourse used against them by European elites opposed to their
adhesion to EU.
In the case of AKP's handling of Occupy Gezi, as in the Turkey adhesion process,
“for those concerned with the maintenance of structure, all sustained manifestations of
communitas must appear as dangerous, anarchical, and have to be hedged around with
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prescriptions, prohibitions, and conditions.”
Dangerous and anarchical were indeed precisely some of the terms employed by the
government to justify the crackdown on protesters, along with the term marginal. However,
this posture, in addition to being wrong due to the sheer number of protesters (official
estimations as soon as June 23 evaluated the number of protesters at 2.5 millions, in 79
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provinces out of 81 ) is also blind to the interest of marginality. Marginality, which is so
heavily criticised in the official discourse, concerned with the maintenance of structure and
order, is actually also an space of creation, of dynamism, where new ideas emerge: precisely
what the officials tried to smother. Creative ways of protesting were heavily relayed in foreign
media: the example of the duran adam, “standing man” that stood motionless for hours on
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Taksim Square was soon followed by the media and other protesters. Thus we can see
178
179
180
181
Turner, 1969, p.106-107
Turner, 1969
Milliyet, “2.5 milyon insan 79 ilde sokağa indi”, 23/06/2013, quoting figures from the Ministry of Interior
France24, “ ' L'homme debout ', nouvelle forme de contestation anti-Erdogan”, 21/06/2013 ; The Guardian , “Turkey's
“standing man shows how passive resistance can shake a state”, 18/06/2013, CNN, “Hundred of Turks emulate “Standing Man”
in protest”, 19/06/2013
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the creative potential of marginality as a space of production, new ideas, and tolerance for
the great part of it, as opposed to the monolithic, exclusivist and mandatory identity of the
turco-islamic synthesis. Indeed, to face the protests and the burgeoning and affirmation of
identities, AKP establishment chose to withdraw on Islamic values and on this turco-islamic
synthesis, antagonizing the protesters as “non-believers” in a polarizing and divisive heavily
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criticised both outside and inside of Turkey. However, many protesters were overtly pious
Muslims, such as the Anticapitalist Muslims group that found in the Gezi movement an
echo to their stance critical of AKP's 10 years in power, as their leader declared: “The AKP
implemented capitalism by covering it with Islam; it has used religion to legitimize capitalism
[…] it has not changed the state's fundamental reflexes. […] It has a backward understanding
of Islam, it talks about alcohol, abortion […] Islam asks you to get rid of the gap between
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rich and poor”.
The official reactions were also present on Twitter and other social media but resulted
in a communication often criticised as hot-headed, divisive and impulsive. Social media
became the target of criticism from the government official as the vehicle for subversive
ideas: “There is now a menace which is called Twitter. The best example of lies can be found
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there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society” declared the Prime Minister...
himself an avid user of Twitter with over 2000 tweets and 3 millions followers on his profile.
Protesters and users of social media were described are vandals opposed to Muslim ideals,
and the general well-being of the people, the economy and the national project. As Prime
Minister Erdoğan declared: “Let them send a million tweets, just one bismillah from us will
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break their games”
The “game” (oyunlar) rhetoric was also heavily employed, as both a decredibilisation
of the protesters, compared to aimless, agitated adolescents, and a reference to supposed
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external manipulation of the protesters by foreign group of interests , conspirational
theories being heavily present in the Turkishpolitical imagery. This same conspirationist
stance brought back even the old accusations against supposed Zionist interests and
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the Turkish Jewish community , voiced amongst others by Melih Gökçek, AKP mayor
188
of Ankara, or Beşir Atalay, vice-President, prompting the Chief Rabbinate of Turkey to
issue a declaration expressing their “concerns and […] apprehension and worry of the
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consequences that such perceptions can cause”.
The government, led by Erdoğan, chose to retract on its electoral base and their Islamic
values through various meetings where he gathered his supporters, exhorting them with
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references to faith, prayer and even solidarity with Muslims abroad in the Arab world and in
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183
184
185
Radikal, Yurtta kutup cihanda kutup, 12/07/2013
Theologian İhsan Eliaçık, public face of the Anticapitalist Muslims movement, in an interview with Hürriyet, 22/07/2013
The Guardian, “Social media and opposition to blame for protests, says Turkish PM”, 03/06/2013
Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan, @RT_Erdogan, 22 June: “ Onlar milyonlarca tweet atsınlar, bizim tek bir besmelemiz oyunları
bozar “
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Bloomberg, “Erdogan Calls Protests Conspiracy, Vows to Strengthen Police”, 18/06/2013, Hürriyet Daily News, “Erdogan
blames 'foreign power' “, 06/06/2013
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188
189
190
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Hürriyet Daily News, “More divisive talk out of the AKP”, 04/07/2013
Marchand, “Les Juifs Turcs accusés de mener la fronde contre Erdoğan”, 10/07/2013
Chief Rabbinate of Turkey – Turkish Jewish Community, Declaration on Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay's statement
Slate.fr, “Recep Tayyip Erdogan a-t-il un jour cru à une Turquie européenne?”, 09/06/2013
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Part III- Liminality: Opportunity or weakness? Analysis of the New Turkish Foreign policy, and the
“Occupy Gezi” movement
the Balkans. It is interesting to see this discourse, when we remember Erdoğan declaring in
2004: “We believe that all sorts of religious divisions should be buried in their well-deserved
place in history. In the contemporary world, religion belongs not to specific organizations or
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territories, but to individuals. It should be left to the individual”.
Still the official discourse maintained practices of othering of the protesters, with
fractures lines placed on the topic of religion, values and morality, while denying accusations
of fractioning the society. Protesters (who, when not directly identified, are simply implied
through through the use of the pronoun “them”, onlar, as another way of polarizing the
tension) are described as the ones trying to pit identities together, while the AKP diffuses a
vision that is intended as inclusive and understanding. “They are working to divide by saying
Alevi-Sunni. What is this divisiveness about? If being Alevi is about loving the Lord Ali, I'm
100% Alevi then”, declared the (obviously not Alevi) Erdoğan, addressing this supposed
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divisive agenda of the movement, meeting with harsh criticism from the Alevi community,
among comments that “instead of being a 100% Alevi, he should have the goal of being a
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good Prime Minister”
The double discourse between openness to difference, democratic reforms, and
rigidity on the core of AKP's rationale inside Turkey, the turco-islamic synthesis, already
foreshadowed in the last years, was confirmed by the crisis that Occupy Gezi represented,
and can be noted in the public opinion, not only through the protests. AKP's establishment,
that had shown a dynamic face and defined a liminality-based active and novel foreign policy,
symbolised with the active EU process undertook in the first years, appeared after Gezi as
a stiff and reactionary force no longer open to dialogue and manifestations of plurality inside
Turkey, retreating on Islamic values, what some observers defined as AKP's “true face”.
Furthermore, despite Erdoğan's marginalisation of the movement, it initially found its
ground into the public opinion. On one hand, the population is more and more aware or
concerned about government interfering in private life and encroaching on the democratic
space and on the press. 49.9% of the respondents of a nationwide poll led between 3 and
12 June judged that the government was moving towards an authoritarian and repressive
style of governance (36% thinking that it was progressing on further democratization); 54.4%
thought the government was interfering into their lifestyle, 46.7% said they were worried to
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express their political views.
On the other hand, it is hard to assess the impact of AKP's communication in the
public opinion. In a poll conducted in the beginning of June, thus in the first days of the
movement, a good part of public opinion disavowed the handling of the crisis and did
not adhere to the “foreign interests” theory developed by the Prime Minister: 20.1% of
respondents identify the government as the reason for the escalation of the movement,
16.9% accused Erdoğan. No more than 3.2% of respondents identified external or internal
powers as the source of the protests, and 53.3% considered that Turkish media was not
free. Yet a second poll, conducted by the same organism, only one month later, attained
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192
193
Speech by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “Why the EU needs Turkey”, Oxford, 28 May 2004
Ahmet Hakan, “Dörtdörtlük Alevi'ye dörtdörtlük sorular”, Hürriyet,19/07/2013,
Ali Kenanoğlu, Director of the Hubyar Sultan Alevi Culture Foundation, in CNNTürk, Başbakanın Alevilik tanımına tepki,
18/07/2013
194
Poll by MetroPOLL Strategic and Social Research Center, analysed by Today's Zaman, Survey reveals growing public
apprehension over democratic process, 16/06/2013
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wildly different conclusions. To the question “Do you consider the Gezi Park protests an
exercise of democratic rights or a coup attempt launched against the government?”, 57,5%
qualified the movement as an coup attempt, only 33% as an exercise of democratic rights.
On a more concerning note, 36% of the voters find necessary some restrictions on the use
of social media, up to 56% among AKP voters, showing the efficiency of the government's
demonisation of the social media and the foreign conspiracy discourse, that is likely to
196
197
be used in the next months , as it is anyway a staple of Turkish political discourse .
And yet another poll, conduced mid-July, had different conclusions and showed 54% of
respondents supporting the protests, and 61.4% disapproving the government's stance on
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the Gezi protests . As we see, it is really too soon to draw conclusions, and polls are to be
taken for what they are: as we can see, it seems hard to assess the impact of the movement
in the public opinion as of now.
C- Impact on Turkey/Europe relations
199
As the protests unravelled and met with a strong and violent repression , the international
reactions were numerous and sometimes heavily criticised the AKP's handling of the events.
German chancellor Merkel declared she was “appalled, like many others”, by the “terrible
200
images”.
Indeed, among the “many others” most Occidental capitals expressed their
concern about the repression.
Guy Verhofstadt, chairman of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in
the European Parliament, called for the respect of European values as a condition for the
admission process: “We support a European Turkey, but not a Turkey that turns its back to
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European values”.
The leaders of the German Green Party even came themselves to
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mark their support for the movement.
For some observers, AKP, through the repression of the movement and its sternness on
rigorist values, had confirmed what was perceived before as a double discourse, an Islamist
agenda that had until then been covered by the EU process and the economic success of
Turkey, but that appeared more clearly during the moment of crisis. For others, it was more
the manifestation of the autocratic bent of a Prime Minister after 10 years of uncontested
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power , tailoring a new regime to his will with the project of a new, semi-presidential
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MetroPOLL, polling between July 6-10, analysed in Today's Zaman,”Poll: Public supportive of cemevis, warm to education
in Kurdish”, 17/07/2013
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197
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Today's Zaman, “ 'Foreign conspiracy' discourse may also be used before 2014 elections”, 21/07/2013
Today's Zaman, “What is behind the veil of conspiracy theories?”, 16/06/2013, I
Today's Zaman, “Poll: Majority of Turks don't approve of government stance on Gezi protests”, 19/07/2013, quoting a poll
by KONDA
199
According to a report from the Turkish Central Council of the Chamber of Medicine and Physicians, from 31 May to 15 July, 4
protesters and 1 policeman died and almost 6000 sustained injured in Istanbul and Ankara alone.
200
Reuters, Germany's Merkel “appalled by Turkey's response to protests”, 17/06/2013
201
202
203
50
Quoted in Le Soir, “Erdogan contre la Turquie européenne?”, 21/06/2013
Hürriyet Daily News, German Greens co-chair Özdemir visits Gezi Park, praises community, 06/06/2013
Le Monde, “Turquie: M. Erdogan ou l'ivresse du pouvoir”, 01/06/2013
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
Part III- Liminality: Opportunity or weakness? Analysis of the New Turkish Foreign policy, and the
“Occupy Gezi” movement
204
Constitution : thus the comparisons of Erdoğan to a Sultan that sprouted in the European
205
press . One could nevertheless argue that these comparisons, although motivated by
solidarity with the movement and criticism of authoritarianism, actually perpetuate Orientalist
imagery and West-East polarization: Western media was obviously also prey to some
sensationalism and simplifications and is not free of criticism. Still, one is to compare this
to the deafening silence of the majority of the Turkish media scene, widely accused of
206
collusion with state interests. It is interesting to see now the stance of Turkish media and
officials: the same voices that were so reluctant to accept the reality of the protests in their
declarations and in the scarce broadcast of the protests focused on accusing foreign media
to cover extensively the movement for secret interests, now heavily broadcast images of
the Egyptian pro-Morsi, anti-coup movements in Egypt with the same intensity as European
media covered Occupy Gezi and denounce European's tacit agreement upon the coup as
a fait accompli (as of July 2013).
The international reactions prompted Turkish officials to adopt a defensive stance, in
207
consequence of which the admission process appeared once more threatened . Direct
critics from the European Parliament, with a resolution critical of the use of violence in Turkey
adopted on June 13, were met with strong criticism of the European Union. As Foreign
Minister Davutoğlu declared: “The resolution adopted today by the European Parliament
regarding the situation in Turkey damages our common goal of strengthening and further
208
spreading democracy, and is detached from reality. Therefore, it is null and void for us.”
Even the Ministry for EU Affairs, supposedly the most attached to the admission
process, released aggressive statements in Turkey and Turkish official media, consistent
with the allegations of foreign conspiracy and interests, and with an increasingly semithreatening, distant stance from the admission process, in reaction to the European threats
to freeze the negotiations:
“We have been seeing that some European parliamentarians and officials are
irresponsibly making very bold and irrational speeches […] such bold and irresponsible
comments on Turkey's internal affairs would have some costs. […] Turkey is not a banana
republic. […] I hope that those who have become carried away by this transient situation
have calculated the cost of targeting not only our government, but also the Republic of
Turkey. […] Suspending Turkey's EU accession process is in fact a threat not for Turkey,
209
but for the EU”
Indeed, Germany, backed by Austria and Netherlands, had initially suggested blocking
the opening of a new chapter, that was to be opened on June 26, leading to concerns
210
on the possible dead-end for the admission process . Nevertheless, negotiations were
204
205
Reuters, “Erdogan's ambition weighs on hopes for new Turkish constitution”, 18/02/2013
The Economist, “Democrat or Sultan?”, 08/06/2013, The Guardian, “Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey's elected sultan or an
Islamic democrat?”, 24/10/2012
206
207
208
The New York Times, Opinion, “In Turkey, Media Bosses Are Undermining Democracy”, 19/07/2013
Hürriyet Daily News, “Future of Turkish-EU ties looks shaky”, 25/06/2013
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press release No. 168 on the Resolution adopted by the European Parliament on the Situation
in Turkey, 13/06/2013
209
Ministry for EU Affairs, Press release, Statement on the recent developments by Egemen Bağış, Ministry for EU affairs
and chief negotiator, 17/06/2013
210
Jean Marcou, “Nouvelle épreuve de vérité pour les relations turco-européennes”, 22/06/2013
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
51
The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
maintained and the opening of a new chapter of negotiations was even announced on June
211
25. Despite the bold statements from both sides, at the view of Ankara's efforts to maintain
this opening through compromises, we can see that it is obviously not ready to give up
the admission process, even in front of equally impulsive and judgemental stances from
some European leaders. It is good to recall that the heaviest criticism to the AKP handling
of the movement was often, not surprisingly, coming from politicians already opposed to the
admission process, and their general position on the topic obviously shaped their reaction,
notably in the case of Mrs Merkel: as in every political discourse, comments were obviously
also calculated with other considerations in mind. Thus the talks concerning this chapter
(Chapter 22 on regional policy) were maintained, but conveniently postponed in Autumn,
212
after elections in Germany in September.
The fact that despite the heavy crisis, the negotiations actually carried on could be
perceived as a reassuring sign on the state of EU-Turkey relations. However, it appears
clear that the concerns about AKP's drift from democratic values and practices are now a
factor that cannot be ignored any more. Although the process survived the crisis, one is
to question the ability of Erdoğan's government, who had so successfully launched the EU
admission process in its first years in power, to keep on bringing dynamism and good will
into the relation with such a stiff posture both internally and internationally. However, EU
leaders should also accompany Turkey's efforts, precisely because such a time of crisis is
actually the best time to put back the EU process on its track and prove that EU is really
willing to use the crisis as an incentive for more democracy in Turkey by not totally severing
the ties with Ankara, a move that many consider would actually play in favour of more radical
stances in Turkey, and ultimately, jeopardize the country's democratic future within Europe.
211
212
Le Monde, L'UE rouvrira à partir d'octobre les négociations sur l'adhésion de la Turquie, 25/06/2013
Batalla, L., “EU-Turkey Relations after Gezi: Another halt or an incentive to revive Turkey's moribund accession process?”
Politika Akademisi, 15/07/2013
52
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
General conclusion
General conclusion
To conclude on this analysis of Turkey's position, we must stress one more time the
importance of liminality as a dynamic concept. Liminality is about avoiding essentialising,
as it is “not a pre-given attribute of the actors that are deemed to be liminals, but a subject
213
position which itself is discursively constituted” . Hence, in this work, we tried to expose the
roots of this discursive construction of space categorisation and its liminals, an exposition
necessary when analysing liminality in geopolitics and international relations as we defined
it: this concerns the historical construction of structure, but also, in our case, an “official”
political discourse of in-betweenness that actually reproduces categorisations. Turkey is now
intending to capitalize on this intermediary position and can indeed benefit from it to assert
its new power through a renewed foreign policy. However, Ankara also seems to face a
difficult task: conciliating a wide array of partners and objectives that can all raise resistance
to this new Turkish quest for regional leadership, but that may also appear as contradictory.
Turkey's recent evolution makes it an exceptionally complex country: as Cizre and
Walker put it, “Turkey has become more European, more democratic, more conservative and
214
Islam-friendly, and more nationalist simultaneously” . As a country of paradoxes, Turkey
evades the traditional categories and challenges them by illustrating their shortcomings as
they do fail to encompass Turkey in a structured vision.
Among the many thematics treated in this work, I would retain three keys.
The first one is the importance of the new question of identity, and the (not new)
practices of othering and ordering of the liminals by Europe. In the case of Turkey, against
which this otherness discourse participated in the construction of the very structure from
which the country is excluded, while also paradoxically included through the EU admission
process, this question is crucial. In the end, it is also an incentive to scrutinise the European
Union construction process in itself: its goals, its theoretical boundaries, and its future. It is
a responsibility for Europe that they alone can solve, however Turkey's role in this question
is capital.
The second one, is the question of democracy, viewed through the universalist narrative
of modernity, development and modernity where Turkey is also in an ambiguous position:
self-entitled role-model of democracy in a Muslim country, the country nevertheless still
faces many debates, and many challenges, a situation thoroughly invoked in Europe in the
admission process. In this case, it is a responsibility for Turkey, that they alone can solve,
however the EU's role in this question is capital.
The third one, finally, is the articulation between norms and values, as Turkey under AKP
could be said to undergo a double discourse and a double movement: one based on norms,
towards democratisation and inscribed in the EU process, and the other one, based on the
affirmation of Islamic and conservative values. It links the two previous by illustrating the
tension involved in Turkey's situation, “incongruence between two cross-cutting discourses
213
Rumelili, 2012, p.496
214
Cizre and Walker, 2010
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
53
The Liminality of Turkey The Construction of a Liminal Position Between Asset and Liability,
Challenges and Opportunities
215
on European identity”. Over AKP's last mandate, the initial good will in democratic reforms
seems to have stalled, as did the EU process, and polarisation seems now a risk in Turkey
The question of Turkey's identity and its admission into the European Union, unlike
any other candidate country before, is the question of both Turkey and Europe's past,
present, and future projects, their very nature and their direction. No surprise therefore lies
in the deep, protracted debate over Turkey's adhesion. However, whatever one's opinion on
the question, let us consider it with a clear mind, aware of the artificial historical divisions
between encompassing and arbitrary concepts of West, Europe, Occident, democracy, and
East, Islam and authoritarianism, as knowledge and comprehension are the best remedies
against prejudice and polarisation.
Davet Dörtnala gelip Uzak Asya'dan Akdeniz'e bir k#srak ba## gibi uzanan bu
memleket, bizim. Bilekler kan içinde, di#ler kenetli, ayaklar ç#plak ve ipek bir
hal#ya benziyen toprak, bu cehennem, bu cennet bizim. Kapans#n el kap#lar#,
bir daha aç#lmas#n, yok edin insan#n insana kullu#unu, bu dâvet bizim....
Ya#amak bir a#aç gibi tek ve hür ve bir orman gibi karde#çesine, bu hasret
bizim... Plea This country shaped like the head of a mare Coming full gallop
from far off Asia To stretch into the Mediterranean This country is ours.
Bloody wrists, clenched teeth bare feet, Land like a precious silk carpet This
hell, this paradise is ours. Let the doors be shut that belong to others Let them
never open again Do away with the enslaving of man by man This plea is ours.
To live! Like a tree alone and free Like a forest in brotherhood This yearning is
ours.
Nâzım Hikmet – 1902/1963
215
54
Rumelili, 2012, p. 505
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
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Summary
Summary
The Liminality of Turkey: The Construction
Liability, Challenges and Opportunities
of a Liminal Position Between Asset and
Zakaria Haffar
At the crossroads of space, history, and memory, Turkey is a permanent challenge
to discourses of structure and identity, brought under scrutiny by the European admission
process and undergoing a shift of foreign policy in the last decade. With the help of the
analytical framework of liminality, this work attempts to offer a a broader perspective on
Turkey's position by addressing not only the current position of the country betwixt and
between structures, but the very construction of this spatial structure, and its weight in
modern-day discourse about or against Turkey and the admission process. This analysis of
a liminal position hopefully enables a better understanding of both Turkey's role and future
with Europe, and the challenges the country has to face and solve in a quest for democracy,
power, and regional leadership.
HAFFAR Zakaria - 2013
59