The Foreign Policy- Hegemony Nexus: Turkey’s Search for a “New” Subjectivity in World Politics and Its Implications for US-Turkish Relations

Year 2012, Volume: 17 Issue: 4, 159 - 184, 01.01.2012

Ali Aslan

Abstract

The linkage between foreign policy and hegemony is admitted but has not been systematically analysed in the study of Turkish foreign policy. One of the key reasons for this is the absence of analytical tools that conceptualise the linkage between foreign policy and hegemony. In response to this gap, this study presents postfoundational/post-structural analytical tools to study the linkage. In addition, it applies those tools to analyse the far-reaching transformation in Turkish-American relations in the context of Turkey’s search for a new subjectivity in world politics. It argues there have been two main periods in Turkish-American relations since the AK Party came to power: an era of “lack of understanding” between the years 2002 and 2006, and the era after the parties had come to a “new understanding” since 2006

Keywords

Post-structuralism, foreign policy, hegemony, AK Party, Turkish-American relations.

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