From the Atlantic Pact to NATO: Debating Turkey's location and function in the Turkish Grand National Assembly

Abstract

This article, using critical geopolitics as a framework, analyzes identity formation in Turkey during Turkey's NATO accession. The main thesis of this article is that identity that is made through foreign policy discourse should not only be confined to debates about location, culture and values but should also include a country's own perceptions about its international function. This article analyzes debates in the Turkish Grand National Assembly just before and after Turkey's NATO accession and it argues that though Turkish elites perceived itself as part of the West in terms of location, culture and values, this was not the case in terms of international function. By becoming the disseminator of the Western security understanding to the Middle East as part of the West, Turkey during these years has started to carve itself a liminal identity. This limnality, however, was a covert one because Turkey perceived itself as part of the West in terms of location, culture and values, but assumed an in-between role in terms of function in the international system.