Abstract :
This study argues that there are two prominent Eurasianist discourses in Turkey, the Kemalist and the Ottomanist, and that these traditions draw on three geopolitical traditions: the nationalist, the socialist, and the Islamist. The contents of three representative journals (the nationalist Türk Yurdu, the socialist Teori, and the conservative democrat Türkiye Günlüğü) are analyzed, investigating their issues published between 1990 and 2010, in order to seek answers to three main questions: First, what distinguishes these three types of geopolitical traditions? Second, did the nationalist and socialist Eurasianist views in recent years converge on each other, thereby forming the Ulusalcı view, while the Islamist Eurasianists became the new opposing pole? Third, insofar as the answer to the second question is yes, why did this realignment take place? In response to the first question, this study shows that the geopolitical visions of these three groups and the way they imagine the past help to explain their respective perspectives of Eurasia and how they place Turkey in these perspectives. In response to the second question, again this research shows that the nationalist and socialist visions of Eurasianism did indeed converge on each other. The research then maintains that this happened because the Islamist circles in the Post- Cold War allied with the liberal groups and developed a “counter-memory” of the past that became an alternative to the Kemalist historiography, while the nationalist and socialist geopolitical traditions remained faithful to the Kemalist narrative of the past.
NaturalLanguageKeyword :
Turkish Eurasianism , Ulusalcılık , critical geopolitics , collective memory , Post , Cold War Turkish politics , historiographical dispute , Turkish geopolitical tradition.
