Ebook: The Kosovar Turks and Post-Kemalist Turkey: Foreign Policy, Socialisation and Resistance

Even before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Turkic communities, living in states newly independent from Ottoman rule, were “protected” by the Ottomans. With the creation of the new Turkish Republic, the notion of “Outside Turks” became embedded in a new foreign policy which aimed to unite these communities to the homeland. This book explores why, after 1980, and particularly during the Justice and Development Party rule, the country’s domestic agenda was transformed to imagine Outside Turks along cultural and religious lines, rather than in a purely ethnic sense. Husrev Tabak provides a foreign policy analysis to account for this vital shift, arguing that four post-Kemalist norms are responsible: Ottomania, de-ethnicised nationhood, Turkish Islam and Islamic internationalism. By focusing on the case of the Kosovar Turks, this book reveals that the post-Kemalist move to de-couple Metropolitan Turkey from Outside Turkish communities was largely counterproductive. In losing Turkey as a secure point of reference for their ethnic identity, these communities began to fashion a nationalism which gained a reactionary character. The Kosovar Turks embraced Kemalist attitudes and discourses and their sense of Turkish ethnicity was sharpened. In tracing the impact of norm changes within Turkey on ethnic Turks beyond Turkey, this book illustrates the way in which domestic norms can be used as a significant foreign policy analysis tool. With a foreword by Professor Othon Anastasakis of the University of Oxford, The Kosovar Turks and Post-Kemalist Turkey will be essential reading for those interested in Turkish foreign policy and post-Kemalism, as well as those researching the ongoing impact of the Ottoman Empire’s multinational, multicultural legacy.