MANIFESTATIONS OF ISLAM IN TURKEY’S FOREIGN POLICY: ISLAMIC INTERNATIONALISM AND TURKISH ISLAM

• Authors: Hüsrev Tabak
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

PL

The incumbent government of the Justice and Development Party (Turkish - Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) has often been accused of pursuing an Islamic agenda, particularly in its foreign policy, due to its concern shown for restoring Turkey`s bonds with the Muslim countries broken off by the Kemalist regime. The post-Arab spring political developments in the neighbouring countries and Turkey embarking on religious discourse in approaching them, particularly in the cases of Egypt, Palestine, and recently Syria, have further solidified such arguments. Keeping these debates in mind, this paper aims to elaborate the actual weight Islam carries in Turkey’s AKP era of foreign policy and what such policy entails. This paper argues that Turkey’s confident use of religion in foreign policy cannot be simply defined as an “Islamic foreign policy’”, and neither can its foreign policy be disassociated from religion’s constitutive role. From the Turkish perspective, Islam manifests itself as two distinct but partly overlapping and sometimes contradictory practices, namely Islamic Internationalism and Turkish Islam. While the former refers to Turkey`s responsibility towards Muslim communities on the basis of the ummah, the latter refers to promoting the performance of Ottoman/Turkish Islamic practices abroad against the expansion of extremist ideology. In the first instance, Turkey is blamed for supporting religious extremists, yet in the second Turkey fights against extremism. Therefore, “Islamic foreign policy” being used to equally describe these two distinct policies is not helpful but rather blurs the issue and is based on a biased position.

Keywords

PL

Turkey foreign policy; Islam; Islamic internationalism; Turkish Islam

• Publisher: Fundacja Copernicus na rzecz Rozwoju Badań Naukowych
• Journal: The Copernicus Journal of Political Studies
• Year: 2017
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2017

online

2018-10-14

Contributors

author

Hüsrev Tabak

editor

Grzegorz Kopcewicz

editor

Natalia Olszanecka

editor

Daniel Urbański

editor

Joanna Piechowiak-Lamparska

editor

Agnieszka Bryc

editor

Bartosz Bojarczyk

editor

Feride Asli Ergul Jorgensen

editor

Dorota Niedziołka

editor

Anna Pacześniak

editor

Radosław Potorski

editor

Maria Wincławska

editor

Agata Włodkowska-Bagan

editor

Agnieszka Jeran

editor

Anna Mol

editor

Alex Solsbery

editor

Izabela Dąbrowska

editor

Mirosław Głodkowski

other

Grzegorz Kopcewicz

other

Natalia Olszanecka

other

Joanna Piechowiak-Lamparska

Identifiers

DOI

10.12775/CJPS.2017.001