Pub Date : 2023-02-14DOI: 10.1177/03043754231155754
M. Amoah
The exacerbation of terrorism in Sahelian West and Central Africa and the presence of foreign legions in aid of counterterrorism has generated research interest in private military companies (PMCs) as legions, including drone legions. This article discusses the French Legion in Mali, PMC Wagner in Central Africa Republic (CAR) and United States (US) drone legions in Sahelian West and Central Africa which is entirely francophone. French Legion disengagements from counterterrorism assignments in Mali and CAR due to increasing operational challenges compounded by policy disagreements with host governments or political disenchantment, also ushered in PMC Wagner, while US drone PMCs provided surveillance and intelligence. The choreography between France’s hard-line policy not to negotiate with terrorists and Mali’s decision to negotiate with terrorists, points to a gradual development across governmental, non-governmental and military circles home and abroad rather than an overnight policy switch against the French. The consensus going forward is a cautious dialogue with the terrorists. Meanwhile, Wagner incursions across Africa have re-ignited Cold War East–West competition for African alliances. With the proliferation of legion presence, African militaries have become actors in the foreign policy agendas of whichever legions they host, whether French, Russian or American. However, there are no guarantees yet that drone operators would protect drone hosts from terrorist backlash.
{"title":"Private Military Companies, Foreign Legions and Counterterrorism in Mali and Central African Republic","authors":"M. Amoah","doi":"10.1177/03043754231155754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754231155754","url":null,"abstract":"The exacerbation of terrorism in Sahelian West and Central Africa and the presence of foreign legions in aid of counterterrorism has generated research interest in private military companies (PMCs) as legions, including drone legions. This article discusses the French Legion in Mali, PMC Wagner in Central Africa Republic (CAR) and United States (US) drone legions in Sahelian West and Central Africa which is entirely francophone. French Legion disengagements from counterterrorism assignments in Mali and CAR due to increasing operational challenges compounded by policy disagreements with host governments or political disenchantment, also ushered in PMC Wagner, while US drone PMCs provided surveillance and intelligence. The choreography between France’s hard-line policy not to negotiate with terrorists and Mali’s decision to negotiate with terrorists, points to a gradual development across governmental, non-governmental and military circles home and abroad rather than an overnight policy switch against the French. The consensus going forward is a cautious dialogue with the terrorists. Meanwhile, Wagner incursions across Africa have re-ignited Cold War East–West competition for African alliances. With the proliferation of legion presence, African militaries have become actors in the foreign policy agendas of whichever legions they host, whether French, Russian or American. However, there are no guarantees yet that drone operators would protect drone hosts from terrorist backlash.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"48 1","pages":"133 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46093951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-16DOI: 10.1177/03043754231151467
Babatunde F. Obamamoye
The neo-Gramscian scholarship locates the agency of common sense in the reproduction of the hegemonic world order but under-theorises the underpinnings for dissimilar subaltern responses to common sense. This article draws on insights from Gramsci and anti-colonial thinkers to unpack three analytical categories for investigating subaltern consent and dissent in hegemonic orders. These analytical categories offer a tripartite framework which maintains the central theoretical argument that the key underlying rationale why some subaltern social groups consent to the hegemonic order while others dissent from the same order could be found in the subaltern past experience, (non)commitment to alternative ideologies and level of socio-political consciousness. Essentially, the article contributes to the theoretical discussion of the re/unmaking of hegemony and demonstrates how neo-Gramscian analysts could further reconnect with Gramsci and engage the postcolonial literature to enhance our understanding of the continuity and disruption of hegemonic orders in the world periphery.
{"title":"When Neo-Gramscians Engage the Postcolonial: Insights into Subaltern Consent and Dissent in the Re/Unmaking of Hegemonic Orders","authors":"Babatunde F. Obamamoye","doi":"10.1177/03043754231151467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754231151467","url":null,"abstract":"The neo-Gramscian scholarship locates the agency of common sense in the reproduction of the hegemonic world order but under-theorises the underpinnings for dissimilar subaltern responses to common sense. This article draws on insights from Gramsci and anti-colonial thinkers to unpack three analytical categories for investigating subaltern consent and dissent in hegemonic orders. These analytical categories offer a tripartite framework which maintains the central theoretical argument that the key underlying rationale why some subaltern social groups consent to the hegemonic order while others dissent from the same order could be found in the subaltern past experience, (non)commitment to alternative ideologies and level of socio-political consciousness. Essentially, the article contributes to the theoretical discussion of the re/unmaking of hegemony and demonstrates how neo-Gramscian analysts could further reconnect with Gramsci and engage the postcolonial literature to enhance our understanding of the continuity and disruption of hegemonic orders in the world periphery.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"48 1","pages":"115 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44596984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-20DOI: 10.1177/03043754221147131
Bahar Rumelili
This conclusion to the special issue provides an overview of the contributions.
特刊的这一结论概述了所作的贡献。
{"title":"Conclusion: Status, ontological insecurity and authoritarianism","authors":"Bahar Rumelili","doi":"10.1177/03043754221147131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754221147131","url":null,"abstract":"This conclusion to the special issue provides an overview of the contributions.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"48 1","pages":"108 - 111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42172332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1177/03043754221134901
C. Turner, Brent J. Steele
This paper examines the racial and religious historical influences on US ontological insecurity in a time of perceived hegemonic decline. It explores the role of particular Protestant theologies from the time of slavery up through the present, and how views on white superiority shaped such thought even after abolition, through Reconstruction, and especially animating the rise of the US as a world power in the 20th Century.
{"title":"Race, Religion, and the Echoes of Status Insecurity in US Foreign Policy","authors":"C. Turner, Brent J. Steele","doi":"10.1177/03043754221134901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754221134901","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the racial and religious historical influences on US ontological insecurity in a time of perceived hegemonic decline. It explores the role of particular Protestant theologies from the time of slavery up through the present, and how views on white superiority shaped such thought even after abolition, through Reconstruction, and especially animating the rise of the US as a world power in the 20th Century.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"48 1","pages":"74 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48073892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-08DOI: 10.1177/03043754221138186
Umut Can Adısönmez, Recep Onursal, L. Öztig
The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been unfolding over a long period, influencing the politics and conflicts in the Middle East. The dynamics, content, and form of the rivalry have changed dramatically following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Sectarianism is frequently seen as the constitutive element of the conflict between the two countries. This paper brings a new light into the literature on the nature of the evolving Saudi–Iran rivalry. Specifically, it explains Saudi Arabia’s ideational balancing and threat perception against Iran by highlighting the ontological security narratives under which the Saudi–Iran rivalry evolves. In doing so, it draws on the fatwas (i.e., religious opinions), issued by Saudi scholars, as an empirical object of investigation, and explores how they constitute and reconstitute Saudi Arabia’s ontological security narratives. In this way, this work critically explains the ontological security regime in Saudi Arabia and the nature of the political struggle and antagonism between the two countries.
{"title":"Quest for Regional Hegemony: The Politics of Ontological Insecurity in the Saudi–Iran Rivalry","authors":"Umut Can Adısönmez, Recep Onursal, L. Öztig","doi":"10.1177/03043754221138186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754221138186","url":null,"abstract":"The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been unfolding over a long period, influencing the politics and conflicts in the Middle East. The dynamics, content, and form of the rivalry have changed dramatically following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Sectarianism is frequently seen as the constitutive element of the conflict between the two countries. This paper brings a new light into the literature on the nature of the evolving Saudi–Iran rivalry. Specifically, it explains Saudi Arabia’s ideational balancing and threat perception against Iran by highlighting the ontological security narratives under which the Saudi–Iran rivalry evolves. In doing so, it draws on the fatwas (i.e., religious opinions), issued by Saudi scholars, as an empirical object of investigation, and explores how they constitute and reconstitute Saudi Arabia’s ontological security narratives. In this way, this work critically explains the ontological security regime in Saudi Arabia and the nature of the political struggle and antagonism between the two countries.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"48 1","pages":"91 - 107"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42514672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-03DOI: 10.1177/03043754221123467
Pasko Kisić Merino, Catarina Kinnvall
Focusing on the debates on ‘due impartiality’ provided to far-right leaders in Swedish media, this article uses a Lacanian approach to address the relationship between the practices of normalisation of far-right discourses and fantasies, and the evolution of emotional governance at the interstice of old (i.e. traditional) and new (e.g. social media) media. Emotional governance refers to the everyday emotionally charged utterances and statements made by political leaders. However, this phenomenon can also be read in a larger Foucauldian sense as techniques of surveillance, control and manipulation and as related to narrative representational fantasies. Studies dealing with the normalisation of far-right discourse from a media perspective tend to focus on framing, journalistic norms, market structures and business incentives. We aim to expand these perspectives by opening a discussion on the interplay between the ontological (in)securities attached to the emotional governance of far-right leaders, and the techno-social affordances and roles provided to (and by) ‘old’ and ’new’ actors in the hybrid media ecosystem. We further analyse this interplay by looking at the particular fantasies embedded in it and the consequences of the enactment of ‘due impartiality' and equal footing’ norms and practices in the Swedish media landscape.
{"title":"Governing Emotions: Hybrid media, Ontological Insecurity and the Normalisation of Far-Right Fantasies","authors":"Pasko Kisić Merino, Catarina Kinnvall","doi":"10.1177/03043754221123467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754221123467","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on the debates on ‘due impartiality’ provided to far-right leaders in Swedish media, this article uses a Lacanian approach to address the relationship between the practices of normalisation of far-right discourses and fantasies, and the evolution of emotional governance at the interstice of old (i.e. traditional) and new (e.g. social media) media. Emotional governance refers to the everyday emotionally charged utterances and statements made by political leaders. However, this phenomenon can also be read in a larger Foucauldian sense as techniques of surveillance, control and manipulation and as related to narrative representational fantasies. Studies dealing with the normalisation of far-right discourse from a media perspective tend to focus on framing, journalistic norms, market structures and business incentives. We aim to expand these perspectives by opening a discussion on the interplay between the ontological (in)securities attached to the emotional governance of far-right leaders, and the techno-social affordances and roles provided to (and by) ‘old’ and ’new’ actors in the hybrid media ecosystem. We further analyse this interplay by looking at the particular fantasies embedded in it and the consequences of the enactment of ‘due impartiality' and equal footing’ norms and practices in the Swedish media landscape.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"48 1","pages":"54 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49515724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-31DOI: 10.1177/03043754221135411
Emel Parlar Dal, Samiratou Dipama
This paper investigates whether the Triangular Development Cooperation (TDC) in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is foreseeable or not between the EU and Turkey. In doing so, we first built a new and original framework based upon five independent variables as follows: (1) foreign policy interests and strategic areas in the recipient country; (2) Convergence of development policy modalities and practices; (3) level of interdependence between DAC-donor and southern provider; (4) friendly relations and share of norms and values between the development cooperation providers and (5) African leaders’ perception about the added value of the TDC. Second, we tested these five variables in our case studies to determine the TDC’s likelihood level between the EU and Turkey in the SSA by using three indicators as follows: positive, negative or partially positive. In this vein, it first profiles Turkey’s and the EU’s position as development aid providers in the SSA to highlight their specificities. Then, it examines the TDC's main features, strengths and weaknesses.
{"title":"Assessing the EU’s and Turkey’s Triangular Development Cooperation partnership in the Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"Emel Parlar Dal, Samiratou Dipama","doi":"10.1177/03043754221135411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754221135411","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates whether the Triangular Development Cooperation (TDC) in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is foreseeable or not between the EU and Turkey. In doing so, we first built a new and original framework based upon five independent variables as follows: (1) foreign policy interests and strategic areas in the recipient country; (2) Convergence of development policy modalities and practices; (3) level of interdependence between DAC-donor and southern provider; (4) friendly relations and share of norms and values between the development cooperation providers and (5) African leaders’ perception about the added value of the TDC. Second, we tested these five variables in our case studies to determine the TDC’s likelihood level between the EU and Turkey in the SSA by using three indicators as follows: positive, negative or partially positive. In this vein, it first profiles Turkey’s and the EU’s position as development aid providers in the SSA to highlight their specificities. Then, it examines the TDC's main features, strengths and weaknesses.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"47 1","pages":"209 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44863650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-29DOI: 10.1177/03043754221136500
E. Aydinli
With the end of the Cold War and through the start of the 21st century, conventional IR theories were anticipating an eventual balancing against the United States. Puzzled when this phenomenon did not occur, balancing theorists engaged in a lively discussion, bringing with it the development of proposed alternative forms of balancing and a debate over whether the concept itself had perhaps outlived its relevance. This article reengages with this discussion, suggesting that many of the involved theorists were hampered by theoretical blinders based on statism, and that in fact balancing did occur, but in an unconventional manner and at the hands of an unexpected suspect: al Qaeda, a violent non-state actor, acting in a transnational manner. In this context, this article treats the 9/11 attacks of the violent Jihadist anti-Western movement as an instance of balancing against the hegemon, a successful one in that the Jihadists arguably aimed not at “winning,” but at revealing the superpower’s weaknesses so that others would subsequently join the balancing effort. By failing to view the Jihadists’ efforts as an ideological balancing effort, the United States responded with force rather than ideational counter-balancing. They waged a war instead of emphasizing efforts to separate the radical violent Jihadist perpetrators from the idea they were championing—a struggle in the name of Muslims/the downtrodden East against the United States—and thus allowing the challenger to rise into a position of "dissident" in the Muslim world, and, arguably, paving the path for today's state revisionist behaviors. The article proposes a framework based on traditionally state-based concepts of intent and impact/capacity to show how non-state actors can in fact balance superpowers and therefore should be incorporated into balancing theories, and presents the actions of the violent Jihadists as an example of transnational, ideational balancing—a phenomenon as real and consequential as state-balancing.
{"title":"9/11 was an Instance of Transnational Balancing: An Intervention in Statist IR Theory","authors":"E. Aydinli","doi":"10.1177/03043754221136500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754221136500","url":null,"abstract":"With the end of the Cold War and through the start of the 21st century, conventional IR theories were anticipating an eventual balancing against the United States. Puzzled when this phenomenon did not occur, balancing theorists engaged in a lively discussion, bringing with it the development of proposed alternative forms of balancing and a debate over whether the concept itself had perhaps outlived its relevance. This article reengages with this discussion, suggesting that many of the involved theorists were hampered by theoretical blinders based on statism, and that in fact balancing did occur, but in an unconventional manner and at the hands of an unexpected suspect: al Qaeda, a violent non-state actor, acting in a transnational manner. In this context, this article treats the 9/11 attacks of the violent Jihadist anti-Western movement as an instance of balancing against the hegemon, a successful one in that the Jihadists arguably aimed not at “winning,” but at revealing the superpower’s weaknesses so that others would subsequently join the balancing effort. By failing to view the Jihadists’ efforts as an ideological balancing effort, the United States responded with force rather than ideational counter-balancing. They waged a war instead of emphasizing efforts to separate the radical violent Jihadist perpetrators from the idea they were championing—a struggle in the name of Muslims/the downtrodden East against the United States—and thus allowing the challenger to rise into a position of \"dissident\" in the Muslim world, and, arguably, paving the path for today's state revisionist behaviors. The article proposes a framework based on traditionally state-based concepts of intent and impact/capacity to show how non-state actors can in fact balance superpowers and therefore should be incorporated into balancing theories, and presents the actions of the violent Jihadists as an example of transnational, ideational balancing—a phenomenon as real and consequential as state-balancing.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"47 1","pages":"175 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47937188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-16DOI: 10.1177/03043754221126279
Dan Öberg, Linus Hagström
There is an emerging debate about the role and importance of women in right-wing nationalist movements. Drawing on research that highlights the need to study such women as active and complex political agents, this article examines a phenomenon that has previously received little attention—the activism of female Japanese nationalists. We approach the question of how such activism is practiced by analyzing a group interview with female nationalists, a nationalist manga centering on women’s experiences, and autobiographic books on such activism by and for Japanese women. The article contributes by arguing that female nationalist agency in Japan is a complex phenomenon, which is enacted through everyday micro-practices. It outlines how female nationalist activism draws upon and enhances, as well as challenges and transcends, a traditional Japanese “housewife identity.” As such, the female Japanese nationalist is imagined as having access to certain truths. She takes on the role of “truth-teller,” who is playing a strategic role in “waking people up” to the nationalist cause by voicing anger but also making space for a more “joyful,” “cute,” and inconspicuous everyday activism.
{"title":"Female Nationalist Activism in Japan: Truth-Telling Through Everyday Micro-Practices","authors":"Dan Öberg, Linus Hagström","doi":"10.1177/03043754221126279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754221126279","url":null,"abstract":"There is an emerging debate about the role and importance of women in right-wing nationalist movements. Drawing on research that highlights the need to study such women as active and complex political agents, this article examines a phenomenon that has previously received little attention—the activism of female Japanese nationalists. We approach the question of how such activism is practiced by analyzing a group interview with female nationalists, a nationalist manga centering on women’s experiences, and autobiographic books on such activism by and for Japanese women. The article contributes by arguing that female nationalist agency in Japan is a complex phenomenon, which is enacted through everyday micro-practices. It outlines how female nationalist activism draws upon and enhances, as well as challenges and transcends, a traditional Japanese “housewife identity.” As such, the female Japanese nationalist is imagined as having access to certain truths. She takes on the role of “truth-teller,” who is playing a strategic role in “waking people up” to the nationalist cause by voicing anger but also making space for a more “joyful,” “cute,” and inconspicuous everyday activism.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"47 1","pages":"194 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44363718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-31DOI: 10.1177/03043754221116738
N. Sandal, A. Ozturk
Authoritarian leaders try to create an environment conducive to the maintenance of their own ontological security. In this study, we advance a theory of tripartite securitization marked by critical junctures that shed light on how authoritarian actors establish a sense of security for themselves when they govern. Using elite interviews with actors from Turkey’s different political parties, we argue that the three major steps towards authoritarianism in Turkey involved restructuring core institutions and ‘cleansing’ them of the perceived hostile elements; doubling down on securitising existing internal and external ‘enemy’ identities; and securitising rivals that cannot be co-opted in the political process. This tripartite securitization starts with what we call ‘desecuritisation of the self’ in cases where the party in power itself was once the target of securitising acts. We trace how tripartite securitisation has unfolded in Turkey under the AK Party government, and we identify three critical junctures associated with this securitisation process: The Ergenekon and Balyoz Trials, the KCK Trials and the 2016 Failed Coup Attempt.
{"title":"Critical Junctures of Securitisation: The Case of the AK Party in Turkey","authors":"N. Sandal, A. Ozturk","doi":"10.1177/03043754221116738","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754221116738","url":null,"abstract":"Authoritarian leaders try to create an environment conducive to the maintenance of their own ontological security. In this study, we advance a theory of tripartite securitization marked by critical junctures that shed light on how authoritarian actors establish a sense of security for themselves when they govern. Using elite interviews with actors from Turkey’s different political parties, we argue that the three major steps towards authoritarianism in Turkey involved restructuring core institutions and ‘cleansing’ them of the perceived hostile elements; doubling down on securitising existing internal and external ‘enemy’ identities; and securitising rivals that cannot be co-opted in the political process. This tripartite securitization starts with what we call ‘desecuritisation of the self’ in cases where the party in power itself was once the target of securitising acts. We trace how tripartite securitisation has unfolded in Turkey under the AK Party government, and we identify three critical junctures associated with this securitisation process: The Ergenekon and Balyoz Trials, the KCK Trials and the 2016 Failed Coup Attempt.","PeriodicalId":46677,"journal":{"name":"Alternatives","volume":"48 1","pages":"38 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42201866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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