Turkish Discourse on Arab Upheavals in International Environment: Post-Structural Analysis of Un General Assembly Speeches (2011-2018)

Abstract

With the outbreak of the grassroots movements in December 2010, the conjuncture of the Middle Eastbegan to undergo a major transformation. The first demonstrations took place in Central Tunisia, andafter a while, a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions spread across thewhole region. With this process, defined as “Arab Spring”, any country affected by the rebellion wavehas experienced different political developments and started to follow different routes. Turkey, as aregional country, has not only monitor developments, but instead followed a very active foreign policytowards the transformations occurred. The aim of this paper is to understand and situate Turkishdiscourse about Arab upheavals in the international environment, specifically in UN General Assembly.Through asking “how” questions, the construction and hierarchical positioning of different actors inthe process will seek to be analyzed. The concepts of “presupposition”, “predication” and “subjectpositioning”, which were borrowed from Roxanne Lynn Doty, will be used as analytical categories toprovide a textual framework. The representational practices through which meaning are generated isimportant in this study. Accordingly, the discursive identities produced by Turkish elites with theirspeech acts will be examined throughout the time in order to understand the attachments to varioussocial objects and subjects in the region. Thus, both continuity and change within the Turkish discoursewould be put forward.