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 East began to undergo a major transformation. The first demonstrations took place in Central Tunisia, and after a while, a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions spread across the whole region. With this process, defined as “Arab Spring”, any country affected by the rebellion wave has experienced different political developments and started to follow different routes. Turkey, as a regional country, has not only monitor developments, but instead followed a very active foreign policy towards the transformations occurred. The aim of this paper is to understand and situate Turkish discourse about Arab upheavals in the international environment, specifically in UN General Assembly. Through asking “how” questions, the construction and hierarchical positioning of different actors in the process will seek to be analyzed. The concepts of “presupposition”, “predication” and “subject positioning”, which were borrowed from Roxanne Lynn Doty, will be used as analytical categories to provide a textual framework. The representational practices through which meaning are generated is important in this study. Accordingly, the discursive identities produced by Turkish elites with their speech acts will be examined throughout the time in order to understand the attachments to various social objects and subjects in the region. Thus, both continuity and change within the Turkish discourse would be put forward.