Implications of Turkey's Politicized Kin-community-making in the Balkans: Transitive Turkish Identity in North Macedonia

Activity: Talk or presentationOral presentation

Description

Direct contact and communication with kin abroad has become one of the characteristic features of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) period's foreign policy that is driven by domestic politics. In this period, instrumentalization of religion in kin politics and extraterritorial authoritarian practices by using a civilizational belonging (Islamic civilization) and a transnational historical memory (Ottoman legacy) are causing Turkey to take its place among post-imperial kin-states. Since the early 2010s, Turkish so-called soft power in the Balkans has markedly shifted from charitable undertaking policies of the early 90s and 2000s towards political ambitions of the ruling regime at numerous fronts. These include import of politics with the intense political polarization from Turkey to its kin communities in the sovereign states and employment of Turkish state institutions to intervene in the ethno-politics in ethnically divided nations. In this respect, this article builds on how the religious-oriented and political polarization export from the kin-state affects the national identity of a kin-minority in ethnically divided society. This article aims to take a brief look at the perception of transitive Turkishness in North Macedonia, which emerged as a result of Turkey’s transnational identity policies, in the context of Rogers Brubaker's well-known triadic nexus.
Period30 Oct 2021
Event titleInternational Conference on Business, Technology and Innovation : International Conference on Political Science & International Relations
Event typeConference
Conference number10
LocationPristina, KosovoShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Kin-politics
  • Turkey
  • North Macedonia
  • National Identity
  • Kin-state
  • Political Polarization