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Securitized identities and less secure western multi-ethnic states: a critical geopolitics of the East–West discourse – Turkey and beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Tabish Shah
Tabish Shah*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, UK. Email: t.shah@warwick.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article explores the implications of monolithic notions of “East” and “West” for security within ethno-religiously diverse nation-states. It builds on literature within critical geopolitics by recognizing not only that homogeneous notions of the “West” and its “Others” were formed for the purpose of legitimizing ideological and physical contestations of geographical space, and that they continue to operate, but also that this has made nation-states substantially less secure at the intra-state level. Travel accounts by Western European and American travellers to Turkey from 1989 onwards are used as data to explore this. The content of these accounts mirrors the wider East–West discourse; considered together with Turkey's popularly described position “at the crossroads” of Europe and Asia, the texts lend themselves to salient discussion of identity, culture, and difference between the hegemonic “West” and its “Others.” The post-1989 decolonized, post-Cold War period enables us to work within a contemporary context in which the opening of geographical space has occurred, and allows us to test whether “Western” identity in its hegemonic form of Western Europe and the US has evolved to accommodate this new context.

Keywords

geopoliticsethnic conflictsecurityidentitypolitical geography
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 393 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

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Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. “Hegemony of a New Type.” In The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic, 1997: 3–11. Print.Google Scholar
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Dodds, Klaus, and Atkinson, David, eds. Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony, and Held, David, eds. Classes, Power, and Conflict: Classical and Contemporary Debates. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Hosking, G. The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Imber, C. The Ottoman Empire 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Macmillan, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. W., and Wigen, K. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. California: U of California P, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Neumann, I. V. Uses of the Other: “The East” in European Identity Formation. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
O'Tuathail, Gearoid. “Putting Mackinder in his Place: Material Transformations and Myth.” Political Geography 11.1 (1992): 100–18. Print.Google Scholar
Pratt, M. L. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Said, E. W. Orientalism. London: Vintage, 1978. Print.Google Scholar
Todorova, M. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Wolff, L. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar