Alternative modernities and epistemic struggles for recognition in Turkish media: deconstructing Eurocentrism?

Abstract

The concept of modernity and its association with the West and secularism is being challenged with the rise of religious movements in the age of globalisation. This provides a fertile ground for alternative modernities, disconnected from the West and secularism, to surface. This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the emergence of alternative modernities by drawing on insights from epistemic injustice and recognition theory, through an analysis of Turkish media outlets. Turkey serves as an illustrative case to examine the emergence of alternative modernities due to its long-standing tradition of incorporating Western modernity and its complex liminal identity between the boundaries of the East and the West. This paper argues that the period from 2005 to 2020 presented a window of opportunity for an alternative modernities paradigm to engage in epistemic struggles for recognition, supported by the ideological context of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AKP) government. This period paved the way for questioning the superiority and uniqueness of Western modernity. However, it also indicates the birth of a new form of epistemic injustice as counter-narratives defending the superiority of Islamic civilisation emerged, seeking to establish epistemic hegemony for Islam and its association with modernity.

Keywords:

• Alternative modernity
• Eurocentrism
• epistemic injustice
• recognition theory
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that have greatly enhanced the quality and clarity of our work. Additionally, we extend our heartfelt appreciation to the editors for their devoted time and effort in handling our manuscript, their meticulous attention to detail, and their unwavering commitment to upholding the scholarly standards of the publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This archive is obtained from the Turkish Grand National Assembly upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by Jean Monnet Chair on “Feminist Epistemic Justice in the EU and Beyond” by the European Commission under Grant Agreement-101085368-FEJUST.

Notes on contributors

Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm

Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations and Jean Monnet Chair on Feminist Epistemic Justice within the EU and Beyond (FEJUST) at Bahçeşehir University. She is also an associate member of the Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP). She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research focuses on Europeanisation, EU foreign policy, Turkish foreign policy, epistemic injustice, gendering EU studies, gender, and diplomacy. She is the author of ‘Conditionality, the EU and Turkey: From Transformation to Retrenchment’ (Routledge, 2019) and co-editor of ‘Feminist Framing of Europeanisation: Gender Equality Policies in Turkey and the EU’ (Palgrave, 2021).

Elif Gençkal-Eroler

Elif Gençkal-Eroler is Assistant Professor at Istanbul Topkapı University. She graduated from Cağaloğlu Anatolian High School (in German). After completing her undergraduate education at Marmara University, Department of Political Science and International Relations (in English), she completed her master’s degree in European Studies at Leibniz Universitaet Hannover (in German and English), and received her PhD from the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Yıldız Technical University. Dr. Eroler’s doctoral thesis, titled “Nation and Citizen Building in Educational Policies of Turkey (2002-2016)”, completed in 2017, was published by İletişim Publishing in 2019. Her research interests encompass nationalism, national identity, gender, modernisation and Westernisation. She is interested in evaluating the processes of Westernisation and modernisation in nation-states from a non-Eurocentric perspective, considering multiple and alternative modernities.