Theory importation and the death of homegrown disciplinary potential: an autopsy of Turkish IR

Abstract

A primary premise of the Global IR initiative is its emphasis on world history as a basis for global IR theorising. While non-Western contributions are thus critical, periphery IR disciplinary communities operate under the dominance and homogenising effect of core IR theories based on Western history and intellectual traditions. An import-­dependent culture takes over periphery disciplinary communities, neutralising their potential for original IR production and theory creation. This study explores these assumptions by focusing on the case of Turkish IR; providing an evaluation of its evolution and current status, and suggesting lessons it might have for other periphery communities and the future of Global IR overall. It offers a longitudinal qualitative investigation of Turkish IR scholars’ perceptions of their community’s evolution. They suggest that Turkish IR has become a dependent ­consumer of core IR theory and devalued its history base, leaving it bifurcated between a minority ‘core-of-the-periphery’ who operate as ‘compradors’, copying and marketing global core knowledge, and a majority ‘periphery-of-the-periphery’, who remain voiceless, disconnected and resentful. Ultimately, the local community is unable to offer original contributions to the globalisation of IR, and the global IR movement is structurally diminished through the exclusion of large portions of the scholarly community.

Keywords:

• Global IR
• IR theory
• Turkish IR
• dependency
• periphery

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I am well aware of the various problems involved with using terms like ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, ‘West’ and ‘the rest’, or even global North and South. They are at best imprecise, and they run the risk of reifying binary hierarchies in the discipline (Alejandro 2017; Gelardi 2020). Nevertheless, they provide familiar terms for referring to a distinction that is not only identified and discussed at length in the literature, but is, equally importantly, clearly recognized in the lived experiences of the ‘periphery’ scholars whose perspectives are the primary focus of this article. For this reason the terms are used here, and defined in this article with a broadly linguistic understanding of the ‘core’ referring to North America, the UK and Oceania, and the ‘periphery’ being comprised of the non-Anglo-American ‘rest’.

Additional information

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Ersel Aydinli

Ersel Aydinli is a professor in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara. His research interests include the disciplinary sociology of international relations, international security with a focus on non-state actors, and Turkey’s security strategy and foreign policy. He has published a number of books, including Violent Non-State Actors: From Anarchists to Jihadists (Routledge, 2016), and articles in such journals as the Journal of Peace Research, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Democracy, Security Dialogue, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Middle East Journal, Terrorism and Political Violence, Review of International Studies, International Studies Review, International Studies Perspectives, International Theory, and Foreign Policy Analysis.