Political Science Ph.D. Student Doğu Durgun's Conference Participation

Political Science PhD student, Doğu Durgun, has been accepted to ISA 2012 Annual Convention to present his paper "The Gendering of Geopolitical Space: A feminist perspective on Ahmet Davutoğlu’s foreign policy discourse." between April 1-4, 2012.

Abstract: Turkey is increasingly seen as an important regional actor in its surroundings. The purpose of this article is to develop a gender sensitive yet theoretically governed account of Turkish foreign policy discourse towards its surrounding regions - the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East – as well as towards its domestic sphere in this regional awakening process. Methodologically, the article draws on a discourse analysis on “Strategic Depth” of Ahmet Davutoğlu, the prominent scholar of international relations and the Foreign Minister of Turkey who is globally recognized as the main architect of Turkish foreign policy in the recent years. Theoretically, it adopts a poststructuralist feminist approach, emphasizing the performative construction of Turkey as a priori masculine entity through an intertextual constitution of meaning and a certain boundary-producing discourse. The paper argues that Ahmet Davutoğlu’s strategic depth vision is gendered in the sense that it exploits one interpretation of the Ottoman past and post-Cold War geopolitics to reproduce Turkey as a solemn yet hegemonic father towards its neighboring “outside” and the “inside.”