Turkish Foreign Policy and Social Identity Theory: From Creativity to Competition

While scholars in the realist tradition of International Relations often presume that states primarily seek material security through their foreign policies, other approaches within the discipline question how such national interests are formulated. Researchers in political psychology have noted that state leaders often seem more motivated to pursue social status vis-à-vis other states rather than acting in strategic ways more likely to reduce the threat of material harm or avert military risks. Applying Henri Tajfel’s notion of Social Identity Theory to states themselves, political psychology IR scholars like Deborah Larson and Alexei Shevchenko have observed states (such as Russia and China) acting in ways that closely resemble individual attempts to renegotiate status within hierarchies: seeking to emulate members of higher-status groups, using creativity to increase one’s social value by adopting new strategies to raise one’s social rank, and/or directly challenging high-status individuals to claim that member’s rank in the hierarchy. This paper tests hypotheses drawn from Social Identity Theory, Constructivism, and Realism using case studies from Turkish foreign policy since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Like today’s Russia and China, the Turkish state that emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire bore a historical memory of imperial grandeur. However, throughout most of its history Turkish political leaders showed comparatively little appetite for revanchism - until the present day. This paper divides Turkish history into four periods in which it appeared to pursue status through different social strategies: 1923-1945, when the young Turkish Republic displayed ‘social creativity’ and focused on modernization plans inspired by both Western and Soviet sources, while remaining neutral and independent; 1946-2003, when it pursued ‘social mobility’ and sought its place within a NATO and US-led Western order; 2003-2014, when Turkey adopted ‘social creativity’ again, pursuing closer ties with both East and West while drawing on Ottoman legacies to enhance its soft power in its near abroad; and 2014-today, when Turkey challenges its NATO allies and competes with Russia and Iran to be a regional standalone power. Can these phases be explained more convincingly by analyzing Turkey’s hard security interests, or by expanding the concept of national interests to include the pursuit of socially-experienced feelings of status within hierarchical relationships? Are Constructivist explanations more effective in explaining these different phases, with their belief in the socializing power of interstate interactions, or does Social Identity Theory, with its attention to social competition and hierarchy, perform better? The paper concludes with a reflection on other cases and makes suggestions for future research.