The Western Condition - St Antony's College - University of Oxford

Faces of the West: Can Europeanisation, Americanisation and Autonomisation be reconciled?
III. Faces of the West: Can Europeanisation, Americanisation
and Autonomisation be reconciled?
What then can we infer from contemporary politics in the Middle East regarding what we called
at the outset of this paper ‘the Western condition’? In particular, what shapes perceptions and
drives “western” decision makers on both sides of the Atlantic in their dealings with Turkey?
While we cannot presume to generalise against such a fluid backdrop, something can be said
already about change and continuity. For one, that it is still the case, and perhaps more than ever,
that different geopolitical priorities, historical vantage points and experiences of socio-economic
and cultural interaction with this country mean that the story of Turkey’s ties to the West is
interpreted differently in Washington, Brussels or individual European capitals. Second, that with
the exception of the few years between the late 1990s and mid-2000s, when Turkey’s EU
membership ambitions dominated its political agenda, the United States has been at the centre of
Turkey’s engagement with the West, defining its main conceptual framework and dominant
narrative. And third, that while Turkey’s attempt to define an autonomous foreign policy free of
western entanglements might seem to have failed, it might yet take on a new shape in the post-
Arab spring configuration. In short, the challenge for Turkish policy today as we see it is now to
reconcile the three variations which have characterised its foreign policy over the last decade,
namely Europeanisation, Americanisation and the search for autonomy.
The United States and the logic of strategy
However contentious within the American body politic, sustaining US global influence continues
to define American foreign policy, and has been the underlying theme of all its bilateral relations,
including with Turkey since the beginning of the Cold War. 135 During that period, and rather
unsurprisingly, prevailing narratives of freedom, democracy and liberty often gave way to
geostrategic considerations in the conduct of policy. Turkey was no exception. Indeed, it could
be argued that its status of “America’s closest ally” in the region along with Israel all but
reinforced the authoritarian and patriarchal tendencies of the Turkish state in the last half
century. During the Cold War, the terms of Ankara’s engagement with the US and Europe, as
well as the dominant narrative of Turkey’s identity as a ‘western’ country, was determined by its
membership in the US-led western security alliance and its key geostrategic role as a frontier state
135 See Joshua W. Walker ‘The Forming of the US-Turkish Special Relationship’, in Nur Bilge Criss, Selçuk Esenbel,
Tony Greenwood and Louis Mazzari, American Turkish Encounters: Politics and Culture, 1830 – 1989 (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011); and F. Stephen Larrabee, Troubled Partnership: U.S. – Turkish Relations in an Era of
Global Geopolitical Change (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2010).
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