Turkey and Postnational Europe Challenges for the Cosmopolitan Political Community
TL;DR: This paper argued that the possibility of an antiontological and multicultural cosmopolitan European community will largely depend on how Europe answers the question of whether Turkey should be granted membership in the EU.
Abstract: The question of Turkey's membership in the EU has been the subject of debates about the cosmopolitan future of Europe. Using the concept of cosmopolitanism as developed by Beck, Habermas, and Delanty, this article argues that the possibility of an antiontological and multicultural cosmopolitan European community will largely depend on how Europe answers the question of whether Turkey should be granted membership in the EU. Turkey forces a debate on three crucial areas that are directly related to the cosmopolitan future of Europe: (a) Europe's geopolitical place in the global world, (b) postnational forms of a European public sphere, and (c) European identity. The potential for a multicultural and pluralistic cosmopolitanism is a two-way street, and while Turkey's membership will have a transformative impact on the EU, the membership process will also have a similar impact on Turkish democracy and modernity.
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01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the view of sociologists presented in a recent book of Ulrich Beck (Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter, 2002, translated into French under the title Pouvoir et contre-pouvior a l'ere de la mondialisation, 2003), and show some analogies between Beck and Held.
Abstract: Sociology was born as an attempt to delimit an object of investigation offered by society as a social reality. The ambition was that of “treating the social facts as things” (Durkheim) or of understanding and explaining the social relations by respecting an “axiological neutrality” (Max Weber). Today, however, we are in the presence of a new kind of sociologists, and they are by no means the less popular ones, who are not trying to avoid assessments in their analysis of the present social world. I have in mind especially two sociologists, Ulrich Beck (Munich) and David Held (London). I will discuss in particular the view of sociology presented in a recent book of Ulrich Beck (Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter, 2002, translated into French under the title Pouvoir et contre-pouvoir a l’ere de la mondialisation, 2003), and I will show some analogies between Beck and Held. Finally, I will try to identify the points hat make the present sociological epistemology different from that of the great founders of this science.
615 citations
TL;DR: This article used the puzzle of Korean success in Korea to develop a model for understanding religious diffusion beyond national borders, arguing that micro-level network explanations that dominate the research on conversion cannot by themselves account for the unusual success of Protestantism in Korea.
Abstract: This article uses the puzzle of Christian success in Korea to develop a model for understanding religious diffusion beyond national borders. The authors argue that the microlevel network explanations that dominate the research on conversion cannot by themselves account for the unusual success of Protestantism in Korea. Instead, events in East Asia in macrolevel, geopolitical networks provoked nationalist rituals that altered the stakes of conversion to either promote or retard conversion network growth. At the turn of the 20th century, unequal treaties both opened this region to missionaries and provoked nationalist rituals. In China and Japan, these rituals generated patriotic identities by attacking Christianity, and network growth slowed or reversed. In Korea, Christianity became compatible with these rituals, and conversion networks grew. This example highlights the greater explanatory power of nested networks for understanding international religious diffusion, relative to microlevel accounts alone.
42 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, women affiliated with rival camps (e.g., pro-religious/prosecular, Turkish/Kurdish, liberal/leftist) can mobilize over issues like empowerment, violence against women, and education.
Abstract: Identity politics and citizenship are often envisaged in dichotomous terms, but cosmopolitan theorists believe commitments to “thin” universal values can be generated from divergent “thick” positions. Yet, they often gloss over the ways in which the nexus of thick and thin is negotiated in practice—a weak link in the cosmopolitan argument. To understand this nexus better, we turn to women’s rights organizations (WROs) in polarized Turkey to show that women affiliated with rival camps (e.g., pro-religious/pro-secular, Turkish/Kurdish, liberal/leftist) can mobilize over issues like empowerment, violence against women, and education. However, thick readings of these issues inflect upon collaboration. This has spurred pro-religious and Kurdish women to develop strategies that flag their specific concerns. As such, mutual recognition along cosmopolitan lines appears possible—and is reinforced through iterative encounters—but is not necessarily negotiated between equally empowered agents and entails complex processes of contestation and concession-making.
25 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the ways in which the increasing role and visibility of "soft power" in Turkish foreign policy operates, and suggest that to be sustainable, Turkish Foreign Policy, relying on soft power, should go hand in hand with the process of the consolidation of Turkish democracy, and also accept and put into practice Turkey-EU relations as the main axis of proactiveness and constructiveness.
Abstract: Abstract In recent years. Turkey has initiated a proactive, multi-dimensional and constructive foreign policy in many areas, ranging from contributing to peace and stability in the Middle East, to playing an active role in countering terrorism and extremism, from becoming a new “energy hub” to acting as one of the architects of “the inter-civilization dialogue initiative” aiming at producing a vision of the world, based on dialogue, tolerance and living together. Thus, there has been an upsurge of interest in, and a global attraction to, Turkey and its contemporary history. Moreover, the global attraction to Turkey has stemmed not only from the geopolitical identity of Turkey, as a strong state with the capacity to function as a “geopolitical security hinge” in the intersection of the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasian regions, but also from its cultural identity as a modern national formation with parliamentary democratic governance, secular constitutional structure and mainly Muslim population. Furthermore, as the world has become more globalized, more interdependent and more risky, this new foreign policy identity entailed the employment of not only geopolitics but also identity and economy. Thus, geopolitics, modernity and democracy have become the constitutive dimensions of Turkish foreign policy today This paper explores the ways in which the increasing role and visibility of “soft power” in Turkish foreign policy operates, and suggests that to be sustainable, Turkish foreign policy, relying on soft power, should go hand in hand with the process of the consolidation of Turkish democracy, and also accept and put into practice Turkey-EU relations as the main axis of proactiveness and constructiveness.
24 citations
22 citations
References
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Book•
01 Apr 1994
TL;DR: In this article, the authors define the distinction between Philosophical and social scientific cosmopolitanism, and discuss the politics of cosmopolitanization and anti-cosmopolitanization in the context of postnational war.
Abstract: Detailed Contents. Acknowledgements. Introduction: What is 'Cosmopolitan' about the Cosmopolitan Vision. PART ONE. Cosmopolitan Realism. Chapter 1. Global Sense, Sense of Boundarylessness: The Distinction between Philosophical and Social Scientific Cosmopolitanism. Chapter 2. The Truth of Others: On the Cosmopolitan Treatment of Difference - Distinctions, Misunderstandings, Paradoxes. Chapter 3. Cosmopolitan Society and its Adversaries. PART TWO. Concretizations, Prospects. Chapter 4. The Politics of Politics: On the Dialectic of Cosmopolitanization and Anti-Cosmopolitanization. Chapter 5. War is Peace: On Postnational War. Chapter 6. Cosmopolitan Europe: Reality and Utopia. Notes. References and Bibliography. Index.
1,199 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: Habermas's theory of democracy has at least three features that set it apart from competing positions as mentioned in this paper : it combines a concern with questions of normative justification with an empirical analysis of the social conditions necessary for the realization of democratic institutions.
Abstract: edited by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff Since its appearance in English translation in 1996, JA rgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms has become the focus of a productive dialogue between German and Anglo-American legal and political theorists. The present volume contains ten essays that provide an overview of Habermas's political thought since the original appearance of Between Facts and Norms in 1992 and extend his model of deliberative democracy in novel ways to issues untreated in the earlier work.Habermas's theory of democracy has at least three features that set it apart from competing positions. First, it combines a concern with questions of normative justification with an empirical analysis of the social conditions necessary for the realization of democratic institutions. Second, at the heart of his model is the assertion of an internal relationship between liberalism and democracy. On this account, the rights of the individual that are central to liberalism can be guaranteed only within a constitutional framework that at the same time fosters democratic rights of political participation through the public sphere. Finally, Habermas defends a conception of universal human rights that is not only sensitive to cultural differences but also calls for legal and political institutions that facilitate the cultivation of cultural and religious identities within pluralistic societies.These essays demonstrate the extraordinary power of Habermas's theory of democracy through a further engagement with Rawls's political liberalism and through original contributions to current debates over nationalism, multiculturalism, and the viability of supranational political institutions.
989 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Kagan as discussed by the authors argued that the United States and Europe are fundamentally different and argued that military power is the all important question in transatlantic relations and that only military power efficacious.
Abstract: Robert Kagan asserts that on international issues, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus" (p. 3). Picking up on classical gender associations recirculated by John Gray's advice books, this catchphrase projects onto transatlantic relations sexy notions about the supposed differences between men and women. The analogy mobilizes conventional assumptions about the supposed biological determinants of sexual difference in support of what Kagan sees as another essential truth: "The United States and Europe are fundamentally different today" (p. 6). Although Kagan's analysis is in places sophisticated, it relies on narrow, even simplistic, concepts of power, strength, and weakness. While Kagan finds power "the all important question" (p. 3), he considers only military power efficacious. In his supposedly realistic world, neither economic and political pressures, nor cultural influence and ideology (save for ideas about the use of military force) have much impact. Kagan discusses the rise of the Nazis without reference to the Great Depression, which elevated what had remained a minor party during German prosperity. Nor does he mention that until 1939, leaders in the Western democracies appreciated the internal order secured by fascism in Italy and Germany while they worried that another war would spawn communist revolutions. Ignoring such textbook history, Kagan focuses on what he calls the "psychologies of power and weakness": in the inter-war period, "a frightened France" and "the traumatized British" (p. 12) tried "to make a virtue out of weakness" (p. 13). This narrow view of power and motivation fits the book's rhetorical structure: a simplifying, polarized depiction of the post-Cold War era. In this setup, robust Americans act on realism, while less manly Europeans display "fundamental and enduring weakness" (p. 28), military "impotence" (p. 46), and an "anemic" foreign policy (p. 65). Rejecting power, Europeans opt instead for "exuberant idealism" (p. 60) and "more and more shrill..,. attacks on the United States" (p. 100). Kagan stresses Europe's "relative weakness," reiterating the point on almost every page. By depicting Europe's post-1989 decision not to match American spending on advanced weapons as a failure of will that led to "inadequacies" (p. 24), he denigrates non-military power while justifying Washington's actions. "Given a weak Europe ... the United States has no choice but to act unilaterally" (p. 99). Kagan argues that Europeans, sheltered by Washington from the "brutal laws of power politics"(p. 58), are "settling into their postmodern paradise and proselytizing for their doctrines of international law and international institutions" (p. 76). While such "doctrines" appear to the author and to many in Washington as indulgent idealism, to worldly Cold Warriors such as Dean Acheson they appeared as useful adjuncts to American hegemony. Despite the sneer at Europe and at norms of peace and cooperation still held by most Americans, Kagan's ultimate target lies "outside the laws of
905 citations
Book•
15 Aug 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the role of the Commission in the integration process of the European Union and its institutions, as well as its role in the creation of the people's Europe.
Abstract: Introduction Part One: Inventing Europe 1. Forging a European Nation-State? The European Union and Questions of Culture 2. Creating the People's Europe: Symbols, History and Invented Traditions 3. Citizenship of the Union. The Cultural Construction of a European Citizen 4. Symbolizing Boundaries: The Single Currency and the Art of European Governance Part Two: EU Civil Servants. The New Europeans? 5. A Supranational Civil Service? The Role of the Commission in the Integration Process 6. The Brussels Context. Integration and Engrenage among EU Elites 7. Transnational, Supranational or Post-National? The Organisational Culture of the Commission Conclusions
732 citations
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the view of sociologists presented in a recent book of Ulrich Beck (Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter, 2002, translated into French under the title Pouvoir et contre-pouvior a l'ere de la mondialisation, 2003), and show some analogies between Beck and Held.
Abstract: Sociology was born as an attempt to delimit an object of investigation offered by society as a social reality. The ambition was that of “treating the social facts as things” (Durkheim) or of understanding and explaining the social relations by respecting an “axiological neutrality” (Max Weber). Today, however, we are in the presence of a new kind of sociologists, and they are by no means the less popular ones, who are not trying to avoid assessments in their analysis of the present social world. I have in mind especially two sociologists, Ulrich Beck (Munich) and David Held (London). I will discuss in particular the view of sociology presented in a recent book of Ulrich Beck (Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter, 2002, translated into French under the title Pouvoir et contre-pouvoir a l’ere de la mondialisation, 2003), and I will show some analogies between Beck and Held. Finally, I will try to identify the points hat make the present sociological epistemology different from that of the great founders of this science.
615 citations