International Relations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10679/714

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Browsing by Institution Author "GÜÇLER, Arda"

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    More than a sovereign symbol? The public reception of the early monumental statues of Atatürk in Turkey
    (Wiley, 2021-10) Güçler, Arda; Gür, Faik; International Relations; GÜÇLER, Arda; GÜR, Faik
    The early monumental statues of Ataturk in Turkey have so far been studied from the perspective of the state and its ambition to disseminate a national consciousness. While this state-centric approach has been helpful to understand the role of symbolism in nation-building, it ends up reducing people to a passive recipient of symbolic indoctrination. We, in contrast, approach public perception as an active component in the discursive construction of these monuments over time. We first analyse the period until the death of Ataturk in 1938 during which the democratic possibility of conflicting with the official narrative remained quite minimal. We then look at the aftermath of Ataturk's death, which coincides with the introduction of the multiparty democracy in Turkey where there were more critical engagements with these monuments, particularly by the right-wing constituents and politicians. We conclude that such resistance was still discursively bound by the nationalist context within which it operated. Our analysis of the politics of symbolism in Turkey taps into the theoretical works of Hanna Pitkin and Warren Breckman.
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    Why so timely? Politics of representation and its entanglement in presentism
    (Sage, 2020-02-01) Güçler, Arda; International Relations; GÜÇLER, Arda
    What gives representation its democratic essence? The recent democratic theory literature, particularly spearheaded by Nadia Urbinati, defends representative mediation as a facilitator of ongoing democratic contestation and revision. While I agree with this agonistic defence, I take issue with how Urbinati construes it. For her, representative contestation works in the teleological sense of testing opinions over time and sublimating them into ideological forms as a safeguard against the threat of immediacy (i.e. arbitrariness and authenticity). This article locates the traces of such presentism within Urbinati's own teleological framework, which I see as compromising her commitment to the agonistic vein in representative politics. When our relationship to the future is imagined from such a teleological angle, I argue, the scope of our representative options becomes significantly narrowed down and the possibility of beginning anew looks quite slim. I develop this critique by tapping into Jacques Derrida's affirmation of untimeliness.