| Summary/Abstract |
After 2013, Turkey’s foreign policy has been noted for neo-Ottomanist
rhetoric and anti-Western discourse, which resulted in the deterioration
of relations with the West. To disclose the patterns of anti-Westernism
in Turkish foreign policy, this paper analyzes official speeches of Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan given at international meetings and
events from 2014 to 2021. Based on critical constructivism, which
underlines the co-constitutive relationship between identity and
foreign policy, and the role of the Other in identity construction,
this article demonstrates how the Western Other has been used by
Erdoğan in building Turkish Ottoman identity. This article articulates
the anti-Western notion of neo-Ottomanism and argues that Erdoğan’s
anti-Western discourse bears the Islamic undertone and relies on the
delineation of the Turkish-Ottoman Self from the Western Self.
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