4.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course takes a deep dive into many of Turkey’s domestic and regional conflicts to understand the issues, actors, and power dynamics at play. We focus on cases since 2002, but draw from legacies including Ottoman collapse, Turkey’s Cold War experiences, impacts of military coups, and spillover effects of the first Gulf War. While we examine so-called cultural conflicts within Turkey and in foreign policy – Kurdish issues, the role of Islam in politics, gender struggles, clashes with Egypt and Israel over Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas ties – we also gain unique perspective on these issues by viewing them through a pop culture lens. We acquire new tools for studying conflicts in various forms by analyzing films, TV, music, novels, and sports, as well as academic sources. By treating pop culture as a data source, we gain access to debates we otherwise wouldn't have, especially when studying in a US institution. In addition to providing an entertaining lens for considering how actors view conflicts in and around Turkey, pop culture is also a site of struggles among rivals. Take Gulf countries’ responses to Turkish support of Qatar during the Gulf Cooperation Council crisis: Saudi Arabia banned wildly popular Turkish soap operas, and UAE produced a historical drama to “counter Ottoman tyranny.” Or consider the Ministry of National Defense's use of music videos to sell Turkey’s naval activity in the Eastern Mediterranean and military incursions in Syria to domestic publics. Or the role Istanbul soccer fans played in sustaining the 2013 Gezi Park Protests, using their highly mobilized networks and experience in clashing with rivals in the stands to defend protesters against police crackdown. Political actors at the highest levels clearly take the power of pop culture seriously. As students seeking deeply informed, multi-faceted, policy-relevant expertise in Turkey’s internal and external conflicts, we will as well.