| The outbreak of ethnic wars in the aftermath of the Cold War revived the interest in the study of identity, ethnicity and culture. These ethnic wars gave scholars ample case studies, where they could investigate the ways in which these three factors interact and eventually cause war. However, these ethnic wars also led the students of international relations and political science to concentrate on the 'conflict' aspect of ethnicity, disregarding other possible uses of ethnicity, especially in terms of international relations.; In this dissertation, through a case study that examines the relations between Turkey and the Turkic Republics of the former Soviet Union---namely Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan---between 1991 and 2001, I analyze the attempts to turn ethnic affiliation into a collective Turkic identity at the international level. Moreover, I explain the means and the levels in which this collective identity creation attempt took place.; Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relative relaxation of the Russian hegemony in Eurasia, the Turkish state started to highlight its common ethnic bonds with the Turkic Republics of the former Soviet Union. Because of the presence of Turkey's interests in the region, the inclusion of identity in Turkish foreign policy has been frequently claimed to be instrumental. In this dissertation, I challenge this claim. My central argument is that neither rationalist explanations that see interest as the sole motivation in policy actions and thus offer an instrumental explanation, nor cultural explanations that regard identity as the source of motivation, can solely explain the change that took place in Turkish foreign policy towards the Turkic Republics of the former Soviet. I argue that both identities and interests should be considered motivational forces in conjunction with each other. My conclusion is that, deliberately or not, states try to control symbols at the international level as much as they try to control their interests. |
