Identity, Nostalgia and Religion: Making Sense of Turkey and the Balkan Relations in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

This article deals with Turkey’s increasing involvement and activism in the Balkan Peninsula between 2002 and 2022, under the rule of the Justice and Development Party and asks two different questions 1) If the Balkan elites perceive the policies implemented by Turkey differently and relatively pejoratively, what is the reason for this and how can we explain it theoretically? 2) What kind of differences does the current position of Turkey-Balkan relations cause us to observe in classical international relations? To answer these questions, this study seeks to shed much needed light on this aspect of Turkish relations with its Balkan neighbours in the context of the broader shift in Turkish domestic and foreign policy under the AKP from a realist-secular orientation to an ambiguous Sunni Islamic. Therefore, it explains the complex relations between religion, nostalgia and identity, and its reflections on state power.