Abstract
This paper focuses on ressentiment in Turkish foreign policy discourse vis a vis the European Union in reaction to the stagnated membership process, employing mixed methods and corpus-assisted discourse analysis to establish the linkages between status, ressentiment and claims to moral superiority. While the role of ressentiment in populist discourse has already been discussed in the literature, research so far has rarely explored the particular role of ressentiment in the triangle of international relations, populism and emotion. The resentment resulting from status denial in international relations, such as not being admitted to an international organization, can activate underlying ressentiment and serve as a strong tool for populists in foreign policy discourse. Following the previous research which considers that status-seeking is a subcategory of state identity politics and political claims to moral superiority is one of the status-enhancing strategies adopted by the small and middle powers (Wohlforth et al. 2018), this study attempts to show how the emotions can function as status markers in populist foreign policy discourse and how they can empower the identity articulations positioning Turkey in a category of higher moral status comparing to the ‘malevolent’ West. With the help of emotion discourse analysis, it explores how populist leaders make claims of moral superiority against the status-denying institutions.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—What to Make of Crises: Emerging Methods, Principles, Actions
KEYWORDS
European Union, Turkish Foreign Policy, Emotions, Status, Populism
