Description
The construction of the dominant narratives of terrorism by the Western powers is frequently analyzed in the critical analyses of terrorism as dehumanizing and even resulting in the rule over non-Western societies. Even though these analyses make a significant contribution to our understanding of how dominant narratives are reproduced, their heavy emphasis on Western understandings of terrorism ignores the ways in which domestic actors in non-Western societies have used the concept of terrorism as a source of legitimacy through international entanglements of national narratives of terrorism. This paper proposes that critical terrorism studies should concentrate more on how non-Western societies adopted and reproduced the "dominant" narratives that can be found in international relations. For this aim, this paper draws on empirical evidence from the case of Turkey in the 1970s and Foucault's philosophical discussions on how a discourse can be "tactically reversible." This means that critical studies of terrorism should be more aware of their own Western-centrism in their emphasis on Western discourses and acknowledge that non-Western societies are not merely "passive receivers" of terrorism discourse but rather "active implementers" as well.
