Description
This paper explores how the AKP (Justice and Development Party) political elite of Turkey sought to use the Syrian Civil War as a narrative tool to appeal to the Turkish public audience. Thus, this paper explains how the AKP administration used humanitarian and securitization narratives to appeal to the Turkish public. First, this paper shows how the AKP political elite adopted humanitarian narratives to vicariously identify with the Sunni Syrian Arabs. Hence, I express how the AKP leadership sought to claim the historical superiority towards the Syrian Arabs to appeal to the Turkish public from 2011 to 2015. Second, I underline how the AKP political elite adopted securitization discourses to depict the United States (US)support on the Syrian Kurds as a security threat. In that case, I explain how the AKP political elite used nationalist narratives which considered the US and the Syrian Kurds as “others” to appeal to the Turkish public from 2015 to 2020. Thus, I use Constructivism, Psychoanalysis Approach, and the Queer International Relations (IR) Theory to understand how the AKP leadership shifted their Syria narratives from humanitarian to securitization. I choose Constructivism to explore how the AKP political elite used religion, history, and culture to construct regional power identity towards the Syrian Arabs. I use the Psychoanalysis Approach to underline how the AKP political elite considered the Sunni Syrians as the extension of self to create the large group identity. I also utilize the Queer IR theory to express how the US support on the Syrian Kurds increased the hysteria among the AKP political elite. In methodology, I choose Critical Discourse Analysis to discover the AKPs humanitarian and securitization narratives on Syria, the US, and the Kurds.
