The fourth style of politics: Eurasianism as a pro-Russian rethinking of Turkey's geopolitical identity

Abstract

This article discusses the political origins, present-day significance, and implications of the intellectual movement known as "Eurasianism" in Turkey, a movement with Euroskeptic, anti-American, Russophile, neo-nationalist, secularist, and authoritarian tendencies, and including among its ranks socialists, nationalists, Kemalists, and Maoists. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Eurasianism emerged as a major intellectual movement in Turkey, competing against Pan-Islamism, Pan-Turkism, and Westernism. Aspiration for a pro-Russian orientation in foreign policy, and a socialist-nationalist, Left-Kemalist government at home are the international and domestic faces of Turkish Eurasianism, which distinguish this movement from others. These orientations and their origins are situated within the history of intellectual movements in Turkey, going back to the Kadro and Yon movements in the 1930s and the 1960s, respectively. Similarities and actual links between Russian and Turkish Eurasianism are also discussed.