Debating Eurasia: Political Travels of a Geographical Concept in Turkey/Avrasya'yi Tartismak: Cografi Bir Kavramin Turkiye'deki Siyasi Yolculugu.

• Author: Yanik, Lerna K.
• Position: Report

O'Tuathail and Dalby have argued that geographical naming practices are not as innocent as they seem, but rather shape "the ongoing social reproduction of power and political economy." (1) The way that the terms 'Eurasia' and 'Eurasianism' are used in Turkey is an excellent such example. This article reviews the discourses produced by Turkish state, semi-state, and military actors, and the scholarly work produced around these discourses. It traces the ways in which the use of the terms Eurasia and Eurasianism have helped these actors in Turkish politics to reproduce Turkey's 'power' in a symbolic sense in the post-Cold War period.

While some scholars who have written about Eurasianism in Turkey do not specifically call it "Turkish Eurasianism," others prefer to define the situation with adjectives placed in front of Eurasia, i.e. Turkish Eurasianism, (2) or 'Kemalist Eurasianism', (3) 'Westernist multiculturalist Eurasianism', (4) and, recently, 'Erdoganist Eurasianism'. (5) Within the first group, Imanov prefers to talk about 'reflections of Eurasia' in Turkey, (6) while Laruelle formulates the situation as 'the idea of Eurasia in Turkey', (7) or has chosen to describe the use of the term in Turkey as a "competition for the control over the concept of Eurasia in Turkey." (8) Ersen, too, is on the same wavelength as Imanov and Laruelle, preferring to regard the situation in Turkey as instrumentalizations of Eurasia as a geopolitical concept. (9) Yet, in a later piece, he also chooses to use Turkish Eurasianism, (10) showing the need to define and conceptualize these debates about Eurasia. Imanov, Laruelle, and Ersen argue that one cannot really talk about 'Eurasianism' in Turkey, at least in the Russian sense, because Eurasianism in Turkey, or frequent references to Eurasia under the disguise of Eurasianism, lacks the theoretical and ideological rigor and sophistication that is present in Russian Eurasianism. This article concurs with this line of thought, and yet, very briefly, talks about Russian Eurasianism in the next section to clarify what is meant by Turkish Eurasianism lacking theoretical and ideological rigor.

There is, however, one interesting overlap between Russian and Turkish Eurasianisms. Mark Bassin et al. argue that the emergence of Eurasianism in Russia was in response to dealing with the 'perennial backwardness' of Russia vis-a-vis Europe/the West, finding the most appropriate way to run these countries, debating the civilizing mission of Russia in Asia, and inserting spirituality while dealing with these issues. (11) When it comes to the emergence of Eurasia or Eurasianism in Turkey, the two issues that led to the emergence of Russian Eurasianism also shaped Turkish Eurasianism: an extensive search for an identity first in the post-Cold War and then in the post-9/11 international system, i.e. questions of self identification vis-a-vis the West; and, related to this, attempts to redefine Turkey's international role by rendering a civilizing role via the idea of the 'Turkish model'. (12) It was, however, the improvement of Turkey's ties with Russia and its simultaneous fallout with the United States and EU that led to a further increase in the use of the term Eurasia, which paved the way for Turkish Eurasianism.

A Short History of Russian Eurasianism

The Oxford Online Dictionary defines Eurasia as the "continental landmass of Europe and Asia combined." (13) Eurasia, as a concept, came to life only in the nineteenth century, when the two continents--Europe and Asia--started to be imagined as one by two German geographers, Alexander von Humboldt and Oskar Peschel. (14) While the creation of the term Eurasia is attributed to these scholars, it was another geographer, Eduard Suess, an Austrian, who gave the term a geological spin, arguing that Europe and Asia, should be considered as one continent because both lay on one tectonic plate. (15) As Laruelle argues, Eurasia's transition from a geological term into an ideology happened after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, in the 1920s, when a group of emigre intellectuals tried to find an answer to centuries-old questions that engulfed the Russian Empire: whether or not Russia belonged to Europe or to Asia and what would be the best way to save and govern it and keep all of its ethnicities together. (16) These questions would be answered by Nikolai Trubetskoi (1890-1938) and Peter Savitski (1895-1968), the two most well known classical Eurasianists. (17)

In his works, Trubetskoi, highlighting the role of Asian (especially Mongol) influence in bringing out the distinctive character of the Russian ethos, criticized Peter the Great's modernization efforts, (18) and argued that Europeanization had eroded Russia's cultural fabric, unity, and self-confidence, causing significant self-alienation. (19) Trubetskoi and other Eurasianists also wrote a great deal about the ways and means that would help best govern Russia politically and economically. (20) The solution would be inventing a 'third way'--something between capitalism and socialism and also between liberalism and dictatorship--because Russia was unique, third way country, i.e. a Eurasian country. (21)

The other ideologue of the movement, Peter Savitski, argued that rather than thinking of Russia as partly in Europe and partly in Asia, one should conceive of Russia as Eurasia because both Europe and Asia were a single, continuous continent and the Ural Mountains should not be considered as a border dividing Europe and Asia. (22) Savitski based his argument that Eurasia was a single distinct continent on different categories, such as climate, fauna, flora, and soil, which were in unison throughout Eurasian geography, lending somewhat scientific credentials to the conception of a unified-yet-distinct idea of Eurasia. (23)

Overall, classical Eurasianism had several tenets. The first was its criticism of Europe as the 'only' source of development and progress for Russia. The classical Eurasianists opposed the idea of Europe being considered the sole yardstick for measuring economic and political progress in Russia. The second was the acknowledgement of the idea of hybridity, or the fusion that encompassed the Eurasian geography; for them, if it was not for the Mongol invasion, the Slavic tribes would not have come together to form a Russian identity and protect Orthodoxy--an approach that led to the formation of a narrative that had an extremely positive view of the Mongolian and Turanian elements as the reason for this fusion. (24) Third was the idea that not being European and commandeering a distinct geography rendered Russia unique and exceptional. Fourth, Eurasianism wanted to create a third way ideology that tried to spawn a solution for best governing Russian state and society. (25) Put differently, Eurasianism was not only a school of thought, or an ideology that aimed to find an alternative way to best run Russia internally, but also, at the international level, it tried to find a way to elevate Russia's position vis-a-vis the West.

The classical Eurasianist movement had its heyday in the 1920s, but slowly disappeared in the 1930s when some of its members were co-opted by the Bolshevik regime. (26) Although the life of classical Eurasianism was short, its brief existence provided the necessary ammunition for the revival of the idea in the 1990s in post-Soviet Russia as 'neo-Eurasianism'. Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), who produced his work almost a generation after the classical Eurasianists, is usually credited for making this connection. (27)

Gumilev was interested in explaining the rise and the fall, and the stages in between, of nations or ethnos, in Gumilev's terminology. His theory of ethnogenesis argued that the emergence of certain ethnos on the world stage would happen with the appearance of passionarii (passionary individuals) who come into being as a result of heightened levels of cosmic energy at certain parts of the world at certain times. These passionarii would then bring different groupings together to create a synthesis of not only a new group of people, but also new types of social and political behavior. As the number of passionarii increased and decreased, ethnos would, according to Gumilev, rise and decline. (28) Gumilev also revised the Mongol chapter in Russian history, saying that rather than being invaded by the Mongols, Russians made an alliance with them and co-existed peacefully--something that would go against the arguments of the classical Eurasianists who insisted on the existence of the Mongol invasion, but rather portrayed it positively because of its unifying character on the dispersed Russian tribes. (29) Though Gumilev diverged from the classical Eurasianists in this regard, he agreed with them on many other issues, including Russia as an exceptional civilization separate from Europe and Asia, anti-Westernism, criticism of the Euro-centric reading of world history, the ethnic fusion that formed the Russian nation, and the interaction of history with geography in determining the fate of nations. (30)

Gumilev died in 1992 as the Soviet Union disintegrated, which left countries in the post-Soviet space, especially Russia, scrambling for an identity in the international system. Led by Aleksandr Dugin, a new group, called the 'neo-Eurasianists' took Gumilev and his predecessors, the classical Eurasianists, as their points of inspiration. (31) Dugin accepts some of the arguments made by the classical Eurasianists yet he departs from them as well. For example, he concurs with them on the role that the Mongols played in making contemporary Russia and on Russian exceptionalism, (32) but he does not subscribe to the idea of the West being an antithesis of Russia. Instead, he considers the West a place that would come under the domination of Russia--when Russia creates alliances as part of pursuing Eurasianist geopolitics--placing Russia back on track as a...