Ontological Insecurity, Anxiety, and Hubris: An Affective Account of Turkey-KRG Relations/Ontolojik Guvensizlik, Endise ve Kibir: Turkiye-IKBY Iliskilerinin Duygusal Cercevesi.

• Author: Fusant, Ozlem Kayhan

Introduction

"Our interlocutor is not the Kurdish leaders, but Iraq's central government. Other than that, I cannot meet with a tribal leader, [Masoud] Barzani or anyone else." (1) Such is the scornful response of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, in the early 2000s, when commenting on the relations with the Iraqi Kurds within Turkey's counterterrorism policy against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). However, in a momentous 2013 rally in Diyarbakir, Erdogan passionately greeted Barzani, President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), by saying:

"We're brothers; we're one and together not till to the bazaar but to the grave, to Armageddon. We are members of the same geography, the same land, the same civilization. Welcome to your brothers' land of the Turkish Republic, welcome to our Diyarbakir just like your father, your uncles did 80 years ago." (2) Conversely, with the KRG's independence referendum in 2017, the future of bilateral relations looked bleak once again when Erdogan retorted, "We did not think Barzani would make such a mistake until the last minute, but clearly we were mistaken. At a time when our bilateral relations are at their best level in history, this decision, made without any prior consultation or meeting with us, is a betrayal to our country." (3)

Abovementioned comments in some ways demonstrate the striking shifts in Turkey's policy toward the KRG under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments from a mostly militarist and disdainful approach to gradual rapprochement and then to strained interactions all in the span of twenty years. While much has been written about the initial change from antagonistic relations to increased cooperation, there is a lack of scholarship written about the broken rapprochement between Turkey and the KRG in the late 2010s. (4) This paper, thus, asks why the Turkey-KRG rapprochement failed to bring about a close partnership, as expected by the Turkish officials, and was easily disrupted with the 2017 independence referendum.

Turkey, like any other state, aims to construct a coherent story about itself. It does so by giving meaning to the past and the future to maintain a continuity and security of the Self at domestic and international levels. These 'autobiographies' not only give meaning to states' actions but also reveal affective components of states' identity. In that sense, as much as they may demonstrate shifts in Turkish foreign policy, the abovementioned remarks also suggest the importance of the Iraqi Kurds' place in Turkey's 'biographical narrative' and its ontological security. (5) Put differently, Turkey-KRG relations are not simply strategic or economic but also highly affectively charged, involving emotional encounters that generate concerns for Turkey's physical and ontological security. Yet such ontological insecurities and affective dynamics are rather overlooked by regional analysts and Turkish foreign policy scholars. This paper traces the emotional features of Turkey-KRG relations and examines how a range of emotions triggered by perceived insecurities affect Turkey's foreign policy change toward the KRG since 2008.

Ontological security, affective dispositions, and emotional reactions have recently been at the forefront of research on state actions. (6) Based on the premise that states are concerned not only for their 'physical' or 'material' but also for their ontological security, this literature emphasizes the construction of states' identities through routines and narratives that in turn affect foreign policy. (7) States' understanding of their Self might be challenged by crises, threats, traumas, or even external stigmatiza-tion and criticism, thereby increasing their anxieties and ontological insecurities and disrupting their routinized foreign policy. States, thus, pursue certain actions to overcome these insecurities and to maintain the story they tell to and about themselves. (8)

Anxiety is the driving emotion of ontological security logic. States' anxieties triggered by crises, traumas, or major transformations that would undermine the notions of who they are lead to policies of managing anxiety and maintaining a continuity of Self, i.e., ontological security seeking. (9) Recently, some scholars call attention to anxiety's interactions with other political-social dynamics, its manifestations, and its dual role in states' ontological security and foreign policy. (10) These studies suggest that anxiety might lead to insistence on 'stability' of a conflictual relationship as political actors maintain their identity constructed in this relationship with the Other(s) while giving room for change to a peaceful relationship under certain conditions. Yet, as Rumelili and Celik argue, the conditions for the manifestation of either role of anxiety need further exploration. (11)

Building on these arguments and picking up where Rumelili and Celik left off, we examine how anxiety interacts with other emotional dynamics of a state's ontological security and makes certain foreign policy changes possible. By focusing on the contemporary Turkey-KRG relationship, we examine the nature and limits of Turkey's rapprochement policy toward the KRG between 2008-2017. We argue that while this policy provided a great opportunity for Turkey to forge a cooperative framework with the Iraqi Kurds, it also challenged Turkey's sense of Self constructed through a conflictual relationship with the regional Kurds. Thus, in seeking ontological security, Turkish leaders aimed to alleviate their historical anxiety about an independent Kurdish state by carving a higher status for Turkey as the big brother or even the patron of the Iraqi Kurds, couching this delicate process within a distinct discourse of 'brotherhood'. Turkey's deep-rooted anxiety and hubris toward the Iraqi Kurds played an important role in preventing the emergence of a close partnership based on trust and empathy between these two actors and instead fostered merely a 'fragile' rapprochement since 2008.

Below, we first identify the key arguments of ontological security and emotions studies. Then, we make a case for a deeper analysis on relations between ontological insecurities, emotions, and foreign policy change. Following, we then summarize the Iraqi Kurds' place in Turkey's identity narratives and examine the trajectory of Turkey's ontological security concerns and emotion discourses toward the KRG since 2008. Lastly, we provide a summary of our argument and suggest directions for further research.

Ontological Security, Emotions, and Foreign Policy Change

In International Relations (IR), two recent, inter-related research agendas on Ontological Security (OS) and 'narrative turn' examine how the psychological, physiological, and social complexities of emotions influence foreign policy. Drawing mainly on the socio-psychological roots of the individual's existence, the concept of ontological security is based on the premise of the 'security of the self', i.e., for the individual to have a coherent sense of self in the world. (12) Applying this framework to international politics, ontological security literature underlines political entities' "pursuit of ontological security, i.e., the security of Self and Being, as a motive distinct from and additional to the pursuit of physical security, i.e., the security of the 'body' and survival." (13) In this ontological security seeking process, identity narratives serve as "a sense-making device that allows conceptions of stable selfhood to be projected, even protected, across time and space." (14) Put differently, "national biographies" constitute states as a "bounded community over time and space" and are employed to describe and justify states' actions. (15) Thus, states seek ontological security to have a sense of continuity and stability over time, which, in turn, makes certain practices and actions possible. (16) States' ontological security might be derived from the external, intersubjective interactions with Others (17) or the internal self-understandings (18) or both. (19)

Ontological security seeking is mostly about overcoming or managing anxieties that threaten the core of the Self and prompt insecurities. Contrary to frequent references to fear in IR as the driving factor for state behavior, an ontological security lens highlights the relevance and implications of anxiety in politics. (20) Despite the difficulty of distinguishing between these two emotions as well as their ambiguity, OS scholars make an analytical distinction between fear and anxiety. They argue fear as being directed at a specified object or threat "that prompts an adaptive response" and anxiety as "a 'diffuse, unpleasant and vague sense of apprehension' that exists prior to and relatively independent of any given actual threat object", thus "unconsciously organized and experienced internally, rather than projected externally." (21) In that sense, ontological security framework suggests that states opt for actions that would control their anxieties and maintain their coherent sense of Self.

However, several scholars recently point out that the earlier studies' predominant focus on "stability" and associating anxiety-reducing with security undermines the "reflexivity" of the Self, and thus, ignores the possibility of change and the potential of agency. (22) These recent studies also offer key insights into the link between emotions, ontological security, and foreign policy change. Steele, for example, refers to "transformational possibilities" whereby states may change their actions to "confront self-identity threats." (23) While Subotic highlights state elites' strategic and selective use of state identity narratives, Cash points to the reorganization of a state's cultural repertoire that allows for a change in foreign policy while maintaining that state's ontological security. (24) Focusing more specifically on conflictual relations...