Persuading through Culture, Values, and Ideas: The Case of Turkey's Cultural Diplomacy.

• Author: Donelli, Federico
• Position: ARTICLE

In the 1960s, Canadian Philosopher Marshall McLuhan predicted one of the main outcomes of the process of globalization: that mass media would be able to convert the world into a village. (1) Nowadays, in the post-modern wired society, a statement or simply a tweet of 280 characters can reach and affect audiences across the world. In the current interdependent world dominated by globalized media, collective cultural identities are no longer delimited by national borders and the shortening of time and space span has become a reality while geographic boundaries have begun losing its meaning. (2) These developments have caused important changes not only in the social, economic and political arenas, they have also affected the areas of world politics and diplomacy. Notably, the latter has experienced a period of great changes, which witnessed the emergence of new kinds of initiatives encompassing international relations and going beyond traditional diplomacy. (3) Among these, public diplomacy is fed by the possibilities and opportunities brought by globalization. According to Nicholas Cull, "public diplomacy is an international actor's attempt to manage the international environment through engagement with a foreign public," (4) or, in other words, "a governments diplomatic efforts that target citizens, the press, and foreign country constituencies directly rather than their governments." (5)

Although public diplomacy is a notion traceable back in time, its implementation started after the Cold War period, alongside the growing interest in soft power tools. (6) Indeed, the fundamentals of public diplomacy can be traced to Joseph Nye's idea of soft power as "the ability to influence the behavior of others to get desired outcomes one wants." (7) He argues that soft power is as important, even more, as hard power in international politics. In a post-modern and globalized society, soft power, predicated on a Value-based' notion of power, has the advantage of considering the economic, political, and cultural dynamics of globalization, along with the consequences of the information revolution. According to Nye, soft power derives from the "attractiveness of a country's culture, political notions, and policies;" (8) that is, the power of attraction, as opposed to the power derived from military force and economic sanctions. In sum, soft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others (co-opt), without the use of force, coercion or violence. For that reason, public diplomacy plays a central role for the emerging middle powers, which are trying to gain international visibility and political significance, relying on a smaller number of material resources than the great powers. (9)

As a consequence, an increasing number of emerging powers understand the importance of culture and are consciously using it as a means to project themselves into global public opinion through what is commonly known as cultural diplomacy. The most oft-cited definition is the one suggested by Milton Cummings: "cultural diplomacy is the exchange of ideas, information, art and other aspects of culture among nations and their people to foster mutual understanding." (10) The term cultural diplomacy has broadened considerably over the years and now applies to any practice related to purposeful cultural cooperation among nations or groups of nations. (11) Cultural diplomacy always links to and often overlaps with soft power and public diplomacy. Indeed, employing effective cultural diplomacy is intrinsically connected to a country's soft power attributes and capacity, especially after the social media revolution which affected mass communication at the global level. Indeed, the most common opinion is to consider cultural diplomacy as a tool, a method of public diplomacy or one of its types. Thus, the three notions -soft power, public diplomacy, and cultural diplomacy- have entered the lexicon of International Relations (IR) and have become standard terms in foreign policy thinking.

Turkey is among the emerging powers that use public diplomacy. Its master narrative projected abroad has been based on its domestic development of democracy and fast economic growth, with the opening toward the global economy. After a 'golden period' (2007-2013), the effectiveness of Turkish public diplomacy has fallen dramatically, and Turkey's global image has been undermined by domestic political turmoil, growing international isolation and the resulting instability. Nowadays, Turkey is attempting to depict a different image to promote itself abroad--a portrait that is able to overcome the declining notoriety of recent years. Indeed, due to the effects of these intermestic contingencies, Turkish public diplomacy has had to shift from a model of democracy in a Muslim state to an approach more focused on the Turkish worldview, lifestyle, and cultural appeal. In recent years, Turkey has focused its efforts on pop-culture, especially television broadcasts, with the intention of projecting winning stories of the country to foreign publics.

Drawing on the conceptualization of cultural diplomacy, this research analyzes features, structures, and actors of Turkey's foreign cultural strategy. Cultural diplomacy is a subject still little studied in the field of IR; however, starting from the analysis of specific cases such as the Turkish one, it is possible to achieve a broader understanding of how countries use culture as a foreign policy tool. This research aims to highlight how Turkey has used culture as a resort of its soft power to strengthen relations with other countries, bolster the nation's image and to promote Turkish interests abroad. Overall, an analysis of Turkey's cultural diplomacy will not only underline features and peculiarities of Turkey's soft power, but it will also help enrich the literature in the field of cultural diplomacy.

The Debate on the Power of Attractiveness

Systemic change from a bipolar to a multipolar world has had a profound impact on the ways in which nations construct and project their national identity through adopting a cultural strategy. Indeed, nowadays cultural, religious, and ethnic factors play a larger part in defining our sense of self and community (12) The discussions of public and cultural diplomacy are largely based on the notion of soft power, and these two terms are often conflated. (13) The main assumption behind Joseph Nye's idea of soft power is that there are sources of power beyond material assets. He asserted that power is "the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the desired outcomes one wants." (14) Nye built his definition as a behavioral outcome, or, as he calls it, a 'relational power concept' attentive to the multiple faces of power. (15) Therefore, soft power is neither evolution or involution of nor a substitute for hard power; it is simply another form of power. In the three-dimensional chessboard model that typifies Nye's theory, world politics is divided into three closely interdependent levels/spheres of influence: a country's hard power consists of two spheres -military and economic power--and another sphere at the base of his model called soft power. (16) Recently, he extended his earlier definition of soft power as "the ability to affect others through the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuading, and eliciting positive attraction in order to obtain preferred outcomes." (17) Nye also introduced the notion of 'smart power,' that is to say, the balanced use of soft and hard power according to the needs of the specific scenario. This strategic concept, openly adopted by the Obama Administration, contrasts the misperception that soft power alone can produce effective foreign policy. (18) In other words, soft power, like public and cultural diplomacy, always needs material resources to support it and to substantiate its efforts.

Some scholars are still skeptical about soft power, and consider that it would be more effective if more money were allocated to it. (19) Others assert that in today's global information space, soft power is becoming more influential, and it needs less hard power support. (20) Both sets of theorists consider soft power not merely as an influence, and as more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument. For them, soft power is based on setting the agenda and attracting others through the deployment of cultural and ideological means of provoking acquiescence. (21) For Nye, soft power is better seen as a malleable strategy that a country may use in order to gain its objectives by attraction founded on culture, political values, and a legitimate and moral foreign policy. In order to better understand the flexible nature of soft power, Nye distinguished between behaviors, resources, and actors. (22) Resources are tangible or intangible capabilities, goods, and instruments at one's disposal; behavior is the action itself, the manner or way of acting, and the conduct of an agent. In behavioral terms, soft power is an attractive power. In terms of resources, soft power resources are the assets that produce such attraction. Nye argued that the soft power of a country is primarily the product of three main resources: "its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when values are widely accepted and implemented), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority)." (23)

In the contemporary world order characterized by a condition of rule or 'no anarchy' (24) and by global civil society,' (25) attractive power could be a means to success in international competition. For instance, in several competitive areas, such as export sales markets or foreign direct investment, the relatively higher attractiveness of a country can have a positive impact on selling goods and services made in the country of origin, and on the hosting of industries, companies, and factories, by...