Islamist-Kemalist struggle in Turkish foreign policy: The Libyan case in Erbakan Period

By arguing that foreign policy is a continuation of domestic power struggle, as David Campbell calls it "double exclusion", this paper focuses on how foreign policy is utilized for domestic power struggle by particularly taking the Erbakan's premier period into account. The main argument of the study is that foreign policy is used on the one hand to discredit Kemalist hegemonic order and to normalize its own alternative language by Welfare Party; on the other hand to confirm the process of exclusion and secularist character of the republic and to strengthen current hegemonic order by reversing the Islamist challenge by Kemalist bureaucracy. Accordingly the factors that make possible Islamist challenge against Kemalist hegemonic discourse and the power struggle shaping around these challenges are matters of the study. In this point the paper will analyze Welfare Party's discourses and practices which are subversive with regards to Kemalism's trivets –westernization, secularism and nation-state- and try to show that foreign policy in this period is a part of this domestic struggle. In this sense, especially Libya case, exceedingly occupies the first months of Welfare Party rule, is analyzed and it is examined how this issue is represented under which discourses and practices within the mentioned two blocks. Eventually this study, by way of Erbakan's trip to Libya, seeks to analyze the founder/ confirmatory/subversive role of the foreign policy as part of Islamist and Kemalist identities and domestic power struggle.