Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Memetics has long been viewed as a quasi-discipline, as something good for light paper-back reading, or an interesting article in the New York Times, but lacking in true academic muscle. It is the purpose of this paper to not only briefly demonstrate the failings of the “field” of memetics as it exists today (for these have espoused to near exhaustion by others) but also, and more importantly, begin a dialogue highlighting the positive aspects of the theory and present ways which sociologists can and should be looking to incorporate them into our own work. It is important to note that my goal here is to facilitate a dialogue for the betterment of sociology by bringing to light areas where we could learn from memetics. I am in no way suggesting that memetics is “the wave of the future” while sociology is a “thing of the past.” What I am suggesting is that “memes” can be useful tools for exploring social issues and social change.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Sources usually list Turkey as a part of the coalition against Iraq in the Gulf War (1991) by citing that number of coalition aircraft attacked Iraq from the bases in Turkey. However, this is only partially true portrayal of the whole reality. Although Turkey could have participated the military campaign, Ankara did not pursue this arguably more rational policy against its threat-posing neighbor. During the crisis, Turkey was divided between the pro-war group composed of the President and the government and the pacifist group of the military backed opposition. Ozal, the Turkish president, wanted to join to the American led coalition by hoping that this would be a profitable policy. The anti-war coalition objected to the idea that acting with the Western powers against neighboring Muslim Iraq would serve to the Turkish national interest. Their policy preference was to comply with the United Nations Resolutions, but to watch the punishment of Saddam Hussein safely from inside the Turkish borders. The struggle between these two groups revolved around what constitutes Turkish national interest, Turkey?s domestic, regional and international responsibilities, the level of threat that Saddam posed for Turkey, and the interpretation of the enforcement of the Turkish Constitution. For each of these debates, rival groups developed arguments based on identity narratives that positioned Turkey between the West and Iraq supported by temporal narratives that interpreted the Turkish history from their desired perspectives. These spatial and temporal narratives are supplemented with batteries of vivid metaphors and historical analogies. In this paper, I shall argue that Turkey?s foreign policy behavior towards the Gulf War to some significant extent was a particular outcome of the discursive struggle what can be call as traditionalists and pro-Westernists.Essentially the competing metaphors and historical analogies invoked by the rival political groupings were not sporadic linguistic ornaments but were carefully selected tropes that reflected the dominant ideas whose interaction constituted the main pillars of the Turkish political culture. In other words, the metaphors and historical analogies used during the Gulf War debates in Turkey were direct references to the Turkish foreign policy ?memes;? that is, socially constructed genes that shaped political actors? initial interpretation of the situation that they are in as cognitive schemas, and are transmitted to the following generation of decision makers as social action frames. Their analysis, therefore, can provide a preliminary empirical base for the social construction of the state identity through the structuration dynamics between agents and the ideational social structures. Also, such analysis can become a starting point for establishing a positive congruence between foreign policy behavior and domestic political identity of the state. This paper aims to analyze some previously unexplained aspects of Turkish foreign policy during the Gulf War such as why Turkey was not fully engaged in the military operations against Iraq by focusing on the memetic ?metaphor wars? between the rivaling traditionalists and pro-Westerns. In the analysis, frequency count based Content Analysis method is applied to the four major debates in the Turkish parliament to gather the primary data. Then, these debates are further analyzed by scrutinizing the identity metaphors used as predicates of the Turkish self and the American and Iraqi others and historical analogies used as temporal memetic referents. Finally the process is traced from the policy preferences of the main actors to the meanings of the metaphors and the analogies used by these actors to seek congruence between the memes and the actual policy. The findings suggest that the Turkish foreign policy was not shaped by any one of the competing political groupings. Instead it was a compromise synthesis crated by the political struggle between them. Therefore, while these findings support Graham Allison?s Governmental Politics Model (Model III), they also indicate that previously omitted actors such as the parliament and variables such as identity are also part of the political struggle that leads to the foreign policy resultants in the Turkish case.