The securitization of the syrian crisis in Turkey: What lies beneath a "threat construction"?

Abstract

During the last two years the Turkish governing party has been trying to show that Assad's regime in Syria is an "existential threat" that cannot and should not left unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to show the process and the steps that the Turkish government followed in order to "designate" a threat stemming from Syria. In doing so, the paper use Copenhagen School's "Securitization" theory, especially, the tool of the Speech Act in order to better understand the process of the "threat construction". After showing how the Syrian crisis came to be considered as an "existential threat" within Turkey, this paper tries to answer the reason that led Ankara explicitly focus on creating such a threat. It is argued that the ruling Justice and Development Party was trying to securitize Syria, mainly because it wants to disorientate the Turkish public opinion and keep it "in the dark" vis-à-vis the real problems stemming from within the borders and not outside of them. The ongoing mass protests all over Turkey reveal that while the ruling party considers Syria as Turkey's threat, the Turkish citizens have a different opinion. © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2015. All rights reserved.