Popular culture and international politics: An alternative way to analyse Turkish foreign policy

Abstract

Popular culture studies have been mushroomed in the discipline of IR in the last decades. The field of popular culture and its relationship with International Relations (IR) discipline are studied in Turkish IR scholars but some parts are overlooked although it provides fruitful resources for IR. There are different ways to research popular culture in IR and this article aims to suggest one way to better study it in the context of Turkish Foreign Policy (TFP). The article uses some elements of Social Constructivism in IR suggested by Jutta Weldes to understand how popular culture can be a site for consent creation for foreign policies. These elements, the dual processes of articulation of the meaning and interpellation to the subject identities and intertextual meaning created by the combination of real political issues and popular fictions help us to understand why popular culture constitutes an important field when analysing foreign policies. In this context, a popular television series, Valley of the Wolves: Ambush and how it may create consent for foreign policies is examined. By explaining all these, this article aims to contribute to Turkish popular culture and Turkish IR studies.