Global Coloniality: Bringing Past Imperial Differences Back to the Present

Abstract

Postcolonial and decolonial International Relations (IR) scholars have often focused on colonial differences in the production of the modern episteme. These studies are critical for understanding the social structures that underpin colonial modernity. However, how historical imperial differences between Europe and non-Europe have shaped the modern episteme and its categories of difference today has yet to receive sufficient attention. This study questions how historical imperial differences produce the modern episteme in the case of Turkey, the heir of one of the non-European historical empires, the Ottoman Empire. It does so by exploring and investigating silencing strategies of the imperial past in national historiography. This study contributes to the debates on the decolonising and Eurocentric critiques of IR. This contribution shows how contemporary negotiations of historical imperial differences produce a discourse of sameness with and difference from Europe, and create subordinate others while demonstrating the ambiguity of the ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ distinction emphasised by decolonial studies. The study argues that attempts to decolonise IR would be incomplete without considering the effects of historical imperial differences on global coloniality. The strategy it proposes is to focus on the connected and intertwined histories of subordinate others and to uncover historical narratives that are not limited to the West/non-West dichotomy.

Introduction

Modern episteme structures the international by making it possible to categorise the world through hierarchies of difference as superior/inferior, such as race, religion, culture and gender. ¹ Scholars of International Relations (IR) with a postcolonial and decolonial understanding have primarily focused on historical colonial encounters in the production of the modern episteme. As such, their analyses have addressed how colonial differences have shaped, enabled and constrained contemporary problems such as rising populism, racism and anti-immigrant violence. ² These insights are critical for understanding the social structures underpinning colonial modernity. However, additional research is needed to explore the connection between historical imperial differences between Europe ³ and non-Europe and the production of modern episteme today. The study contends that without taking into account how historical imperial differences produce the modern episteme, decolonising attempts in the discipline would be incomplete.

So far, decolonial studies have developed the concept of imperial difference as an important dynamic in the modern/colonial episteme. However, it has yet to look at how historical imperial differences are received and negotiated by an heir of a non-European historical empire today. One of these cases is Turkey, the heir of the Ottoman Empire. ⁴ The emphasis in this article is not on the qualitative differences of non-European empires and their histories. Thus, this article does not offer an ‘alternative’ or a ‘different’ reading of Ottoman imperial history but rather explores how the Ottoman imperial past has been incorporated into Turkey’s national historiography, thus contributing to the modern episteme through the construction of categories of difference. The study reveals how Turkey’s discourse of difference from and sameness with ‘Europe’ has led to the construction of subordinate others. By examining the particularities of Turkey, the article shows that the search for ‘difference’ from West can have mixed and opposing effects and argues that the concept of coloniality requires an analysis of the global and multiple structures of colonial modernity.

This study contributes to the debates on decolonising and Eurocentric critique in IR. ⁵ This contribution not only emerges from the decolonial literature but also reveals some of its limitations. The distinction between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’, especially used by decolonial scholars, divides the world into spatial binaries between ‘West’ and ‘non-West’, as well as temporal ones between ‘past’ imperial differences and ‘present’ coloniality. This division prevents us from seeing that the historical imperial differences between Europe and non-Europe is still being negotiated today, and the boundaries between ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ and ‘past’ and ‘present’ are blurred and relational. Moreover, the study is important since it points to one of the examples of the historical convergence of religion and race in the contemporary world, ⁶ as it explores the use and translation of hierarchies of race, religion and culture in non-European contexts against the European discourse of superiority.

The article is organised into three main sections. The following section shows that while IR scholars have focused on colonial encounters and differences to uncover the categories that shape the international in the discipline, imperial differences have often been overlooked in this debate. The second part analyses the decolonial literature on the critique of the modern episteme and shows that this relation is not only built on colonial differences but also on European and non-European imperial differences. However, the decolonial literature has certain limits here. Indeed, the process of negotiating these historical imperial differences in the present is not sufficiently emphasised. In this context, the study addresses Manuela Boatcă’s concept of imperial difference by complementing it with some insights from post-imperial studies.

After providing a brief historical background to the 19th century European-Ottoman imperial encounters, the third section uses the term ‘postcolonial anxiety’ to describe the process of negotiating historical imperial differences today. To address this anxiety and to elaborate on Turkey’s negotiations with White Western civilisation, it looks at the strategies of silencing the Ottoman imperial past in national historiography in two different periods as snapshots of Turkish history: the early Republican period of the 1930s and the AKP period of the 2000s. It uses both primary sources, consisting of the writings of state intellectuals, and secondary sources on analyses of national historiography in Turkey. These strategies of silencing emerge as selective rejection and selective exclusion of the Ottoman imperial past. This section shows how these strategies, with their accompanying categories of difference, were used to construct subordinate others inside and outside.

The article concludes with the implications of the study for debates on the decolonisation of IR. The concept of historical imperial difference allows us to shift our focus in understanding coloniality to the production of modern/colonial episteme in other parts of the world while allowing us to see global categories of modern/colonial difference and situate subordinate others within broader and interconnected relations. This should lead us to consider that the distinction between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ used to describe decolonising strategies proposed in the discipline may not always and in all circumstances be valid.

The Production of the Modern Episteme in IR

In order to make sense of the modern episteme in IR, postcolonial scholars point to the neglect of certain questions in our understanding of the international. Sankaran Krishna has pointed to the relationship between the discipline being founded on a series of denials and exclusions, such as slavery, dispossession and exploitation. ⁷ It is through the denial or exclusion of these questions that the epistemological categories of IR become possible. In response, Krishna urges us to uncover the historical contexts from which they emerge, the ends they seek to serve, the interests they advance, the particular peoples they simultaneously dispossess and empower, and the acts of epistemic and physical violence they mobilise. ⁸ As Krishna notes, Western abstraction has worked to deny the subjectivity of the other, legitimise inequality and consolidate European imperialism.

For example, some postcolonial and decolonial analyses of the ‘migration crisis’ in Europe have pointed to the connection between imperial histories and racial and colonial violence. ⁹ While IR approaches exclude colonial histories from our analyses of the international, the modern episteme continues to structure the present. Postcolonial and decolonial scholars of IR have interrogated the historical connections between colonial practices and the production of the discipline’s main categories. The emphasis of these studies is not only to add the question of empire and race to IR but also to address their shortcomings as epistemological limitations and to point to their implications for the modern episteme. ¹⁰ It is discussed how the modern episteme enables the denial and exclusion of imperial histories and thus produces the current (post)colonial order. As we have seen in the discipline of IR, the categories of the discipline are limited to events that are considered central to the construction of modernity while excluding colonial histories and encounters from this construction. ¹¹

Indeed, in the decolonising IR literature, ¹² scholars have mostly raised Eurocentrism as an epistemic problem. ¹³ Gruffydd Jones argues that decolonisation requires revealing ‘the imperial and racialised constitution of international relations’ and ‘moving imperialism from its bracketed position in specialist studies and the distant chronological past and demonstrating the unbroken centrality of imperialism to international relations’. ¹⁴ To reveal the co-constitutive relationship between Europe and non-Europe prevents us from isolating categories such as ‘West’ and ‘non-West’. Eurocentrism as a knowledge system narrows our understanding of the international not because ‘non-Western’ is missing but because it is included in a particular way, ¹⁵ abstracted from its historical relationship with Europe.

In the postcolonial and decolonial insights to IR, the historical relationship between Europe and non-Europeans has been analysed mainly in terms of (post)colonial encounters. The encounter has been addressed in different ways in various historical contexts to challenge European imperial historiography, such as subaltern studies, African perspectives and Subaltern Studies in Latin America. However, recent studies reveal some of their limitations. ¹⁶ For example, Birkvad critically explains how subaltern studies addressed the problem of Eurocentrism and colonial episteme in Indian historiography. ¹⁷ While subaltern studies have challenged colonial writing and the construction of Indian history, a genealogical reading of the concept of Aryanism has shown the historical and political continuities of the caste system. Birkvad’s work is essential for understanding the negotiation of the colonial difference between Europe and India among Hindu elites. This process implies a complex construction of multiple hierarchies within. In other words, even as subaltern studies challenged colonial top-down perspectives in Indian historiography, Indian elites produced a new top-down elite perspective, thus contributing to the colonial episteme.

On the other hand, demonstrating the limitations of the concept of coloniality, which emerged from Latin American decolonial literature, Rosenow argues that it ‘divides the world into spatial and temporal binaries, especially between the (global) North and the South, and between past (finished) formal colonialism vs. ongoing coloniality’, thus rendering invisible the settler colonialism that cuts across these binaries. ¹⁸ Karen Tucker has pointed out, ‘Invocations of “coloniality,” “coloniality of power,” and “coloniality of knowledge” in IR have tended, for example, to portray them as uniform, unitary systems of oppression and domination’ in contrast to ‘close, detailed analysis of dispersed practices that produce racialised hierarchies and erasures’. ¹⁹

Moreover, the abstractions that Krishna warns us about the discipline have also been used in different ways by its critics, especially by decolonial scholars, such as abstractions of ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’. This division prevents us from seeing how historical imperial differences between Europe and non-Europe have shaped the modern episteme and its categories of difference today. These modern/colonial categories have also been used in distinct forms in states with imperial pasts to deny the subjectivity of their subordinate others and to legitimise inequality. The decolonial literature has led us to understand coloniality through the concept of imperial difference. Nevertheless, as the following section argues, the literature is limited in understanding the contemporary negotiation of historical imperial differences and their implications for the present.

Modern Episteme, the Question of Race and Imperial Difference

The term ‘Eurocentric coloniality’ of power, coined by Anibal Quijano, ²⁰ is central to making sense of the modern episteme that constitutes our understanding of the modern world. Through the modern episteme, the coloniality of power and its social categorisation has shaped colonial modernity and its present global hierarchies. Decolonial scholars have explained the historical development of the Eurocentric coloniality of power as follows.

The modern episteme is built on Occidentalist ideas of European superiority, which preceded Orientalist representations of the inferiority of the Other during the 19th century. ²¹ Before representations of the Oriental Other, there was the representation of the European Self as superior. This Occidentalist metaphor of European superiority brought along the question of race to make European superiority possible and to inferiorise differences, thus forming the epistemic structure of European colonialism. The question of race points to the racialisation of difference in European discourses of otherness, which has had different patterns since the 16th century. ²² As Mignolo says, ‘race refers mainly to subjective relations among social groups and is related to the control of knowledge and subjectivity’, and the colonial matrix of power reshaped the existing knowledge structure in the world with this question. ²³

According to Boatcă, there are two main patterns of European discourses of superiority until the First World War, and each pattern has a defining characteristic. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Western European Christian identity was reconstructed through its religious differences. In this period, the discourse of the superiority of Western Christianity and the West’s self-definition in these terms shaped the terms used to inferiorise non-Westerners; the colonised were defined as ‘people without religion’ and Muslims and Jews as ‘people of the wrong religion’. Boatcă describes this as ‘a policy of spatial racialisation’. ²⁴ Religious differences came to be expressed as colonial and imperial differences. On the one hand, the peoples of the Americas were articulated in terms of a racial logic that dehumanised them, thus legitimising their enslavement. According to Boatcă, indigenous peoples are the ‘first racialised subjects’ of modernity. ²⁵ On the other hand, non-Western peoples with ‘wrong’ religions were expressed through imperial differences.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Western Christian and secular discourse formed the basis of imperial difference with the Ottoman and Tsarist Empires. ²⁶ Historically, the control of European imperial powers over rival empires was based on the assertion of Europe’s superiority as an imperial hegemon and the inferiority of others in terms of religion, language or culture. Thus, imperial difference recognises similarities but immediately reduces these empires to second-class empires by extending the characteristics of colonial difference. ²⁷ Thus, according to Mignolo and Tlostanova, the mechanism of colonial difference was applied to societies in similar circumstances to those in dominant positions. Consequently, while colonial differences between European empires and non-European colonies were mainly constructed on racial logic that denied the humanity of ‘people without religion’, imperial differences between European and non-European empires were structured in terms of peoples with ‘good’ religion and peoples with ‘wrong’ religion.

From the 18th to the 20th century, the discourse of European superiority was expressed in terms of Western culture as an indicator of universal civilisation. The progressive idea of the Enlightenment introduced the notion of a time lag between modern civilisation and the uncivilised world, and was based on evolutionary concepts of human. ²⁸ Accordingly, the world population was divided into the people of Western Europe, whose history was matured by the Spirit; the people of Africa, who had no history; and the people of Asia, who had a stagnant history and were incapable of progress. ²⁹ This is also the period when ‘the old ideas of the superiority of the dominant, and the inferiority of dominated under European colonialism were mutated’ biologically and structurally into a relationship of superiority and inferiority. ³⁰ Thus, along with Social Darwinism and theories of the racial superiority of White ‘man’, the European discourse of superiority ‘eventually coalesced into nineteenth-century scientific racism’ ³¹ and the social construction of skin colour replaced religious denominations as markers of identity. ³² This process of ‘Eurocentric colonialism’, as Quijano puts it, ‘gave way to the imposition of such a “racial” criteria to the new social classification of the world population on a global scale’, which in turn had ‘implications for the processes of nationalisation of societies and states, and for the formation of nation-states and citizenship’ worldwide. ³³

The crucial point for this study is that in this period, non-Western empires began to develop their own imperial discourses on their differences with their imperial subjects. Non-Western empires are not only ‘subaltern empires’ but also, as Tlostonava puts it, ‘Janus-faced empires’. ³⁴ These empires look at the dominant Western empires on the one hand and at their colonies on the other. They point to blurred and in-between models that are marked by ‘incomplete or partial difference’ because their differences with the West are unstable. ³⁵ Moreover, for the authors, as Janus-faced empires, their colonial discourses were implemented by a ‘culture of a European-oriented imperial/national elite with secondary Eurocentric inferiority complexes’. ³⁶ For example, when the Russian Tsardom was transformed into an empire, and colonies were established, a discourse of imperial superiority was employed to its own colonies. ³⁷ I will return to this point at the end of this section.

This distribution and social categorisation of the world did not end with the First World War. On the contrary, ‘Eurocentric colonialism’ was transformed into ‘Eurocentric coloniality of power’. Quijano argues that the coloniality of power and its social categorisation shaped European modernity and global hierarchies of economic, political, linguistic and racial forms of domination and exploitation. According to Quijano, therefore, ‘Coloniality, then, is still the most generalised form of domination in the world today, once colonialism as an explicit political order was destroyed’. ³⁸ When we look at the historical development of Eurocentric coloniality of power, we can see how the question of race and the processes of inferiorisation of differences were used for European domination. The fundamental matrix of the othering of differences is the question of race in which the binary of superiority and inferiority is established. Indeed, the inferiorisation of the other makes religious, racial, ethnic or gender hierarchies possible. In other words, the question of race does not mean the same thing as the scientific racism that developed in the 19th century but is considered a more meta-epistemic category.

The colonial difference between European empires and the colonised is important for the construction of the modern episteme, as is the imperial difference between European and non-European empires, both of which are expressed in ‘the very structure of the colonial matrix of power’. ³⁹ These are two essential components of the racialisation of difference in the Occidentalist world imaginary and are seen as closely linked to ‘the establishment of power structures on the basis of religious and cultural hierarchies, both within Europe and between Europe and Central Asia, as well as racial hierarchies in Europe’s overseas colonies since the fifteenth century’. ⁴⁰ In this sense, Boatcă’s work is important for clarifying imperial difference and how it differs from colonial difference in the context of European empires. Boatcă explained the construction of Europe(s) with reference to ‘double imperial difference’ composed of internal and external differences. ⁴¹ The external difference refers to differences and hierarchies in the outside world, such as the Ottoman Empire and the Tsarist Empire (Christian and non-Catholic), while the internal difference refers to differences in the peripheries of Europe (Central and Eastern Europe), which ‘are the less overtly racial, more pronounced ethnic, and distinct class hierarchies accounted for the imperial difference among the European empires and their (former) subjects’. ⁴²

Boatcă emphasises how imperial difference emerged between the historical empires of Europe (Spain and Britain) and how this process shaped the construction of hierarchies within Europe. Thus, the modern episteme has shaped discourses of modernity in a world of historical imperial differences in the present as well. ⁴³ This study is also informed by Boatcă’s concept of imperial difference. However, so far, decolonial studies have not paid enough attention to how historical imperial differences are negotiated by an heir of a non-Western historical empire today, while they include them as a component of coloniality. Indeed, the concept of coloniality divides the world into spatial binaries of ‘West’ and ‘non-West’, as well as temporal ones between ‘past’ imperial differences and ‘present’ coloniality. Seeing these imperial differences as independent of past-present relationality leads to an essentialised understanding of difference and produces a distinction between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ categories. Therefore, this study argues that it is essential to uncover how Europe’s discourse of superiority is also negotiated by an heir of a non-European historical empire in the present and the relationalities between past and present.

In this sense, I complement Boatcă’s notion of imperial difference with some insights from post-imperial studies. On the one hand, unlike some of the imperial-turn studies in the social sciences, my use of the term ‘imperial’ draws on postcolonial and decolonial thought rather than showing that the early modern imperial order – the antithesis of the nation-state form – is a ‘testing ground for our post-national ambitions and desires’. ⁴⁴ On the other hand, to overcome the limitations of the decolonial literature I have outlined above, some post-imperial studies provide insights into understanding the continuous after-effects of the collapse of past empires on the current order. These studies ‘reflect postcolonial endeavours in dealing with the ongoing consequences of imperial rule after the demise of traditional territorial empires such as the Habsburg, Romanov or Ottoman’ and, in keeping with postcolonial literature, the prefix ‘post’ does not characterise the aftermath but ‘points to the various after-effects rather than its end’. ⁴⁵ Therefore, post-imperial has a negative meaning in this usage. Hence, post-imperial studies have variously addressed how the past imperial order was ‘reassured, refused and/or subverted’ in the present through the study of literature, political discourse or national historiography. ⁴⁶ This engagement with the imperial past emerges in the context of modernity and ‘negotiates questions of belonging in the present through the lens of Empire, or what is evoked as such’. ⁴⁷ In other words, like in postcolonial studies, it is concerned with belonging to the ‘modern’ world but does so through its negotiations with the imperial past.

Thus, the fact that discourses of difference in the world of historical imperial differences have taken on forms such as secondary Eurocentrism, Orientalism, and racism points to various engagements with the imperial past beyond a simple reflection of the discourse of European superiority. Indeed, focusing only on these superiority and inferiority complexes also methodologically pushes us to produce a distinction between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ abstractions. This process is also one in which historical relationalities are involved as a component. The term ‘postcolonial anxiety’, which I use in the following section, is important for analysing these material and non-material historical relationalities. Uncovering these historical relationalities is important for showing us the limits of categories used, such as race, civilisation, tolerance on the one hand, and the ambiguity of the distinctions between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ in the decolonial critiques of the discipline on the other.

The rest of the article demonstrates, through the case of Turkey, how negotiations of historical imperial differences have shaped the modern episteme through Turkey’s discourse of difference while denying the subjectivity of its subordinate others and legitimising hierarchies and inequality, both inside and outside. Before this, I will explain why I use the term ‘postcolonial anxiety’ to discuss the contemporary repercussions of Turkey’s historical imperial differences with Europe. This part does not form part of my analysis but provides a historical background for what follows.

Bringing Historical Imperial Differences Between Europe and Turkey Back to Contemporary Turkey

While the Ottomans were initially represented as the Other of Europe in terms of religious differences, othering began to be expressed through the discourse of the superiority of Western culture as an indicator of universal civilisation. From the late 18th century onwards, the Ottoman Empire was represented as ‘uncivilised’ ⁴⁸ and positioned in a different hierarchy in the international community by the European imperial powers, as it was denied the rights and protections granted by international law to members of the European international community. ⁴⁹ In the early 19th century, Ottoman elites began to realise how the new European civilisational diplomacy had run counter to their state’s interests, and for some authors, the Tanzimat reform of 1839 became an explicit ‘acknowledgement of the existence of a Eurocentric international society and its legitimising discourse of universal civilisation’. ⁵⁰ With the reform, the Empire recognised the equality status of non-Muslim peoples living in its territory in exchange for non-interference by Western powers.

However, the acceptance of the centrality of the West did not mean that Ottoman ruling elites shared the view that universal civilisation was the exclusive heritage of Europe. There was a view that civilisation is ‘the common heritage of humanity’, ⁵¹ and the inclusion of the Ottomans in the European international society was based on these civilisational principles, norms and institutions, which were seen in Europe ‘as universal, not peculiarly Christian’. ⁵² The concept of the West as the centre of ‘universal civilisation’ was not considered in terms of racial and religious differences and their superiority. This was due to the translation of the terms ‘civilisation’ and ‘barbarism’ in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman intellectuals first translated the concept of civilisation from the Arabic words for ‘city’ and ‘civilisation’ (medeniyet), and then this term was transformed into European civilisation as the highest stage of human progress from the 1830s to the 1860s. ⁵³ In this sense, in its first translation and use, intellectuals used Ibn Khaldun’s conceptual dictionary. In this dictionary, civilisation refers to the settled people and bedouin (bedeviyet) refers to the nomadic/non-settled people. Therefore, in its first use, the opposite of ‘civilised’ did not have a pejorative meaning as used by Europeans. Western culture and its superiority were understood as high urban culture.

In the 1880s, Ernest Renan’s Orientalist arguments intensified the negative European public opinion against the Ottoman Empire. ⁵⁴ Renan’s arguments about the incompatibility between Islam and scientific progress shared the idea of the superiority of White-Aryan Christians over Semitic Muslims based on racial hierarchy. Orientalist arguments and the racialisation of the Muslim East during the period of high imperialism popularised in the writings of modernist Muslims ‘the defence of Islam as a religion compatible with contemporary civilisation in general, and with science in particular’. ⁵⁵ More importantly, according to Aydın, the defence of Islam by modernist Muslims against the Orientalists’ criticisms of inferiority and backwardness showed ‘the extent to which Islam and the Muslim world conjured the meanings of race in the age of high imperialism’ and that being Muslim became a ‘quasiracial category’. ⁵⁶

From the 1890s onwards, three intellectual and political movements emerged in the Ottoman Empire: Ottomanism, Islamism and Turkism. ⁵⁷ Islamism created a narrative of Muslim unity against Western imperialism during the Hamidian regime. ⁵⁸ According to some scholars, although this Islamist narrative was softened by the Young Turks movement of the early 20th century and its discourse of Turkism, most ruling elites in the Ottoman Empire sought to prove the compatibility of Islam and modern civilisation against Western expansionism. ⁵⁹ The main point of the brief historical background presented here is that from the late 19th century onwards, the imperial difference between Europe and the Ottoman Empire and this discourse’s binary of a ‘civilised’ Europe and an ‘uncivilised’ Orientalist/Muslim Ottoman, associated with backwardness and conquerability, incapable of progress, was not accepted but negotiated.

It has long been argued in the literature that Turkey’s desire to position itself within ‘civilised’ states was a response to material and non-material concerns, postcolonial anxiety it experienced, not only in the early Republican period but also in the late Ottoman Empire. ⁶⁰ In this discussion, the term ‘postcolonial’ is used in a broader sense. According to this understanding, the postcolonial situation encompasses not only the directly colonised but also the actors who indirectly become part of the hierarchies in international politics through domination and resistance and their material and non-material insecurities. ⁶¹ Bilgin defines postcolonial anxiety as the social and political insecurities experienced by actors whose criteria do not belong to the ‘civilised’ and ‘modern’ worlds developed by European international society. In other words, ‘being modern and civilised’ has become a survival strategy for these nations. ⁶² European powers did not directly colonise Turkey, nor did they see the Ottoman Empire as part of the modern world from the late 18th century onwards. Indeed, despite the fact that the Ottoman Empire was technically recognised as a member of the European international community by the Treaty of Paris of 1856, Ottoman elites struggled for proof of the empire’s civilisational status. ⁶³ I use the term ‘postcolonial anxiety’ to understand Turkey’s anxieties in response to European encounters and representations of it as not belonging to the ‘civilised’ world.

While recognising that what Turkey has historically experienced since the 19th century is a state of postcolonial anxiety, examining this anxiety through historical imperial differences brings new insights to the analyses of countries with an imperial past. Thus, how historical imperial differences are negotiated today is important not only to elaborate Turkey’s negotiations of difference with the White Western ‘civilised’ world but also to address how the former, as an heir to an empire, defines this anxiety in response to its past imperial identity. As raised in the previous section, this engagement with the imperial past emerges in the context of modernity and is concerned with belonging to the ‘modern’ world. Thus, Turkey’s concern about belonging to the ‘civilised’ world is also about how it positions itself vis-à-vis its imperial past. ⁶⁴ In this sense, postcolonial anxiety, in a broader sense, also includes Turkey’s post-imperial legacies. I suggest that one of the ways of dealing with this anxiety and negotiating historical imperial differences is through the silencing strategies of the imperial past. As Trouillot notes,

But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past – or, more accurately, pastness – is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past. ⁶⁵

In the late Ottoman Empire, various intellectual attempts were made to represent the past through the needs of the present. In reaction to nationalist movements in the Balkans and the labelling of ‘the sick man of Europe’ in the late 19th century, Young Turk intellectuals began to build the roots of Turkish nationalism and national historiography. Thus, I do not proceed from the assumption of a radical rupture in this study. ⁶⁶ Although the discussion of the ideas of the Turkish History Thesis dates back to the early 20th century, the thesis was realised as an official project in 1928 after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.

Both the Turkish History Thesis and the Sun Language Theory ⁶⁷ construct the Turkish race as a white Aryan race originating from Central Asia. Moreover, these theses claim that Western civilisation also originated from this geography and assert that the Turkish race is also the basis of human civilisation and language. ⁶⁸ The thesis was not only an intellectual initiative but also institutionalised the production of modern knowledge in Turkey. Following establishing the Turkish History Thesis committee in 1930, the Faculty of Language and History-Geography in Ankara was founded in 1935 with the disciplines of Anthropology and Etymology and is still one of the leading humanities faculties in Turkey.

The next section illustrates two main strategies that emerged in Turkey’s national historiography through which Turkey managed its anxieties about being part of the ‘civilised’ world. The first is the selective rejection of the Ottoman imperial past in Turkey’s early national historiography. The second is the selective exclusion of the Ottoman imperial past in the 2000s in connection with the discourse of Ottoman tolerance. These two strategies are based on specific political objectives and have emerged in different historical contexts. However, showing their commonalities and differences points to the complex connections through which discourses of difference take on secondary forms and pushes us to question the distinctions between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ used in decolonial critiques of the discipline.

Selective Rejection of the Ottoman Imperial Past

The Turkish History Thesis constituted the essence of Turkey’s national historiography in the early period of the Republic, and the book The Outlines of Turkish History ⁶⁹ became the main source of primary school history textbooks in 1931. Thus, the thesis formed the guiding principles of the regime’s early nation-building process and influenced public history education. Although the thesis’s influence weakened in the scientific field as of the late 1930s, it is argued that the influence continued at the secondary education level for a period of time. ⁷⁰

As highlighted by earlier scholarly works, ⁷¹ the Turkish History Thesis constructed the ‘Turkish race’ as a white Aryan race originating from Central Asia. Moreover, claiming that the Turkish race was also the foundation of human civilisation, it argued that most of the world’s civilisations, the Indian civilisation, the Chinese civilisation and the Western/Greek civilisation were influenced by Turks who migrated from Central Asia to these parts of the world. In the national historiography of the early Republic, there was the selective rejection of the Ottoman imperial past. This is because some textbooks focused on the political and military achievements of the early and middle centuries of Ottoman history. The Outlines of Turkish History focused on pre-Ottoman Turkish history, while also included Ottoman Empire as one of the 12 states established by Turks in history. ⁷² Some scholars have drawn attention to the similarities between the formation of national historiography in postcolonial societies and modern Turkey. ⁷³ In this context, they have pointed to a paradox between admiration and resentment of the West. However, Turkey was never colonised by European imperial powers and is the heir to an empire. Historical imperial differences and how they were negotiated were central to the construction of Turkey as a new and young republic and the formation of early national historiography.

As I argued in the previous section, the binary of a ‘civilised’ Europe and an ‘uncivilised’ Orientalist/Muslim Ottoman formed the basis of the European discourse of superiority, especially in the late 19th century. In early national historiography, the early Republican regime challenged this constructed historical discourse of imperial difference between Europe and the Ottoman Empire by selectively rejecting its imperial legacy. As a matter of fact, in the history books, the 19th century Ottoman history was labelled as a period of cosmopolitanism, decay and dissolution. ⁷⁴ Thus, on the one hand, the regime challenged the Western image of the Turks as the ‘Barbarian’ Other. For example, one of the reasons for writing The Outlines of Turkish History was explained as follows:

This book was written with a specific purpose in mind. In most of the history books published in our country and in the French history books that are the subject of these books, the role of Turks in world history has been consciously or unconsciously minimised. Such misinformation about the ancestors of Turks has been detrimental to Turkish self-awareness and identity development. The primary aim of this book is to try to correct these mistakes, which are harmful to our nationality, which today has regained its natural place in the world and lives with this consciousness; at the same time, it is the first step taken in front of the need to write a national history for the Turkish nation, which has awakened a sense of self and unity in its soul with recent important events. ⁷⁵

On the other hand, not only Western and Orientalist images and narratives of ‘Barbarian’ Turks were challenged, but also the exclusion of pre-Ottoman Turkish empires, such as the Seljuks, from Ottoman historiography. While some scholars argue that the reference to the pre-Ottoman period is related to the secularisation concerns of the early regime, ⁷⁶ it is also about rejecting Europe’s imperial discourse of superiority it created in the late 19th century. For example, in the standard introductory text at the beginning of primary school history textbooks written in the early Republican period, the following reasons are given for why history textbooks were written:

Until recent years, Turkish history has been one of the subjects studied the least in our country. Fanatical historians, with the sense of enmity created by the Islam-Christian dichotomy that lasted for more than 1000 years, struggled for centuries to show the history of Turks who believed in the religion of Islam as consisting of blood and fire adventures. Turkish and Islamic historians, on the other hand, have fused Turkishness and Turkish civilisation with Islam and Islamic civilisation. They saw it as a necessity of the ummah policy and a duty of religious endeavour to forget the periods of thousands of years before Islam. More recently, the Ottoman movement, which dreamt of creating a single nationality out of all the elements of the Ottoman Empire, has been added to the others as a third factor in not only neglecting the Turkish name but also erasing it from the pages of which it was written. ⁷⁷

Yusuf Akçura, one of the intellectuals who played a leading role in the construction of early Republican historiography, rejected this inferiority complex that Turks had historically experienced and underlined that this rejection was one of the reasons for the emergence of the Turkish History Thesis with the following words:

Atatürk, who sincerely believed in the greatness and superior civilisational abilities of the Turkish nation, explained to the Turkish nation, which had lost its self-confidence and belief in itself in the feelings of inferiority of the last centuries, that it was a great nation not only in the field of war but also in the field of civilisation, and that in order to rise to the level of the most civilised nations, it must first know its history. He believed that it was necessary to learn from primary sources, not from foreigners, by researching it personally. ⁷⁸

The historical context is important for rejecting the late 19th-century European discourse of imperial difference and the reformulation of the postcolonial anxiety in the early Republican period. The new Turkish Republic was still experiencing the material and non-material insecurities of the War of Independence with European imperial states between 1919 and 1923. Indeed, as Bilgin states, the postcolonial concern of the regime in the 1920s was to prevent ‘external interference into the affairs of the state on behalf of non-Muslim citizens, thereby safeguarding Turkey’s sovereignty’. ⁷⁹ As an extension of this, ‘being modern and civilised’ was a survival strategy for the new regime. In this historical context, the new regime, in response to the claims of superiority and the anxiety caused by the Western powers, engaged in national historiography.

Two important points stand out in this historiography. The first is the rejection of the inferiority of the Turkish race. Yusuf Akçura, while criticising Western imperialism and its civilisation discourse, emphasised that the Turkish race was an indispensable part of the development of contemporary civilisation by contributing to the civilisation of different communities from India, China and Egypt to Europe. ⁸⁰ In the Turkish History Thesis, there are representations that the indigenous communities in India and China were also backward and became ancient civilisations due to the influx of Turkish migrations to these parts of the world. Second, again as another extension of the postcolonial anxiety of the new regime, in order to prove that Anatolia was historically the land of the Turks, the Turkish History Thesis positioned the Turkish race as the White race in contrast to the Orientalist/Western characterisation of the Turkish race as the ‘yellow race’ (Mongols). For example, Afet Inan, who contributed to the Turkish History Thesis, describes her conversation with Atatürk as follows: ‘In 1928, in one of the French geography books, it was written that the Turks belonged to the yellow race and that they were a second-class human type according to the European mentality. I showed it to him and said, Is this so? No, it cannot be. He (Atatürk) said, let us be busy with this, you work’. ⁸¹ The Turkish History books tried to prove that Turks did not belong to the yellow race and that their state traditions were based on pre-Ottoman history, not Byzantine imitation. ⁸²

Therefore, the European immutability of the developing civilisation as belonging to the White race remained intact in these representations of the White/Yellow race. In other words, the official discourse did not challenge the international racial hierarchical discourse of the time. The new Republic changed the position of Turks in the Western discourse of superiority in order to protect against possible Western intervention. Therefore, rejecting the Western discourse of imperial difference and transforming it into a new discourse of sameness (with the White race) and difference (contribution to other civilisations different from Western imperialism) is one way of alleviating postcolonial anxiety. Otherwise, there might have been a risk of Western intervention under the pretence of protecting the non-Muslim population living in Turkey. Thus, as Bilgin and İnce also show, the early regime and its ‘1924 Constitution helped to secure the citizens of the Republic of Turkey against those members of the (European) International Society who did not hesitate to express their doubts regarding Turkey’s capacity to govern its populace in a “civilized” manner’. ⁸³ As a matter of fact, the new regime also used the European discourse of scientific racism to prove that it was ‘civilised’ and ‘White’ enough to protect them. ⁸⁴

Moreover, another essential point of the Turkish History Thesis is the attempt to prove the continuity of the Turkish race back to the early ages in the broader region and that Anatolia was the land of the Turks. As Eissenstant notes, ‘a broad and colorful national mythology was developed and propagated, “proving” the racial unity and continuity of Anatolia. Central to this was that the first civilisations of Anatolia – the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Hittites – were the products of Turkish migration from Inner Asia’. ⁸⁵ This discourse of the Turkish race is also related to the material security concerns of the new Republic. For example, in response to Greek claims over the Western regions of Anatolia during the War of Independence, the official history textbook stated that the Trojan, Cretan, Lydian and Ionian civilisations were Turkish civilisations. Similarly, the Greek civilisation was initially based on the Hittite culture and civilisation and was considered to be its continuation. According to the textbook, Greek civilisation was formed by the mixing of the ancient inhabitants of the peninsula with the Aegeans, Achaeans and Tors, all of whom had their origins in Central Asia and were of the Turkish race. ⁸⁶

Another reason for the discourse on the superiority of the Turkish race is to remind the people of Anatolia of their ‘Turkishness’ and thus to prevent them from demanding self-determination, like the Kurds in the Eastern provinces or the Alevi Arabs in Hatay. For example, according to Eissenstant, ‘By claiming that the Turkish race founded the ancient civilisations of Anatolia, the dilemma of how to position the sizeable Kurdish population within the Turkish nation could be circumvented. . .The Turkish History Thesis gave an easy solution. Kurds were Turks who had forgotten Turkish’. ⁸⁷ Another example of claims about the Turkishness of Anatolian lands emerged in the 1930s when the Hatay issue and the annexation of Hatay to the motherland were on the agenda. In this context, it was claimed that the origin of the Alevi-Arab population, mainly concentrated in Hatay and called Nusayris, was ‘Eti-Turks’. According to this view, the Nusayris living in the region were originally Turkish, had nothing to do with the Arabs, and in a sense, should be recognised as descendants of the Hittites living today. ⁸⁸

In the early Republican period, the official discourse rejected the European discourse of civilised Europe/uncivilised Orientalist-Muslim historical imperial difference through the selective rejection of the Ottoman imperial past due to the material and non-material insecurities brought about by the superiority discourses of European imperial powers. However, the new regime also continued to negotiate its historical imperial differences from Europe with the categories of European superiority discourse of the time and its racial hierarchies, thus constructing its own discourse of difference and subordinated others through ‘Turkishness’. The claim of sameness with the West, belonging to the White race, is the same but different, as it differs from Western imperialism. In other words, the claim of sameness is not a copy of the European discourse of superiority but a reinterpretation of it in its own historical conditions. Thus, the Turkish History Thesis emerged as an official discourse against 19th- century Western imperialism and Orientalism while contributing to the production of categories of difference between civilised/uncivilised in the 1930s.

Selective Exclusion from the Ottoman Imperial Past

The negotiation of historical imperial differences influenced not only the early regime and its national historiography. This section shows that historical imperial differences explain the discourse of ‘Ottoman tolerance’ ⁸⁹ in the 20th century, which is also used by official textbooks in contemporary Turkey. While the Ottoman imperial past was selectively rejected in early national historiography, the existence of the Ottoman past in the national historiography of contemporary Turkey has been revitalised through selective exclusion from imperial histories.

Some studies have focussed on the resurgence of the Ottoman heritage in the AKP era and its implications for Turkish domestic and foreign relations, particularly analyses of neo-Ottomanism, ⁹⁰ while others have analysed the resurgence of the Ottoman past and examined the selective exclusions of the imperial past and their effects on the present. ⁹¹ Unlike these analyses, which focus on constructing a particular historical discourse through official accounts and popular culture to legitimise Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies, this section examines how Turkey’s national historiography has enabled the normalisation of discourses of difference in Turkey.

Ottomanist-Islamist intellectual discourse has been in force in Turkey since the 1950s. ⁹² My focus here is on the selective use of Ottoman imperial histories in Turkey’s national historiography since the 2000s. ⁹³ It has been recognised in secondary school textbooks since the curriculum reform in 2005. ⁹⁴ In this context, in analysing the 21-volume Türkler series by Yeni Türkiye Publishing, ⁹⁵ I examine six volumes that contain articles specifically on the history of the Ottoman Empire. National historiography includes 19th- century Ottoman history, the history of the first Turkish states and research on Turkish genealogy. In fact, studies on the Turkish ancestry of Kurds were also included in this series. ⁹⁶ Therefore, there are continuities with early national historiography.

In his study, Erçel discussed how late Ottoman historiography constructed the discourse of Ottoman civility. ⁹⁷ Two points are crucial for the discussion here. First, according to Erçel, in this new historiography, there is a ‘dark image of the West’, portrayed through European colonialism and racism. This image also enables the construction of a discourse on the superiority of Ottoman civilisation. Second, this discourse of superiority mainly focused on the so-called ‘golden age’ of the empire between the 15th and 17th centuries, which was portrayed as a rule based on multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, human rights and freedom for minorities living in Ottoman lands. According to Erçel, Turkish intellectuals tried to create ‘a counter image to the Western perception of the Ottoman-Turkish Empire as the land of despotism and barbarism’ ⁹⁸ by rewriting the dark image of the West and fantasising about the early Ottoman Golden Age where ‘Turkish ancestors are the respected rulers of the world’. ⁹⁹ According to Erçel, this was akin to the essentialisation of the pre-colonial indigenous self by colonised Third World intellectuals attempting to create the Western Other. Thus, for Erçel, by ‘correcting the perception of the Turk as barbaric, historians reverse the positions of East and West’. ¹⁰⁰ Erçel’s analysis of Ottoman narratives of tolerance is important in that it points to similarities between Third World intellectuals in postcolonial societies and Turkey, thus addressing the essentialising dualisms of the inverted positions of East and West. However, I argue in this study that contemporary Turkey’s negotiation of historical imperial (external and internal) differences in particular ways has been central to the formation of national historiography during the AKP rule.

While the discourse of European superiority is rejected, the negotiation of historical imperial differences with Europe is reversed and forms the core of the superior discourse of Ottoman tolerance. The discourse of superiority and the selective transfer of Ottoman imperial histories to the present brings with it contradictions concerning the subjectivity of contemporary Turkey divided between its past and its present. In other words, by reimagining contemporary Turkey as the heir to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has begun to negotiate the European imperial discourse of difference with late 19th-century categories of difference such as religious and cultural hierarchies, which in itself leads to contradictions and the production of subordinate others.

When we look at the historical context of the revival of the Ottoman discourse of tolerance and historical narratives, we witness two important encounters with Europe that led to new postcolonial anxieties Turkey experienced in response to Europe’s discourse of superiority and representation of Turkey as not belonging to the ‘civilised’ world. First, in response to the EU’s criticisms of Turkey’s accession process since the early 20th century (especially the Kurdish question and minority rights), national historiography has rejected Western claims of superiority, and thus the portrayal of Turks as barbarians by referring to the early modern Ottoman past and the ‘millet system’, ¹⁰¹ and has sought to prove that it belongs to the ‘civilised’ world because of its glorious imperial heritage. Contemporary Turkey looks to its pre-modern Ottoman heritage to show that it historically shares ‘civilised’ ideals such as multiculturalism, tolerance and cosmopolitanism. However, the postcolonial anxiety of exclusion from the ‘civilised’ world is mitigated by reference to the cultural and religious differences of the Ottoman Empire’s moral superiority over the others within, notably Armenians, Greeks and Jews. In the Türkler series, one author, in describing Ottoman tolerance, refers to how the Ottomans sacrificed their own development as an extension of the superior Islamic religious ethos:

The Ottoman understanding of tolerance and tolerance towards non-Muslim citizens continued unchanged until the end of the state’s history. It is even said that the high tolerance of Ottoman society had a negative impact on the state’s stagnation and decline. As a matter of fact, non-Muslims who benefited from a single state administration and tranquillity during the foundation and rise periods gradually multiplied and became richer and continued their religious life, customs, and traditions in a completely free manner. Since the state never interfered in community affairs, they protected their religion, language, and nationality. In the meantime, Turks were busy with conquering and defending conquered places, i.e., military service. For this reason, they declined in trade and industry. ¹⁰²

In another article, the tolerance shown by the Turks to Jews, unlike Europeans, is expressed as follows: ‘Apostates and refugees of European origin, especially Jews, sought refuge in the tolerance of the Ottoman Empire. They reflected their understanding of art, culture, and religious beliefs in social life and achieved cohesion. They would later gain an important place in Ottoman trade and world trade’. ¹⁰³

Second, the other significant event shaping the historical context of the revival of the Ottoman discourse of tolerance in contemporary national historiography is the rise of Islamophobia in Europe in the 20th century. As we have also seen in the official debates on Islamophobia and racial discrimination experienced by the Turkish diaspora in Europe, Turkey’s approach to the issue points to an understanding that sees Islamophobia as the final stage reached by European racism and xenophobic tendencies in the historical process. ¹⁰⁴ According to this discourse, European racism has a historical evolution consisting of scientific racism, xenophobic tendencies and Islamophobia. In response to Europe’s superiority discourse, selective Ottoman historiography enabled the discourse of Ottoman tolerance as a counter-racialisation movement against European racism and Islamophobia. Thus, the discourse of Ottoman tolerance defines not only internal historical differences but also external differences with the West.

Turkey’s renegotiation of its historical imperial differences with Europe mainly points to its discourse of difference from Europe. The discourse highlights moral superiority over Europe as a multicultural civilised power against the Western representation of the Muslim Other and as a non-imperial and non-racist civilisation. For example, in an article also published in the Türkler series, it is stated that the characteristics that distinguish the Ottoman system from the Western system stem from the tradition of ahilik, which refers to the communities of artisans and craftsmen based on basic moral qualities such as humility, tolerance and justice that emerged in Anatolia after the 13th century. According to the author, ‘While the bourgeois mentality and capitalism were the most important elements that created Western civilisation, Ottoman society and economy were largely guided by the ahilik mentality. Due to the dominance of this mentality, the colonial activities and class struggles that constitute Western capitalism were not seen in the Ottoman Empire’. ¹⁰⁵

To be clear, this section does not argue that there is no defining difference between the early Ottoman and European empires but problematise how this difference is used in the present. Thus, the discourse of Ottoman tolerance has created a split self between the past and present Turkey, as it allows the ‘civilised’ norms of the present to be merged with the early Ottoman imperial past. As an example, Çayır, in his study of secondary school textbooks in Turkey, found that post-2005 textbooks contain numerous paragraphs praising the Ottoman Empire’s ‘good’ treatment of minorities on the basis of tolerance. Moreover, due to the conflation of the Ottoman past with the present, ‘tolerance’ is read in an essentialist way, as ‘rather than contextualising the multicultural policies of an empire, the textbooks present “tolerance” as a quality that defines the Turks and shapes their history’. ¹⁰⁶

Moreover, in contrast to the considerable emphasis on European colonialism, imperial practices and policies in the late 19^th-century Ottoman Empire are neglected. Indeed, studies in the Türkler series that focus on the 19th century emphasise the semi-colonisation of the Ottoman Empire by Europe when discussing European imperialism and colonialism. ¹⁰⁷ While Turkey, felt the need to prove how it was semi-colonised by Western imperial powers due to European colonialism, Ottoman imperial practices, which were widely discussed and researched by Ottoman historians in their analyses of the peripheries of the empire, ¹⁰⁸ were not included in national historiography.

Thus, in order to alleviate Turkey’s new postcolonial anxieties, contemporary national historiography, in fact, reversed the European discourse of historical imperial difference, contributing to the formation of subordinate others while showing how Turkey was superior to Europe. Since 2005, as Çayır notes, although the Ottoman discourse of tolerance frames a ‘multicultural reconciliation’ of ethno-religious groups, ‘the term “tolerance” is presented in the textbooks not as an historical practice of managing differences within an empire but as one of the essential characteristics of the Turkish nation that “tolerated” its “others,” thus attributing to Turkish Sunni-Muslims a dominant, and to “others” a subordinate position’. ¹⁰⁹ We see the contradictions of the Ottoman discourse of tolerance not only in the representation of secondary ‘others’ (non-Turkish Muslims, non-Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims). This discourse of tolerance also created its own discourse of (humanitarian/moral) superiority over other ‘subaltern’ nations in its broader region who ‘needed’ Turkey’s protection against the inhumanity and racism of the ‘West’. This discourse of difference from the West has been particularly utilised during Turkey’s humanitarian foreign policy initiatives since the 20th century and, more recently, during the ‘refugee crises’ in Europe.

This existing division between Turkey’s past and present makes possible the construction and contradictions of this discourse of counter-racialisation in contemporary Turkey. The postcolonial anxiety against Europe could be overcome through the reversal of Europe’s discourse of historical superiority in contemporary Turkey. Thus, the historical civilised/uncivilised dichotomy and the revival of imperial categories of difference have made possible the essentialised ‘moral superiority’ of Sunni-Muslim Turks over subordinate others. Hence, the claim of difference from the West, while based on the claim of belonging to the Islamic civilisation of tolerance and moral superiority, is in fact different but the same. Thus, the Ottoman discourse of tolerance not only produces existing essentialised distinctions between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ as Western discourses do but also constructs subordinate others both internally and externally through the religious, moral and cultural hierarchies it establishes. This discourse against Islamophobia or ‘European’ racism is not an anti-colonial movement, but a strategy to manage postcolonial anxiety by reversing historical imperial differences. As such, this discourse actually shows that historically the categories of difference have been produced in different ways in different parts of the world.

Conclusion

In this study, I argued that the discipline’s decolonising goals of focusing only on colonial difference had led us to overlook the modern/colonial categories of difference used elsewhere in the world. For this reason, I pointed out some of the shortcomings of the concept of coloniality in understanding the global and multiple nature that we face today. Therefore, I addressed Boatca’s concept of imperial difference, complementing it with some insights from post-imperial studies. I have shown how the negotiation of Europe’s discourse of imperial difference in contemporary Turkey contributes to the development of the modern episteme through a critical analysis of the silencing strategies of the imperial past. Through the case of Turkey, the study reveals the distinctions between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ blurred by Turkey’s negotiation of Europe’s discourse of historical imperial difference and the subordinate others created by these distinctions. The case shows that the distinction between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’, which is also used in decolonial critiques of the discipline, may not always and under all circumstances be valid.

What are the implications of bringing historical imperial differences into the present for the decolonisation of the discipline? It is important to focus on the connected and intertwined histories of subordinate others, ¹¹⁰ and to uncover historical narratives that are not confined to the West/non-West dichotomy. Indeed, not all discourses of ‘non-Western’ difference offer an inclusive understanding of an ‘alternative’ world, as with indigenous movements, and develop their modern exclusionary categories. Therefore, in order to understand the global and complex nature of coloniality today, it is necessary to consider the imperial not only about the ‘West’ and its imperial past but also about the ‘non-West’ and its present, where the boundaries between the ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ and ‘past’ and ‘present’ are blurred and relational. It is, therefore, important to draw on studies that allow us to see the simultaneities and connections between subordinate others situated in different political and historical contexts but still linked and shaped by global coloniality. This understanding of global coloniality takes us beyond spatial (Western/non-Western) and temporal (past/present) dichotomies, allowing us to situate subordinate others within broader and connected relations on the other.

While history and historical narratives constitute one of the foundations of IR, they also provide us with essential insights into the discipline’s decolonising strategies. One of these is the uncovering of connected and intertwined historical narratives. ¹¹¹ Adding historical imperial connections between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ spaces to these narratives will allow for new contributions to essential debates in postcolonial and decolonial IR studies. For example, the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ and the question of the need to replace the ‘Western’ discourse of tolerance with a ‘non-Western’ understanding of tolerance or cosmopolitanism. Understanding connected imperial and colonial histories allows us to formulate insights beyond the fact that neither the ‘Western’ discourse of tolerance nor the ‘non-Western’ one is more ‘valid’ since these insights may be built on the exclusions of others. These insights can be practices and understandings that emerge in the connected histories of subordinate others produced by global coloniality. Concerning the case under scrutiny, we need to look at the connections between others, not only as those between Syrian migrants and Kurds or Alevis in Turkey but also as those between Syrian migrants in Turkey and migrants in Europe. This is how we can understand coloniality globally, and by exploring these connections and the alternative discourses that emerge from these spaces, we can find decolonising strategies. As an initial step, it is important to discuss the contemporary implications of historical imperial differences for our understanding of the complex forms of global coloniality.