Bilge Yesil, Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order (New Texts Out Now)

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Jul 31, 2024 Turkey
Bilge Yesil, Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order (New Texts Out Now)

Bilge Yesil, Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order (New Texts Out Now)

By : Bilge Yesil

Bilge Yesil, Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order (University of Illinois Press, 2024).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Bilge Yesil (BY): Between 2015 and 2016, as I was completing my previous book, Media in New Turkey, I observed a significant uptick in the Erdoğan government’s external communication efforts. The government launched TRT World to reach English-speaking audiences around the world and to promote Turkey in a positive light. Existing organizations, Anadolu Agency (a state-run news agency) and SETA (an AKP-backed think tank), were echoing the government’s preferred narratives about the “migrant deal” with the European Union, Turkish military incursions in North Syria, andErdoğan’s response to the coup attempt. 

My interest deepened with the establishment of the Directorate of Communications in 2018. This new body, operating under the presidential office, significantly expanded Turkey’s international activities, aiming to project Erdoğan and Turkey as the leader of Muslims and guardian of oppressed peoples around the world. Moreover, Anadolu Agency was expanding its journalism training programs, especially targeting media professionals from the Global South. During this period, AKP-endorsed historical television series also became highly popular among audiences worldwide, especially Muslims in the Global South. In addition to these news and information related endeavors, SETA and TIKA (Turkey’s aid and development agency) were working to expand the country’s influence and visibility in the global communication order by organizing international conferences and offering journalism training programs and material support to media outlets in the Global South. 

Intrigued by all these developments, I began to systematically follow state-run and other loyalist media organizations and their English-language communicative activities. I examined a wide range of media content, from documentaries and television series to news stories and social media messaging. Over time, I noticed a set of recurring narratives that comprised the government’s global communication: Turkey as a benevolent force reshaping the global order; the West as a morally bankrupt and declining hegemon; Muslims as victims of Western hegemony; and Turkish Muslim civilization as superior.

I wanted to understand the underlying factors driving these narratives. My goal was to go beyond the frameworks of public diplomacy, soft power, or information warfare that are typically used to interpret state-sponsored communication initiatives. Much of the literature on this topic emphasizes foreign policy and international relations, often ignoring cultural and historical contexts. I aimed to fill this gap, providing a nuanced exploration of the role of history, religion, and identity in shaping state-led global communication.
Erdoğan’s communication emissaries and the media entities they control are driven not by democratic or humanistic ideals but by the need to legitimize the government’s domestic and foreign policy agenda.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

BY: The book explores how Turkey’s global communication apparatus works to justify Erdoğan’s policies, project the country in a positive light, criticize foreign adversaries, and rally Muslims under Turkey’s leadership. Through news media, television series, conferences, forums, awareness campaigns, and journalism training programs, these entities celebrate Turkey’s achievements and portray it as a powerful actor challenging Western hegemony and advocating for justice for “the voiceless”—those who have been oppressed, particularly by the West.

The book engages with the literature on global communication, especially focusing on state-sponsored efforts to influence foreign publics for political, economic, and cultural gains. Traditionally, research in this field has examined state-sponsored communication through the lens of international relations and foreign policy, viewing it as tools of propaganda, public diplomacy, and/or soft power. In this book, I go beyond these conventional frameworks by adopting a cultural perspective. I analyze the core ideas and symbols driving Erdoğan government’s global messaging, examining how Western imperialism, Muslim identity politics, and nationalist-Islamist ideology shape Turkey’s communication strategies.

I analyze news coverage, documentaries, television series, and various other state-led activities  as well as official documents, speeches, and statements. Through discourse-historical analysis, I demonstrate that while AKP-backed actors highlight real issues (for example, Islamophobia in Europe, colonialism in Africa, Western military interventions in the Middle East) in their communicative activities, they strategically frame them in binary terms (for example, East versus West, moral versus immoral), aligning with Erdoğan’s narratives while omitting inconvenient truths about his authoritarianism and irredentist foreign policies. This selective presentation, which I term “strategic obfuscation,” aims to convince global audiences that Turkey is poised to reshape the current power structures to create a “fairer world” for marginalized peoples. 

It is crucial to understand that Erdoğan’s communication emissaries and the media entities they control are driven not by democratic or humanistic ideals but by the need to legitimize the government’s domestic and foreign policy agenda. I argue that their use of counter-hegemony is anchored in a selective and exclusionary interpretation of “the voiceless”—one that reflects Erdoğan’s policy priorities as well as his nationalist-Islamist worldview.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

BY: In my previous book, Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State (2016), I explored Turkey’s media system through the lens of domestic and global dynamics, such as the neoliberal shift in the Turkish economy, military interventions, rise of political Islam, end of the Cold War, and the country’s engagement with global capitalism. This analysis centered largely on the political economic structures that shaped Turkey’s media landscape since the 1980s.

Talking Back to the West is not a direct continuation of that work, but it nonetheless investigates the political economic structures of AKP-backed media and communication organizations, especially those that target global audiences. However, it is primarily concerned with how culture, religion, and identity influence the AKP’s global communication strategies. One of the central goals of the book is to explore how Erdoğan’s communication emissaries utilize religious and identity-based narratives. It specifically analyzes the AKP’s anti-Western ideological framework and its strategic use of Muslim identity politics to shape global perceptions.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

BY: I hope Talking Back to the West resonates with scholars of global communication, especially those interested in counter-hegemony, media imperialism, and media flows and contra-flows. I also hope it is of interest to those in postcolonial studies, since the book analyzes how the Erdoğan government instrumentalizes the language of postcolonial critique to legitimize its actions on the world stage. Talking Back to the West also examines disinformation and misinformation campaigns, conspiracy narratives, and religiously inflected populist discourse, and I believe political communication scholars will find this analysis relevant. Last but not least, I want this book to be a valuable resource for media professionals, particularly those in international news, public relations, and public diplomacy. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

BY: I am currently involved in two international projects. The first is the Stanford-Göttingen Civilizationism Project, where I am conducting a study on how Turkey, Russia, and China shape perceptions of the West through their state-sponsored media, using a civilizational framework. The second project is the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project. For this, I am finalizing a country report on Turkey that examines ownership patterns and market concentration across various telecom and media sectors. I am also beginning work on my next book, which will investigate the relationship between surveillance society, visual culture, and media in Turkey.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Conclusion, pp. 138-143)

A new communication order? A postcolonial critique? 

Erdogan’s emissaries present their communication activities as crucial steps aimed at disrupting Western media imperialism and rectifying the power imbalances within global communication flows. Their perspective is largely influenced by their interpretation of Western journalists, news organizations and social media companies as collaborators with foreign governments in a concerted effort to destabilize Turkey. The AKP cadres perceive Western media as a source of threat to the survival of the state, echoing the anxieties of Ottoman officials regarding the dominant position of the European press and news agencies in the late 19th century.

They accuse Western news organizations and social media companies of displaying bias in their coverage of Turkey and launching disinformation campaigns, all of which they assert are part of a larger imperialistic scheme. Consequently, they frame Turkey’s global communication endeavors as a counter-offensive against the West, and as representative of their efforts to redress the imbalances in global communications.

Turkish officials also position their journalism training programs and media assistance initiatives as endeavors aimed at establishing a more equitable communication order. They frame them as tangible examples of Turkey’s commitment to empowering “the voiceless,” which in this context refers to government representatives and media professionals from the Balkans, Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia who often find themselves marginalized within the international media landscape. 

The afore-mentioned narratives and initiatives put forth by Turkish officials evoke parallels with the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) which emerged in the 1960s and 70s in connection to the broader postcolonial movements. During this time, the newly-independent nations raised objections to the hegemonic position of European and American news agencies, Western powers’ disregard for cultural sovereignty of developing nations, and the unidirectional flow of news, entertainment and culture from North to South. Along these lines, in late 1970s countries that comprised the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) put forth proposals to create an equitable communication and information order. These proposals included structural and organizational changes pertaining to telecommunications infrastructure, allocation of radio frequencies, regulation of transnational corporations, facilitation of regional news exchanges, and development of journalist training programs.

In 1976, NAM countries presented their proposals to UNESCO. At UNESCO, the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems was established to conduct comprehensive studies and explore potential solutions to the existing flaws in the global communication system. In its 1980 report, the Commission put forward several recommendations: democratization of access to communication, establishment of self-reliant communication systems in third-world countries, enhancement of international news gathering, and advancement of international cooperation.Regrettably, the realization of a new communication order was hindered by a combination of ideological conflicts among UNESCO members, staunch opposition from the United States and Great Britain to the Commission’s recommendations, and the predominant mindset of the 1980s that prioritized market-oriented solutions over political interventions.

Turkey was not a part of the NAM, but it was represented by journalist Hifzi Topuz at the Commission meetings. Unfortunately, there is no systematic analysis of Turkey’s official position in regards the NWICO other than Topuz’s personal account of his participation at the Commission meetings. Executives at TRT World and Anadolu Agency that I interviewed for this book did not express any familiarity with the NWICO movement. Nor have I come across any references to the NWICO and the UNESCO commission in statements made by Fahrettin Altun, Serdar Karagoz, Ibrahim Eren and other communication executives. Regrettably, my interview requests to these officials have remained unanswered, making it challenging to directly inquire about their perspectives on these matters.

In addition to the parallels between the objectives of the NWICO movement and the communication efforts led by Turkish officials, it is essential to recognize how these endeavors also resonate with postcolonial perspectives. Erdogan’s communication emissaries articulate the necessity to challenge the privileged position of Eurocentric knowledge systems and consistently emphasize the importance of empowering those who have been silenced. Echoing various arguments put forth by postcolonial thinkers, they exhibit a recurring focus on power dynamics and inequality, agency and resistance, voice and representation.

In light of the Erdogan regime’s calls to de-center the West and to reorient Turkey and Muslim publics from “passive to active, inert to sovereign, represented to representer,” (to use Kandiyoti’s words), can we then assess Turkey’s global communication efforts within the context of postcolonial resistance? For example, can we interpret the regime emissaries’ activities to disrupt the Orientalist gaze as genuinely counter-hegemonic? Are Turkey’s international communication and knowledge production activities representative of an epistemic emancipation? In identifying with and advocating for the oppressed peoples around the world, do regime-aligned communication instruments undertake a genuine humanist critique of the West? Do they offer an affirmation of universal norms and values about human rights? No, is the brief response to these inquiries. Now, let me elaborate further. 

To begin, regime emissaries’ criticisms of the global communication order (although generally correct) do not comprise a nuanced understanding of the intricate power-knowledge relationships. Their perspective relies on simplistic notions that portray Western media organizations and professionals either as minions at the service of their respective governments or as inherently Orientalist and biased against Erdogan. They reduce the complex web of relationships among governments, regulatory bodies, media and technology companies, and audiences to a narrative about the West meddling in Turkey’s internal affairs. Is this due to a lack of understanding of these intricate relationships or do Erdogan’s emissaries really believe their own conspiratorial narratives? While providing a definitive answer to this question is challenging, it is worth considering Al-Ali’s perspective on Occidentalist visions of the West. As discussed in Chapter 4, Al-Ali reminds us that oversimplified descriptions of the West are not solely a result of misunderstanding or a lack of understanding. It is because they are part of larger political projects: “Blaming the West for most evils in the world is generally paralleled by a passionate and uncritical embracing of one’s own primordial group without paying too much attention to the social, cultural, economic and political realities inside one’s nation.”

Along these lines, it is important to discuss how the Erdogan regime’s activities are driven by self-interest rather than genuine concerns for the democratization of the world communication order. As demonstrated throughout this book, the regime strategically expanded its global communication tools during the early-to-mid 2010s, motivated by the urgent need to justify its authoritarian policies within Turkey as well as its irridentist foreign policy agenda in the Middle East and North Africa. AKP-aligned communication entities strive to confer legitimacy upon Erdogan’s domestic and international actions, and ultimately accrue (more) power to his personalized regime.

Examining several parallel developments provides a greater clarity on this matter. As the Erdogan regime expanded its political economic, and cultural outreach activities in the Global South, it has opportunistically utilized Islamophobia to portray itself as a champion of justice and a defiant actor speaking truth to power on behalf of the voiceless. In tandem with its intensified political and military involvements in Syria and Libya, it has emphasized the humanitarian dimensions of its foreign policy, and asserted that its expanding diplomatic, trade and media presence in Africa was not driven by colonialist ambitions. While it tightened its control over media outlets in Turkey following the 2016 coup attempt, it has simultaneously projected itself as an actor combating media imperialism.

The Erdogan regime’s strategic leveraging of “postcolonial sensibilities” serves to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. As Nora-Fisher aptly explains, this is an outcome of the “moral injury” Turkey and other post-imperial states such as Russia and China have experienced vis a vis the West in 19th and 20th centuries. Battlefield defeats, political setbacks or near-colonization by Western powers left indelible marks on these successor states. Furthermore, their endeavors to regain control and elevate their standing within a Western-dominated international system in the post-empire era have created additional anxieties. Fisher-Onar explains that to reaffirm their ontological security, post-imperial states craft new narratives that highlight selected glories and traumas from their imperial past. These narratives portray the West not only as a nemesis but also as the norm-setter within an international system where former empires endeavor to enhance their status. At the same time, they seek to persuade interlocutors in South-South, South-East and global governance contexts that imperialism is an exclusively phenomenon even as they themselves pursue post-imperial projects in their near abroads. These narratives summon a sense of world-historic grandeur and help to position the successor states as resurgent great powers which offer alternative perspectives to Western universalism.

There is a deep cynicism in the re-purposing of counter-hegemonic narratives especially when one is engaged in expansionist projects itself. Beyond the hypocrisy, though, this media strategy negatively affects the global public sphere. Turkey has a wide reach among Muslim communities; its popular culture products have huge appeal in the Global South and Muslim diaspora in the North; and the AKP government funds multiple aid and development projects in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. This alone should alert us to the risks that emanate from the AKP’s instrumentalization of counter-hegemony.

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

Oct 16, 2016 Lebanon
Mandy Turner By :
Mandy Turner

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.