Imperial Memory and Risk-Taking: Explaining Turkish and Russian Foreign Policies

• In Event: Russian Foreign Policy

Abstract

Why do the post-imperial states display unprecedented levels of willingness for risk-acceptant behavior in recent years despite facing major repercussions? This question has become especially important with post-imperial states like Turkey and Russia’s overambitious policies toward their immediate neighborhoods. While the relevant literature discusses these policies by referring to material gains, electoral mobilization, and realist assumptions of international security dynamics, the impact of status concerns and memory of imperial recognition remains less explored. Drawing on Prospect Theory, I propose an alternative understanding to these recent risk-acceptant policies by demonstrating that these states perceive the status quo in the international system as a source of constant status loss compared to their imperial era status, which impels them to be more risk acceptant with respect to these perceived losses. Rather than engaging in social comparisons, the post-imperial states engage in temporal comparisons due to a recent period of positional rise and perceive themselves in the domain of losses compared to their “glorious pasts.” Despite the risk of international isolation, material and status losses, these states pursue overambitious foreign policies as they frame their “civilizational” goals as means to eliminate perceived losses from imperial position rather than to gain higher status in the international system. Tracing the changes in the official and unofficial sources of mnemonic contestation in Turkey and Russia, I demonstrate the impact of the imperial memory on these post-imperial states’ overambitious civilizational foreign policy agendas.

Author

• Muhammed Yusuf Yilmaz, McGill University