Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter develops a theoretical framework for understanding Turkey as a “torn republic,” shaped by unresolved identity cleavages, historical traumas, and competing civilizational orientations that continue to define both its domestic politics and foreign policy. Drawing on concepts of liminality, tornness, and ontological insecurity, it argues that Turkey’s geopolitical behavior cannot be explained solely by material interests but must be situated within ongoing struggles among rival identity projects—Kemalism, Islamism, neo-Ottomanism, pan-Turkism, and Eurasianism. The analysis traces the Kemalist project of civilizing and Westernizing society. This Islamist counter-memory revalorized Ottoman-Islamic heritage, Turgut Özal’s neoliberal reforms that opened new opportunity spaces for conservative actors, and Erdoğan’s turn toward a neo-patrimonial and civilizational foreign policy. Foundational traumas, such as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, mass displacements, and the Sèvres Treaty, generated a securitized political culture and a persistent fear of fragmentation, shaping Turkey’s sense of existential vulnerability. Foreign policy emerges as an extension of these identity struggles—oscillating between Europeanization, Islamic solidarity, and regional assertiveness—not merely as a strategy but as a performance of belonging and recognition. Ultimately, the chapter contends that Turkey’s foreign policy is best understood as a theater for negotiating its fractured identity, where competing visions of modernity, sovereignty, and civilizational alignment reproduce the republic’s torn condition rather than resolve it.</jats:p>