Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Author

Ali Balcı

Sakarya University
Ali Balcı
The Alliance of Civilizations: The Poverty of the Clash/Alliance Dichotomy?
July 1, 2009
The Alliance of Civilizations (AoC) initiative emerged from debates around the “clash of civilizations.” Based on this I will argue that the “alliance” notion is an integral part of the clash of civilizations thesis. Thereby, clash and alliance together form a mutually constituting “dichotomy,” which I will call “the clash/alliance dichotomy.” In the first part of the article, I will give a brief summary of the emergence and expansion of the “clash of civilizations” myth. The second part seeks to underline important attempts to “de-mythize” the clash of civilizations thesis. Later, I will show how the “dialogue” notion emerged as a response to the clash-based ideas and how it became a complementary part of “the clash/alliance dichotomy”. In the last part, I will focus on the problems of the AoC that stems from the fact that it emerged as a “reactionary entity.”

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