Civilization and its discontents in shifting international order: reading the Turkish case

This article explores why Turkey's ruling elites employ civilizational narratives to contest the liberal international order and articulate an ‘alternative’ vision rooted in Ottoman-Islamic imagery. Drawing on ontological security studies and Freud's seminal work Civilization and Its Discontents, it argues that civilizational discourse and the performative actions it drives function as psychopolitical tools. It first demonstrates how civilization functions simultaneously as a source of ontological restraint and fantasmatic liberation for the non-West. Second, it reveals how Turkey uses civilizational narratives to manage historical resentments, resist the liberal order's demands, and reimagine Turkey as a ‘human-centered’ order-setter in the Global South.