EMOFORTE expands and deepens the existing research on the interaction of Turkish national identity and Turkish Foreign policy in relation to Europe by placing at the centre of its analysis the emotions as significant discursive elements which construct, frame and change the meanings of the discourse and lend it particular force. Its objectives are as follows:
To understand the changes in emotional component of political discourse in Turkey over time with a longitudinal study from 2002-2019.
To investigate how the affective force of historical narratives as sedimented practices in society ideologically empowers particular political positions and legitimizes particular articulations of foreign policy towards Europe
To create a comparative ideological map of emotions through corpus assisted discourse analysis
To examine the gendered reconstructions of national, religious and ethnic identities in Turkish politics, and the fantasmatic re-articulation of ‘others’ as threats to these idealized imaginaries leading to deep feelings of insecurity.