Civilizational exceptionalism in international affairs: making sense of Indian and Turkish claims

Abstract

Claims to civilizational exceptionalism have long been part of how states manoeuvre international affairs. While scholarly attention has started to move beyond the civilizational claims of western powers by engaging with those of states beyond the West, few accounts provide in-depth examinations of specific cases or bring these into dialogue with one another. This article offers a comparative analysis of how and why India and Turkey are positioning themselves as civilizational forces in global forums and international cooperation initiatives. Under the Narendra Modi regime, civilizational framings in India have found expression in the seemingly benign discourse of Hindu internationalism. In Turkey, successive governments under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have linked their engagement abroad to the legacies of the Ottoman Empire. While there are clear differences in their respective civilizational antecedents, both countries draw on a combination of moral superiority and responsibility—India as vishwaguru (the world's guru) and Turkey as dünyanın vicdanı (the world's conscience)—as the legitimizing base for their assumed (normative) exceptionalism on the international stage. Overall, we argue that Indian and Turkish claims to civilizational exceptionalism serve two distinct but interrelated political projects: attempts to overcome centuries-long international marginalization, and efforts to buttress competitive authoritarianism domestically.

Claims to civilizational exceptionalism have long been part of how states manoeuvre international affairs. While western powers have traditionally stood at the centre of most civilization-related analyses, more recently a number of scholars have suggested that this is a more widespread phenomenon in ‘a world in which civilization is fast becoming the currency of international politics’.¹ So-called ‘civilization(al) states’² outside the geopolitical core of the western world have been an integral part of this phenomenon, although most contributions to that debate so far have engaged in general discussions rather than providing in-depth analyses.³ In this article we explore how India and Turkey position themselves as civilizational forces in international affairs, and examine the political motivations for doing so. On the basis of an extensive review of official documentation, media accounts and academic literature, we analyse how Indian and Turkish governments have deployed civilizational framings when presenting themselves in global forums such as the UN, and while positioning themselves vis-à-vis their bilateral partners in international cooperation activities.

The article is structured as follows. We first briefly introduce the debate about the rise of references to civilizations and civilizational exceptionalism in the study of world politics. We then apply this focus to India and Turkey as case-studies. We select these two countries because the literature on how civilizational framings are deployed by states outside the West is still relatively nascent and, beyond generalized discussions, requires more in-depth engagement with specific empirical evidence. On the basis of a more detailed analysis of the two cases, we compare the dynamics behind the recent rise of civilization-related framings in Indian and Turkish official rhetoric, both domestic and diplomatic. We find that despite context-specific differences, Indian and Turkish claims to civilizational exceptionalism exhibit strikingly similar patterns. Under the Narendra Modi regime, civilizational framings in India are rooted in the idea of Hindu internationalism. In Turkey, successive governments under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have linked their engagement abroad to the legacies of the Ottoman Empire. Both countries draw on a combination of moral superiority and responsibility—India as the vishwaguru (the world's guru) and Turkey as dünyanın vicdanı (the world's conscience)—as the legitimizing base for their assumed exceptionalism on the international stage. Overall, we argue that Indian and Turkish claims to civilizational exceptionalism serve two distinct but interrelated political projects: attempts to overcome centuries-long international marginalization, and efforts to buttress competitive authoritarianism domestically.

Claims to civilizational exceptionalism in international affairs

Despite a growing academic debate about ‘civilization(al) states’, the notion of civilization itself has remained an elusive concept.⁴ References to Civilization—singular and capitalized—emerged in eighteenth-century France as part of European attempts to divide the world between ‘the civilized’—i.e. the superior—and ‘the savage’.⁵ The ‘standard of civilization’ put forward by European powers in the nineteenth century served as a formidable tool to establish and solidify what Ayşe Zarakol has called a ‘closed social stratum’ that excluded most non-European states.⁶ Following the First World War, civilizations—plural—became part of discussions to depict (the rise or decline of) cultural identification frameworks, or what Göran Therborn has referred to as the oldest and broadest cultural strata.⁷ As the former flagbearer of civilization singular, European—or, more broadly, western—countries have played a central role in the analysis of civilizations plural. While noting that constant evolution and diversity make defining civilizations a complex task, Christopher Coker highlights that western civilization has often been pinned down as ‘an organic entity that began with the Roman encounter with Greek culture and evolved from the Greco-Roman to the European … before eventually mutating into something we call a Euro-Atlantic community’.⁸ This (contested) idea of a civilization being a somewhat objectively definable space also underpins Samuel Huntington's work.⁹ Huntington's thesis about the clash between civilizations has been an influential if controversial account of geopolitical rifts to come, centred on (a rather idiosyncratic set of) civilizational spaces as the broadest reference frameworks for social identity.¹⁰

While some have argued that ‘civilization’ in and of itself can be a meaningful analytical tool,¹¹ in this article we are concerned with civilizational claims and the social construction of civilization-related references. As ‘the language of civilization’ allows leaders ‘to prioritize the battles to be fought in the future’,¹² we focus on how a particular conceptualization of civilization relates to framing, accompanying or legitimizing political practices, identities and patterns of social interaction.¹³ Official government-endorsed assertions about a state's civilizational exceptionalism open up and facilitate specific foreign policy outlooks. They are concerned with a state's identity to the extent that they refer to and aim at a larger—usually essentialized—reference category, suggesting that a state ‘represent[s] … a distinctive civilization’.¹⁴ Explicitly or implicitly, civilizational claims usually include a notion of universal reach, combining assertions of (global) superiority with responsibility to those inside one's civilizational remit or the world at large.¹⁵ At the heart of these claims to civilizational exceptionalism, the assumption of superiority highlights the differential nature—usually translated into hierarchical and exclusionary features—of civilizational framings, often used in tandem with nationalist agendas.¹⁶ In line with the discussion above, then, claims to civilizational exceptionalism portray a given state as the linchpin of a broader cultural space with its own—allegedly superior—standards, attributes and world-views.

Whereas a large proportion of work in the study of civilizations has focused on Europe and the West,¹⁷ civilizational references put forward by states outside the western world have recently led to an expansion and reorientation of the debate. While China has been a major focus of this literature,¹⁸ in-depth accounts of current civilizational claims put forward by other non-western players have been scarce, as have comparative studies where insights from different spaces are brought into dialogue with one another.¹⁹ This is why this article puts a comparative focus on India and Turkey. As members of the Group of 20, both India and Turkey have often been referred to as (regional) ‘emerging’ or ‘rising’ powers.²⁰ In both countries, the current ruling parties—the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) in Turkey—‘came to power with a certain claim of authenticity’ centred on historical–religious credentials.²¹ As part of their official rhetoric, overtly or tacitly as the occasion may warrant, both the Indian and the Turkish governments place strong emphasis on their civilizational belonging, drawing on their respective civilizational registers—Vedic (Hindu) philosophy in the case of India, and Ottoman legacies in the case of Turkey—to position themselves as the flag-bearers of virtue, enlightenment and moral probity. This translates into the framing of India as the vishwaguru (the ‘world's guru’) and Turkey as dünyanın vicdanı (the ‘world's conscience’). These civilizational registers not only contribute to connecting Indian and Turkish national identities to specific—essentializing—framings, but also serve to legitimize their claims to exceptionalism on the international stage.

The world's guru: Indian claims to civilizational exceptionalism

India's claims to civilizational exceptionalism in the international system go back a long way. As part of the fight against colonial rule preceding India's independence in 1947, these claims emphasized how Indian spiritual and moral standards were superior to notions of social or material progress promoted by the British empire and other western powers.²² A range of Indian voices argued that eastern spirituality was inherently superior to western materialism²³ and this was taken to be the basis for India's civilizational entitlement to serve humanity as a moral leader. After India's independence, it was respect for co-existence that came to inform notions of Indian civilizational exceptionalism. While Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India's first Prime Minister, advanced an understanding of pluralism that was rooted in a secularist intellectual tradition, Mahatma Gandhi turned to Hinduism—and in particular its more syncretist branch—to highlight the unity of all creeds, including Islam.²⁴ These divergences notwithstanding, both believed that inclusivity stood at the core of Indian civilizational exceptionalism. Nehru's interpretation of Indian civilizational exceptionalism also informed Indian foreign-policy making, translating into support for the principle of peaceful coexistence among nations²⁵.

In contrast, the Hindu Right maintained that it was Hinduism tout court that defined Indian civilization. Whereas Nehru's and Gandhi's interpretation of Indian civilization as an internally differentiated and culturally loose system led them to further conceptualize the Indian nation-state as secular and pluralist, the Hindu Right's understanding of Indian civilization was one that elevated, above all else, the superiority of Hinduism over other religions, and became the basis for the idealization of a Hindu Rashtra (nation). Under Narendra Modi's BJP government that came to power in 2014, civilizational framings have built on these historical trends by taking on a rather essentialist approach that centres on the superiority of Hinduism. According to Hindutva—a Hindu nationalism closely associated with the BJP—Indian civilization centres on ‘Hindu’ culture, something that is increasingly framed in reductive ways. Hindutva pundits highlight (their version of) Hinduism's civilizational supremacy while branding members of other religious groupings, particularly Muslims, as Others.²⁶ Modi's civilizational rhetoric of ‘Hindu internationalism’,²⁷ mobilized in global forums, attempts to combine the secular–pluralist elements of India's historically institutionalized civilizational discourse with the religious–nationalist elements of Hindutva's more divisive civilizational rhetoric. A trope often used by Modi is that of India as vishwaguru, i.e. the world's guru, a leader with strong normative credentials. The notion of vishwaguru builds on the philosophy of the nineteenth-century Hindu religious leader Swami Vivekananda, whose rendition of Hinduism, like Gandhian Hindu syncretic thought, ostensibly espouses the values of tolerance and pluralism.²⁸ With this and similar framings, the adoption of an allegedly Gandhi-inspired syncretic Hindu discourse enables Modi to distance himself politically from the secularist civilizational discourse of Nehru,²⁹ without completely surrendering the values of pluralism and peaceful coexistence that have historically stood at the core of Indian foreign policy discourse. At the same time, though, Modi's civilizational discourse, with its indisputable belief in the superiority of Hinduism, has begun to underpin official rhetoric in international forums, even if cautiously and indirectly.

The rise in references to India as representing a Hindu-led civilization has manifested itself in how high-ranking Indian government officials, including Modi himself, have engaged with global spaces.³⁰ More often than not, Hindu nationalist features have been introduced through tacit messaging.³¹ At the World Economic Forum in 2018, for instance, Modi drew on Hindu philosophy to expand on the idea of India's embodiment of the values of plurality and cooperation, quoting the relevant passage in its original Sanskrit.³² Modi's use of Hindi to deliver the speech to an international audience is politically symbolic, as Hindu nationalists believe that Hindi is the central vehicle for transmitting India's cultural essence.³³ Modi has also promoted the concept of a Hindu nation-state: ‘We are inheritors of Vedanta philosophy that believes in the essential oneness of all and celebrates unity in diversity: ekam satyam, vipra bahudha vadanti.’³⁴ This statement mobilizes Hindu ideas and symbols to create a ‘we’ group,³⁵ which, in this diplomatic setting, refers to the nation-state itself.³⁶ In this way, culture and territory come together to assert a very particularist notion of Indian national identity—essentially a Hindu-centric one—on the international stage. On another occasion, former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj stated: ‘Here in India, we live by the credo of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—a Sanskrit shloka, which means “the world is one family”.’³⁷ Here too, Hindu symbolism, in this case in the form of Vedanta philosophy, generates a national Hindu ‘we’ group. Such coded forms of communication—where Self/Other differences are hinted at rather than explicitly stated—enable the Modi administration plausibly to deny a Hindu nationalist agenda.

At the UN, this particularist interpretation of a Hindu-centred Indian identity came to the fore when Modi floated the idea of establishing an International Day of Yoga in his address at the opening of the UN General Assembly in 2014. He referred to yoga as ‘an invaluable gift from our ancient tradition’—alluding to Hindu tradition—prompting a draft resolution proposed by India and ‘endorsed by a record 175 member states’.³⁸ In the lead-up to the global launch of the day, the association between yoga and Hinduism was made more explicit as the government mandated the observation of certain Hindu salutations alongside yoga practice.³⁹ As international media outlets began to discuss the links between Modi, Hindutva ideology and yoga, the Indian government released statements that emphasized yoga's internationalist and universalist ethos, highlighting, for example, its potential to act as a tool for conflict resolution. Here, in the international realm, the Indian government felt the need to make an explicit diversion from a thinly veiled Hindutva discourse, recognizing its political ramifications.⁴⁰

The trend of promoting India as a Hindu civilization has also been reflected in India's development cooperation.⁴¹ Since independence, India has offered support to partners abroad. From the 1950s onwards, the assistance provided was limited, but put a strong focus on challenging hierarchical North–South norms, with reference to non-intervention, reciprocity and equity as key principles of South–South cooperation. Building on economic liberalization policies and the initial rise of Hindu nationalism under the BJP throughout the 1980s and 1990s, which prompted a more proactive foreign policy, India has been an increasingly visible assistance provider since the early 2000s.⁴² As a more assertive player vis-à-vis Northern donors, India has centralized its development cooperation institutions in the context of a strong discourse on postcolonial solidarity with Southern developing countries.⁴³

Under Modi, India's development cooperation has not only exhibited more mercantilist features—where the provision of commercial credits is tied to the requirement of importing Indian goods or services—but has also seen shifts in framing practices. Spirituality and religion, specifically Hinduism, are now frequently invoked as tools to address global development challenges. As we have seen above, yoga, in particular, has become a widely promoted feature of vishwaguru's contribution to the world,⁴⁴ as has been the case with Indian medicines and treatments—such as Ayurveda—more generally.⁴⁵ From the beginning of the COVID–19 pandemic, actors affiliated to the Indian government have been at the forefront of promoting the tools of ‘Hindu science’ as potential instruments for recovery and cure, including chanting the Gayatri Mantra (a sacred Hindu chant) and performing yoga.⁴⁶ Building on pre-modern moral and spiritual antecedents, and contributing to considerable identity-related domestic controversies, these practices attempt to highlight the Hindu credentials of India's trajectory and link them to Indian aspirations at the international level.

The world's conscience: Turkish claims to civilizational exceptionalism

In Turkey, questions about civilizational belonging have long been at the centre of national identity debates, usually connected to questions about the extent to which Turkey is part of the East and/or the West.⁴⁷ Traditionally, the primary civilizational reference used to centre on Islam and, more specifically, on the Ottoman empire as the historical formation from which today's Turkey emerged.⁴⁸ Between the late thirteenth and the early twentieth century, the Ottomans came to rule a vast and evolving territorial range, with the sultan as political and religious leader at its head.⁴⁹ With the conquering of Constantinople in 1453, Istanbul—the new name given to the city by the Ottomans—became the capital of the empire and, with it, was often framed as one of the world's ‘centres of civilization’.⁵⁰ For centuries, the Ottoman empire was one of the foremost imperial powers, entertaining colonial-like relations with a number of territories at its fringes. At its largest extension, it directly or indirectly ruled spaces ranging from what are today Algeria and Yemen to Hungary and Ukraine.⁵¹ From the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, the Ottoman sultan also carried the title of caliph, and thus embodied the claim to lead the entire Muslim world.⁵²

With the demise of the Ottoman empire following the First World War, both sultanate and caliphate were abolished. Covering only the Ottoman heartland of Anatolia and a relatively small territory on the European continent, the newly founded Republic of Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal explicitly turned away from its Ottoman—or more generally ‘eastern’—heritage to embrace westernization.⁵³ While nationalist voices tried to establish notions of Ottoman Turkishness in their political rhetoric, references to the Ottoman past remained scarce in mainstream politics during the early decades of the republic.⁵⁴ Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, however, a growing number of political forces—including Turkey's Prime Minister and President Turgut Özal (in office 1983–93)—included references to Ottoman customs and linkages more forcefully in how they presented Turkey at home and abroad.⁵⁵ When the AKP under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power in 2002, the stage was set for a renewed focus on Turkey's Ottoman heritage. As a socially and religiously conservative party, the AKP—like many conservative Islamist movements in Turkey before it—was suspicious of Kemalism's strong focus on secularization and instead highlighted the importance of Muslim values and practices, often in combination with references to what has been depicted as a glorious Ottoman past.⁵⁶

This explicit focus on Turkey's civilizational heritage under the AKP has also been visible in global forums. At the UN, in particular, Turkey has promoted an engagement with civilizational frames to foster links between the Islamic world and the West. Together with Spain, the Turkish government co-sponsored the UN Alliance of Civilizations in 2005 as a space for intercultural and inter-religious dialogue.⁵⁷ With offices at UN headquarters in New York City, the Alliance of Civilizations is now a separate entity within the UN system headed by a UN Secretary-General's High Representative.⁵⁸ Through awards, fellowship programmes and festivals, it provides frameworks and venues to engage media and youth representatives in order to address issues ranging from education to migration and peace mediation.⁵⁹ While its strong focus on the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—has been criticized,⁶⁰ overall the Alliance of Civilizations puts forward an agenda generally recognized as a noteworthy if highly aspirational attempt to address and bridge some of the most prominent cultural–religious divides.⁶¹ At the same time, Erdoğan has also used references to the Alliance to make the case that without Turkey as a member, the European Union (EU) would ‘turn into a Christian club’, and that it needed Turkey ‘as a bridge between civilizations’: ‘Turkey is not a primitive tribal community … If Turkey becomes a full member of the EU, the alliance of civilizations will be achieved.’⁶² In domestic debates, Erdoğan has identified Turkey as the leader of a neo-Ottoman version of Muslim civilization, referring to Turkey's opponents as ‘remnants of the Crusaders’.⁶³ While this account has not gone unchallenged, a considerable part of the Turkish public seems to embrace or at least accept civilizational framings as part of an increasingly populist approach to domestic and foreign policy.⁶⁴

Both the more benign and the more divisive versions of civilizational belonging have also been reflected in—and have had a palpable impact on—Turkey's international cooperation initiatives, contributing to an (arguably short-lived) ‘populist dividend’ for Erdoğan's government.⁶⁵ In addition to the Republic's strong link with western allies—particularly the members of the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—successive governments under AKP leadership have expanded relations with their eastern and southern neighbours, and notably with Muslim-majority countries.⁶⁶ One important tool in that endeavour has been international development assistance,⁶⁷ where the Turkish government has presented itself—in neo-Ottoman fashion—as a ‘helping hand’ or ‘shelter’ for those in need.⁶⁸ Overall, the Turkish version of civilizational exceptionalism is arguably best captured by references to dünyanın vicdanı: the world's conscience. Popular across recent accounts of Turkey's international cooperation—including as title and framing of two recent Turkish development assistance reports⁶⁹—this phrase epitomizes the ways in which the current Turkish government wants its international engagement to be seen by audiences at home and abroad. As the world's conscience, Turkey is presented as a generous patriarch following in the steps of (a particularly benevolent reading of) the Ottoman empire, taking care of those in need—including, importantly, those who have allegedly been forgotten by others.⁷⁰ In explicit contrast to western practices described as self-serving, Turkish altruism comes with the civilizational frame of Muslim charity and solidarity reminiscent of Ottoman grandeur. Politicians and government spokespersons regularly use references to dünyanın vicdanı when highlighting the ways in which Turkey acts as a responsible power, from the hosting of Syrian refugees on its own territory to the provision of infrastructure support to Somalia and Palestine.⁷¹ In the words of Fatma Şahin, the former AKP mayor of the city of Gaziantep: ‘If your neighbour is hungry, then you must try to help him … our stance has become a global example. We have become the conscience of the world.’⁷²

Making sense of Indian and Turkish claims to civilizational exceptionalism: from international marginalization to competitive authoritarianism

While claims to civilizational exceptionalism in India and Turkey are the product of and evolve in rather different settings, the parallels between them are striking. Both Indian and Turkish accounts rely on historical references to make sense of current roles and positions. In India, it is the millennium-old traditions of eastern spirituality—exemplified by yoga practices—that are employed to highlight India's cultural and moral superiority. In Turkey, references to the Ottoman empire as a generous patriarch are mobilized to showcase the country's benevolence and commitment to development assistance and humanitarian support. In both cases, religion plays a central if instrumental role in defining the civilizational essence based on assumptions of superiority that, while exclusionary, come with assertions about responsibilities and entitlements of universal reach. In India, a particular reading of Hinduism is put at the core of Indian civilization, with Modi's Hindu internationalism attempting to merge an internationalist and universalist outlook with the BJP's commitment to nationalist tendencies that celebrate the superiority of Hindu traditions and, as a corollary, Hindu populations. In Turkey, the usage of Islam-related tropes by Erdoğan and the AKP has introduced an explicitly religious discourse into an—at least formally—secular political system. Overall, however, references to Muslim teachings and Muslim solidarity have largely followed a pragmatic stance as part of attempts to cater for expectations of (certain parts of) domestic audiences, discredit secular political opponents and expand Turkey's alliances across the Muslim-majority world. In both India and Turkey, this combination of historical trajectories and religious tropes has been used to put forward claims to civilizational exceptionalism as the legitimating basis for international leadership. For the Indian government, India as vishwaguru is predestined to shape alternative forms of international cooperation that reflect notions of peaceful coexistence and solidarity among developing countries. As dünyanın vicdanı, Turkey, in turn, is presented as a paternalistic leader that takes care of those in need and thus represents the countries and peoples of the world that have often been forgotten by the powerful.

These striking parallels between Indian and Turkish civilization-inspired narratives build on a significant overlap between the two governments’ underlying motivations for putting forward claims to civilizational exceptionalism. Broadly speaking, in both cases these motivations stem from two political projects that, while not necessarily dependent on each other, have empirically evolved in an intertwined manner: the quest to overcome centuries-long international marginalization, on the one hand, and attempts to buttress more authoritarian forms of rule domestically, on the other. While both projects have a clear focus on addressing and mobilizing domestic audiences, they also play out in and contribute to shaping international spaces.

Overcoming international marginalization

In both India and Turkey, claims to civilizational exceptionalism have been used to create discursive distance from western powers that still dominate large parts of the international status quo. In different and evolving ways, these claims are thus part of and/or connected to implicit or explicit attempts to address or deal with postcolonial or postimperial heritage.⁷³ By putting forward assertions to moral leadership, official Indian and Turkish accounts draw on but also (try to) go beyond postcolonial or postimperial psychological registers of stigma or shame in order to explore what a more assertive engagement with international affairs could look like. In the case of India, the pre-independence movement highlighted the superiority of eastern spirituality over western materialism as an integral part of its anti-colonial project.⁷⁴ The celebration of Indian civilization expanded as a response to and attack against the Civilization project that had originated in western Europe, and that had been propagated across the globe through instruments of European imperialism and colonial rule. The Ottoman empire, in turn, was never formally colonized but instead played an—increasingly weak—part in concertation processes among colonial powers.⁷⁵ Following sustained pressure from European imperialist forces throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, the ‘sick man of the Bosporus’ disappeared after the First World War.⁷⁶ As a successor state of the Ottoman empire, the Republic of Turkey long evolved at the periphery of the West, as a ‘developing country’ somewhere between global North and South.⁷⁷ While references to Ottoman grandeur remained marginal in mainstream Turkish politics for most of the twentieth century, they have moved to centre stage under the AKP.⁷⁸ Erdoğan and his allies have repeatedly invoked Ottoman legacies to frame Turkey's position, and to highlight the extent to which Turkish altruistic ambitions differ from the (allegedly) self-serving practices of western powers.⁷⁹

In a context where India and Turkey have become economically and politically more influential on the world stage, claims to civilizational exceptionalism that refer to and build on historical sources of strength or respectability are now an integral part of a project that challenges established hierarchies in international affairs. India has repeatedly tried to push for reform at the UN Security Council, for instance, either by itself or in coordination with others, in order to make sure India's size and economic relevance are translated into political power in the world organization.⁸⁰ Following an unsuccessful bid by Turkey to enter the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member in 2014, Erdoğan has followed a similar line of argument, stating that ‘the world is bigger than five’.⁸¹ By now a staple in official Turkish rhetoric, this phrase defies the traditional dominance of not only the United States, the United Kingdom and France but also Russia and China as permanent members and veto powers at the Security Council. It epitomizes the wish to overhaul existing institutions⁸² and highlights Erdoğan's intention of moving towards ‘strategic autonomy’, together with a certain decoupling from the western-led status quo.⁸³ Against this backdrop, references to India as the world's guru and Turkey as the world's conscience provide catchphrases aimed at supporting concrete political goals. They present India and Turkey as morally or spiritually advanced leaders that, implicitly or explicitly, shine when compared with self-serving and corrupted status quo powers.

In both India and Turkey, claims to civilizational exceptionalism have thus been shaped by a desire to overcome the international politico-economic marginalization that has conditioned both countries’ trajectories at least throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With this, India and Turkey exemplify a larger phenomenon that connects a number of so-called ‘rising powers’ in today's international system in their quest to overcome established patterns of international influence and status.⁸⁴ Official narratives shaped through civilizational references contribute to turning attention away from and moving beyond twentieth-century experiences at the (semi-)periphery of the international system that, to a significant extent, were shaped by external domination.⁸⁵ Instead, they mobilize the alleged continuity between today's governments and a specific reading of pre-modern antecedents to promote spiritual, moral and/or cultural superiority,⁸⁶ notably but not only vis-à-vis the western world. Claims to civilizational exceptionalism, then, span an arch between the narrative of a distant past—or the framing of a specific historical or religious trajectory—and aspirations on today's international stage.

Buttressing authoritarian rule domestically

Indian and Turkish attempts to overcome international marginalization are not only—maybe not even primarily—directed at international audiences, but strongly relate to dynamics ‘at home’. For governments of countries that have gone and are still going through major socio-economic transformation, in particular, demonstrating to domestic audiences that they are able to take on positions of international leadership and stamina when faced with traditionally dominant powers can be an important political asset. This is even more the case in political systems—such as those in India and Turkey—that feature regular elections, as public perception of governments’ international performance matters for continued electoral support.⁸⁷

Again, India and Turkey exhibit striking parallels when it comes to how claims to civilizational exceptionalism at home and abroad relate to increasingly authoritarian practices. Over recent years, both countries have experienced a trend towards what Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have referred to as ‘competitive authoritarianism’.⁸⁸ Competitive authoritarian systems ‘employ informal mechanisms of coercion and control, while maintaining the formal architecture of democracy’.⁸⁹ More specifically, whereas ‘elections are regularly held and are generally free of massive fraud, incumbents routinely abuse state resources, deny the opposition adequate media coverage, harass opposition candidates and their supporters, and in some cases manipulate electoral results’.⁹⁰ In other words, political systems in India and Turkey currently do not offer an inclusive and fair backdrop against which electoral processes play out.⁹¹ While elections remain in place as a key democratic procedure, features of authoritarian rule have been on the rise. In terms of academic freedom, for instance, India has been assigned to the second-lowest (with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) and Turkey to the lowest (with China, Egypt and Syria) category in recent mappings.⁹² According to the V-Dem Project, India and Turkey are among the top ten ‘autocratizing countries’ for the period 2010–2020 and, as of 2020, are both listed as ‘electoral autocracies’.⁹³

Both India and Turkey have also seen a trend towards the establishment of ‘a one-man government, with adulation focused on a single leader’ that is ‘more a cult than a well-rooted and institutionalized system’.⁹⁴ The dominance of the Indian prime minister's and the Turkish president's offices in policy formulation and power politics—often to the detriment of cabinet ministers—is widely acknowledged. Both the BJP and the AKP have been described, in different ways, as ‘a party of slaves’ that depends on and caters for the interests and needs of the man at the top.⁹⁵ In many ways, the separation of powers in both countries is more a chimera than a reliable organizing principle. From electoral bodies to the judiciary, the independence of key institutions is either under threat or has long disappeared.⁹⁶

Against this backdrop, claims to civilizational exceptionalism have played a double role: they project superiority not only for audiences abroad but also towards the electorate and political opponents at home, and link this to concrete—and increasingly authoritarian—entitlements. In both India and Turkey, civilizational framings have been instrumentalized to discredit political competitors, notably those that represent the old guard parties that dominated Indian and Turkish politics for much of the twentieth century. In India, the BJP has openly challenged the authenticity of the Congress Party's secular ideals, offering its constituencies a pro-Hindu brand of nationalism as an alternative.⁹⁷ In Turkey, the AKP's religiously inspired civilizational rhetoric has contributed to framing Turkey's Muslim majority as the victims of a secular and pro-western Kemalist elite that had advocated a rupture with the Ottoman past and (omitting interruptions) had ruled Turkey since the foundation of the republic in 1923.⁹⁸ References to continuities between Turkey and the Ottoman empire have thus been an integral part of the AKP's toolbox to undermine secular forces in domestic power struggles and strengthen the party's constituencies. For their broader domestic electorates, Modi's and Erdoğan's claims to civilizational exceptionalism tell a clear story: with me as your leader, we have managed to overcome failures of past administrations and now ‘are’ someone at the international level. As embodiment of the world's guru, the world's conscience or related framings, Modi and Erdoğan are able to employ the foreign policy project of overcoming international marginalization discussed above in order to make the case for their expanding authoritarian grip at home.

By relying on civilizational projections to legitimize their authoritarian tendencies, both Modi and Erdoğan create or intensify divisions between the national Self and—also domestic—Others. In India, Modi's emphasis on India as a Hindu civilization puts forward a conception of Indian society that largely excludes those who do not identify as Hindu.⁹⁹ When embedded in an increasingly divisive sectarian context, the seemingly harmless gesture of presenting India as the world's guru appears in a different light. In both international and domestic forums, Modi's ‘we’ includes only one part of India's population and, by and large, caters for the concerns of Hindu nationalists. The ways in which Modi's government presents India in global forums and through international cooperation initiatives thus correspond to and buttress discordant—and increasingly authoritarian—politics at home.

In a fashion similar to trends in India, Erdoğan's conservative outlook in Turkey has become increasingly nationalist and exclusionary. Former Kemalist elites have been pushed to the margins, and long gone are the days when the AKP presided over attempts to engage with militant factions of Turkey's Kurdish movement.¹⁰⁰ The war in Syria and Turkey's involvement in it have further aggravated the domestic political climate. Since a 2016 coup attempt against Erdoğan's government, terrorism charges have been a popular tool to get rid of opponents.¹⁰¹ Public criticism by academics or on social media is aggressively punished.¹⁰² Political antagonists—such as the former Kurdish co-leader of the People's Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP), Selahattin Demirtaş—as well as public intellectuals and philanthropists such as Osman Kavala, the founder of the non-profit organization Anadolu Kültür, as well as large numbers of former bureaucrats affiliated with the now disgraced Gülen movement, have been put in prison.¹⁰³ The amalgam of conservative, ultra-nationalist, Islamist, neo-Ottoman or populist policies under successive AKP governments do not seem to have followed a strategic rationale other than a pragmatic take on securing Erdoğan's grip on power.¹⁰⁴

Turkey's projection as the world's conscience abroad and Erdoğan's insistence on paternalistic notions of acting as ‘big brother’ of the destitute from Palestine to Somalia are part of this broader—power-focused and increasingly authoritarian—project. Modi's embrace of Hindu nationalism resonates with Erdoğan's turn towards accommodating the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) which, as things currently stand, he needs to secure a majority in the Turkish parliament. In a context of increasing levels of polarization, claims to civilizational exceptionalism are part and parcel of attempts by both leaders to cater for their power base and strengthen their authoritarian grip domestically.

Concluding remarks: challenging claims to civilizational exceptionalism

Critical analyses of the current state of the political systems in India and Turkey sound strangely similar, highlighting the central position of a one-man-show leader, the absence of a successor, the main party in power being used as an instrument for electoral purposes only, or the crony networks that in many ways replace public institutions.¹⁰⁵ While both Modi and Erdoğan can still count on the support of a significant part of their respective electorates, they have faced staunch and enduring opposition from different parts of Indian and Turkish societies, as well as disapproval from abroad.¹⁰⁶ In both India and Turkey, domestic and international criticism and some of the inherent weaknesses of a political culture organized around a single individual point to likely fractures and limitations in projections of civilizational exceptionalism that are (too) tightly knit around Modi and Erdoğan, respectively, and largely depend on the BJP's and AKP's sustained political success. What is more, relations between the Indian and Turkish governments themselves have experienced some serious strain over the last years, notably due to the harsh tone against Muslims under Modi and the strong focus on Muslim solidarity espoused by Erdoğan and the AKP. In a fashion similar to his reaction to the situation of Uyghurs in China, Erdoğan has publicly denounced India's treatment of Muslim populations.¹⁰⁷ The Indian government, in turn, has criticized attempts by Turkey and other Muslim countries—including at the UN and through the Alliance of Civilizations—to put too strong a focus on Muslim suffering while ignoring the ways in which Muslim-majority countries inflict harm upon others.¹⁰⁸ As India's First Secretary at the UN put it: ‘The United Nations is not a body which should take sides when it comes to religion. If we are indeed selective, we will only end up proving Samuel Huntington's “clash of civilizations”.’¹⁰⁹

In this article, we have used the cases of India and Turkey to examine how and why claims to civilizational exceptionalism are enacted in international affairs. We have found that, in both cases, civilizational claims unfold with regard to religiously inspired notions of superiority—India as the world's guru (vishwaguru) and Turkey as the world's conscience (dünyanın vicdanı)—that build on (specific interpretations of) historical trajectories leading back to pre-modern times. For both the Indian and Turkish governments, these claims have served two distinct but interrelated political projects: attempts to overcome international marginalization and efforts to reinforce authoritarian rule domestically. Conceptually, this article suggests that rhetorical emancipation from postcolonial and postimperial legacies—privileging the historical experience of Civilization (singular) as western superiority—is a key ingredient in the rise of civilizational claims among states that have long been politically and economically positioned at the margins of or beyond the West. In terms of the motivations behind claims of civilizational exceptionalism in international affairs, the obvious linkages between foreign policy agendas and domestic interests in India and Turkey show that these claims can have various and often interrelated functions, not least in a political system that centres on elections.¹¹⁰ Future research on civilizational claims beyond the West might want to engage in a more detailed comparison between authoritarian systems—particularly China—and countries such as India and Turkey where, irrespective of authoritarian tendencies, governments depend on the popular vote. Politically, and relatedly, our analysis helps unpack prominent rhetorical devices that have contributed to enabling the current Indian and Turkish leaders in their telling stories of (revived) superiority at home and abroad. Far from exclusively constituting official framing purposes, claims to civilizational exceptionalism should be understood as powerful tools for enacting political agendas and reshaping domestic power constellations.

The obvious purchase claims to civilizational exceptionalism have had recently—not only in India and Turkey, but also among Chinese audiences and the far right in the United States and a number of European countries¹¹¹—suggests that the debate about civilizational belonging is here to stay. Against this backdrop, contributions to the debate on ‘civilization(al) states’ are well advised to leave behind sweeping generalizations or superficial macro analyses and engage with detailed empirical evidence—not least because there is no inherent or necessary link between civilizational rhetoric, on the one hand, and authoritarian rule or nationalist ideology, on the other. As Nora Fisher-Onar has recently argued, references to civilization(s) can unfold in different ways and can be mobilized for different kinds of political projects.¹¹² While civilizational claims with particularist and exclusive (often nationalist) features have been the dominant trend, the potential of more inclusive formats—such as postnational and postcolonial civilizational pluralism—should not be disregarded. As our analysis of India and Turkey highlights, a key question for academic enquiry does not necessarily centre on whether civilizations exist but rather on how ideas of civilizational belonging are used and play out in shaping the contours of social interactions, from the local to the global.¹¹³

Footnotes

Author notes