BRİTANYA İSTİSNACILIĞININ ADASALLIĞI: ELEŞTİREL JEOPOLİTİK PERSPEKTİFİNDEN BİR İNCELEME

• Published in: Alternatif politika 2023-02, Vol.15 (1), p.110-140
• Main Authors: UZ-HANÇARLI, Pınar, Parlak, İsmet
• Format: Article
• Language: eng ; tur
• Subjects: EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment; Geopolitics; Government/Political systems; International relations/trade; Political behavior; Politics and society; Social Theory; Sociology of Politics
• ISSN: 1309-0593; 1309-0593
• DOI: 10.53376/ap.2023.05

Historically, Britain has been following a relation with the EEC/EU which could be labelled as “awkward/reluctant partner” or “semi-detached relationship” and completed its official leaving procedure from membership on January 31, 2020. In this affair, Britain, as a country embracing exceptionalist discourse and politics, has both enclosed its insularity to the national identity formation and used it to be excluded from EEC/EU policies or demand an opt-out legitimately. This study tries to give an answer for the question of how insularity taking its legitimacy from natural and given geography affects British exceptionalism by adopting Critical geopolitics perspective which attempts to fill the historical gap in the geographical inquiries within the social sciences. For this aim, the speeches of MPs in British Parliament in the time period of British membership in the EEC/EU were analysed on the basis of being an “island nation”. This study concludes that the analysed discourse both paves the ground for the reproduction of British identity as opposed to European one and also contributes the legitimation of exceptionalist policies of Britain in the realm of Common Fisheries Policy and border and migration regime of the EEC/EU.