Gastrodiplomacy in Turkey: ‘saving the world’ or neoliberal conservative cultural policies at work

ABSTRACT

Gastrodiplomacy is an external project because it is a struggle to represent and promote a country internationally. It is, however, an internal project as well since building a ‘strong’ nation is foremost a domestic public project. In this article, we focus on how a sense of nation is created in Turkey’s gastrodiplomacy efforts and how these turn into cultural policy when we recognize the domestic public as the target. To be able to discuss gastrodiplomacy and its discontents in Turkey, we look at First Lady Emine Erdoğan’s use of culinary culture for promotional purposes. We particularly focus on the first gastrodiplomacy project of Turkey – the publication of a Turkish cookbook and its book launch in 2021. Our main aim is to understand how Emine Erdoğan uses food to dictate a specific political agenda and how this political agenda has to do with conservative gender politics and neoliberal cultural policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Gastrodiplomacy
• Turkey
• political communication
• conservatism
• neoliberalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Kaneva’s categories are especially useful since nation branding and gastrodiplomacy are neighboring subfields. They have similar strategies and targets regarding promotion.

2. Producing academic knowledge for the government as well as the private sector has its own history. See Mills (1959) in The Sociological Imagination, Chapter 5 – ‘The Bureaucratic Ethos’ for a good critique.

3. This approach may reflect different usages of the terms gastrodiplomacy and culinary diplomacy. Culinary diplomacy is defined as the use of food for diplomatic pursuits, including the proper use of cuisine within formal diplomatic procedures (Rockower 2014, 14). It is about government-to-government relations. In other words, it is the use of cuisine as a medium to enhance formal diplomacy in official diplomatic functions. For example, in terms of culinary diplomacy, diplomatic banquets seem to tell a lot. Who is invited and who is not, the kinds of food that are served to the politicians, what is being said about the food and its serving, etc., are significant in diplomatic relations. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] Istanbul Summit in 2004, where a modernized version of Ottoman cuisine was served, had been a success for culinary diplomacy (Karaosmanoğlu 2007). In 2015, G20, which took place in Antalya, was another case of culinary diplomacy (Demir and Alper 2021). Gastrodiplomacy, on the other hand, deals with people-to-people relations, but the ultimate aim is the same. Here food becomes a tool for conflict resolution in public-to-public relations.

4. Sinkonta is known as a Crete dish and popular in the Aegean part of Turkey.

5. Six months after the cookbook was published, the week of 21–27 May was declared Turkish Cuisine Week and celebrated in Turkey’s foreign consulates, governmental libraries, and state museums. While celebrations abroad include open buffets serving Turkish dishes, domestic programs are more like academic or cultural events on the Turkish cuisine’s heritage (Yörük 2022). For the gastrodiplomacy week a website is designed by the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey [https://turkishcuisineweek.com].

6. This information is based on a search and scan of official social media accounts of Turkey’s embassies located in throughout the world, and personal observations in museums.

7. See: Nahya and Birer’s (1990) culinary bibliography, which lists 346 books under the category of recipes/cookbooks.

8. For example, see: Imperial Taste: 700 years of Culinary Cultures. 2000. Istanbul: Ministry of Culture.

9. Chefs’ names are Ali Ronay, Arda Türkmen, Aydın Demir, Cüneyt Asan, Eyüp Kemal Sevinç, Fatih Tutak, Ömür Akkor, Savaş Aydemir, Sezai Erdoğan, Sinem Özler, Şemsa Denizsel, Şerife Aksoy, Yılmaz Öztürk, Zeki Açıkgöz.

10. Contemporary chefs are starting their own campaign to make a massive change such as Ebru Baybara Demir who appeared on HBO Max’s Zero Waste Chef.

11. While prebiotics found in yogurt, sourdough bread, or sauerkraut encourage good gut bacteria, the most widespread superfoods are ‘goji berries, kale, acai, wheatgrass, green tea, turmeric, edamame, spirulina, and chia seeds, and flaxseeds’ (Sikka 2019, 2) They are believed to promote wellness, health and immunity through their nutritional properties.

12. The recipe pages labelled superfood state which ingredient is superfood on the list only in some cases. The Turkish version’s label indicates that a recipe contains a superfood. The editor and translator team in the English version prefer to describe an entire recipe as a superfood. For example, a recipe for ‘baby spinach with walnut tarator sauce [taratorlu kuzu ıspanak]’ having a ‘superfood’ label also is highlighted as a superfood since it contains several nuts and spinach in the text (MoCT 2021, 62).

13. In the case of almonds, the efforts of the Almond Board of California enhance almonds into superfoods (Reisman 2020, 337). A similar attempt was made by Peru’s Ministry of Exterior Commerce through the ‘Superfood Peru’ campaign that marketizes the country as the ‘land of superfood’ to entice investors to improve Peru’s agricultural export (McDonell and Wilk 2020, 1).

14. Slow Food has influenced other countries’ national food initiatives, such as New Nordic Cuisine, which was approved and embraced by the Nordic Council of Ministers, and declared its manifesto around ‘purity, season, ethics, health, sustainability, and quality’ (Nordic Co–operation 2022a, 2022b).

15. Chefs’ names are Ali Ronay, Arda Türkmen, Aydın Demir, Cüneyt Asan, Eyüp Kemal Sevinç, Fatih Tutak, Ömür Akkor, Savaş Aydemir, Sezai Erdoğan, Sinem Özler, Şemsa Denizsel, Şerife Aksoy, Yılmaz Öztürk, Zeki Açıkgöz.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Büşra Eser

Büşra Eser is PhD student in Communication Studies at Kadir Has University. She holds an MA in Sociology from Istanbul Sehir University, and a BA in Psychology from Istanbul University.

Defne Karaosmanoğlu

Defne Karaosmanoğlu received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from McGill University. Her articles are published in the International Journal of Cultural Studies; Food, Culture and Society; Space and Culture; and the Journal of Intercultural Studies. Her research interests include cultural studies of food, discourse and identity, political communication, and nation branding. She is currently teaching in the Faculty of Communication at Kadir Has University, Istanbul.