Instrumentalization of religious nationalist security discourse in the case of the Afrin operation: perspectives of Muslim conscientious objectors and anti-war activists
This thesis analyzes the Afrin cross-border military operation, also known as Operation Olive-Branch, which was launched by the Turkish Armed Forces in Syria on 20 January 2018 as a case study. Through discourse analysis method, this thesis first examines the role of religious nationalist rhetoric of the governing elites in securitizing both the Afrin operation and compulsory military service. The study interrogates the ways in which security discourses are sanctified and instrumentalized by the political elites in light of the scholarship on the Critical Security Studies. This study secondly investigates the alternative discourses put forward by non-state actors, in this thesis, the Muslim conscientious objectors and anti-war activists, on the securitization of the Afrin operation and conscription. In the fieldwork conducted with the participants, focus group analysis method was used. As a result of the central findings obtained from the case study, this thesis argues that the religious nationalist rhetoric, which have shaped the Afrin operation discursively, aims to legitimize the operation in the eyes of the general public and to restrain the generation of any other critical discourse. On the contrary, the Muslim conscientious objectors and anti-war activists have opposed to the instrumentalization of religion on matters such as security, militarism, and nationalism at political and discursive levels by putting forward an alternative dissident discours
