1st Istanbul International Geography Congress Proceedings Book
Critical geopolitics: Rereading geo-politics
Nurettin Özgen, Saitcan GüngördüGeopolitics, defined as the policy of the Earth, appeared as an effective sub-discipline in shaping global politics and power relations in the 20th century. The basic principle in the appearance of the concept is focused on structural power and power. Through this context, the policy of the earth is built and the concept of geography is applied. In particular, international relations and spatial dominance approaches built on physical geography elements and power influenced the war and destruction processes of the states with the contribution of political scientists and geographers of the period. These devastating effects, led to the geopolitics being called “intellectual poison ”or a questionable science, especially at the end of the second world war. This negative record of geopolitical science has caused geography to be interpreted as “criminal science” or “bloody discipline and increased doubts about the identity of the discipline. In particular, the geopolitical approach, which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and was built on new political arguments related to how spatial patterns mobilize politics or form effective apparatuses, has been widely accepted in the social science literature. Together with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, contemporary geopolitical theories have been shaped in parallel with these influences. As sources of Inspiration, beginning with Frankfurt School, The activity of social scientists such as Foucault, Said, Fanon, Lacoste, Chomsky and Harvey has been the basis for the development of critical science and thus critical geopolitical approach. Today, with the work of geographers such as Tuathail, Dalby and Dodds, the theory questions classical geopolitics with post-positivist discourses and presents new geopolitical readings with different approaches.