playing partners

International Relations2015, Vol. 29(1) 69 95 The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/0047117814552300ire.sagepub.com

Playing partners: Expectation, entanglement, and language games in US foreign policy

Amy SkoniecznySan Francisco State University

AbstractIn this article, I argue that seemingly un-noteworthy interactions between states can demonstrate the significance of language for social relationships and foreign policy partnerships. Using language game analysis, I apply Peter Howards four-stage model to the case of the USTurkish Economic Partnership Commissions proposal for qualified industrial zones shortly after 9/11 and examine how the expectations for enhancing partnership are shaped and at times dashed through the language used among a network of actors. A language game analysis provides an explanation for how actors expectations rise and fall and provides an understanding of the maintenance, enhancement, and dismantling of state relationships in a social and practice-centered context. I utilize author interview data as well as texts from newspapers, speeches, and organizations to show how partnership between allies is vulnerable to social expectations signaled in and through the common language they both hold.

Keywordsconstructivism, economic partnership, language game analysis, 9/11, practice turn, trade, Turkey, US foreign policy

Introduction

In January 2002, the USTurkish relationship was at a high point. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, Turkey had been the first Muslim country to offer troops for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan,1 and earlier, in April of 2001, the United States had supported an additional US$8 billion in International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to Turkey on top of an already existing US$11 billion package to aid with Turkeys severe economic crisis.2 During this time, President Bush invited Turkish Prime

Corresponding author:Amy Skonieczny, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, HSS 354, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA. Email: [email protected]

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70 International Relations 29(1)

Minister Ecevit for a diplomatic visit to Washington, DC, and promised action on deep-ening the economic component of the partnership between the two countries. On the first day of the visit, the Wall Street Journal reported that since the start of the war in Afghanistan, the United States has appeared to rediscover the strategic value of Turkey Turkey is indispensable to the logistics of the Afghanistan conflict and with this visit Turkey is setting a price for its help. In addition to renewed US support for International Monetary Fund loans to his nation, Mr. Ecevit is looking for concessions on its textile and steel exports.3

However, the results of the talks did not include any immediate concessions on tex-tiles or debt relief on Turkeys IOU to the Pentagon. The only concrete outcome of the talks was the creation of a USTurkey Economic Partnership Commission (EPC) to be directed by the US State Department, whose task was elevating the economic relation-ship between the two countries to the same status as the strategic, security partnership that had long characterized their alliance.4 Despite this, Turkish representatives did not express disappointment5 but channeled hopes into the newly established EPC.

The Bush administration suggested that the first item on the agenda of the Commission should be investigating the possible establishment of qualified industrial zones (QIZs) in Turkey for the purpose of duty-free export to the US market. One month later, the EPC held its first meeting and suggested that the QIZ proposal be submitted to Congress. The recommendation was received warmly by the Turkish foreign ministry and the business community because it required relatively low capital investments to set up and had the potential for immediate growth in certain sectors, particularly textiles and apparel, which made up 40 percent of Turkeys exports to the United States.

However, when the bill was introduced to the Senate on 20 June 2002, sensitive prod-ucts such as textiles and apparel were not included as qualified goods and thus not eli-gible for export through the economic zones scheme.6 With this, the QIZ proposal was perceived in Turkey as having no economic value as it only contained provisions for high-tech goods, a sector in which Turkish industry was not competitive. Despite attempts to negotiate a more beneficial economic agreement, the QIZ legislation remained as it was, and by the end of September, a majority of the Turkish business community lobbied against the bill and it never moved out of the Senate Finance committee.

Given the usual US politics of textile protectionism,7 the end result of this failed eco-nomic policy is not really surprising and, in fact, something to be expected. What is surprising, then, is that both the EPC and the Turkish government pushed for the QIZ proposal knowing that textiles would be crucial for its success in achieving the stated goals of strengthening partnership and elevating economic relations to balance what had been predominantly a security alliance. How was it possible to propose an economic partnership that included such a contentious and controversial element?

In this article, I contend that the expectations of Turkey and the EPC for expanded economic partnership that included textiles can be explained using a language game analysis approach. As overlapping language games, the QIZ proposal both facilitated high hopes for change and entangled the players in a preexisting game of protectionism. I argue that a new game of partnership between the United States and Turkey began to strengthen the alliance after the 9/11 attacks, but the choice of the QIZ proposal caused it to overlap with a textile game such that success in the partnership language game


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came to hinge on having textiles included in the QIZ proposal. Without textiles, partner-ship was not enhanced, and once these two games were linked, the players became entangled in their own rules of the game, and ultimately, partnership was damaged.

Examining language games is one source of identifying how expectations are formu-lated. While economic bargaining is generally thought of as consisting of an exchange of interests, it also results from socially generated expectations. The seemingly misplaced expectations of Turkey for a more equal economic partnership were formed in co-consti-tution with US expectations through dialogue, mutual common knowledge, and in rela-tion to the social context constructed by a post-9/11 discourse that favored Muslim allies in the war on terrorism. By analyzing these failed and seemingly insignificant exchanges between states, it is possible to understand and demonstrate how and why actors hold the expectations that they do.

In the next section, I examine the literature on language game analysis to demonstrate how partnership is played through a combination of dialogue, common knowledge, and social expectations. Building on the work of Peter Howard, I apply his four-stage model of language game entanglement to the case of the EPC/QIZ proposal between the US and Turkey in 2002. Drawing on author interview data as well as texts from newspaper, speeches, and organization documents,8 I examine how the expectations for equal part-nership came to rest on the inclusion of textiles as a qualified export in the QIZ scheme. Finally, I conclude and offer an analysis of how partnership between allies is vulnerable to social expectations signaled in and through even rather un-noteworthy economic negotiations between states.

Language and action: rule-based approaches to analyzing foreign policy

Domestic politics explanation of policy failure

From a domestic politics approach emphasizing interests and domestic political con-straints, the explanation for the QIZ policy failure is relatively straightforward. While President Bush and Prime Minister Ecevit agreed to advance an economic partnership, and the US State Department EPC put forward legislation on establishing QIZs in Turkey to reach this foreign policy goal, once the actual policy entered the milieu of US domes-tic politics, it faced stark opposition on two fronts that influenced how the legislation looked once it reached the US Congress. The issue networks (both for and against the QIZ proposal) that formed in response to the legislation forced those supportive of the QIZ to remove any contentious items such as textiles and apparel in order to give it even a remote chance of passing through Congressional committees. A focus on bargaining and competing interests reveals that foreign policy promises made between the United States and Turkey are not realizable without considering the domestic constraints, policy processes, and domestic influences that determine the outcome of foreign policy actions. Thus, the failed QIZ legislation, and the consequent disappointment for Turkey, can be explained by looking internally to the domestic politics of the state.

However, while the domestic-level foreign policy analysis literature9 offers a compel-ling explanation of why the QIZ legislation became watered down leading to its failure



in the US Senate Finance Committee, it does not explain why the policy was put forward in the first place as the premier legislation of the EPC designed to enhance and elevate relations between the United States and Turkey. How was it possible that the EPC put forward legislation that was bound to fail and disappoint? Can we really believe that the EPC was unaware of the domestic political challenges such legislation would face? Certainly, the US State Department would be familiar with the politics involved in pass-ing textile legislation through the US Congress. In fact, the chair of the EPC was State Department Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, Alan Larson, the same person responsible for negotiating the derailed trade/aid package for Pakistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks. In this earlier case, he faced nearly identical situations a Muslim country, strategic ally and needed partner in the War on Terrorism, with over 60 percent of indus-trial workers employed by the textile sector and he failed to get the lowered tariffs through Congress because of domestic opposition.10 This recent experience would surely have provided important background information on how textile quotas would be received in the domestic arena in the current climate.

Thus, the domestic politics approach offers one possible explanation for why the pol-icy failed but fails to explain why the policy was proposed in the first place. What condi-tions of possibility led the EPC to propose legislation that would replicate the same conflicts and battles of the Pakistan textile tariff relief effort as the legislation designed to promote partnership with Turkey? How was it possible that the Commission sought QIZs for Turkey, signaling willingness to compromise on Turkeys most important export to the United States, when all indications in the domestic arena were that such legislation would be impossible to pass through Congress? In addition, why implicate a partnership-building policy with complications that might actually lead the relationship between the United States and Turkey from one of high expectations, goodwill, and part-nership to missed expectations, disappointment, and policy failure?

Constructivism and the Practice Turn

Although constructivist literature on identities and foreign policy emphasizes interaction and social relations, it often does so in order to understand large social processes such as the maintenance of world order in times of crisis,11 the creation of security communities between former enemies,12 and the structure of the international system as a whole.13 This unintended emphasis on structure in constructivism has sparked criticism for its inattention to agency and action, especially from those supportive of the overall pro-ject.14 In a 1998 review article on the constructivist turn in IR, Jeffrey Checkel claimed that constructivism lacks a theory of agency. As a result, it overemphasizes the role of social structures and norms at the expense of the agents who help create and change them in the first place.15 Iver Neumann argues that while the linguistic turn has invigorated social inquiry,16 IR theorists have not been diligent about foregrounding language in use; the practices that make up social relations. Instead, he claims that the linguistic turn overwhelmingly focuses on analyzing language apart from its effect on politics and the socio-historical context. In other words, Neumann contends that the linguistic turn in IR remains overly concerned with structures of language as permitting and preventing pos-sible social actions rather than with the practices that constitute social action itself.17 As


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Stefano Guzzini puts it, [Constructivisms] success was paid for by a neglect of some of the basic ideas of constructivism.18 These critiques have reinvigorated a more action and agency-centered social theory turn in IR. Three interesting attempts at bringing action into IR theory include the work on communicative action (based on Habermas), the emphasis on practices in IR (based on Bourdieu), and dialogical and language game analysis (drawing on Wittgenstein). Each of these literatures attempts to break the agentstructure dichotomy in order to build a nuanced understanding of agency that does not dwell wholly on the individual. In all, these approaches move IR theory closer to address-ing action and developing an intersubjective constructivist notion of agency.

In bringing the action of communication into International Relations theory, Thomas Risse draws on the literature of communicative action to claim that processes of argu-mentation, deliberation, and persuasion constitute a distinct mode of social interaction.19 In unpacking social interaction, Risse argues that there are logics of action that guide how actors come to collectively define a situation and conceive of what to do. For Risse, actors act not only in representation of their interests or in response to social rules, but through speech as they engage in truth seeking with the aim of reaching a mutual under-standing based on a reasoned consensus.20 The compelling contention of Risses claim is that through arguing, actors develop common knowledge and thus define the situa-tion that they are in. This illuminates the process of how common knowledge comes to be through an argumentative form of communication rather than taking common knowledge as given in bargaining situations.

While the literature on communicative action is influential in bringing action into the linguistic turn, some IR scholars have called on more direct account of practices to reinforce what they view as the political effects of actions in language.21 The turn to practices in IR has directed those who already address the lack of agency in linguistic accounts of social inquiry toward lived experiences; in other words, the call to practice is a call to examine something beyond textual data and to complement the text with different kinds of contextual data from the field, data that may illuminate how foreign policy and global politics are experienced as lived practices.22

The practice turn in IR has philosophical roots in Michel de Certeaus23 notion of eve-ryday practices and Pierre Bourdieus24 notion of habitus and field study25 but is also influenced by Ludwig Wittgensteins26 meaning as use, which unlike de Certeaus empha-sis on non-discursive practices and habits, examines how actors use social rules and play language games and thereby use language to make sense of and interact with the world. This has been built on in IR theory as an approach to interaction between interna-tional actors that foregrounds how language and social rules construct foreign policy.

Rule-oriented constructivism: pragmatic analysis and language games

Influenced by Wittgensteins later work on rules and rule-following, Nicholas Onuf27 impacted the field of IR by recognizing a competing Constructivist paradigm to under-stand the social world. In a constructivist understanding of action, actors use language in an intersubjective environment to both constitute structure and initiate change. It is Onufs emphasis on rules (and rule) for understanding social action and structure that contributes to the practice turn. His contribution toward a communicative conception of



agency and an explicitly social ontology impacted a pragmatic analysis and language game approach to international relations.

Building on Onufs work as well as Wittgensteins work on language games, rules, and meaning in use, IR scholars have examined how dialogue and language games have impacted foreign policy processes and outcomes.28 Pragmatic analysis and language game analysis approaches offer a nuanced understanding of language in action and elicit an agent-centered approach to how actors use language and dialogue to construct, com-municate, and maneuver international interactions. In examining foreign policy cases, these two approaches demonstrate a method for analyzing specific political interactions with the aim of accounting for the practices of actors and the social rules that both struc-tured the dialogue and changed it as a result.

Gavin Duffy29 proposed pragmatic analysis as an interpretive method in IR to detail empirically how analysts arrived at their interpretations of the communicative interaction in the international arena. The aim is to provide a technique for generating systematic readings [this approach will] force analysts to detail the interpretive inferences that underlie their readings.30 As a method, the analyst examines speech acts in order to gen-erate propositions to display the precise logic of each player in the game to determine how they interact, respond, and change as the dialogue progresses. As Duffy states, pragmatic analyses thereby produce inventories of the parties explicitly stated and implicitly con-veyed beliefs.31 In line with a practice turn, the pragmatic analysis approach turns to the dialogue to look and see how actors engage in meaning making through mutually recog-nized social rules.

While the pragmatic analysis approach turns to the tradition of pragmatics in linguis-tics drawing on speech act theories,32 Karin Fierke develops a language game analysis33 approach that further develops Wittgensteins look and see understanding of meaning in use and builds on his language game metaphor. This approach is less technical in that as opposed to drawing on formal semantics and linguistic pragmatics, she turns to lan-guage games to understand the social rules of communication in a specific and shared context. Identifying and analytically distinguishing, a language game requires careful attention to the rules that constitute the game itself. As Fierke states, rules are explicitly social and the patterning or regularities we associate with them are dependent on people following them over and over again rules constitute the meaning of practices within specific games.34 Thus, language games are games because they follow certain rules. Like other kinds of games such as chess or soccer, it is the rules of the game that consti-tute the game itself. One can identify soccer instead of baseball by the rules that make the game playable. Language games are not as easily identified as sporting games, but they can still be identified as having rules, expected actions and roles.

Language game analysis emphasizes a contextual approach to language such that what is considered rational action depends on the context in which it takes place and the shared understandings and expectations that create this space for appropriate behavior. As Fierke states:

Many practices of everyday life can also be understood to be game-like, in so far as they make sense only when embedded in a context of meaning. For instance, when we step into a Christian Church to observe a marriage, a whole set of shared understandings are already in place. These


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shared understandings underpin the actions of the main participants and make it possible for observers to grasp what is happening.35

However, the social rules and expectations of language games are not reified or fixed and while identifiable as a distinct game, the rules of the game can change. Fierke explains:

The rules [of a game] may also be contested within a context. Churches have struggled with the question, for example, of whether marriage by definition revolves around a man and a woman, or whether two people of the same sex should be allowed to marry. In this respect, the rules are flexible rather than law-like. In acting, we often follow rules blindly (this is simply what we do when getting married), but the rules may also be the object of contestation.36

Peter Howard emphasizes this point as crucial for understanding the role of agency and practice in language game approaches. He states, Language games are not fixed stable entities. Because meaning depends on use, and use can vary in practice people can play the same game in different ways [and] games evolve and the rules change through repeated use.37 In order to identify a language game then, it is critical to analyze what language is actually in use by the actors participating.

From analyzing talk between actors, one can identify what game they might be play-ing. As Fierke states, For language use, and therefore communication to be possible, there must be an agreement about meaning.38 This agreement comes from a cultural context that gains stability from already established rules and practices that guide how to interpret a situation or an object. Fierke claims that it is rules that make certain interpreta-tions of, for example, a ballistic missile as different from a totem pole, and that the cul-tural and contextual rules prohibit conflating these two objects. She writes:

The single object observed would already have a meaning in the culture from which it originated. The object would have already been constructed to be either a totem pole or a ballistic missile. The central issue is the practices that relate to the totem pole or the ballistic missile; that is, not what is seen, but how one understands the rules for interacting with one type of object as opposed to another.39

For Fierke, it is these practices how language is actually used that help identify what games are being played. One can then observe the practices in order to understand how actors are relating and navigating a given social context.

In language games, rules can be identified as existing with grammars of the language that signal what kind of game is being played. What is the grammar that the language game relies on? Fierkes use of Wittgensteins term grammar is not to be confused with its meaning in contemporary linguistics40 but is derived from his metaphorical reference to grammar as making sense of language within certain spaces. A grammar helps condi-tion what is possible to communicate within a certain context at best, it structures the game such that preexisting terms, claims, and signs set the parameters of what is possible within that particular game. If the grammar and the game are incompatible, either the rules of the game must adapt or change, or the language used will not make sense. Bertrand Russell explains Wittgensteins meaning, He uses the words space41 and



grammar in peculiar senses, which are more or less connected with each other. He holds that if it is significant to say This is red, it cannot be significant to say This is loud. There is one space of colors and another space of sounds Mistakes of grammar result from confusing spaces.42

Language games of alliance and partnership

Fierke investigates the grammar to help identify language games at work in a given inter-action. For example, in IR, a commonly played language game is a game of alliance.43 Fierke examines a partnership game in her analysis of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance following the end of the Cold War.44 According to Fierke, alliance games often rely on a grammar of structure the alliance is conceived of as a kind of structure wherein the various possible moves are maintain, destroy, rebuild, and other terms that make sense when talking of structures. This makes up the language (the grammar) of structure and therefore of the game of alliances.

By examining the language used between actors, such as the terms build, maintain, and upkeep, Fierke identifies that the language signals a game of alliances. In her research, she analyzes the structure of alliances that made up possible actions within NATO. She explains:

The structure [of the alliance grammar] had particular components, such as foundations, cornerstones and frameworks For over twenty-five years, the Atlantic Alliance has provided an irreplaceable framework for our collective security The credibility of the United States nuclear guarantee, which is the corner-stone of the Atlantic Alliance, depends on the credibility of each element of the triad.45

In this example, the NATO alliance became meaningful through the language of structure. A metaphor of structure presents what Fierke calls a grammar tree of possi-bilities; she argues that four dominant possibilities of action existed for the NATO alli-ance during the Cold War: build, maintain, restore, and dismantle.46 She presents these possible actions in Figure 1. This figure illustrates the possible moves once structure becomes the operating grammar of the NATO alliance game.

Building on Fierkes work, Peter Howard47 developed a four-stage model to disag-gregate how it is that a new game develops from already existing language games. The four stages articulated in his model showcase how players (1) initiate a game, (2) institutionalize it with resources, (3) develop a common language based on previous

Structure

Build Maintain Restore Dismantle

Figure 1. Fierkes Grammar Tree of Possiblities for the language of structure.


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understandings of the rules and the new context of the current game, and finally (4) become entangled in the rules of the language game. The four stages are, of course, not necessarily how every language game proceeds. As he clarifies, In practice, all four stages repeat and overlap through the course of [playing the game].48 However, con-structing a model of a language game is useful analytically.49 Indeed, this four-stage process can be seen in the language game of partnership between the United States and Turkey after 9/11.

In the next section, I apply Howards four-stage model to the case of USTurkey eco-nomic partnership to analyze how an effort with such promise to enhance and deepen this important strategic alliance at a crucial time for the United States quickly soured in an 8-month period of time. By examining both textual and interview data, I examine how two competing games of partnership and textile protectionism facilitated both expec-tations of change and trapped participants in a policy dead-end that resulted in disap-pointment and discord for the USTurkish relationship.

Stage 1: enhanced partnership promised a language game begins

According to Howard, the first stage of a language game is the initiation of a new game. Actors must signal to the others what rules will be followed for interacting, and from these rules, the game commences. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States sought to strengthen ties with its Muslim Allies, and in so doing, it initiated a new round of a partnership game with Turkey. The United States and Turkey were familiar with this language game as partnership was an already established game between these two long-time allies. The grammar of partnership for the United States and Turkey can be characterized as primarily strategic that is, militarily focused. In the past, discus-sions and negotiations that maintained the partnership between them primarily involved shared security concerns.

However, in the changed social context following 9/11, the United States wanted to (re)articulate the partnership game with Turkey by introducing the grammar of economic partnership into the game. This new game of partnership initiated by the United States now included an expanded grammar of possibilities (military and economic partnership). This was significant, as I will show shortly, because Turkey had long been attempting to initiate a new round of play based precisely on expanding the grammar of partnership to include economic relations as well as military ones. For example, a year prior, Turkey had asked for US support and help during an economic crisis, and the US obliged. This maintained the partnership between them but did not enhance it because the aid given was US support for IMF loans, whereas Turkey had asked for more direct access to the US market for exports.

In stage 1, with the initiation of the new round of the partnership game, two possi-bilities for play became possible with this expanded grammar: (1) replay the old game of partnership: use the language of strategic, military alliance, and therefore maintain the status quo or (2) enhance the partnership through new moves that indicate a more equal relationship where military and economic interests and aid are paramount. Figure 2 illus-trates these two possibilities.



The game is constituted by two possibilities: maintain the strategic game by focus-ing on military alliance or transition to a new game that included an economic compo-nent that deepened and enhanced the alliance.

Enhancing partnership and increasing expectations

As already mentioned, the nature of the partnership prior to 9/11 was primarily strategic meaning that the partnership is based on defense interests and military aid. Any talk of partnership was commonly within this grammar of possibilities. In the new initiation of a partnership game, there was still strong pull from the former practices, habits, and common knowledge that understood the United States and Turkey as primarily strategic partners. In the beginning stages of the game, this old game would be replayed as actors were cautious to believe that the partnership might actually be enhanced by adding a mutually beneficial economic component to the partnership.

Turkish representatives were already very much aware of the predominantly strategic nature of the established partnership. As a member of Turkish Industrialists Associations (TUSIAD) Washington, DC, headquarters stated:

Here [in the US], Turkey is perceived primarily as a strategic asset. When you are talking about the strategic asset you are focusing more on the security side. We in Turkey tend to see the other aspects of Turkish development, which we see as more important than Turkeys security asset.50

Turkish actors described the old, long-standing partnership by emphasizing that Turkey was only a military, strategic partner to the United States and that this made the partnership unequal and not a real partnership of the kind that Turkey believed it should

Figure 2. Partnership game: the Old and the New.


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have with the United States. There had been past efforts to deepen and extend the USTurkish partnership, but they had only been mildly successful. For example, in 1991, the concept of enhanced partnership was introduced into the diplomatic relationship and called for diversifying and deepening the Turkish-American relationship as well as developing it on a more substantial basis.51 However, despite a focus on energy, econ-omy and trade, regional cooperation, Cyprus and defense and security cooperation, the piece that stuck was security and defense.52 In 1999, Turkey was officially declared a strategic partner where the two close allies consult one another, coordinate their efforts and cooperate in conflict prevention and crisis management and in containing regional conflicts, deterring rogue states, curbing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.53 This security cooperation continued to dominate the relationship.

After 9/11, it appeared possible to return to the additional goals of enhanced partner-ship and to include the economy and trade as equal components of the partnership. This was the perceived missing piece of the relationship. A commercial counselor for the Turkish Embassy described the desire to equalize the relationship with both economic and military components:

We have been trying to explain to our counterparts here that because of the specific nature of the relationship between the US and Turkey, as Ive said, the strategic relationship, we feel like we could do more in terms of freer trade between the two countries.54

From the language used by Turkish representatives, the old partnership game already appeared well played (and tired), and effort had been made to expand the rules to include more possible actions within the game.

In Washington, DC, Turkey had, and still has, numerous organizations pushing for this goal. In the view of these organizations, the need for a stronger partnership was both evident and expected. For example, one representative of a Turkish organization in Washington, DC, stated:

I dont want to talk about politics because its way beyond my scope but we have been very close. We have been close allies for a long time and the trade and investment have been missing. We have been very close politically and militarily, everyone can see that for the last 5-6 years we have been pushing for more investment, more trade. There should be more trade.55

Another person representing an organization of Turkish businesses in Washington, DC, explained when asked if the United States is thought of as a less reliable ally because they emphasize Turkeys strategic importance but have not come through as strongly in bilateral economic aspects, Yes. Thats pretty much Turkeys view. When it comes to trade and economic relations Turkey thinks it is unfairly treated, and the US doesnt do well enough.56

The previous plays of the partnership game reflected this dynamic, with Turkey pushing for more economic gains and the United States emphasizing their military importance. For example, despite Turkish requests in the past for a free trade agreement, the United States chose to focus on supporting Turkeys European Union (EU) member-ship rather than engaging in direct, bilateral trade agreements. However, occasional talks about bilateral economic agreements surfaced in reaction to EUTurkish relations. For



example, in 19971999, there was some talk of initiating a USTurkey Free Trade Agreement57 after the Clinton Administration failed to persuade EU member states to upgrade Turkeys status to an EU candidate in 1997.58 Senator Phil Gramm promoted a project for a free trade agreement between the United States and Turkey during an August 1997 visit to Ankara but as the reporter noted:

The move is part of efforts by the US to support closer relations between Turkey and the EU. Turkey has a long-standing application to join the European Union but last month, the EU excluded Turkey from a list of prospective new members to join the 15-nation bloc.59

Once the new round of the partnership game was initiated, it appeared that the United States finally agreed to a language of economic and security partnership that Turkey had been trying to encourage for years. With the initiation of the game and the expansion of a common grammar, the United States and Turkey established that the rules of partner-ship in this round of play would structure a more balanced, equal engagement than had been the case in the past. Primarily, Turkeys strategy was to expand the grammar of partnership through a language of balance, equality, and enhancement. The lan-guage used on the part of Turkey almost always put security on one side and the economy on the other as if on a teeter-totter that was heavily unbalanced with the security side much heavier than the economic side. With the initiation of a new partnership with expanded grammar, balanced and equal came to signal an actual deepening of the partnership between the United States and Turkey. This came to define what was meant by the term equal partnership and indicates the significance of the establishment of an EPC charged with equalizing the economic and strategic aspects of the relationship. For Turkey, the new partnership game was a long time coming.

Stage 2: institutionalizing the game establishing the EPC

In stage 2 of Howards model of language games, the game is given a concrete institu-tionalized setting, resources (e.g. funding, office space, and staff), organizational power, and decision-makers. This tangible commitment and institutionalization becomes the locus of the game. As Howard states:

These sites are not static institutions. Instead, they are dynamic networks of officials [that constitute] the rules and language of [the game]. The site is important in that it defines where and how things actually happen. It is a mechanism for creating a common language and playing the game.60

The language game now has a place to be played and a concrete commitment to anchor the dialogue. Where and what this is, shapes the contours of the game.

With the official diplomatic meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Ecevit and President Bush in January 2002, the language game of partnership entered stage 2. It was as a result of this diplomatic meeting that President Bush established the EPC. The EPC insti-tutionalized the expansion of the grammar of partnership and the new rules of the game that included possible moves in the economic realm as well as the military one. This is evident in the press release announcing the commission. The US State Department announced:


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The U.S. and Turkey have long maintained a close strategic partnership. Now we have agreed to upgrade our economic partnership to the same level. The first initiative of this new chapter in our relations will be the convening of the first U.S.-Turkey Economic Partnership Commission.61

The establishment of the EPC concretized the expanded grammar of partnership, and by officially committing State Department resources to the enhancement of partnership, the US institutionalized the language game.

As the diplomatic meeting in January took shape, the partnership game was already being played as to what this enhanced partnership would look like and what the concrete results of the EPC might be. On 17 January, Turkeys Commerce Minister Tunca Toskay explained to reporters what was at stake and deployed the language that characterized the old partnership game to emphasize the necessity of an enhanced one. Toskay stated in an interview that Turkeys trade relationship with the United States was less than it deserves as a strategic security partner Turkey is the only Muslim member of NATO and has broadly supported the U.S. military action in Afghanistan.62 He concluded his statement by saying, It is our opinion that Turkey is being treated in an unfair way, Toskay said.63 On the same visit, Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem said that trade between the US and Turkey was unbalanced because Turkey spends large sums on US military equip-ment but does not receive favorable trading status in return for its strategic support. He stated, In our relations with the USA, the hitch is in trade. Our trade is unusually unsta-ble.64 Cem complained that Americans bought only US$3 billion worth of Turkish goods last year compared with US$3.5 billion in American products imported by Turkey.65

This reflects Turkeys strategy in the language game. By using the terms balance/un-balanced and fair/unfair, Turkey distinguished between what would be an old and new game of partnership and revealed how the EPCs actions would be judged. It was not trade that was unbalanced (US$3 billion to US$3.5 billion is actually quite balanced), it was the relationship between the security emphasis and the economic emphasis in the partnership that was out of balance. Moreover, Turkey emphasized that in the changed social context post-9/11, the United States should reciprocate Turkeys support of the war on terrorism with the help for Turkeys struggling economy, and this too was out of balance. The moves in the language game would involve pushing forward these specific meanings of balance, equality, and fairness.

On the part of the United States, President Bush welcomed the Turkish coalition to Washington and set the tone for the diplomatic meeting in his opening remarks:

Thank you for coming, Mr. Prime Minister. Im proud to welcome you as a friend. You have been steadfast in your support in the war against terror. And for that, my nation is very grateful. We appreciate your leadership when it comes to foreign policy, and we appreciate your leadership when it comes to economic policy. You and your administration have made some very tough decisions. And the economy is improving as a result of your leadership. And we look forward to having a good discussion about how we can increase trade.66

As the welcome remarks from President Bush indicate, the United States was also intent on equalizing the partnership and bringing the security emphasis into balance with an economic emphasis. Bush is careful to counter each strategic comment with an



economic one leadership in foreign policy (military, i.e., war on terror reference) with leadership in economic policy, for example. At this stage of the game, both actors were developing a common language that could be used to enhance partnership. From the moves played out during the initial diplomatic meeting, it even appeared that the partnership might reach the deepest level of friendship. Both leaders expressed mutual friendship and expressed the intent for a more equal partnership.

Prime Minister Ecevit responded during the press conference following his meeting with President Bush that the establishment of an EPC was a good first step in enhancing their partnership toward an equal economic and military relationship. This interplay between strategic ally and economic ally is evident from his opening remarks regard-ing the EPC. Moreover, again, like the trade ministers statement, Ecevit reaffirmed that Turkey came to the aid of the United States in the War on Terrorism and consequently expected financial help in exchange. This would bring the relationship into balance. The Turkish strategy in the game of partnership continues in Prime Minister Ecevits remarks:

We had always good relations with the United States and you have totally enhanced this cooperation and friendship. We have some very good, concrete good news now, as you have referred to it, Mr. President. The State Department has today issued a statement expressing the will of the United States that we will be able to form an economic partnership in additional to our political partnership. We attach great importance to that our cooperation with you against terrorism is a great service, not only for our own people, but for the whole world. The American determination to get rid of terrorism in the world is of great importance, of historic importance, and we are glad, we are very happy that we have the chance to cooperate with you to that effect. And Turkish and American cooperation, partnership now together with economic partnership will be beneficial for both peoples of both our countries.67

Ecevit, like Bush, reiterates the expanded grammar of the partnership game and makes some critical ties during his opening remarks such as the connection between being close friends over a long period and cooperating on shared experiences of and responses to terrorism with the great importance Turkey attaches to an economic rela-tionship with the United States. Additionally, Ecevit connects expected economic gains with Turkeys past service to the United States in supporting the war on terrorism. Thus, Ecevit, like his Turkish counterpoints, used the language of equality, balance, and emphasized the mutual benefit of enhancing partnership for both countries.

With the institutionalization of the new partnership game, the site of the game was established, and it was now up to the EPC to translate this into concrete policy options. The first meeting of the EPC took place on 26 February 2002. Following Bushs sugges-tion, the EPC chose the USTurkish QIZ scheme as a relatively quick way to increase economic ties and enhance partnership. The QIZ proposal further institutionalized the language game of partnership by expanding the number of players involved. With a QIZ proposal, Congress would be involved, and with Congress, political lobbies, as well as other domestic actors would come into play. The network of actors now responsible for achieving the aim of enhanced partnership had just dramatically expanded.

Furthermore, the formerly tabled QIZ proposal68 was itself the site of an old lan-guage game that one might label textile concessions. Textiles, like other sensitive sec-tors of the US economy, were both heavily protected via quotas and tariffs and at the


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forefront of economic disputes with developing countries such as Turkey. Turkey had angled in the past to expand the grammar of textiles by similarly pushing the language of fair/un-fair and balance. The specific strategy was arguing for the elimination of US textile quotas, particularly since becoming members of the European Customs Union in 1995. As the TurkishUS Business Council, the leading Turkish economic organization in Istanbul states, Turkeys main argument [in the textile concession game] is that as Turkey has a Customs Union with the EU, it is controversial that the United States, which maintains no quotas and barriers to the EU, applies quotas on Turkish goods.69 The textile concession game similarly echoed the Turkish language of unfairness, unbalanced, and unequal and therefore intersected well with the newly expanded grammar of partnership. However, it also made the game much more complicated.

With the EPC raising the textile proposal from the dead, they unwittingly70 con-verged the partnership game with the game of textile concessions and therefore inter-sected the goal of enhanced partnership with the achievement of textile concessions from the United States. Most language games intersect with others, either through the inten-tional action of actors strategically pushing for resonance for one game through linking it with another or accidentally as actors articulate the rules of the game at the intersection point with another game.71 Howard claims that Intersections, whether intentional or accidental, are the product of [actor] practice[s]. Agreements, statements and processes of implementation will necessarily draw on some historical referents.72 During the insti-tutionalization of partnership in stage 2, and as the EPC further institutionalized how partnership would be enhanced, the partnership games rules and grammar expanded and the permissible moves became intertwined with the moves and grammar of a game of textile concessions a much more difficult game to play and win. With the site of play established, the game was becoming defined in particular ways according to the actions of the network of actors. These same acts constituted the parameters of the game and now the meaning of enhanced partnership began to be specified though the practices of the actors playing the game.

Stage 3: developing a common language QIZs, textiles, and enhanced partnership

According to Howards model, once the game establishes a tangible commitment of resources and an institutional setting, it transitions to stage 3, a forging of a common language that relates more specifically to the site of the game. As he states, In devel-oping and using a common language, players create shared meaning by agreeing to use language in a particular way to talk about [in this case, partnership].73 However, as the partnership game was institutionalized, it intersected with the textile conces-sion game, and this expanded the available grammar and moves for players. Howard explains, Learning a common language requires understanding how to use that lan-guage in particular situations not anticipated by the initial rules.74 Unlike more con-trolled games such as baseball where the rules are set and rarely change over time, language games are in use, meaning that as actors practice the rules and act, the game adjusts and the rules expand as long as both actors continue playing and there-fore reiterating the rules as they go along. As the partnership game intersected with the



textile concession game, the rules stretched enough to allow the kinds of moves famil-iar in the game of textile concessions.

Textiles: an established and stalled game

Within the grammar of textiles, there are certain maneuvers, strategies, and common language that actors can deploy concessions, protection, qualifying products, quotas, value-added, input, and so on. As the Turkey desk officer at the US Department of Commerce told me:

all the textiles exporters have come to the US for flexibilities and our poor textiles folks are bombarded daily with these kinds of questions, you know, we want more treatment, we want more flexibility, we want concessions, I mean theres a whole language that those folks use.75

The textile concession game, like the partnership game, has a long history, institutional sites, common language, and entanglements. It also has its own network of actors. However, in this instance, the network of actors partially overlaps with those working toward enhanced partnership between the United States and Turkey.

Prior to the initiation of a new round of the partnership game, the textile concession game, was a stalemate. Despite this, Turkey consistently asked for concessions in the textile sector. For example, the director of the TUSIAD described the impasse from the Turkish point of view:

[In economic negotiations] the inclusion of Turkeys key sectors is determinate of whether it is desirable on the Turkey side or not. At the end of the day everything comes down to textiles, leather and all related manufacturing labor-intensive sectors in Turkey Any preferential treatment would of course work, but the question would be whether it would include those sectors or not. And both sectors are strong in their respective countries. Textile is very strong in Turkey and it also has a strong lobby here in the US and any kind of agreement would have to pass through the Congress and there it is strong in Congress and so its very, very difficult for Turkey to have such an agreement with the US. I dont know what the solution is there.76

As the USTurkish specialist for US Treasury Representatives (USTR) told me, Turkey always talks about textiles but its not always in their best long term interest as they need to diversify. Turkey refuses to look beyond textiles.77 Between the United States and Turkey, textiles was a well-played and worn game. Each player had predeter-mined roles to play and language to use and not a lot of new moves seemed possible.

Common language: intersecting grammars and competing moves

As the partnership game intersected with the textile concession game, including textiles as qualified goods became the conduit through which partnership would be measured as either enhanced or not. However, including textiles as qualified goods in the QIZ con-strained the possible moves for US actors as they encountered a tightly knit set of rules regarding textile concessions that proved nearly impossible to change.


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However, despite the liability that came with the intersection of the partnership game with the game of textile concessions, US actors proceeded to play the partnership game. At the EPC meeting where it was agreed to move forward with the QIZ proposal, the State Department sought Turkish allies in Congress for help with the first step of submitting an amendment. On 20 June 2002, Senators John Breaux, Chuck Grassley, and John McCain introduced the TurkishIsraeli Economic Enhancement Act to the US Senate, which would allow specific products to be eligible for duty-free entry to the United States under the 1996 IsraelEgyptJordan QIZ program. In announcing the leg-islation, Senator McCain said:

Turkeys deepening, and unique, strategic relationship with Israel, command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, partnership in NATO, and support for U.S. policy toward Iraq place it in the first order of American allies. Turkish troops have fought alongside U.S. forces from Korea to Kabul. As a Muslim nation and a secular democracy, Turkey puts to rest the myth that Americas war on terror is a war on Islam. Turkey deserves our support, and I hope Congress will act swiftly on our legislation to advance Israeli-Turkish cooperation and American interests in the region.78

McCains statement reiterated Ecevits earlier statements of balance and fairness by associating Turkeys past military (strategic) service as justification for economic partnership. The shared language of partnership had developed some common meanings among the different actors involved.

The Turkish QIZ amendment required Turkish business firms to have Israeli partner-ship either through investment or value-added inputs to be eligible for QIZ benefits. This, of course, was lucrative for the Israeli business community and gained their strong support for amending the free trade agreement. Because of the proposed TurkishIsraeli cooperation, the QIZ proposal received strong support from various US Jewish-American lobbies. In a letter dated 11 September 2002 (1 year exactly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks) and sent to US Senators John B. Breaux (Louisiana), Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), John McCain (Arizona), and US Representatives Philip M. Crane (Illinois), and Robert I. Wexler (Florida), nine major American-Jewish organizations characterized the pending QIZ legislation as a development that sends a timely and well-justified message of American solidarity with Turkey.79 The letter went on to describe the strategic impor-tance of Turkey and the need to deepen the partnership through economic benefits to Turkey. It continued:

Since the attacks of last September, there is a new recognition of the importance of the long-standing U.S.-Turkish partnership There is hardly a place in the world where the intersection of politics and economics is more clearly complete. That is why we are convinced that the benefits of creating economic development through expanded free trade are so important.

Again, the partnership language had common meanings and all actors used the lan-guage of intersecting economics with military (politics) to bring the partnership into balance.

As the partnership game intersected with the textile concessions game, policy options became restricted. Over a fairly brief period, it became apparent that the only way to meet



the goal of enhancing partnership between the United States and Turkey was to include textiles as a qualified good in the QIZ scheme. Through this language game, actors became entangled within their own rules, and once this entanglement happened, it became nearly impossible to start over with the original un-institutionalized partnership game first initi-ated by the United States that had a more open terrain of permissible moves.

Stage 4: entanglement disappointment and empty promises

The fourth and final stage of Howards model of language game occurs when actors find themselves entangled in the rules they have created with the common language.80 While rules define the situation, give it meaning and create the realm of possible and permis-sible actions,81 these same rules can begin to entangle actors to the extent that permis-sible moves at the outset of the game are now reduced to only a few options.

At stage 4 of the language game, possible moves in the USTurkish partnership game became constrained by the intersecting rules of textile concessions such that any pos-sible move needed to address this issue for the game to move forward. Actors had learned how to use the common language, and those in favor of enhancing USTurkish partner-ship could not avoid the grammar of textiles it had developed into the common lan-guage of the enhanced partnership game.

The Hollowed QIZ: exclusion of sensitive goods and enhanced partnership dismantled

Despite Israeli, Turkish, and US support, by the time the QIZ legislation was approved by the Ways and Means Committee in September, the eligible products included in the duty-free zones had been stripped down to only high-tech products textiles were not included. During the summer, several meetings took place to push for the inclusion of textiles and other goods more valuable to Turkey. Republican Congressman, Cliff Stearns of Florida and Democratic Congressman, Robert Wexler of Florida, joined a contingent of Turkish business leaders at a meeting on 22 July in Washington where they expressed their full support for a more meaningful economic agreement for Turkey and asked the USTR to prepare a more comprehensive proposal that would give Turkey the opportu-nity to pull itself out of its economic crisis.82

In addition to a US push for the inclusion of textiles, officials of the Turkish Foreign Ministry reiterated the concerns of Turkish business community during a meeting with EPC members held in Washington at the end of August between the Turkish and American teams that a QIZ proposal without textiles would not achieve the partnership goals of the EPC. The Turkish Foreign Ministry stated that The QIZ legislation, in its current form, is opposed by the Turkish business and industry leaders because it excludes textiles and apparel, Turkeys primary exports and the only industry capable of expansion in the US market.83 Another Turkish newspaper reported on the August visit stating that the President of the Turkish Textiles Industry Association, Umut Oran, declared that the Senators who are responsible for the current description of the QIZ project admitted that the current condition of the QIZ proposal is not useful for Turkey.84 The US representative


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of Istanbul Textile and Apparel Exporter Associations (ITKIB)and Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM), organizations representing over 14,000 members of textile and apparel exporters in Turkey, Ziya Sukun, stated Turkeys disappointment with the now hollowed out QIZ proposal that had arrived in the House Ways and Means Committee in September:

Over 50 percent of Turkish exports to the US are textiles and apparel which has reached its limit of $1.2 billion. The US imports billions of dollars worth of textiles and apparel from China and Hong Kong. Its not because of Turkish imports that US textile workers are losing their jobs. Were asking for a fair share because this is what we have to offer the US market that will pull Turkey out of economic crisis.85

Sukun concluded by saying:

Its expected that when the President of the United States declares an economic partnership program it means more than a simple QIZ project [without textiles]. It means lifting trade barriers and adjusting custom taxes for substantial industries that have a meaningful effect on our countrys economy.86

The Turkish moves in the language game consistently emphasized balance, fairness, and equality. Now, entangled in the rules of the evolved game, this translated into textile concessions as the only move towards equal partnership. For example, Sukuns remarks operated within the common language and the rules of the new game of partnership such that when he emphasized that any partnership program must include substantial indus-tries that have meaningful effect.

The TurkishUS Business Council used this same strategy but more directly within the parameters of the expanded grammar of the partnershiptextile concession intersect-ing game. In a press release, it stated:

Turkey views QIZs as a crucial tool to improve economic relations with the US Turkey claims that the exclusion of textiles contradicts the worldwide practice of the US, including the QIZ in Israel, and argues that there should not be any restrictions on sector and location options.87

In the United States, the Israeli lobby expressed disappointment with the final QIZ pro-posal as well, reiterating that Turkey is a critical ally and deserves more in return. In my interview with the American-Jewish Council, they retrospectively described the QIZ proposal debate:

We fought for the QIZs because we fought for Turkey and we thought that the QIZs in the end, as I say, the administration will do anything for Turkey except for do anything for Turkey. When you looked at the QIZs it didnt contain textiles, it didnt contain the things that Turkey needed I dont think the QIZs were very generous. It offered them stuff they werent good at and it didnt seem like the administration was willing to put out a lot of political muscle with the Textile Caucus.88

From a US domestic perspective, it was the textile issue that proved impossible to navigate for the proponents of the QIZ legislation. For example, in my interview with



USTR Turkey Representative, David Birdsey, he explained that opposition to textile con-cessions is steadfast in the US Congress. As he stated:

The initial QIZ proposal did have limited textile access. However, Senator Wes Hayes from North Carolina gave 1 vote for it on the condition that no textile concessions be given before the 2005 MFA quota reduction [when all textile quotas would be abolished anyway]. Textile lobbies on both sides have a very strong effect.89

The Turkish representative from the Department of Commerce also explained that the tex-tile issue was too sensitive to get the QIZ proposal through Congress. With the exclusion of textiles and apparel from the QIZ proposal, Turkish business and industry organizations actively lobbied against it in order to press for a QIZ program that was not empty. Because of Turkeys actions against the high-tech QIZ proposal, the legislation lacked the support needed to continue through the congressional process and it stalled in committee.

Summary and analysis

The intersection of the textile concession game with the partnership game effectively constrained the permissible moves of the EPC and others hopeful of negotiating a suc-cessful economic agreement with Turkey. The language game model illustrates how, over time, the QIZ proposal came to mean nothing for Turkey if textiles were not included. At this point, the partnership game quickly unraveled. The rules of the game evolved in a direction that made this partnership game impossible to win and actually a game that could be lost. Since the initiation of the new partnership game established a grammar of enhancement that came to include a balance between the economic and security aspects of the relationship, a proposed QIZ scheme with nothing of value to Turkey threatened to erode the existing partnership. As the empty QIZ proposal was juxtaposed with Turkeys domestically unpopular move to be the first Muslim ally to offer troops to the US war on terrorism, the USTurkish partnership appeared even fur-ther out of balance than before the game began.

In an interview with a former Turkish government trade advisor, he explained why textiles were the make or break ingredient for a successful economic partnership:

So, when it came to the QIZ discussion in Turkey, everyone wanted the textiles to be included in the QIZ system. Because they said that people could easily transfer their manufacturing to the QIZ zone from anywhere in Turkey because ready-made goods are a smallish industry that you can transfer very easily. And it could start immediately to make exports for Turkey and to make an impact in Turkey because the textile industry employs a lot of people in Turkey, especially ladies so we can find employment for ladies. But [the US] said no we dont want textiles included. And our argument was always for the QIZ, we were telling the US The value of the QIZ is for goods that have high import duties to the US or quotas thats the only value that the QIZ has.90

The empty QIZ proposal signaled that the United States was not following the new rules of enhancement and equality that had become part of the new grammar of partnership. As the director of business consulting group, ARGE, exclaimed in an interview:


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When we started [the QIZ negotiations] it was a good idea, but then all the things in which Turkey is competitive were eliminated from the list that was available for the QIZ. So it didnt work out. Textiles for example [were excluded]. They left in high tech. If we were competitive in high tech we wouldnt need a QIZ!91

With the EPC signifying equal partnership within the contours of the partnership game, the failure of the QIZ proposal meant more than a failed QIZ proposal the entire game of enhancing partnership was lost. The inability of the United States to include textiles as qualified goods was an action of deteriorating partnership rather than enhancing it. In a language game where balance, equality, and fairness meant partnership, a proposal with nothing of value for Turkey was reminiscent of the old game of partnership. The United States acted according to the old rules and not according to the new ones. This signaled to Turkey that nothing had changed in terms of the relationship.

The moves within the partnership game expanded the possibilities of permissible action and gave rise to heightened expectations for results. Because of this, once the QIZ proposal failed, Turkey articulated frustration and disappointment as the empty prom-ise of enhanced partnership. For example, when the director of ARGE was asked if other kinds of QIZs might be possible, he said:

It is possible. There is no limit to creativity. But the end result should be quick money. And its not only getting money but also employment for large numbers of people first you have to agree on what you want to accomplish with the QIZ. If you want to say here is a little carrot named QIZ but its empty then its not going to make a difference. So what you want to accomplish with QIZ is important.

Author: So what kinds of sectors provide that immediate relief?

Answer: Textiles.92

With the failure of this first proposal of the EPC, it appeared that the USTurkey relationship would remain the old game of partnership predominantly strategic. Entanglement of the two games had dashed the hope of the EPC in achieving a balanced, equal, relationship with Turkey.

Conclusion

In this article, I examined USTurkish partnership as a language game using Peter Howards four-stage model of language game analysis. Language game analysis pro-vides a way of analyzing how practices change and build common meanings within a network of actors. It can demonstrate how and why something like the QIZ proposal came to mean what it did for USTurkish actors. It also explains why expectations were high for a proposal that might otherwise seem a very unlikely possibility.

Analyzing the language game of partnership solves the puzzle of why actors had increased expectations for concessions on textiles in the QIZ proposal given the history of this issue. It explains the rise and fall of expectations and disappointment. As actors became entangled in their own rules of enhanced partnership, there was little to be done to change the now common language and meaning of enhanced partnership, namely,



the inclusion of textiles, an extremely sensitive and protected sector in the US domestic economy. The practices of actors as they played the game made any former moves impossible to bring back into the game at a later time. As the partnership game inter-sected with the textile concession game, the only way to enhance partnership became to include textiles in the QIZ proposal.

This was not necessarily how the initial partnership talks started out, but once the game was started, the possibilities for actions and moves with the game were limited by the rules of the now intersecting partnershiptextile game. Wittgenstein explains:

The fundamental fact here is that we lay down the rules, a technique, for a game, and that then, when we follow the rules, things do not turn out as we had assumed. We are therefore entangled in our own rules For those cases, things turn out otherwise than we had meant or foreseen.93

The entanglement of rules from the partnership and textile games created a new set of rules that dictated that the exclusion of textiles signaled a failure of enhanced partner-ship. Without textiles in the QIZ scheme, the USTurkish partnership was perceived by Turkey to remain the same old partnership (strategic) and dominated by the interests of the United States and not equally considerate of Turkeys needs, interests, or economic health. A language game analysis provides an explanation for how actors expectations rise and fall and provides an understanding of the maintenance, enhancement, and dis-mantling of state relationships in a social and practice-centered context.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Bud Duvall, Peter Howard, Karin Fierke, Sanjoy Banerjee, and Andrei Tsygankov for their helpful comments and feedback on various drafts of the manuscript. I would also like to thank and acknowledge the many participants in the USTurkish economic community that gave generously of their time and expertise during my interviews. Martin Sampson receives a special acknowledgement for his assistance and development of the empirical research that grounds this work, including his help in conducting interviews and facilitating research in Istanbul, Turkey. Finally, I would like to thank the extremely thorough and helpful comments of the anony-mous reviewers who helped improve this manuscript tremendously.

Funding

This research was partially funded by a Graduate Research Partnership Program Grant and the Larson Fellowship for the Study of Political Economy from the University of Minnesota. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

1. House Committee on International Relations United States Congress, Subcommittee on Europe:

To Commend Turkey and Israel for Continuing to Strengthen Their Partnership and Support of the War on Terrorism; to Express the Sense That Security, Reconciliation, and Prosperity for All Cypriots Can Be Best Achieved within Membership of the EU and for Other Purposes; to Commend Turkey for Assuming Command of the Peacekeeping Operation in Afghanistan. (US GPO, 2002: 25)


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2. Paul Blustein, Stopping the Bailout Buck Here: ONeill Taking a Tough Stance on IMF Loans to Countries, The Washington Post, 5 June 2001, p. E1.

3. Hugh Pope, Turkey Builds on New Closeness with U.S., Wall Street Journal, 14 January 2002, p. A12.

4. Neil King Jr, Another Anti-Terror Coalition Partner, Turkey, Fails to Win Many U.S. Favors, Wall Street Journal, 17 January 2002, p. A16.

5. When Prime Minister Ecevit was asked if he was disappointed in the outcome of the meeting with President Bush, he replied, No, I believe in the good will of the United States admin-istration. See Jim Lehrer, The Prime Minister of Turkey, a Longtime Ally of the United States, Discusses Peacekeeping in Afghanistan and Concerns about Iraq, PBS NewsHour, 2002, Transcript.

6. 107th Congress, Turkey-Israel Economic Enhancement Act. Second, S 2663. 7. As a recent Forbes magazine article describes:

In the 224 years since the first Congress, textile and apparel protectionism has been a continu-ous feature of U.S. trade policy. High tariffs, voluntary export restraints, safeguard restric-tions to limit the effects of market disruption, 30 years of comprehensive import quotas under the Multifibre Arrangement, antidumping and countervailing duty restrictions, special safeguard mechanisms related to Chinas entry into the WTO (which were used to effectively extend quotas for three years), carve outs, and convoluted rules of origin in trade agreements to ensure the contentedness of Americas textile magnates have defined U.S. policy since the founding of the republic.

See Dan Ikenson, Washingtons Coddling of U.S. Textile Industry Is Hurting Shoppers, Forbes, 23 July 2013. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danikenson/2013/07/23/textile-protectionism-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership/ (accessed 19 February 2014).

8. I analyzed the transcripts of my 21 interviews I had with experts who were representative of organizations promoting USTurkish economic ties (14 in Washington, DC, from August 2003; 7 in Istanbul, Turkey (with Dr Martin Sampson) from October 2003) that included 189 pages (47,257 words) of data.

9. This literature is extensive but largely rooted in the decision-making literature such as Richard Snyder, H. W. Bruck and Burton Sapin, Decision-Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis Project Series No. 3 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954 [1962]). Also see Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck and Burton Sapin, Foreign Policy Decision Making (New York: Free Press, 1962; reprinted in 2002) and the bureaucratic approach put forth by Graham Allison in Graham T. Allison and Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications, World Politics, 24, 1972, pp. 4079 and Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999). Also see Valarie Hudson, Foreign Policy Analysis: Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, 1, 2005, pp. 130 for an excellent overview of the domestic politics literature.

10. Susan Rosegrant, Pakistani Textile Exports, Fast Track, and the US War on Terror: A Collusion of Foreign and Trade Policy Goals, in Case Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2006), pp. 121.

11. Janice Bially Mattern, Ordering International Politics (New York: Routledge, 2005).12. Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1998).13. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1999).



14. Iver B. Neumann, Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy, Millennium, 31, 2002, pp. 62751.

15. Jeffrey Checkel, Review Article: The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory, World Politics, 50, 1998, pp. 32448, 325.

16. Neumann, Returning Practice, p. 627.17. Neumann, Returning Practice, p. 629.18. Stefano Guzzini, A Reconstruction of Constructivism in International Relations, European

Journal of International Relations, 6, 2000, 14782, 148.19. Thomas Risse, Lets Argue: Communicative Action in World Politics, International

Organization, 54, 2000, pp. 139.20. Risse, Lets Argue, p. 1.21. See, for example, Chris Brown, The Practice Turn, Phronesis and Classical Realism:

Towards a Phronetic International Political Theory?, Millennium Journal of International Studies, 40, 2012, pp. 43956.

22. Neumann, Returning Practice, p. 628.23. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California

Press, 1984).24. See Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1977); and Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980).

25. For use of these concepts in IR, see Stefano Guzzini, A Reconstruction.26. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958).27. See, for example, Nicholas G. Onuf, World of Our Making (Columbia, SC: University of

South Carolina Press, 1989); Nicholas G. Onuf, The Constitution of International Society, European Journal of International Law, 5(1), 1994, pp. 119; Nicholas G. Onuf, Making Sense, Making Worlds: Constructivism in Social Theory and International Relations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013).

28. See, for example, Gavan Duffy, Brian K. Frederking and Seth A. Tucker, Language Games: Dialogical Analysis of INF Negotiations, International Studies Quarterly, 42, 1998, pp. 27194; Gavan Duffy and Brian K. Frederking, Changing the Rules: A Speech Act Analysis of the End of the Cold War, International Studies Quarterly, 53, 2009, pp. 32547; Hayward R. Alker, The Dialectical Logic of Thucydides Melian Dialogue, American Political Science Review, 82, 1988, pp. 80520. See also the edited volume honoring Hayward Alker, Rene Marlin-Bennett (ed.), Alker and IR: Global Studies in an Interconnected World (New York: Routledge, 2011); Karin M. Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Karin M. Fierke, Logics of Force and Dialogue: The Iraq/UNSCOM Crisis as Social Interaction, European Journal of International Relations, 6, 2000, pp. 33571, 337.

29. Gavan Duffy, Pragmatic Analysis, in Audie Klotz and Deepa Prakesh (eds) Qualitative Methods in International Relations: A Pluralist Guide (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 168186.

30. Duffy et al., Language Games, p. 291.31. Duffy and Frederking, Changing the Rules, p. 331.32. Gavin Duffy explicitly draws on the speech act theories of John Austin, Paul Grice, and John

Searle. See, John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1962); Paul H. Grice, Logic and Conversation, in Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press, 1975), pp. 4158, and John R. Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).


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33. This is a research program based off of the extensive work of Karin Fierke. See Karin M. Fierke and Michael Nicholson, Divided by a Common Language: Formal and Constructivist Approaches to Games, Global Society, 15, 2001, pp. 725 for an extensive explanation of this research tradition.

34. Fierke, Changing Games, p. 19.35. Karin M. Fierke, Agents of Death: the Structural Logic of Suicide Terrorism and Martyrdom,

International Theory, 1, 2009, pp. 155184, 158.36. Fierke, Agents of Death, pp. 1589.37. Peter Howard, Constructing Security: The Power of Language in U.S. Foreign Policy

(Washington, DC: American University, 2002), p. 46.38. Fierke, Changing Games, p. 25.39. Fierke, Changing Games, p. 24.40. Thank you to a very helpful anonymous reviewer for needed clarification on this point.41. Later Wittgenstein uses parts of speech or language game type in place of the term

spaces. See, Robert Wesley Angelo synopsis of Wittgensteins logic of language for clarity on this point. Available at: http://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/logwitt3.html#Parts-of-Speech-and-Printed-Words (accessed 26 February 2014).

42. Russell discussed his conversations with Wittgenstein in his autobiography. Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), p. 297.

43. Fierke uses the term alliance to define the language game in her work but alliance-type games might be called a game of community-building or partnership. In my analysis, I use the term partnership since that is the label used by participants in my case study. As Fierke states, What to label the game comes from the language used by the actors but is not exclu-sive of other possible names.

44. Fierke, Changing Games.45. Fierke, Changing Games, p. 35.46. Fierke, Changing Games, p. 51.47. Howard, Constructing Security.48. Howard, Constructing Security, p. 46.49. In Duffy and Frederking (2009), the authors elaborate on what was formerly dialogical analy-

sis and create a model not unlike the one presented here by Howard. The upward movement of a Wittgensteinian moment in the model represents a context-creating product of human activity and proceeds up until the activity is institutionalized. The downward movement in the model represents a Weberian moment wherein social practices have become routinized through institutionalization and limit the conditions of possible and acceptable action. My thanks to an anonymous review for this helpful insight into the compatibility of these two models.

50. Author Interview, 2003.51. Relations with North American Countries: TurkishUs Relations (Ankara, Turkey: Republic

of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2003), p. 3.52. Relations with North American Countries, p. 3.53. Relations with North American Countries, pp. 34.54. Author Interview, 2003.55. Author Interview, 2003.56. Author Interview, 2003.57. Harun Kazaz, Free Trade Agreement with Us Is Overdue, Turkish Daily News, 16 August

1997, p. 1; Douglas Frantz, Turkeys Leader Visits U.S. to Plead for Urgent Economic Aid, The New York Times, 14 January 2002, p. A3.



58. Nathalie Tocci, Eu Accession Dynamics and Conflict Resolution (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, LTD, 2004).

59. Gramm Promotes Free Trade, The Financial Times, 12 August 1997, p. A4.60. Howard, Constructing Security, p. 41.61. Philip T. Reeker, U.S.-Turkey Economic Partnership Commission. Available at: http://www.

state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/7295.htm (2002).62. Doug Palmer, Turkey Seeks Fairer Access to US Textile Market, Reuters, 17 January 2002.63. Palmer, Reuters.64. Peter Sisler, Ecevit to Solicit Trade Aid to Back U.S. Against Iraq, The Washington Times,

14 January 2002, p. A11.65. Frantz, The New York Times, p. A3.66. President Bush, Turkish Prime Minister Discuss War on Terrorism, Public Papers of the

Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush, 16 January 2002, pp. 746.67. President Bush, Turkish Prime Minister, pp. 746.68. A QIZ proposal for Turkey had been previously initiated by the Clinton Administration who

had successfully implemented a similar program in Jordan with great success. President Clinton had circulated the possibility of modeling the Jordanian program in Turkey after a 1999 earthquake in Northwestern Turkey killed over 17,000 people and left approximately half a million people homeless. The proposal never manifested and was moved to the back burner with the 2000 US Presidential election but had remained of particular interest to the Turkish business community.

69. Towards an Economic Partnership between Turkey and the USA (Istanbul: TurkishUS Business Council (TUSBC) of DEIK, 2003).

70. I use the term unwittingly because once the game of partnership intersected with the game of textile concessions it made the Commissions job much more difficult and I doubt this was the intention.

71. Howard, Constructing Security, p. 42.72. Howard, Constructing Security, p. 38.73. Howard, Constructing Security, p. 42.74. Howard, Constructing Security, p. 43.75. Author Interview, 2003.76. Author Interview, 2003.77. Author Interview, 2003.78. Breaux, Grassley, McCain Introduce Trade Bill for Turkey, The Turkish Times, 1 July 2002.79. QIZ Legislation Supported by Major American-Jewish Groups, The Turkish Times, 15

September 2002, p. 1.80. Howard, Constructing Security, p. 45.81. Howard, Constructing Security, p. 45.82. QIZ Legislation Supported.83. QIZ Legislation Supported, p. 1.84. Current Condition of the Qiz Proposal Is Not Useful for Turkey, Milliyet, 3 November 2002.85. QIZ Legislation Supported, p. 1.86. QIZ Legislation Supported, p. 1.87. Towards an Economic.88. Author Interview, 2003.89. Author Interview, 2003.90. Author Interview, 2003.91. Author Interview, 2003.92. Author Interview, 2003.93. Wittgenstein, Philosophical, p. 125.


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Author biography

Amy Skonieczny is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. Her research interests include social construction of US trade politics, societal influ-ence on US foreign policy, and social theory and narratives in global political economy. Her pub-lications include Constructing NAFTA: Myth, Representations and the Discursive Construction of US Foreign Policy (2002) in International Studies Quarterly, Interrupting Inevitability: Globalization and Resistance (2010) in Alternatives: Global, Local Political and a book chapter, Globalization and Occupy Wall Street with Giuliano Morse (2014) in the SAGE Handbook of Globalization. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Trade Talk: Images, Identity and US Economic Policy.


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