Balancing Stigma: Turkish Stigma Management Within its Multivector Foreign Policy Towards Russia and the ‘West’

What to do when being dependent on two allies and one calls you too conservative, while the other stigmatizes you for being too liberal? While we have learned a great deal about “us v. them” narratives, about stigmatization imposed by the ‘West’, and targets’ potential response options, we still know little about states’ stigma management strategies when balancing their foreign policy interests between two regional or global powers. In times where international power dynamics are shifting and increasingly more middle powers rely on multivector foreign policy approaches, more supposed – and often opposed – ‘normals’ or potential stigma imposers appear, making it indispensable for their targets to find balancing strategies that achieve friendly or at least functioning ties with one vector without setting off the other. Hence, the paper scrutinizes how between 20XX and 2023, Türkiye has strategically orchestrated its stigma management to reinforce its multivector foreign policy with Russia and the ‘West’. Drawing on an in-depth framing analysis of Turkish senior decision-makers’ statements and press releases, the paper analyzes Türkiye’s stigma management in the context of three case studies where Ankara found itself stuck between two important allies, the ‘West’ and Russia: The Turkish withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, Türkiye’s role in Sweden’s NATO accession, and Türkiye’s ‘middleman’ position in the Ukraine War.