This event was jointly organised by The European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) and The Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) .
Ozturk: The international community allowed China’s increasing integration into the liberal multilateral global order, mainly, through membership in global organizations like the WTO in 2001, with the belief that China will continue "normalizing" through further opening based on reciprocity and "converging" to the rule of the game. However, empirical pieces of evidence both in (Honk-Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang internment camps) as well as outside China have shown that the view of "China as an opportunity" has been falsified and, instead, "China as threat" school is gaining prominence globally. Today, we come to the stage where ignorance of China’s use of sharp power to prioritize profit and Chinese market access is not sustainable anymore when China crosses the line of national security in many countries.
Oner: China, Russia, and the US are globally competing for political leadership and spheres of influence. This discussion, in particular, focuses on the instrumental role of narrative power projected through social media and international broadcasting in great power competition and rivalry for global influence. How do China, Russia and the US seek to undermine each other through negative messaging in their respective state-led media outlets? To answer this question, this discussion will offer an analysis of the narrative conveyed by China’s CGTN, Russia’s Sputnik and the US’s Voice of America. In addition, this discussion will also provide a context of narrative convergence between China and Russia against the United States.
Ibrahim Oztürk has been a visiting professor of economics at the University of Duisburg Essen (Germany) since 2017. Since his PhD at Keio University (Tokyo, Japan, 1998) with a dissertation on the rise and decline of Japan’s developmental institutions post-WWII, Dr Öztürk has been working on the Japanese, Chinese and Turkish economies. He has been working at (1) the UDE since 2017 as a visiting research fellow and (2) the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) since October 2020 as a senior economic researcher.
Before, he worked at both Marmara University (full-time: 1993-2016) and Bosporus University (part-time: 2003-2014) (İstanbul, Turkey), at Tokyo University (2004), Institute of Developing Economies (Tokyo, Japan, 2005), at North American University, (Houston/Texas, the USA, 2014-2015). He is one of the founders of the Istanbul Japan Research Association and Asian Studies Center of Bosporus University. He served as a consultant to business associations, companies, and the government. Also, he was a columnist and TV commentator in Turkey at different media outlets for long years.
His research area includes Japanese economic development, China and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), governance, the political economy of Turkey, and the role of institutions in economic development. His native language is Turkish, and he is fluent in English, advanced (C1) in German and Lower intermediate in Japanese as a spoken language.
Imdat Oner is a former Turkish diplomat who recently served as Deputy of Head of Mission and Political Officer at the Turkish Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. He is currently a Senior Policy Analyst at the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University, where he received his Ph.D. in International Relations.
