5. Turkey, Global Governance, and the UN

Turkey—a NATO member and long-time European Union (EU) aspirant—also is usually classified as a “rising” or “emerging power.” However, all groupings of developing and industrialized countries should be interrogated and not merely applied and assumed to make analytical sense. This chapter teases out why as well as probes two other topics, global governance and the United Nations, which mean many things to many people. This chapter urges readers to question several convenient and related but erroneous narratives: that the Global South has had little impact on universal normative developments; that it was largely absent from the founding of the United Nations whose values came only from the West; that “rising powers” is a meaningful analytical category; and that “global governance” is a synonym for international organization and law with some non-state actors now in the mix. Finally, the conclusion challenges readers to move beyond the ahistorical character of much contemporary social science.