Race and Religion in South Africa and Turkey’s Sub-Imperialist Expansion

Abstract

Drawing on the theory of sub-imperialism, this article focuses on the roles of race and religion in the construction of South Africa and Turkey’s regional expansions. It argues that while ‘black control of politics and white control of economy’ was a constitutive element of South African sub-imperialism after the fall of the apartheid regime in 1994, religion has been instrumental to Turkey’s sub-imperialist expansion since the 1980 military intervention. Thus, the South African state uses claims of representing and protecting African interests as its instrument of a sub-imperialist agenda, while the Turkish state’s guarding of Islam in the Middle East facilitates its sub-imperialist expansion. While ‘white’ bourgeoisie and late-comer ‘black’ bourgeoisie decisively marked the post-apartheid period in the South African context, the political interests of ‘devout bourgeoisie’ and the economic interests of big finance capitalists marked Turkey’s sub-imperialist direction. The article concludes that race and religion are the unifying ideologies of South African and Turkish sub-imperialism respectively, as both manufacture consent among popular masses. © 2019, © 2019 South African Association of Political Studies.