Post by Erman M. Demir

🐴 Is UNESCO's cultural agenda a Trojan horse for neoliberalism? I'm thrilled to share our new article in Insight Turkey (Spring 2026, Vol. 28, No. 2), co-authored with Prof. Ahmet Serhat KAYMAS: "Taming the Trojan Horse: How Turkish Foreign Policy Can Reconceptualize UNESCO's Neoliberal Cultural Agenda" UNESCO was founded on a bold promise: peace through culture, not just politics. But has its post-2000 embrace of the "creative economy" quietly reshaped that mission into something more market-driven — measuring culture through jobs, exports, and competitiveness rather than diversity and dialogue? In this article, we explore: 🔹 How UNESCO's core cultural policy instruments (especially the 2005 Convention) reveal a tension between its founding humanist vision and a growing neoliberal logic 🔹 Why this shift matters for middle powers like Türkiye navigating global cultural governance (soft power, pr Cultural diplomacy) 🔹 How Türkiye — a founding UNESCO member and Executive Board member since 2021 — can strategically reposition itself, potentially as a voice for the Global South 🔹 What it would mean to "tame" this Trojan horse rather than simply reject or fully absorb it 🌍 This piece sits at the intersection of cultural policy, creative economy critique, and foreign policy strategy — themes we've been developing through our ongoing research on governance in the creative industries. #CulturalPolicy #CreativeEconomy #CreativeIndustries #UNESCO #ForeignPolicy #Türkiye #CulturalDiplomacy #GlobalSouth #SoftPower #InsightTurkey 📖 Read the full article here: