ABSTRACT
The chapter argues that when we study trust in international politics, we should pay more attention to the representation of trust in discursive practices. The field of foreign policy analysis represents a discursive practice that employs strong metaphors through which images of trust and distrust are conveyed. The embedded beliefs are not just neutral descriptions about the nature of the international system but closely intertwined with foreign policy practices. Similarly to Considine’s grammatical approach to trust, the narrative approach employed in this chapter is grounded on the idea that ‘the terms we use to talk about the world will necessarily frame what we can and cannot ask’ (Considine 2015, 126). The chapter focuses on Western approaches towards Turkey, showing how images of distrust strongly feature in foreign policy analysis rhetoric.
