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1. The Role of Syria in Israeli-Turkish Relations

Author:
Dennis Ross and Moran Stern
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
This article argues that, since the end of the Cold War, developments in or associated with Syria have proved instrumental in determining Israeli-Turkish relations, for better and worse. Syria borders both Israel and Turkey. Not surprisingly, its geographic location, regional strategic conduct, relations with Israel's and Turkey's regional rivals, military capabilities and, more recently, the implications of its civil war have affected both Israel and Turkey, and their relationship with each other. While strategic cooperation between Turkey and Israel reached a high point in the 1990s, and then soured and largely dissipated over the last several years, Syria's civil war has posed a new set of challenges and opportunities for renewed Israeli-Turkish ties. Indeed, shared interests on Syria may propel new possibilities for cooperation between Turkey and Israel on security, economic and humanitarian issues. Through the historical analysis presented in this article, the authors attempt to explain the evolution of Israeli- Turkish relations through the prism of Syria. Understanding the historical background provided herein is relevant for contemporary analyses aimed at finding new ways to renew Israeli-Turkish strategic cooperation and assist in securing a stable post-war Syria.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Turkey, Israel, and Syria

2. Understanding Iran

Author:
John McNeil
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
William Polk, born in 1929, is one of the more successful scholar-diplomats in American life. He has written more than a dozen books, mainly on the modern Arab world, some for trade publishers and some for university presses. He taught Middle East and Islamic history at Harvard and the University of Chicago. He also served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, on the State Department's Policy Planning staff and later as an adviser to McGeorge Bundy, President Johnson's National Security Adviser, charged with handling the aftermath of 1967's Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. His latest book is his first on Iran. He has visited the country from time to time since 1956, and in the 1960s met the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and some of the Iranian political elite. Aware of the stalemate that bedevils U.S.-Iranian relations, and frustrated by what he sees as the narrowness of war-game exercises and the field of international relations, Polk wrote this book “to bring forward what war games omit: in short, what it means when we speak of Iran and Iranians.” He feels American policy-makers pay insufficient heed to the history and culture of Iran and Iranians, and are thereby baffled by what seems to them illogical behavior. If they had adequate grounding in things Iranian, he believes, they would better understand Iran, its government, its policies, and its people. Adequate grounding, in Polk's view, extends back 2,500 years. He maintains that even if the majority of Iranians alive have scant knowledge of the Achaemenid dynasty they are nonetheless influenced by it. Indeed, he writes, “I am certain that the inhabitants of Iran today are largely governed by their past regardless of whether they consciously remember it.” He appeals to Carl Jung's notion of “collective unconscious” and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “social contract” to make his case.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
America, Iran, Middle East, Israel, and Chicago

3. Continuity and Change – Israel's relationship with the United States and the World

Author:
Michael Oren
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
Michael Oren has served as Ambassador of Israel to the United States since July 2009. In this interview, he discusses Israel's relationship with the United States, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and political, environmental, and social challenges that Israel is currently facing.
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, and Palestine

4. Averting Catastrophe in the Middle East

Author:
Susan Braden
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
There are three seemingly independent forces brewing in the Middle East today whose confluence, if mismanaged, could have devastating consequences for the people in the region and U.S. security interests. They are the failure of the U.S. military invasion of Iraq to stabilize the country, the breakdown of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and growing fissures between Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza, and the mushrooming of radical groups across the region that claim to have links to al-Qaeda.
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza