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1. Assessing the Impact of Turkey’s Quest for Status Since the 2000s on Foreign Policy Change: Transformational or Transactional?

Author:
Samiratou Dipama and Emel Parlar Dal
Publication Date:
01-2024
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
This paper delves into an assessment of the impact of Turkey’s quest for status since the 2000s on changes in its foreign policy. In other words, how has Turkey’s search for status influenced its foreign policy stances since the 2000s? And can we consider the changes in Turkey’s foreign policy change transformational or transactional in essence? In this vein, this paper will make essential contributions to the existing literature on Turkey’s status-seeking strategies by using specific cases to link them to changes in Turkey’s foreign policy and assessing the extent to which they are transactional or transformational. The examination of this topic is all the more important in light of internal developments in Turkey, such as democratic backsliding and economic crisis, as well external factors such as its tense relationships with the EU, its rapprochement with Russia and China, and its increasingly proactive profile in regional crises. This paper critically assesses the pattern of Turkey’s foreign policy change from transformational and transactional perspectives.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Status, and International Politics
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

2. A Political Economy of Historical Change and Continuity in Turkish Foreign Policy

Author:
Inan Rüma
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
This study aims to analyse historical continuity and change in Turkish foreign policy (TFP) within the framework of Critical Theory as elucidated by Robert Cox. It suggests asking how TFP has been affected by the historical changes in relations of production and world orders. Within this framework, it aims to explain the changes in TFP within the relation between the production, the world order and the form of state. It analyses TFP in three historical periods such as the Interwar Years, Cold War and post-Cold War. It exposes that Turkish state (re)formation and foreign policy making has succumbed to the global capitalist relations of production and corresponding world orders. These two have been the major framework(s) of change and continuity in Türkiye’s 100 years-old foreign policy. Its main argument is that the continuity and change in TFP has shown an interplay of relations between production and world order. It concludes that TFP has been in line with the global relations of production so there has been a clear and substantial continuity; and that the arguable changes have been the repercussions of global relations of production and world orders.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, International Order, Production, and Critical Theory
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

3. Do Campaign Speeches Predict Foreign Policy? An Operational Code and Leadership Trait Analysis of Donald Trump’s MENA Policies

Author:
Merve ÖZDEMİRKIRAN-EMBEL, B. Toygar Halistoprak, and Michael Young
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
This article investigates whether campaign speeches during the US presidential elections can help predict foreign policy behavior. We use speeches made by Donald J. Trump during his bid for president in 2016. We compare the analysis from 2016 with his actual foreign policy decisions during his tenure, 2017-2020. Operational code analysis and leadership traits analysis approaches are used to analyze candidate Trump’s foreign policy beliefs and strategies associated with them. We use Profiler Plus software to conduct content analysis which produces OCA and LTA results. We use three separate datasets to analyze Trump’s beliefs and traits focusing on his general foreign policy speeches, the MENA region, and a third one only about Islamic State and Syria. Our results show that Trump’s profile indicates a foreign policy orientation that avoids involvement in affairs that are perceived as beyond immediate interests. The consistency between his beliefs and traits during the 2016 campaign and his actual foreign policy behavior leads us to conclude that individual level analysis, and specifically OCA and LTA approaches, are useful tools to analyze, explain and predict foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Elections, Leadership, Donald Trump, and Political Beliefs
Political Geography:
Middle East, North America, and United States of America

4. Ontological Insecurity, Anxiety, and Hubris: An Affective Account of Turkey-KRG Relations

Author:
Özlem Kayhan Pusane and Asli Ilgit
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Given Iraqi Kurds’ special place in Turkey’s ‘biographical narrative’, Turkey-Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) relations are not simply strategic or economic but also highly affectively charged. These relations involve emotional encounters filled with anxiety, pride, anger, and disappointment that generate concerns for not only Turkey’s physical security but also its ontological security. This paper traces the emotional context of Turkey- KRG relationship. It suggests that a combination of Turkey’s deep-rooted ‘anxiety’ and ‘hubris’ toward the Iraqi Kurds prevented the emergence of a close partnership between these two actors and fostered merely a ‘fragile rapprochement’ since 2008.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Foreign Policy, and Identity
Political Geography:
Iraq, Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Asia, and Kurdistan

5. Perceptions of Turkey in the US Congress: A Twitter Data Analysis

Author:
Hakan Mehmetcik, Melih Koluk, and Galip Yuksel
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
The way we interact with individuals, companies, and communities has been altered by our usage of online social media sites and services. Simultaneously, the use of social media as a data source for social scientific inquiries has increased substantially in recent years. This study uses Twitter data analysis to investigate the views of United States (US) Members of Congress on Turkey, and to see if these perceptions reflect some of the trends in US-Turkey relations. Our initial view is that the Twitter conversations among Members of Congress appropriately reveal changes in the course of perceptions vis-a-vis relations between the two countries. With that assumption in mind, we evaluated Twitter data from 2009 to 2021, and analyzed it using statistical methodologies, network analysis, computational text analysis, and topic modeling tools. The findings indicate that Twitter data is a useful proxy for evaluating the perception of Turkey among US Members of Congress.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Social Media, Twitter, and Congress
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

6. Turkey’s Response to Syrian Mass Migration: A Neoclassical Realist Analysis

Author:
Zeynep Sahin Mencutek, N. Ela Gokalp Aras, and Bezen Balamir Coşkun
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Migration studies have seldom dealt with the foreign policy dimensions of refugee migration. Additionally, international relations (IR) theories have barely addressed migration policy. The present study seeks to address this gap by analysing Turkey’s response to Syrian mass migration through the lens of neoclassical realist theory. Its purpose is to ascertain to what extent IR theories, particularly neoclassical realism, help us to understand Turkey’s policies and politics addressing Syrian mass migration and changes over time. It questions the pertinence of Turkey’s relative power and its foreign policy objectives in shaping responses to Syrian mass migration. The research also sheds much-needed light not only on dynamism in power-policy relations but also interaction between the international system and internal dynamics in designing migration policies. It aims to stimulate dialogue between IR theories and migration studies, with a particular focus on the foreign policy dimension of state responses to mass refugee migration.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Migration, and Refugees
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Asia, and Syria

7. Twitter Diplomacy in Turkey - US Relations

Author:
Ali Sevket Ovali
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
The use of Twitter has become an important part of foreign policy making and conducting in the recent years. Since it is seen as the most powerful and popular tool of digital diplomacy, foreign policy makers increasingly use Twitter for sending messages to their counterparts and to inform their followers on certain issues, problems or current topics on their country’s foreign policy agenda. Taking the popularity of Twitter use in foreign policy, this study aims to discuss the role of Twitter diplomacy on Turkey-US relations. In this respect, how and for which purposes foreign policy makers in Turkey and the US use Twitter, which topics are mostly covered by the tweets of the selected top- level decision-makers’ accounts, the positive and negative impacts of Twitter on the current status of bilateral relations and the role that Twitter is likely to play in the future of relations are the points that are going to be dealt within the framework of this study.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Social Media, Donald Trump, and Twitter
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

8. Deconstructing the EU’s “Standards of Civilisation”: The Case of Turkey

Author:
Münevver cebeci
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Arguing that the European Union’s (EU) imposition of its norms and values on Turkey is a continuation of the logic of “European standards of civilisation”, this article offers a second reading of European discourses about Turkey. It regards enlargement conditionality as an apparatus through which the EU constructs its own identity as “ideal” and its others as imperfect. Thus, it attempts to deconstruct the EU’s standards of civilisation through three major lines on which they are built: the authoritative application of standards, unequal treatment and a geopolitical approach – as set by Hartmut Behr in 2007.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, and Civilization
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, and European Union

9. The Viewpoint of the Political Elite towards Syria from the Late Ottoman to the Early Republic: The Cases of Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın and Falih Rıfkı Atay

Author:
Ozan Kuyumcuoglu
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Developments in Syria over the past eight years prompted the arguments claiming that Early Republican Turkey had turned her back to the Middle East. However, after a close consideration regarding the discourses of the political elite in Turkey, it becomes evident that Early Republican Turkey’s Middle East policy had been tending to rapprochement with Arab countries rather than avoidance of getting involved in regional issues. This article aims to scrutinize the viewpoints of the outstanding political elite of the Late Ottoman and Early Republican periods like Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın and Falih Rıfkı Atay toward Greater Syria (Bilad-al-Sham) in order to understand the historical and intellectual backgrounds of Early Republican Turkey’s Middle East policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, History, Elites, and Ottoman Empire
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, and Syria

10. Debating Eurasia: Political Travels of a Geographical Concept in Turkey

Author:
Lerna K. Yanik
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
This article reviews the ways in which various actors in Turkey have used the terms ‘Eurasia’ and ‘Eurasianism’ since the end of the Cold War. It presents two arguments. First, compared to Russian Eurasianism, it is difficult to talk about the existence of a ‘Turkish Eurasianism’. Yet, the article employs the term Turkish Eurasianism as a shorthand to describe the ways in which Eurasia and Eurasianism are employed in Turkey. Second, Turkish Eurasianism is nothing but the use or instrumentalization of Eurasia to create a geopolitical identity for Turkey that legitimizes its political, economic, and strategic interests primarily in the post-Soviet space, but, from time to time, also in the Balkans and Africa. Various Turkish state and non-state actors have used Eurasia to mean different things and justify different goals: reaching out to Turkic Republics, being pro-Russian, creating a sphere of influence in former Ottoman lands, or, recently, cloaking anti-Western currents.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, and Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Turkey, Middle East, and Mediterranean

11. Russian and Turkish Foreign Policy Activism in the Syrian Theater

Author:
Inan Rüma and Mitat Çelikpala
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Russia and Turkey have been involved in remarkable redefinitions of their foreign policies while navigating through turbulent times in the Post-Cold War era. This has manifested in a search of being recognized as a great power. The tragic civil war in Syria has been the theatre of these ambitions of these two states in highly controversial ways. They have been on the opposite sides until recently on the essential question of the regime change in that country. The risk of a direct fight has even been observed when Turkish air force got a Russian jet down. However, a rapid rapprochement started due to Turkish priority shift from the regime change to the prevention of Kurdish autonomy and the alienation from US; and Russian enthusiasm to get the cooperation of an ardent anti-regime NATO member like Turkey. It can be said that Russia and Turkey have been more process-oriented than result-oriented because they have been compelled to see the limits of their power and influence. As a result, they seem to prefer to focus on the process since they seem to reach their primary objective of showing their salience. All in all, one can only hope for a peaceful and democratic life for Syrians whom tremendously suffered also as a result of an imbroglio of all these global and regional powers’ policies.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Political Activism, and Kurds
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Turkey, Middle East, and Syria

12. The EU’s Approach to the Syrian Crisis: Turkey as a Partner?

Author:
Çiğdem Nas
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
The article aims to analyze the European Union (EU)’s approach to the Syrian crisis and to evaluate the role it attributes to Turkey. The EU’s approach staggered between supporting transition in Syria to a post-Assad regime and the need to protect itself against spill-over effects of the conflict. Two issues emerged as urgent priorities that determined the EU’s approach to the conflict. One of them was to control the outpouring of refugees fleeing war and oppression in Syria and the other was to deal with the growing threat of terrorism, mainly the ISIL threat. The influx of Syrian refugees through the Aegean and Balkan route to the EU surged in the summer of 2015 leading to practical and political problems for EU countries. In the meantime, ISIL related terror attacks in the EU created a major security problem and led several Member States to bring back border controls in the Schengen area. The EU turned to Turkey and sought Turkey’s cooperation in controlling the refugee flow and also keeping away the ISIL threat. The article looks at cooperation between Turkey and the EU and also points of contention that created hurdles in this cooperation.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, European Union, Refugee Crisis, Syrian War, and Borders
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, and Syria

13. Relations between Turkey and Syria in the 1980’s and 1990’s: Political Islam, Muslim Brotherhood and Intelligence Wars

Author:
Behlül Özkan
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
The aim of this study is to examine how continuities and discontinuities over a period of nearly half a century have shaped the AKP government’s relationship with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the Assad regime. From the start of the 1980s until the 2011 Arab Uprisings, relations between Turkey, Turkish Islamists, Syria, and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood remained highly complex. Based on the information available from open sources and newspaper archives, this study terms the conflict between the Turkish and Syrian intelligence services that broke out in the 1980s as an “intelligence war.” Both countries viewed the PKK and the Muslim Brotherhood – domestic enemies which they were trying to stamp out – as useful actors to be played off against the other party. While the Syrian/PKK part of the equation was frequently alluded to by the Turkish media and Turkish academia, Turkey’s relations with the Muslim Brotherhood were gradually forgotten. Though open support for the Brotherhood was never an element in Ankara’s official foreign policy, Turkey’s intelligence and security forces did establish ties to the Brotherhood in order to strengthen Turkey’s hand against Syria and made use of the organization insofar as it was in their interest to do so.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, History, Syrian War, Islamism, and Muslim Brotherhood
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, and Syria

14. Leverages and Constraints for Turkish Foreign Policy in Syrian War: A Structural Balance Approach

Author:
Serdar Ş. Güner and Dilan E. Koç
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Various balance and imbalance conditions among the U.S., Russia, Turkey, Syria, and Iran are analyzed to present how changes in the direction of conflict and cooperation disturb the regional balance in the Syria conflict. We find that given a stable hostility between the U.S. and Russia, and the stable friendship between Russia and Syria, Turkish preferences over coveting friendship and leaning toward enmity are central in the formation of balances. Turkey-Syria relations constitute a key for the balance in the region. A main Russian foreign-policy problem thus remains to help Turkey and Syria to conduct friendlier relations. A competition or an agreement between the U.S. and Russia over Kurdish independence underlies TFP alignment choices and a high likelihood of a protracted conflict for years to come in the Middle East.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Political Power Sharing, and Syrian War
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, and Syria

15. Sectarian Actors in Foreign Policy Making: 2006 Lebanese War Revisited

Author:
Murat Tinas and Özlem Tür
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
This paper analyses the role of sub-state sectarian actors in foreign policy making in weakly established states by re-visiting the July War of 2006 in Lebanon. It mainly asks how sub-state sectarian actors behave as foreign policy actors in countries where society is divided along sectarian identities and how sectarian identities matter in terms of the definition of the self and the other and the ally and the enemy in weak states. By doing so, the paper analyses the emergence and the consolidation of foreign policy orientations, preferences and behaviour of the Maronite, Sunni, Shi’a and Druze communities in Lebanon, with a specific emphasis on the role of Hezbollah during the war. Building its main findings on various fieldworks in Lebanon, interviewing leaders of major sects; this study concludes that in the absence of a cohesive foreign policy stance in a weak state, the role of sectarian identity in defining self and other becomes central for understanding the foreign policy choices of sectarian actors.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, History, Sectarianism, Identities, and Hezbollah
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

16. Change in Turkey’s Northern Iraq Policy: A Comparative Analysis of Turgut Özal and Tayyip Erdoğan’s Tenures

Author:
Özlem Kayhan Pusane
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Since the 1960s, Turkish policymakers have developed a distant attitude towards the Kurdish movement in Iraq and they have been concerned about the possibility of similar developments taking place in Turkey. However, in the early 1990s, and then from 2007/2008 onwards, Turkey left its distant attitude towards northern Iraq and pursued an active policy developing close relations with the Iraqi Kurds. This paper explores to what extent Turkey’s foreign policy change towards northern Iraq in these two periods constituted leader-driven change and to what extent these changes resulted from structural/environmental factors.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Politics, Kurds, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Turgut Özal
Political Geography:
Iraq, Turkey, and Middle East