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1051. Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy

Author:
Özdem Sanberk
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
BILGESAM (Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies)
Abstract:
This presentation will attempt an overview of Turkish foreign policy but it will dwell in particular on Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East, and with its ramifications or impact on our relations with the US and Europe. I have done this because these are the most prominent aspects in the rethinking or in the new directions of Turkish foreign policy. But this will not be exclusive and I will be happy to answer any questions on other aspects of our foreign policies for example as Russia or the Caucasus or other issues at the end. Foreign policy is something that has constantly to be revised and re-adapted in the light of changing conditions. Countries whose foreign policies are frozen – those of isolationist countries for example – are usually weaker as a result. Today‘s agenda on the world scene has changed greatly since the Cold War when the agenda consisted basically of peace, stability and security. An effective foreign policy today has to take into account matters such as climate change, environment, immigration, energy to cite a few.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Regional Cooperation, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

1052. The Middle East Policy of the Republic of Turkey

Author:
Şener Aktürk
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
BILGESAM (Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies)
Abstract:
Recently, it seems that the Middle East has become the main focus of Turkey’s contemporary foreign policy. Without any doubt, one of the reasons for this focus is that the Justice and Development Party (AKP), within the context of their main foreign policy directions, is determined to enlarge their role in the region since the day they came to power. However, it has to be said that various conditions are also forcing the government towards this direction. For example, directly after the electoral victory in 2002, the AKP was confronted with the US intervention in Iraq in 2003. Acting with the knowledge that this intervention would cause instability and chaos in the region, and to avoid a war, Turkey took the initiative to hold meetings with countries bordering Iraq. When it was evident that the war could not be prevented, the government agreed upon the opening of its’ southern borderfront with Iraq to the US, which gave them access to Northern Iraq through Turkey. Yet, the Turkish parliament disapproved this gesture by AKP. After American military operations ended, the Turkish government attempted, in a somewhat controversial manner, to send a military force that would be part of the coalition forces to Iraq. This attempt was blocked by the Iraqis and especially by the Northern-Iraqi Kurds. Eventually, when the Kurds became the closest allies of the Americans in Iraq, the Turkish-American relations were occasionally quite tense. Before 2003, Turkey was able to fly into Northern Iraq to fight against the PKK. However, it found itself unable to enter Iraq for a long time soon after the Americans arrived to the country. Even today, for Turkey, the main problem in the Middle East region remains the question of Iraq’s future. The developments in Iraq and its consequences are undoubtedly the main triggers for Turkey to play a more active role in the Middle East diplomacy. Within this scope, it seems that Turkish diplomacy has successfully expanded its ‘macro diplomacy’ with ‘micro diplomacy’ by establishing contacts with several different sectarian and political groups in Iraq. Later on, similar activities have taken place in Lebanon, while the relations with the Palestinians have also been strengthened. Although it seems slightly assertive, the notion of ‘zero problems with neighboring countries’ seems to be a creative concept as well. A detailed analysis of AKP’s Middle East policy will be further examined within the upcoming subparagraphs of this research report. Yet, before doing so, it seems useful to have a look at the continuous and divergent elements of the Middle East policies that have been adopted by the various governments since the foundation of the Turkish Republic. This approach will, on some level, shed light on what extent the discourse of ‘Turkey was pursuing a relatively passive Middle East policy’ before AKP administration reflects the reality.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Geopolitics, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Iraq, Turkey, and Middle East

1053. Turkey's Maturing Foreign Policy: A View from the USA

Author:
Jessica Sims
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
BILGESAM (Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies)
Abstract:
In 2009, both the US and Turkey witnessed significant changes to both their domestic and foreign policies. After an examination of how key figures’ ideas have impacted the trajectory of the US and Turkey’s domestic policies, the article looks beyond the domestic context at how each country is pursuing its foreign policy. Within each country’s foreign policy schemes the most important emerging issues affecting both nations and the USTurkey relationship are discussed. Considering leaders’ statements and influential academics’ and journalists’ views, the article looks at whether US and Turkish policies converge or diverge on individual issues.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, and United States of America

1054. Turkey's Today and Tomorrow

Author:
Ilter Turkmen
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
BILGESAM (Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies)
Abstract:
The geopolitical location of Turkey had created the framework of the policies pursued during the first years of the Republic. Upon the circumstances in the post- WWII period, Turkey unwaveringly preferred to join the Western world. Despite the occasional bottlenecks that have arisen in terms of the compliance with the Western values during and after the Cold War, Turkey irreversibly integrated with the fundamental ideals of the Western civilization such as democracy, multi-party system, rule of law, respect for human rights, and the social market economy. This evolution has been accelerated also by the process of accession to the EU.
Topic:
Democratization, European Union, Geopolitics, and Economy
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

1055. China's Challenge to the West in the 21st Century

Author:
Kees van der Pijl
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
Abstract:
What follows is based on Global Rivalries: from the Cold War to Iraq. In that book and elsewhere I have developed the theory that the global political economy for several centuries now has been characterised by an evolving core structure juxtaposing an expanding, English-speaking 'West' to a succession of contender states-beginning with France in the late 17th and the 18th centuries; Germany, Japan, and Italy and Austria-Hungary from the late 19th; followed by the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, a Third World Coalition rallied behind a tentative New International Economic Order seeking to impose a state-led world economy on global liberalism through the UN (Krasner 1985). Today, China would be the main contender state challenging Western hegemony.
Topic:
History, Geopolitics, Economy, and Global Political Economy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

1056. Who Leads Russia?

Author:
Elizabeth A. Wood
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
Ever since Dmitri Medvedev’s nomination to succeed Vladimir Putin as president of Russia, followed by his election and now his inauguration, Kremlin watchers, both Russian and Western, have been discussing the so-called “Putin-Medvedev tandem” and asking who will really lead Russia. Is the duumvirate stable? Will it degen- erate into squabbling among the Kremlin clans behind the scenes? The pundits have identified four plausible scenarios. One is that President Medvedev will indeed have the principal power, including the possibility of ousting Mr. Putin as prime minister, or marginalizing him, since the Russian political system has been “super- presidential,” i.e., strongly centered in the presidency, since the adoption of the new Constitution by Boris Yeltsin in 1993. The second is that the system will remain cen- tered around Prime Minister Putin through informal power mechanisms that have much more weight in this system than do the formal powers granted by the Constitution; this is the scenario I consider most likely. A third is that the United Russia Party will emerge as dominant in this situation, able to make or break presidents through the electoral process. A fourth is that the whole country, or at least the government, will fall apart because of feuding among the followers of the president and the prime minister who will be unable to decide on the fair division of spoils that come with holding power in this country that covers one-sixth of the earth’s land mass. Because the corridors of power are so completely impenetrable to outsiders, no one knows what will happen. Still, Putin and his advisers’ actions in the months leading up to the election and then inauguration of Dmitri Medvedev as president of the Russian Federation show some answers.
Topic:
Governance, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Political stability
Political Geography:
Russia and Europe

1057. Fixing Failing States: The New Security Agenda

Author:
Pauline H. Baker
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University
Abstract:
Weak and failing states rank among the world’s greatest threats to international peace and security today. While major threats to world peace used to come mainly from ideological, military, or economic competition among competing states, in modern times lethal threats are growing within states from communal tensions among rival factions, extremists groups with radical political agendas, and faltering regimes clinging to power and asserting militaristic ambitions. These are the driving forces of a growing world disorder.1 Recent events highlight this paradigm shift in the strategic environment. North Korea is a failing state with an inward-looking regime and a negative view of the world. Its own insecurities, including its fear of a US invasion, are motivating it to pursue nuclear capabilities that have increased its isolation further and exacerbated tensions.2 Lebanon is a weak state that successfully cast off fifteen years of Syrian military occupation, but was unable to assert its sovereignty and fill the vacuum left behind. Hezbollah used that opportunity to assert itself as a “state within a state,” with dual power bases in the government and in the south, where its autonomous security forces launched a devastating war with Israel in July 2006. Then there is Sudan, a country with the highest risk of internal violence that has stonewalled effective international action to stop the continuing humanitarian crisis in Darfur, described by the US State Department as genocide. 3 Internal weaknesses within these states have increased the threat of nuclear proliferation, precipitated an interstate war, and worsened an ongoing humanitarian crisis, respectively. Though the origins of state weakness go back decades, the curtain was raised on the era of failing states—if one can call it that—by the tragedy of September 11, 2001. One year after the biggest terrorist attack on the US in history, the 2002 US National Security Strategy stated that America is threatened more by failing states than it is by conquering states, overturning decades of US national security thinking. Overnight, we went from looking at security through a “big power” lens to seeing it from a “small power” lens. Much of the rest of the world has come to see security challenges from that perspective as well.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Fragile/Failed State, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

1058. Security Threats and Risks in South Caucasus: Perceptions From the Western Black Sea

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
Perception1 of security threats is a dynamic process determined by the outside world and the perceiver’s culture, attitudes, expectations, needs, experience and other attributes. Each interpreter, depending on her or his respective analytic point of view, subjectively defines the facts in the security realm. Values, beliefs and cognitions constitute the bulk of any perception, including about security issues. A value is a preference for one state of reality over another. A belief is a conviction that a description of reality is true, proven or known. And cognition is information derived from the environment that can be substantiated through physical evidence or perceptual observation. Cognitions are key elements in establishing perceptual systems and in changing those systems. The threat perceptual systems of the Western Black Sea countries – Bulgaria and Romania, are strongly influenced by their values, beliefs and cognitions as sovereign nations with specific geopolitical positions and interests. They are also shaped in the context of their membership in NATO, as future EU members and as US allies on whose territories would be stationed American military bases.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Geopolitics, and Risk
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, South Caucasus, and Black Sea

1059. Euro-Atlantic and Euro-Asiatic Concerns of an Enlarged Europe: a Bulgarian View

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
For historical, geopolitical, domestic and other reasons the enlarged Europe of 25 ‘+2’;’+3’, or ‘+4’ does not have a homogenized vision of the extent to which EU should differentiate itself in the realm of security from the United States of America. This causes fundamental concerns to the new members of the Union and to the other two, three or four that would join in the next few years. The Bulgarian perceptions of this issue cause concerns as to the most appropriate roles and functions of the country in the EuroAtlantic area as well as relative to the Euro-Asiatic neighborhood when the country joins the Union.
Topic:
Security, NATO, International Affairs, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, Bulgaria, and Atlantic Ocean

1060. Bulgaria’s Role and Prospects In The Black Sea Region: Implications Of Nato and Eu Enlargement

Author:
Plamen Plantev
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
In the evolving situation of EU and NATO eastward enlargement within a dramatically changed global security environment Bulgaria’s role and prospects are shaped by powerful yet hard to organise and realise in practice interests: First, the interest of serving as a reliable boundary state of both EU and NATO while projecting the image and influence of a trustworthy bridge, linking a stable and well established region of EU and NATO states with countries of a still shaky though bearing positive economic opportunities area. With the support of EU and NATO Bulgaria is in a position to mobilise its potential to serve these uneasy jobs. Second, the interest not to be pushed or even just to be left in the position to choose between the EU and NATO as well as between the EU and the leading NATO country – the United States. Bulgaria’s perceptions of the world – from the point of view of EU and US interaction, is a place, calling for cooperation in approaching and solving the hard issues of the globe and not for trying to counter-balance the Americans. Any other reading of the EU/US relationship by Bulgaria would practically dilute and even dissolve the country’s chances to play an effective and forward targeted boundary and bridge roles. Third, the interest to project to the contending for EU and NATO membership countries in the Balkans and in the Black Sea area the lesson Bulgaria has learnt in the accession years, that joining the two institutions is not an issue of geopolitical bargaining, but one of mostly meeting standard conditions that would lead to social and economic progress of the aspirants themselves and make them compatible with the other members of the Union and the Alliance.
Topic:
NATO, European Union, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, and Black Sea