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1. One Step Towards Reconciliation In Cyprus: Perceptions of the ‘Other’ for the Families of Missing Persons

Author:
Hasibe Şahoğlu
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
By the end of the inter-ethnic conflict in 1974, there were over 2000 people who were reported as missing in Cyprus. Since 2005, with the efforts of the Committee of Missing Persons (CMP), 870 remains of the missing persons have been discovered, exhumed and returned back to their families. Although there exist several studies focusing on disappearances during violent conflicts, there is a dearth of academic research that investigates the reconciliation at the grassroots level, particularly for the families of the missing persons. The aims of this paper are twofold. Utilizing twenty two in-depth interviews with the families of Greek and Turkish Cypriots who experienced ‘ambiguous losses’ in the 1963 and 1974 conflicts in Cyprus, the paper firstly aims at improving the understandings of how disappearances shape the perceptions of ‘the other’ group in a post-conflict society. Secondly, the paper also aims to investigate the potential role of CMP on trust building and reconciliation efforts in Cyprus. The paper reveals that there is a subtle step forward for reconciliation among the families of missing persons, which were clear in the narratives of the families who started showing empathy towards the other. While both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots showed very little hatred towards each other and noted that there were no problems at the individual level, they continued to blame the politicians and radical groups for their losses. The opening of borders and the contributions of the Committee of Missing Persons (CMP) in reducing the pain of relatives and helping to bond relations in line with trust building and reconciliation efforts were also acknowledged by both sides.
Topic:
Conflict, Disappearance, Reconciliation, and Missing Persons
Political Geography:
Cyprus and Mediterranean

2. An Empirical Analysis of the Women and Peace Hypothesis

Author:
Malek Abduljaber
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
For decades, social scientists have questioned whether women are more politically tolerant, peaceful, and less likely to prefer war to solve international conflict compared to men. Empirical analyses have been limited to a few geographic regions: North America (the United States); the Middle East (Israel and the core Arab World); and Africa (Rwanda). Furthermore, the measurement of the dependent variable, perceptions of war and peace, has been either evaluated with a single item or with a few items tapping on various dimensions of war and peace. This paper extends the geographic coverage in the literature to include a cross-national analysis containing North American, Latin American, Western European, Eastern European, African, Asian and Pacific nations, and utilizes thirteen items measuring gender differences in attitudes towards the perception of war, conflict resolution, foreign policy attitudes, international organizations’ appeal, political tolerance, and international cooperation. The analysis utilizes the most up-to-date data of national representative surveys, the World Values Survey and the Arab Barometer, featuring mean comparison methods to supply readers with simple results informing the relationship between gender and perceptions of war and peace on a global level. The evidence reveals that there is no difference in perceptions between men and women regarding international conflict perceptions across countries.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Politics, Women, Conflict, and Peace
Political Geography:
Middle East

3. Ideologies and the Western Question in Turkish Foreign Policy: A Neo-classical Realist Perspective

Author:
Sevket Ovali and Ali Murat Özdemir
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Growing anti-Western sentiments around the world are currently manifesting themselves through divergent ways ranging from peaceful resistance movements to various forms of political violence. In the Middle East, unlike the earlier partially secular and nationalist Cold War anti-Americanism, the current popular anti-Western political movements are heavily equipped with Islamism, which appears to be an all-inclusive ideology and political movement for almost all dissidents. This applies to Turkey as well, despite its relatively long history of secularisation. This research particularly aims therefore to discuss the role of nationalism and Islamism on anti-Western sentiments in Turkish foreign policy through the lens of neo-classical realism and a new, broader conceptual framework: The Western Question. The research examines the contours, contents, and consequences of the problem through comparing two cases, namely the Cyprus problem of the 1970s and the crisis with the West that has surfaced after Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War.
Topic:
Political Violence, European Union, Conflict, and Islamism
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Syria, North America, Cyprus, and United States of America

4. A Dynamic Model of the Spread of Intrastate War

Author:
Ali Fisunoğlu
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The spread of intrastate war has gained increasing prominence, especially in the recent past. This paper studies the spread of intrastate war as a result of another intrastate war in a neighboring country using a system dynamics modeling approach. The model employed is a modification of the SIR, a spread of disease model taken from epidemiology. Revising the SIR model with relevant political and economic variables, the model seeks to explain the mechanism through which an intrastate conflict is spread from an "infected" country to a "susceptible" country. Although diffusion and contagion of civil wars have been widely examined in the past, a dynamic modeling approach has not been adequately used in this area. Consistent with the existing literature, the results of the model suggest that refugees are a means to carry the conflict disease from the initial country by disturbing economic and social dynamics of the host whereas political capacity acts as the immune system, reducing the likelihood of conflict contagion. The results of the simulations, obtained using theoretical parameters, are mainly consistent with the expectations.
Topic:
War, Refugees, Conflict, and State
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. System Dynamics Modeling in International Relations

Author:
Ali Fisunoğlu
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
This article provides an introduction to system dynamics modeling with a particular focus on the use of system dynamics models in political science and international relations. A system dynamics approach offers an alternative to traditional qualitative and quantitative methods by providing a dynamic and endogenous point of view, which allows for understanding the dynamic interactions between variables and making short- and long-term projections for alternative policy choices. This approach is particularly useful to tackle the complex problems of contemporary politics, in which the solutions require combining the insights from different disciplines. Applications of a system dynamics approach in the social sciences cover a broad spectrum, from war initiation and termination to social inequality, from demographics to human development and democratization. This article starts by presenting the brief history of system dynamics models and their use in social sciences, and comparing a system dynamics approach to traditional qualitative and quantitative research methods by discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each one. This discussion is followed by the explanation of the essential components of system dynamics models. Finally, the article provides several applications from international relations via developing models of arms races and spread of intrastate conflicts.
Topic:
Politics, Conflict, Quantitative, Methods, and Arms Race
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Large-N Analysis in the Study of Conflict

Author:
Belgin San-Akca
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
In this paper, I examine the generation and use of large-N datasets and issues related to operationalization and measurement in the quantitative study of inter-state and intra-state conflict. Specifically, I critically evaluate the work on transnational dimensions of internal conflict and talk about my own journey related to my research on interactions between states and nonstate armed groups. I address the gaps in existing research, the use of proxy measures in large-N data analysis, and talk in detail about observational data collection and coding. I argue that future research should bridge the gap between studies of conflict across the fields of Comparative Politics and International Relations. I make suggestions laying the standards of academic scholarship in collecting data and increasing transparency in research.
Topic:
International Relations, Civil War, War, Research, Conflict, and Data
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. The Politics of Effective Aid and Interstate Conflict

Author:
Ömer F. Örsün
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The link between foreign aid and military conflict has received little attention in both aid effectiveness and interstate conflict research. This study provides a first-cut analysis of the impact of foreign aid on interstate conflict among recipient countries. In doing so, it opens the black box of state and builds on the previous research in the aid effectiveness literature and on the signaling processes in the conflict literature. Previous research indicates that the effectiveness of aid in improving citizen welfare is conditional on the presence of democratic institutions. This study shows that this conditional relationship has a detrimental effect on crisis bargaining outcomes. Foreign aid, on the one hand, increases citizen welfare in democratic regimes; hence, also governments’ ex- ante re-election prospects. On the other hand, foreign aid retards government ability to generate audience costs and to send informative signals to their opponents. Analyzing all dyads from 1961 to 2001 yields robust support for this view. As aid inflows increase, targets’ resistance propensity against threats issued by democratic governments becomes statistically indistinguishable from threats issued by autocratic governments. Moreover, democratic states are not significantly more peaceful to each other than non-democratic pairs once we take into account the amount of foreign aid they receive.
Topic:
Foreign Aid, Democracy, Conflict, and Aid Effectiveness
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Ideology, Political Agenda, and Conflict: A Comparison of American, European, and Turkish Legislatures’ Discourses on Kurdish Question

Author:
Akın Ünver
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Combining discourse analysis with quantitative methods, this article compares how the legislatures of Turkey, the US, and the EU discursively constructed Turkey’s Kurdish question. An examination of the legislative-political discourse through 1990 to 1999 suggests that a country suffering from a domestic secessionist conflict perceives and verbalizes the problem differently than outside observers and external stakeholders do. Host countries of conflicts perceive their problems through a more security-oriented lens, and those who observe these conflicts at a distance focus more on the humanitarian aspects. As regards Turkey, this study tests politicians’ perceptions of conflicts and the influence of these perceptions on their pre-existing political agendas for the Kurdish question, and offers a new model for studying political discourse on intra-state conflicts. The article suggests that a political agenda emerges as the prevalent dynamic in conservative politicians’ approaches to the Kurdish question, whereas ideology plays a greater role for liberal/pro-emancipation politicians. Data shows that politically conservative politicians have greater variance in their definitions, based on material factors such as financial, electoral, or alliance-building constraints, whereas liberal and/or left-wing politicians choose ideologically confined discursive frameworks such as human rights and democracy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, European Union, Conflict, Legislation, and Kurds
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, and United States of America

9. The Paradox of Power Asymmetry: When and Why Do Weaker States Challenge US Hegemony?

Author:
Hong-Cheol Kim
Publication Date:
07-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Little is known about how, among weaker states, incentives to challenge the status quo are related to the expected response of the US as the system’s hegemon. In contrast to conventional wisdom that suggests militarized punishment can deter potential challengers, it is argued that weak but strongly motivated challengers can interpret the hegemon’s military intervention against adversaries as a window of opportunity to launch their own actions. Empirical results using Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) and binary time-seriescross-section (BTSCS) models reveal that weaker states possess incentives to challenge the international status quo when the hegemon is preoccupied with prior foreign policy commitments, most notably war. In other words, weaker states dissatisfied with the status quo are more likely to challenge the hegemon when it is preoccupied with prior military commitments. They do so because war involvement distracts the hegemon, drains its capabilities and resolve, and opens up a window of opportunity for weaker states to issue challenges. In addition, weaker states that have an alliance portfolio dissimilar to that of the hegemon are more likely than others to initiate Militarized Interstate Disputes. Theoretically, this paper provides microfoundations to answer the question of why weaker parties instigate asymmetric conflicts when it might seem irrational to do so.
Topic:
International Relations, Hegemony, Conflict, Power, and Asymmetric Relations
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

10. Buying Trouble? The Impact of Foreign Assistance on Conflict in Direct and Indirect Rivalry Situations

Author:
Peter Rudloff and James M. Scott
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
States provide foreign assistance for many reasons, including their achievement of strategic goals. Previous research suggests that rivalries exert a meaningful impact on foreign aid allocations, not only in direct rivalry situations (i.e., rivals are less like to receive aid), but also in indirect rivalry situations (i.e., potential recipients located near rivals or with rivalries in common with the donor are more likely to receive aid). What happens as a consequence of such strategic aid allocations? In this paper, we examine the effect of foreign aid on conflict within direct and indirect rivalry situations. Specifically, we identify and develop two contending arguments about the likely consequences of foreign aid and conflict in indirect rivalry situations. To test these arguments, we examine foreign assistance by the United States and the conflict history of recipient states from 1962 to 2000. Our results indicate that when foreign aid recipients and donors are rivals with a third state, increased foreign aid to the recipient leads to increased conflict between the recipient and the third-party rival
Topic:
Conflict, Rivalry, and Foreign Assistance
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America