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161. Turkey's New Activism in the Western Balkans: Ambitions and Obstacles

Author:
Erhan Türbedar
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Following the Turkish Chairmanship-in-Office of the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP), 2009 represented the year of Turkey's return to the Western Balkans as an influential actor. Granted, Turkey's Balkan policy became a matter of contention. Ankara's Bosnia and Herzegovina initiative even raised questions as to whether Turkey is aspiring to restore its former power and influence over the region. Those expressing their unease over this initiative are accusing Turkey of nurturing inclinations reminiscent of the Ottoman state. To counter this image, Turkish officials are using every opportunity to underline that Ankara has no intentions other than to contribute to the consolidation of peace and stability in the Western Balkans. This article reviews the last two years of Turkish policy towards the region, and includes evaluations on the perception of Turkey's proactive Western Balkans policy.
Political Geography:
Turkey and Balkans

162. Turkish Interests and Involvement in the Western Balkans: A Score-Card

Author:
Žarko Petrović and Dušan Reljic
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The vigor which has characterized the Turkish approach to the Western Balkans since the end of the Cold War has transformed the country into an important regional actor from its previous position as a distant neighbor that showed little interest. Although Turkey and the Western Balkan countries have in the meanwhile achieved the most intensive relationship since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has not yet displayed the economic capacity and political weight that could make it compete with the magnetism of the European Union for Western Balkan countries. Turkish cultural influence, although significantly widened in the last few years, particularly through investments in educational institutions, is mostly limited to the Muslim population in the region. While potential EU membership remains the most important driver for the political elites in the region, the stalled EU membership prospects of both Turkey and the countries of the region might change this in the future.
Topic:
Cold War and Economics
Political Geography:
Turkey and Balkans

163. Turkey in Europe: Record, Challenges and the Future

Author:
Daivd Lovell
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The relationship between Turkey (and its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire) and Europe has been long, often tense or openly hostile, and is in some senses fundamental to the identities and development of each; this relationship also adds a considerable burden of suspicion to Turkey's current aim of joining the European Union (EU). This essay examines these propositions by providing an account of the history of the relationship and of Europe's recent, conditional approach to Turkish accession to the EU. While accepting that much remains to be done at the institutional level to bring Turkey into alignment with EU norms, this paper argues that Turkish accession is a historic opportunity for Europe that it should not squander. Despite mixed signals, further development of Turkey's democracy along the path to Europe is the most likely course. The story is not “never-ending”, but the end will not come quickly.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Europe and Turkey

164. Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History

Author:
Laurence Raw
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Cinema in Turkey differs from other recent books on the subject – notably Gönül Dönmez-Colin's Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging (2008), and Asuman Suner's New Turkish Cinema (2009) – in that Arslan focuses less on recent cinema in Turkey and more on the Yeşilçam era from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. More importantly, Arslan does not consider the cinema in Turkey either as 'Turkish,' or as expressive of a certain construction of national identity. Rather he employs a series of binary oppositions – the melodramatic and the realistic, the popular and the artistic, the forced and the spontaneous – to suggest that Turkish cinema is in a state of “perpetual 'trans-ing,' continual transition, translation and transformation.” (p.13)
Political Geography:
Turkey

165. Headscarf Politics in Turkey, A Postcolonial Reading

Author:
Michelangelo Guida
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The distressing photo on the cover effectively represents the content of this book. The photo depicts a junior high school student amidst male and female police officers who tear up her headscarf at the entrance of a school in 2001. We do not see the girl's face, but we can imagine her shame and fury for the act and the injustice of the ban. Author of the book under review, Merve Kavakci Islam was an activist for the Muslim women's right to wear the headscarf during her term with the Virtue Party. When elected to Ankara's Parliament in 1999, she was prevented from swearing into office, first, by an astonishing media campaign and, then, by the opposition of the leading party in the assembly. Later, she was stripped of her parliamentary immunity and of her Turkish citizenship by the Constitutional Court, which also closed her party for alleged threats to the state. Those were the aftermaths of the 28 February Process previous to the advent of the Justice and Development Party (JDP), a period when the secularist wing was attempting to reinstate the most severe form of laicism in the country.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Turkey

166. Rifat Bali, Turkey in the 1960's and 1970's Through the Reports of American Diplomats

Author:
Tanel Demirel
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Rıfat N. Bali has done us a great service by publishing reports of American diplomats about Turkey in the 1960's and 1970's. The book consists of 35 reports and cables prepared by American consulates in Istanbul, Adana Izmir, and the American Embassy in Ankara. Bali has organized the classified reports into five categories: the “political and social situation in Turkey,” “the situation after the May 27, 1960 Coup,” “the Turkish general staffs ultimatum of March 12, 1971,” “the Kurdish issue” and finally reports concerning minorities. It should be noted here that these reports did not exactly represent the views of the US government, but the views of serving American diplomats. Failure to distinguish between these two categories might lead to unwarranted conclusions.
Political Geography:
Turkey and Istanbul

167. Alexander Murinson, Turkey's Entente with Israel and Azerbaijan: State Identity and Security in the Middle East and Caucasus

Author:
Jakub Wodka
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
In this timely book Alexander Murinson explores the forces behind the entente between Turkey, Israel, and Azerbaijan. He juxtaposes these three countries, which he characterizes as “garrison-, like-minded, 'Westernistic', secular, constitutionally nationalist and lonely states.” (p.143) Those features depict the identity construct of the three states, which on the face of it, may seem to have conflicting interests in the turbulent Eurasian region spanning the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans. Each of the three states is a sui generis actor on the global stage – post-imperial, western-oriented Turkey with global ambitions ruled by a post-Islamist party, a Jewish state encircled by Arab neighbors, and an oil-rich post-soviet republic with an autocratic regime. Thus, the author seeks to understand how the common identities of the three countries on the one hand led to the formation of this peculiar alliance, and on the other hand what factors could and in fact do undermine the Turkish-IsraeliAzeri security relationship. Departing from the more classic, neo-realist approach to international relations, where the homogenous states – the so-called billiard balls are the sole actors on the world stage, the author draws from the constructivist importance of identity as the driving force of states' behavior and their foreign policy. He looks deep into the tissue of the three states and the regional and global context to decipher the emerging patterns and trends in Ankara's relations with Israel and Azerbaijan. As “all the three states have special relations with the world hegemon,” (p.147) it is warranted to say that the United States is the “fourth leg” of this triangular axis. Washington plays a key role in regional affairs and is interested in forging cooperation between countries potentially capable of counterbalancing the regional alignment between Russia, Iran, and Syria.
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Iran, Turkey, Middle East, Israel, and Syria

168. Shoah: Turkey, the US, and the UK

Author:
Sylvia Tiryaki
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
T“I was alive only because I had a Turkish passport,” tells Lazar Russo in Arnold Reisman's Shoah: Turkey, the US and the UK. Lazar Russo was living in France when the Nazis occupied it. As with the other Jews, it was impossible for him to leave the country. However, remaining meant certain extermination. Only after the Turkish Consulate in Paris offered him a passport could he escape. He went to Turkey. It was an unusual move from a foreign country those days. But according to the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, France was only “one of the countries where Turkish diplomats worked to save Jews.”
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, and Turkey

169. Citizenship, Security and Democracy, Muslim Engagement with the West

Author:
Noémi Michel
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The book under review regroups selected contributions from an international conference held in Turkey in September 2006 that was jointly organized by the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (UK) and the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (Turkey). Reflecting the mission of this conference, the book is concerned with the challenges of security and democracy in relation to Islamic discourses and Muslim communities. In the Introduction, the editor, Wenda Krause, convincingly highlights the importance of these issues, especially after 9/11 and 7/7. She states that “both security and democracy are becoming ever less attainable in today's climate of increased division and cleavages along ideological lines and Islamophobia – an acute problem for citizenship in humanity” and calls for the need of variously angled analyses and critical solutions. (p. xv) The twelve contributions of this volume, which are classified in five sections, therefore offer multiple points of entry to this main problem through case studies, historical accounts, policy analyses, as well as reflections drawing upon Islamic jurisprudence and intellectual history.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Turkey

170. The Roots of Balkanization: Eastern Europe C.E. 500-1500

Author:
Ina Merdjanova
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
In his book, Ion Grumeza ambitiously sets about “to fill a gap with authoritative material on how the process of Balkanization came about, to separate fact from fiction and trace the patterns of ethnic and cultural life that originated fifteen centuries ago.” (p. ix) Furthermore, the book “traces the creation of the present Balkan nations and examines their influence on Eastern Europe.” (p.xiii) With this impressive aim in mind, the author has studied some hundred historical books on the Balkans, or at least this is what we find in his bibliography.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Europe and Turkey