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1. Where is the Anchor? Explaining the Endurance of the American-Turkish Partnership, 1927-2024

Author:
Onur Erpul and Kemal Kirisçi
Publication Date:
01-2025
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Once considered a model partnership, the American-Turkish relationship now elicits ambivalence among scholars and policymakers, calling into question the fundamental interests and assumptions that once undergirded the relationship. Critics attribute the negative trends in the relationship to geostrategic and value-based incompatibilities, but relatively few have examined both factors longitudinally across the entire relationship. This paper does not aim to provide a grand theory of American-Turkish relations. Instead, its goal is to develop a framework illustrating the vital role that strategic, ideational, and domestic political factors have played in shaping macro-level outcomes in the partnership’s cohesion at various junctures. Overall, our paper identifies the positive role of foreign policy bureaucratic elites on both sides acting as an “invisible hand” providing an anchor for the relationship even in the absence of other commonalities. Yet, we also observe the weakening of this hand in recent times as both countries become domestically transformed.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Partnerships, Alliance, and Elites
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

2. Turkey and the US in the Middle East: A Case for Alliance Change

Author:
Meliha Benli Altunisik
Publication Date:
01-2025
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Turkey-US relations in the Middle East have evolved significantly in recent years. Initially based on shared threat perceptions and strategic outlooks during the Cold War, the alignment became characterized by divergences on some issues after the Gulf War in 1991. Their relationship in the Middle East has even become hostile in recent years. Turkey’s increased regional aspirations and evolving threat perceptions in the Middle East, framed within an ontological security narrative, have strained bilateral ties. This shift is compounded by divergent worldviews influenced by domestic political changes in both countries. Despite these challenges, the alliance persists within NATO, albeit with complexities arising from the interplay of external pressures and internal dynamics. This article explores these dynamics using a Neoclassical Realist framework to explain how Ankara’s evolving threat perceptions and ontological security concerns have reshaped Turkey-US relations in the Middle East amid changing global and regional contexts.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, Alliance, Neoclassical Realism, and Threat Perception
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

3. Operation Iraqi Freedom: Learning Lessons from a Lost War

Author:
Heather S. Gregg
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
American-led efforts to state and nation-build in Iraq all but failed, resulting in the deaths of 4,431 US troops, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi fatalities, and mixed-at-best results in creating a viable state. Despite these failed efforts in Iraq, the United States will most likely need to work with allies, partners, and the Ukrainian people to reconstruct their country in the wake of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Therefore, learning lessons from the war in Iraq is critical for future efforts at state stabilization.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Alliance, Iraq War, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

4. Time to Recalibrate America’s Middle East Policy

Author:
Raphael BenLevi and Michael Doran
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Our understanding of reality in the Middle East has changed significantly in the last seven years. At a conference on US-Israel relations in 2016, then Secretary of State John Kerry highlighted, now famously, the impossibility of Israel making peace with the Gulf states. In an obvious reference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his associates, Kerry said, “I’ve heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, ‘Well, the Arab world is in a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world, and we’ll deal with the Palestinians.’” Kerry dismissed Netanyahu’s thesis with total certainty: “No. No, no, and no. I can tell you that I’ve talked to the leaders of the Arab community. There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality.” Just two years later, Netanyahu refuted Kerry’s view of reality by, with the help of President Donald Trump, signing the Abraham Accords with Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani and Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. But the flaws that Trump and Netanyahu revealed were not Kerry’s alone. Nor were the flaws limited to thinking about Arab-Israeli relations. Trump and Netanyahu were attacking the entire strategic belief system of the Obama administration, which had identified reconciling with Iran and brokering a Palestinian-Israeli peace as the two top priorities of the United States in the Middle East. In the Trump-Netanyahu conception, the Abraham Accords were the cornerstone of a regional alliance that aimed not just to improve relations between Israel and its neighbors but also to contain Iran militarily and to prevent it, through the application of hard power, from acquiring a nuclear weapon. With a Middle East staff consisting almost entirely of veterans of the Obama administration, the Biden administration intended to prove the utility of Obama’s effort to reconcile with Iran. It therefore rejected the Trump-Netanyahu view of the accords as a key component of an Iran-containment strategy. However, the accords have fashioned a new “hard reality” of Arab-Israeli coordination that the administration cannot ignore. That reality includes formal Israeli representation at US Central Command, the military’s combatant operations command responsible for, among other things, deterring Iran. In other words, beneath the umbrella of the United States military, the Israeli military and its Arab counterparts are now liaising daily. Weren’t Trump and Netanyahu pursuing this outcome? The simple answer is no. To prevent trilateral military cooperation among the Arab states, Israel, and the United States from turning into a coalition designed to pressure Iran regarding the aggression of its proxy forces and the expansion of its nuclear weapons program, the Biden administration instructed CENTCOM to focus exclusively on defensive measures and integrated missile defense, and to avoid any offensive countermeasures against Iran. But defending against an aggressor with only a shield is impossible. Arming oneself with a sword is also necessary. Enter Raphael BenLevi, the director of the Churchill Program for Strategy, Statesmanship and National Security at the Argaman Institute of Tikvah Fund Israel. BenLevi is at the forefront of a new generation of foreign policy strategists in Israel who have come of age in an era when what seemed like a “hard reality” to the generation of John Kerry is now obviously history. In this article, he lays out a strong case for the potential of the kind of trilateral cooperation to which the Biden administration, under the weight of stale ideas, has turned a blind eye.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Middle East, North America, and United States of America

5. Los Estados medio-orientales en su competencia por recursos y alianzas en África subsahariana (2000-2021)

Author:
Rafael Bustos and Juan Carlos Pastor
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista UNISCI/UNISCI Journal
Institution:
Unidad de investigación sobre seguridad y cooperación (UNISCI)
Abstract:
El artículo explora la importancia antigua y nueva que para estos países de Oriente Medio tiene el continente africano a principios del siglo XXI. Para algunos de ellos es un interés histórico arraigado como es el caso de Egipto y su presencia en Sudán y las fuentes del Nilo, el de Turquía ligado al Imperio otomano o el de Omán, cuya vieja relación se remonta al comercio de esclavos y al control de Zanzíbar desde finales del siglo XVII, mientras que para Arabia Saudí o Irán esa relación data de los años 70 y para Emiratos Árabes Unidos y Catar este interés es mucho más reciente y arranca en el siglo XXI. Intereses que tienen múltiples vectores, entre los que destacan la competencia por la hegemonía regional de Oriente Medio, el prestigio, la intermediación y, en menor medida, pero también la compra de tierras cultivables en suelo africano. Por su parte, Israel, aunque es un actor que tratamos secundariamente, persigue también desde hace poco una agenda propia que resulta claramente distinguible del resto.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Alliance, Rivalry, and Competition
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa

6. Aligning U.S.-Israeli Cooperation on Technology Issues and China

Author:
Jonathan Schanzer, Shira Efron, Martijn Rasser, and Alice Hickson
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The United States and Israel have a long history of working together as close allies. Theirs is a relationship based on common values and security interests. In recent years, the alliance’s highlights have included close cooperation on counterterrorism and intelligence, as well as deepening economic ties, technological cooperation, and mutual knowledge transfer. The United States continues to provide Israel with significant security assistance based on a memorandum of understanding signed by both countries in 2016, which commits the United States to provide Israel with at least $3.8 billion per year in aid. The relationship is further strengthened by deep personal connections at the government and business levels as well as through collaboration between the two countries’ technology sectors. In recent years, however, the United States and Israel have differed regarding their threat perceptions and approaches to China. Whereas Israel sees China primarily as an economic partner and is increasing its ties with the country, the consensus view in Washington increasingly sees China as a global strategic rival—militarily, economically, and technologically—even while the Joe Biden administration preserves space for cooperation with Beijing in areas of common interest. In recent years, U.S. and Israeli officials have had public and private disagreements over several Chinese investments in Israeli infrastructure and technology. Although Chinese investments in Israel have declined since their peak in 2018, and even though these disagreements have yet to be aired publicly by the Biden administration and the Naftali Bennett–Yair Lapid government, this issue is likely to remain high on the agenda. The most critical challenges in the bilateral relationship are technology protection and collaborative innovation. Chinese investment in Israeli technology companies, including those that develop dual-use technologies, remains largely unregulated. Although Israel does not export defense technology to China and has placed stringent regulation on the export of dual-use technologies, the line between civilian and dual use is increasingly blurred, and Israel has yet to fully adapt to this reality. Washington, for its part, has not been entirely clear about how it expects American companies and allies to limit their roles. The United States has been slow to offer alternatives to allies such as Israel for forgoing cooperation with China and has yet to develop a collaborative technological innovation framework that builds on the cumulative strengths of the United States and its allies, benefits all, and helps to tip the balance in the technological competition with Beijing. To address the multidimensional challenge presented by China, the United States must enhance collaboration with its allies, including Israel, its closest partner in the Middle East. Fortunately, when the United States and Israel have had differing perspectives in the past, they have successfully engaged in deep bilateral consultations to work through these differences. These efforts have not always resulted in complete alignment, but they have significantly reduced disagreements and allowed for greater cooperation. This paper represents the most comprehensive public analysis to date of the challenges facing U.S.-Israeli cooperation on issues related to technology and China. It proposes an approach for the United States and Israel to align their policies and bridge differences by focusing on three central areas.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Science and Technology, Bilateral Relations, and Alliance
Political Geography:
China, Middle East, Israel, North America, and United States of America

7. Understanding the Baku-Tehran Relationship

Author:
Nina Miholjcic
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Baku Dialogues
Institution:
ADA University
Abstract:
Even though Azerbaijan and Iran have maintained cordial ties over the years, this has been punctured by evidently turbulent periods of constrained diplomatic and political rhetoric, which has produced occasional volatility in the bilateral relationship. Ever since Azerbaijan regained its independence in 1991, Baku and Tehran have remained cautious and circumspect in their interactions whilst managing to avoid open conflict. Such vigilance is due for the most part to the effects of contrasting foreign policies, divergent choices of allies and foes, different constitutional arrangements, and contrary ethnic‑ and identity‑based perceptions and postures. Such and similar points of friction explain why Azerbaijan and Iran continue to be wary of one another in their bilateral communication and diplomatic relations.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Alliance, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, and Azerbaijan

8. Regional security and alliances in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific: implications for European security

Author:
Bastain Giegerich, Emile Hokayem, and Sharinee Jagtiani
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Regional security dynamics and the constructs to manage them are in flux around the world. Governments are attempting to address a multitude of simultaneous security challenges; determine the depth and scope of achievable and desirable security autonomy versus the unavoidable interdependencies with friends and opponents alike; and maintain a focus on their specific regional hotspots, whilst also positioning themselves for the era of systemic competition between an assertive China and the United States. This research paper analyses the challenges and implications of regional security dynamics in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific for European security to inform discussions in NATO and the EU on their respective global role and help decide on an achievable level of ambition for dealing with partners and challengers. Against this background, both the European Union and NATO are revising their strategic guidance to produce in 2022 – in the case of the EU – the so-called Strategic Compass, a document to give further shape and substance to the Union’s international security role, and – in the case of NATO – a new Strategic Concept to replace an earlier version developed in 2010. Aspects of international order, geopolitics and regional stability will inform these documents as both organisations will need to tackle their respective global role and decide on an achievable level of ambition for dealing with partners and challengers. NATO’s 2021 Brussels Summit Communiqué suggested that NATO would work to improve its ‘ability to contribute to preserve and shape the rules-based international order in areas that are important to Allied security… [and] increase… dialogue and practical cooperation with existing partners’. In addition, NATO heads of state and government decided to ‘strengthen NATO’s ability to provide training and capacity building support to partners’. The draft Strategic Compass document debated by EU ministers in November 2021 stated that the EU would ‘bolster partnerships where they are mutually beneficial and serve EU values and interests, particularly when there is a shared commitment to an integrated approach to crises and capacity building’, and proposed a range of multilateral, regional and bilateral initiatives to deepen and strengthen partnership formats.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Regional Cooperation, Military Strategy, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Middle East and Indo-Pacific

9. Will US-Israel ties withstand possible strains due to the Iranian and Palestinian issues?

Author:
Eytan Gilboa
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS)
Abstract:
Despite former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to a 40-year friendship with President Joe Biden, the latter preferred the new government headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, Leadership, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, North America, and United States of America

10. The Gulf Countries and Turkey: (Re-)Drawing the Map of Alliances in the Middle East

Author:
Yoel Guzansky and Gallia Lindenstrauss
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for National Security Studies (INSS)
Abstract:
After a decade of hostility, and against the background of Turkey’s weak economic situation and Iran’s expanded regional presence, there is a significant improvement in the relations between Ankara and Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. What opportunities might this change bring for the region, and how might this affect Israel’s relations with Turkey and with the Gulf countries?
Topic:
International Cooperation, Alliance, Strategic Interests, and Regional Power
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, and Gulf Nations