Department of International Relations

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A poliheuristic analysis of South Korea’s responses towards North Korea’s missile tests
(Routledge, 2023-12-16) Dengiz, Pelin
The North Korean missile program has gained undeniable momentum in the twenty first century, highly sensitive to dialogues within the region. One could argue South Korea is accustomed to these repetitive launches splashing into the Pacific Ocean, at times nearing two dozen in a year, but the republic has its sets of policy alternatives when responding to the neighbor’s aggression. To understand South Korea’s decision-making mechanism, I utilize the ‘Poliheuristic Theory’ developed by Mintz. A decision matrix consisting of three policy alternatives (passive by-standing, reaching out, joint drills) is applied to three crisis moments from 2013, 2017, 2022. Primary and secondary sources like defense ministry press releases and news reports are used for data collection. The North’s tests are closely observed by the South but usually not responded to provocations. When South Korea decides to respond, the tendency is to carry the issue to the international audience by citing U.N. Convention, Armistice Agreement, etc. The presence of the U.S. military in the peninsula plays a crucial role, as seen from the remarkably increased tests after the U.S. declared it would lessen military involvement. Several domestic and regional criteria (the Sunshine Policy, eventual unification possibility, U.S. military presence, asymmetrical capabilities, regional status quo) has possible influence over leaders’ responses. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Open Access
Critical theory
(Routledge, 2023-03-29) Bilgin, Pınar; Williams, Paul D.; McDonald, Matt
In this chapter, students will learn about the critical approach to security studies which draws on the critical theory of Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School. This approach is also known as the ‘Aberystwyth School’ of security studies. The chapter begins by tracing the origins of critical security studies. It then explores the key concepts of security studies that have been inspired by critical theory, using empirical illustrations from regions such as the Middle East and the Euro-Mediterranean, and issues such as human mobility, nuclear weapons, and ‘state failure’.
Open Access
The onset of BRICS cooperation on climate change: material change, ideational convergence and the road to Copenhagen 2009
(Routledge, 2023-02-20) Kıprızlı, G.; Köstem, Seçkin
What explains the convergence among Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) on climate change? While Brazil, India, China and South Africa caught attention due to their economic dynamism in the 1990s and accelerating momentum as of the early 2000s, Russia progressed to increase its influence in the twenty-first century. This shift in the material capabilities of BRICS has increased their significance in global climate governance. Merging governmentality and social constructivist approaches, this article argues that material changes in the post-Cold War period led Brazil, India, China and South Africa to experience a change in their ideational framework, repositioning themselves at the international level, recognising new responsibilities, and reaching a common point on the road to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009. Therefore, they went through a convergence process, bringing them closer to Russia, whose position invited major developing states to take tangible actions for emissions reduction. This process of convergence marked the onset of the future BRICS partnership on climate change.
Open Access
The sheep that god lost: ‘legally’ circumventing the human rights of undocumented migrants
(Routledge, 2023-09-12) Bayar, Tuğba
The world witnessed the forceful repulsion of undocumented migrants when the Turkish government unilaterally repealed the EU-Turkey Deal in the Spring of 2020 and opened its border to allow migrants to reach the Greek border. In general, the rights of undocumented migrants are widely abused, particularly during migrants’ journeys towards asylum applications and pending status. This article examines in-depth how states violate the rights of undocumented migrants, despite existing international and European human rights protection regimes. I argue that states engage in political malignancy by creating an accountability (compliance) gap for abusing the grey areas of international law, where they consciously perform policies that harm undocumented migrants. Moreover, I also argue that states cooperate in those grey areas to overcome their human rights obligations and to fend off the migrant flows.
Open Access
International Relations in search of an antidote
(Center Foreign Policy & Peace Research, 2023-01-20) Karaosmanoğlu, Ali L.
This essay is based on the author’s long-time observation of the International Relations discipline and the repeated crises it has experienced. The piece identifies ‘event-drivenness’ as the structural reason behind these crises, in other words, the course of the discipline naturally follows global IR events and, depending on how transformative these events are, when responding to them, is more likely to fall into an existential crisis—with the most recent one being potentially fatal. By discussing in detail the a) science-statecraft relationship; b) scholar-practitioner disconnect; c) distortion of theories by scholars and practitioners; d) paradoxical relationship between rationality and irrationality; and e) theory-practice disconnect, the essay seeks to operationalize these crisisgenerated processes when responding to major events. In order to show these crisis generation processes in detail, it uses the theories of political realism and, to a lesser degree, classical liberalism, as case reflections. As a possible solution to the reciprocal condescension between scholarship (theory-making) and statecraft (practice), the essay proposes a “Clausewitzian” modus vivendi that aims at creating a culture of synthesis between the presumed producers and consumers of IR knowledge.
Open Access
Digital diplomacy and international society in the age of populism
(Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023-02-05) Erpul, Onur; Hare, P. W.; Manfredi-Sánchez, J. L.; Weisbrode, Kenneth
In recent decades, states have extended their diplomatic efforts to engage with the international community and their domestic audiences as a tool of legitimization. With the advent of the internet, this trend has culminated in regularized public interactions over social media. While the internet presents yet another avenue for diplomatic agents to communicate benign messages consistent with the aims and scope of traditional diplomacy, social media also offers populist democracies and authoritarian states the opportunity to broadcast politicized, divisive, propagandistic, and personalistic messages aimed at domestic consumption that are incompatible with the purposes of diplomacy. The main goal of this chapter is to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the potential adverse effects of diplomatic agents’ internet and social media usage by exploring the Turkish government’s social media practices. Turkey offers an opportune case study as a state that has exhibited elements of populism, authoritarianism, and personalization of politics, while also showcasing abundant examples of negative diplomatic interactions on social media, stemming from the vicissitudes of its relations with major powers and allies alike.
Open Access
Guns, gender and petroleum: a critical analysis of the underlying dynamics of Timor-Leste’s development trajectory
(Routledge, 2023-10-20) Buldanlıoğlu Şahin, Selver; Verkhovets, S.
This article examines the underlying political economy context of the uneven development outcomes in post-conflict Timor-Leste. We use a modified version of a structural political economy approach that is situated in a Gramscian understanding of the state-society relationship. This approach conceptualises development as a process of historically specific class-based and gender-based contestations over the distribution of resources that result in particular forms of socio-political orders maintained through a combination of institutional and ideological mechanisms of wealth generation. Our analysis of whose interests have been prioritised and marginalised in post-independence Timor-Leste is based on a systematic examination of three major factors: regulation of class relations, organisation of gender relations, and the governance of the petroleum industry. We conclude that despite some important improvements in the formation of formal democratic institutions in Timor-Leste, the processes of the distribution of power and access to resources remain far from being inclusive prioritising a class-based group of male-dominant elites that manipulates institutions to advance their interests and use a hegemonic gender ideology to justify and maintain these existing unequal arrangements in the prevailing socio-political order. Thus, the development outcomes in Timor-Leste are strongly connected to the political-economic processes from a larger historical perspective.
Open Access
Theory importation and the death of homegrown disciplinary potential: an autopsy of Turkish IR
(Routledge, 2023-09-14) Aydınlı, Ersel
A primary premise of the Global IR initiative is its emphasis on world history as a basis for global IR theorising. While non-Western contributions are thus critical, periphery IR disciplinary communities operate under the dominance and homogenising effect of core IR theories based on Western history and intellectual traditions. An import-dependent culture takes over periphery disciplinary communities, neutralising their potential for original IR production and theory creation. This study explores these assumptions by focusing on the case of Turkish IR; providing an evaluation of its evolution and current status, and suggesting lessons it might have for other periphery communities and the future of Global IR overall. It offers a longitudinal qualitative investigation of Turkish IR scholars’ perceptions of their community’s evolution. They suggest that Turkish IR has become a dependent consumer of core IR theory and devalued its history base, leaving it bifurcated between a minority ‘core-of-the-periphery’ who operate as ‘compradors’, copying and marketing global core knowledge, and a majority ‘periphery-of-the-periphery’, who remain voiceless, disconnected and resentful. Ultimately, the local community is unable to offer original contributions to the globalisation of IR, and the global IR movement is structurally diminished through the exclusion of large portions of the scholarly community.
Open Access
Breaking the bank: effects of domestic conflict on the banking sector in Turkey
(Routledge, 2023-10-02) Arı, Emine; Bayer, Reşat; Kemahlıoğlu, Özge
Although banks occupy a central role in most (post-)conflict situations, there is a perplexing lack of attention to them in studies of political violence. As a case experiencing domestic conflict with varying degrees in the last decades, Turkey offers opportunities to understand how the banking sector, including state deposit banks, responds to such political violence. We focus on the short-term impact of political violence and address the following questions: Do all actors in the sector respond in similar ways to security threats? Is there variation according to conflict intensity? We shed light on these puzzles with an analysis of original data on bank ownership, bank branches, bank deposit amounts, and bank credits. We show that banks with profit incentives respond to conflict by lowering their presence in provinces hit by these attacks. In comparison, our finding that deposits in high conflict intensity areas are not affected suggests that it is indeed economic actors outside high intensity regions that are more sensitive to short-time changes in security compared to local ones. Overall, the results demonstrate that political violence hurts banks’ presence in conflict locations and their presence matters through credit provision to these areas.
Open Access
Turkey’s withdrawal from Istanbul Convention: International human rights regime vis-à-vis authoritarian survival
(Routledge, 2023-09-27) Bayar, Tuğba
This article traces the raison d’être for Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. It draws upon two bodies of literature: international human rights regimes (IHRR) and authoritarian survival strategies. The Turkish government faced an electoral defeat in local elections 2019, which represented a serious challenge to the ruling party. To compensate for its loss of power and to consolidate its voter base, the government took some steps for its political survival. This article argues that the dynamics of the withdrawal from the Convention lay primarily behind the authoritarian survival strategies of centralization, legitimation, and repression, and secondarily behind the issue area of the Convention as an international human rights regime.
Open Access
A Turkish mayor goes to Moscow: Vedat Dalokay and development politics in the 1970s
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2023-08-30) Hirst, Samuel John; Khajei, Aydın; Kaptan, Deniz
In 1975, the mayor of Ankara requested Soviet assistance to build a public transportation system and affordable housing in the Turkish capital. This article uses Vedat Dalokay's appeal as a window into international development politics during a transformative decade. The 1970s saw growing leftism in Turkey, and Dalokay hoped that progressive urban planning would solidify voting trends among rural-to-urban migrants. He sought to introduce a new ideological element into Soviet–Turkish exchange, but politicians and academics in Moscow dismissed Dalokay's class-oriented projects. Instead, they increased their investments in the steel mills and electricity plants that were hallmarks of Soviet economic exchanges with the Third World. Whereas Dalokay's aspirations emerged from a Turkish intellectual climate that was being reshaped by dependency theory and by disillusionment in the possibilities for growth within boundaries defined by the political borders of nation-states, Soviet economists and bureaucrats remained wedded to the idea of development defined in terms of the territorial economy. The Ankara municipality eventually turned to Western Europe, but the Turkish government continued to negotiate gas pipelines and nuclear power plants with the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian governments. This article explores the ideological assumptions that have shaped economic exchange across the Black Sea.
Open Access
Understanding intersectionality and vulnerable populations: A missing part in building disaster resilient communities?
(Routledge, 2023-01-31) Whetstone, Crystal; Demiröz, Fatih; Knepper, Hillary J.; Evans, Michelle D.; Henley, Tiffany J.
This chapter explores the slow but growing inclusion of intersectionality in crisis management. Intersectionality is a framework that analyzes overlapping and compounding oppressions and/or privileges that individuals and social groups experience. We ask: What does the lens of intersectionality do for crisis management? Following a review of the extant literature, we trace the evolution of intersectionality in crisis management scholarship and unpack how this framework can improve the effectiveness of crisis management in terms of resilience. We argue that intersectionality is a key theoretical concept for crisis management when people are the focus, as in a human security perspective. We urge that resilience planning regarding a community or population should follow an intersectional approach to ensure effective crisis management. This chapter contributes to the scholarship on crisis management from a human security perspective by bringing in critical theory, specifically from an intersectional perspective.
Embargo
Against Eurocentric narratives on militarism
(Routledge, 2023-06-06) Bilgin, Pınar
Aspects of the recent scholarship on militarism, especially those who focus on ‘militarization’ as a post-9/11 development, have met with criticism by scholars who have underscored that the violence incurred by everyday people in the hands of the(ir) state – be it in Belfast, Cairo, İstanbul, Paris, or Rio de Janeiro – is not new insofar as military practices of have always impinged upon everyday life. Even as I agree with the critics, I submit that substituting the notion of ‘militarization’ with ‘pacification’ or ‘martial politics’ may not suffice. For, the problem is not (only) with the concept of militarization but with Eurocentric historical narratives on militarism that have informed this conceptualization. Accordingly, I locate the problem with militarism and militarization at an epistemic level: our approaches to militarization have been informed by Eurocentric historical narratives that consider militarism as a problem that belongs to a past world, which incidentally includes our contem-poraries outside the ‘West’.
Open Access
Grieving mothers who nurture sustainable peace and women’s political agency in Argentina
(Springer Nature, 2023) Whetstone, Crystal Marie
Political violence in Argentina has shifted from direct, albeit sometimes veiled, state action during the military dictatorship that ended in 1983 to today’s combination of open direct action, inaction and covert action by the state. This chapter examines the collective agency of women’s groups mobilized through maternal grief against political violence, asking: How does motherhood activism contribute to sustainable, full peace in an Argentina marked by evolving forms of political violence? By tracing empowered constructions of motherhood through three cases – Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), Madres contra el Paco (Mothers against Paco) and Mamà Cultiva Argentina (Mom Cultivates Argentina) – this chapter demonstrates that women’s political agency enacted through motherhood activism contributes to sustainable peace through the pursuit of accountability as well as economic and political equality, and adapts to varying deployments of political violence. The results of this motherhood activism have bolstered human rights, social justice and democracy in Argentina. The implications of these findings point to progressive and emancipatory potentials through motherhood for both women’s political agency and sustainable peacebuilding in various political environments including, authoritarian, transitioning and (deficiently) democratic.
Open Access
To sanction or not to sanction: public attitudes on sanctioning human rights violations
(SAGE Publications , 2023-05-21) Zarplı, Ömer
Public opinion is central to understanding when states enforce human rights abroad. Yet we do not have firm evidence regarding why individuals demand government action in some cases of human rights violations, but not others. I argue that economic interests and shared identity play important roles. I employ a pre-registered survey experiment in Turkey measuring the extent to which individuals support sanctioning China for its repressive policies against the minority Uyghur population. Results provide partial support for my hypotheses. The findings have implications for the question of international human rights enforcement.
Open Access
‘Welcoming’ guests: The role of ideational and contextual factors in public perceptions about refugees and attitudes about their integration
(Uluslararası İlişkiler Konseyi Derneği İktisadi İşletmesi, 2023-12-19) Özen, H. E.; Dal, Ayşenur; Tokdemir, Efe
In this study, we aim to explore the ideational and contextual sources of perceptions about refugees. Contrary to many studies focusing on the interaction with and integration of refugees in developed countries, we examine the effect of social identity and refugee exposure on the perception of refugees in Turkey, which pose a substantive case with a background of ethnic conflict and scarce resources. We contend that social identities provide individuals with cues; however, we argue that identity type and its salience are key to understanding in-group vs. out-group formation processes, hence the perceptions about refugees. Moreover, we argue that socioeconomic status affects an individual’s support for refugee integration, as it challenges the existing status quo of access to scarce resources. Our findings challenge the conventional wisdom in migration studies by employing an original face-to-face survey among over 1,100 respondents in three cities (Istanbul, Diyarbakir, and Gaziantep) in Turkey. We find that those prioritizing national vs. religious identities reveal different levels of perceived threat. Additionally, we show that those belonging to lower-income socioeconomic groups are less supportive of refugee integration when the presence of refugees sets the ground for competition for economic and social resources where they reside.
Open Access
Do campaign speeches predict foreign policy? An operational code and leadership trait analysis of Donald Trump’s MENA policies
(Uluslararası İlişkiler Konseyi Derneği İktisadi İşletmesi, 2023-12-19) Özdamar, Özgür; Halistoprak, B. T.; Young, M.
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.
Open Access
A conceptual history: historical sociological analysis of unipolarity in structural realist literature
(Uluslararası İlişkiler Konseyi Derneği İktisadi İşletmesi, 2023-02-21) Karademir, Burcu Sarı
Unipolarity has been taken for granted and remains unquestioned in the International Relations literature. This article provides the conceptual history of unipolarity by bringing an immanent critique. It shows the evolution of unipolarity literature in the absence of counterbalancing in four stages. It focuses on the use of history in structural realism and brings a historical sociological perspective to the literature to show how tempocentric theorizing impaired the understanding of unipolarity as a distinct structure. The article concludes by underlying the importance of noticing the cost of reification of concepts for theorizing and by highlighting that unipolarity is still understudied both theoretically and methodologically.
Open Access
Introduction to the forum on Karin Fierke snapshots from home mind action and strategy in an uncertain world Bristol University Press 2022
(SAGE Publications, 2023-11-20) Bilgin, Pınar
Karin Fierke situates Snapshots from Home at the intersection of two bodies of scholarship: one directed toward globalizing the study of world politics and the other drawing from quantum theory's insights to study the social world. The first body of scholarship has a long history. That it did not make a mark on the study of world politics until the mid-2010s has to do with the narrow notion of "science" that dominated the study of world politics, also known as disciplinary International Relations (IR). By way of showing the obsolescence of the narrow notion of "science" that IR has modeled itself on, the body of efforts that draw from quantum theory's insights has the potential to make more room for the first one. Fierke's book, by way of exploring the parallels between quantum physics and Asian philosophies, allows us to identify this potential. The contributors to this special forum each elaborate on different aspects of this potential.
Open Access
Animals and diplomacy: on the prospect for interspecies diplomacy
(SAGE Publications, 2023-08-10) Fougner, Tore
If diplomacy is considered an alternative to war, can the ongoing human ‘war against animals’ be replaced with diplomacy between humans and other animals? While many scholars and practitioners of diplomacy can be expected to dismiss such an idea out of hand, this essay encourages us to think more seriously and thoroughly about what it might imply to engage diplomatically with nonhuman animals. Doing so requires a somewhat unconventional conception of diplomacy, and some scholars have already done much to rethink diplomacy in suitable ways (despite the persistent anthropocentrism). Combining such work with political science scholarship on human-animal relations, indigenous peoples’ relations with animals, various notions of animal ambassadorship and the study of animal behaviour in natural settings, the essay argues that interspecies diplomacy is possible and urges scholars to further explore this and how the possibility in question can be translated into reality.