Browsing by Subject "Geopolitics"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 20

Open Access
Alternative futures for the Middle East
(Pergamon Press, 2001) Bilgin, P.
This paper investigates alternative futures of security in the Middle East in an attempt to discover a path that could take the region from an insecure past to a more secure future. Looking at five scenarios about the future of world politics, namely, globalisation, fragmentation, clash of civilisations, democratic peace and the formation of a security community, the paper argues that although each scenario has its strengths (as well as weaknesses), it is the scenario that foresees the establishment of a security community that incorporates a more explicit consideration for shaping a more secure future for the Middle East.
Open Access
Azerbaijan's foreign policy and challenges for energy security
(Middle East Institute, 2009) Ipek, P.
This article examines Azerbaijan's foreign policy by demonstrating the interplay between the oil-led development process and early post-independence regional conflicts that enforced a Western orientation in the country's foreign policy. It is argued that geopolitics continue to prevail in the strategic goals of Azerbaijan. However, the new challenges in the emerging framework of energy security, which extends beyond the revitalized geopolitical rivalries and preeminent concern over securing energy supplies, put Azerbaijan's foreign policy at a crossroads and require a new trans-Atlantic partnership to promote human security and to manage the risk entailed in the unpredictable policy environments of the Caspian region.
Open Access
Beware of the Wolves! the Turkish versus the European reception of Valley of the Wolves (2006)
(Intellect, 2011-06) Smets, K.; K. Mutlu, D.; Winkel, R. V.
Open Access
Clash of interest over northern Iraq drives Turkish-Israeli alliance to a crossroads
(Middle East Institute, 2005) Kibaroglu, M.
Turkey and Israel enjoyed an almost perfect relationship throughout the 1990s that amazed their friends, yet bothered their rivals. The US war in Iraq revealed, however, that the two longstanding allies did indeed have contradictory objectives and concerns with respect to the future restructuring of Iraq. While Turkey fears the emergence of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, the same possibility seems favorable for Israel from its security standpoint, vis-à-vis threats posed by countries like Iran, Pakistan, and beyond. It appears that the "amazing alliance" is heading toward a crossroads. Such an eventuality may change the nature of the relationship from a "win-win" to a "lose-lose" situation unless proper steps are rapidly taken with a view toward rebuilding confidence on both sides.
Open Access
Exogenous shocks and governing energy security
(2017-07) Diriöz, Ali Oğuz
The research examines how governments maintain energy security when faced with exogenous shocks. The main focus of inquiry examines the relative influence of markets vs. geopolitics in the area of energy security using the comparative case studies of Turkey, France, and Netherlands, which are OECD economies and NATO members, but feature diverse settings and contexts as well as different energy mixes, geographies, and demographics. The research then inquires how these countries’ respective governments responded to four exogenous shocks: a) 2003 invasion of Iraq and ensuing oil price hike; b) Russia-Ukraine natural gas crisis of 2005/6; c) 2008 world economic crisis and ensuing extreme oil price fluctuations; d) 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown. It is argued that governments operate within two distinct decision time horizons to maintain energy security. The concept of “Term Structure Approach to Energy Security” is introduced, which refers to government’s capacity to respond to exogenous shocks within different time horizons. In the short term, governments cannot respond to vulnerabilities with optimum efficacy, so they seek palliative solutions. In the long term, governments develop a greater capacity to the area of energy security, to minimize vulnerabilities. Thus, governments implement different strategies associated with different term structures in responding to exogenous shocks to their energy security. Geopolitics and external adjustment (EGA) observed tend to be of long term, and set the structure within which markets operate. Therefore, system level influences are more observable in maintaining energy security.
Open Access
Geopolicts of Russia's caucasus policy and its implications for the world
(2014) Tekir, Gökhan
This thesis examines an overlooked region in the discipline of international relations, the Caucasus. The collapse of the Soviet Union caused the independence of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, which comprise the South Caucasus. The North Caucasus remained under the control of the Russian Federation but the Russian Federation had to deal with separatist movements in the North Caucasus. Despite military and economic costs, Russia tries to hold on the region. The withdrawal of Russian rule from the South Caucasus led to the belief that newly established republics would join to the Western camp immediately. The South Caucasus emerged as a big energy prize for the European Union, which wants to diversify its energy transportation routes. However, regional conflicts and Russian presence, which increased gradually has prevented this opportunity. Russia has managed to establish a dominant presence in the region. This study claims that Russia’s Caucasus policy rests upon geopolitical considerations. Russia ensures that the Caucasus will remain under its sphere of influence in order to provide its security and reestablish its great power status in international arena. Russia’s goals in the region are frequently challenged by external powers. In order to maintain its hegemonic position in the region, Russia struggles with other external powers.
Open Access
The 'greater middle east' as a 'modern' geopolitical imagination in American foreign policy
(Routledge, 2010) Güney, A.; Gökcan, F.
This article aims at analysing how the September 11 terrorist attacks have caused the formation of a new geopolitical vision of an area called the 'Greater Middle East' and how this formation has led to changes in US foreign policy towards this region. To do that, the article first presents a theoretical background against which the modern geopolitical imagination of the USA is formulated. It considers the links between national traumas/myths, geopolitical codes and visions, and foreign policy actions. The article then applies this analysis to the case of the Greater Middle East with respect to how this imagined geography shapes the foreign and security policy of the USA. It concludes that even though this imagined region has been presented in texts as justifying US-led policies with liberal underpinnings, it has in reality laid the ground for and been used for justifying US extra-territorial intervention in the region. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Open Access
Individual and societal dimensions of security
(Oxford University Press, 2003) Bilgin, P.
Despite the prevalence of state-based approaches to security studies during the Cold War, alternative ways of thinking about security-focusing on the individual and society-also developed during this time period. However, in the post-Cold War era the primacy of the state in considerations of security has come under increasing challenge from a variety of perspectives. In this essay, the development of the study of individual and societal dimensions of security is traced and discussed against the background of the end of the Cold War. The first part of the essay examines the evolution of thinking about individual and societal dimensions of security during the Cold War. The second part focuses on the post-Cold War revival in thinking about these aspects of security. The essay concludes by considering the future of world politics conceived of as "risk society" and the implications for individual and societal dimensions of security.
Open Access
Key challenges facing the Eastern Mediterranean: the future of regional energy development
(Siyaset Ekonomi ve Toplum Arastirmalari Vakfi, 2021) Karbuz, Sohbet
This article provides a critical overview of the key commercial, technical, legal, and political challenges the Eastern Mediterranean region faces in regard to the development of its natural gas resources and proposes possible ways to overcome them. To that aim, it first gives an up-to-date overview of the upstream developments in the region. It then discusses the challenges facing the monetization of the gas discoveries by looking at both the commercial challenges hampering exploration and field development and the technical challenges involved in exporting the gas to the immediate and distant markets. While examining the legal and political challenges related to maritime delimitation and political alignments, it highlights the role of gas. Finally, it offers some possible ways to overcome those challenges.
Open Access
“Only strong states can survive in Turkey's geography”: the uses of “geopolitical truths” in Turkey
(Pergamon Press, 2007) Bilgin, P.
Following Critical Geopoliticians' re-formulation of geopolitics as discourse, this article historically traces, politically contextualizes, and empirically analyzes the linguistic practices as found in myriad actors' formal geopolitical writings and public articulations in Turkey. It shows how the production and dissemination of a particular understanding of geopolitics as a "scientific" perspective on statecraft, and the military as an actor licensed to craft state policies (by virtue of its mastery over geopolitical knowledge) has allowed the military to play a central role in shaping domestic political processes. Subsequent to the erosion of bi-partisan consensus on foreign policy from the mid-1960s onwards, civilian actors also began to tap geopolitics but as a foreign policy tool. By the end of the 1990s, geopolitics had become rooted in the discourses of both military and civilian actors shaping (for "better" or for "worse") Turkey's "foreign" relations with the European Union as well as "domestic" political processes.
Open Access
Preface
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) Togan, Sübidey; Balasubramanyam, V. N.; Togan, Sübidey; Balasubramanyam, V. N.
This book offers a comparative study of the Central and Eastern European and Turkish economies that analyses the implications of EU enlargement. The contributors discuss issues related to the creation of a legal infrastructure that encourages entrepreneurial initiative, fair competition, market forces and investor confidence. They assess the benefits of following prudent monetary and fiscal policies together with appropriate competition, trade and foreign direct investment policies in Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe.
Open Access
Projections for the geopolitical economy of oil after war in Iraq
(Pergamon Press, 2006) Williams, P. A.
How are events surrounding the latest Iraq war shaping the future global political economy of oil? The saliency of Iraq's oil resources suggests a trend towards intensified great-power competition to dominate energy-rich provinces and transportation corridors. Yet, the nature of the oil trade, Iraq's insurrection, and Sino-American economic interdependence indicate barriers to unilateral attempts to control energy supplies. Based on examination of the Iraq conflict's unintended stimulus to terrorism and to China's search for foreign oil supplies, this paper assesses three possible scenarios: 'multiple energy insecurity' (great-power competition and violent non-state reaction); 'mutual energy securitisation' (inter-state collusion against non-state resource claimants); and 'multiple energy security' (great-power curtailment of geographically expansive energy consumption). It finds that the increasing problems associated with the first two alternatives are inducing decision-makers to contemplate policy options consistent with the third scenario.
Open Access
A return to 'civilisational geopolitics' in the Mediterranean? Changing geopolitical images of the European Union and Turkey in the post-cold war era
(Routledge, 2004) Bilgin, P.
The prevalence of the discourse of ideological geopolitics during the Cold War meant that both Turkey and the EU belonged to the West by virtue of their ideological orientation. In the absence of this prevalent geopolitical discourse, both the EU and Turkey have spent the 1990s trying to locate themselves geographically. Drawing on the literature on critical approaches to political geography and international relations, this article seeks to answer the question of whether the EU's post-Cold War security discourse on the Mediterranean in general and on relations with Turkey in particular point to a return to the earlier discourse of civilisational geopolitics. The article also presents a reading of Turkish policy makers' attempts to resist EU's representation of Turkey in 'non-Europe' (as with the 'Middle East' or the 'Mediterranean') as boundary-producing practices which have served to underline the boundaries between the 'West' and the 'non-West'.
Open Access
The ‘Rojava revolution’ in Syrian Kurdistan: a model of development for the middle east?
(Institute of Development Studies, 2016) Cemgil, C.; Hoffmann, C.
As the civil war in Syria continues, in the territory of Rojava - in Kurdish, ‘the West’ - the northern Syrian Kurdish political movement is attempting to implement ‘libertarian municipalism’, based on the thoughts of United States (US) anarchist Murray Bookchin. Since the withdrawal of Syrian regime forces in 2012, the movement has consolidated significant territorial gains as a US ally in the anti-Islamic State (IS) struggle, while simultaneously securing Russian support. Viewed with suspicion by Turkey, Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan, the geopolitical conditions of Rojava’s emergence are its greatest impediment. This article analyses Rojava’s model of rule and socioeconomic development, and its theory and practice in the context of the civil war, and regional Middle Eastern and wider global geopolitics. It reflects on Rojava’s place and meaning for contemporary geopolitics in the Middle East, and considers the territory’s prospects, discussing its transformative potential for an otherwise troubled region. © 2016 The Authors and Institute of Development Studies.
Open Access
Thinking past 'Western' IR?
(Routledge, 2008) Bilgin, P.
The laudable attempts at thinking past 'Western' IR should not limit their task to looking beyond the spatial confines of the 'West' in search for insight understood as 'difference', but also ask awkward questions about the 'Westernness' of ostensibly 'Western' approaches to world politics and the 'non-Westernness' of others. For there may be elements of 'non-Western' experiences and ideas built in to 'Western' ways of thinking about and doing world politics. The reverse may also be true. What we think of as 'non-Western' approaches to world politics may be suffused with 'Western' concepts and theories. Indeed, those who are interested in thinking past 'Western' IR should take an additional step and inquire into the evolution of the latter. While looking beyond the 'West' may not always involve discovering something that is radically 'different' from one's own ways of thinking about and doing world politics, such seeming absence of 'difference' cannot be explained away through invoking assumptions of 'teleological Westernisation', but requires becoming curious about the effects of the historical relationship between the 'West' and the 'non-West' in the emergence of ways of thinking and doing that are - in Bhabha's words - 'almost the same but not quite'. This article looks at three such instances (India's search for nuclear power status, Turkey's turn to secularism, and Asia's integration into the liberal world order) in the attempt to illustrate how 'mimicry' may emerge as a way of 'doing' world politics in a seemingly 'similar' yet unexpectedly 'different' way.
Open Access
Trust in world politics: converting 'identity' into a source of security through trust-learning
(Routledge, 2014) Bilgic, A.
In the discipline of international relations, the concept of trust has been theorised in two ways: the 'rationalist' approach and the 'normative' approach. This article aims to show that these approaches do not adequately reflect how trust operates in world politics and that trust provides a new way of understanding the identity-security nexus in international relations. It is argued that as actors learn to trust each other, this trust-learning process has a transformative effect on their definition of self-interests and identities. The elaborated understanding of trust in the security dilemma is operationalised in terms of the immigration security dilemma.
Open Access
Turkey's "new" foreign policy toward Eurasia
(Taylor & Francis, 2011) Bilgin, P.; Bilgiç, A.
Two geographers specializing in Turkey's international relations examine the reframing of foreign policy issues under the country's Justice and Development Party (JDP; also known by its Turkish acronym AKP), in power since 2002. After first locating the JDP within Turkey's current political landscape, the authors investigate how notions of civilizational geopolitics have led to a "new geographic imagination" under JDP that has influenced foreign policy thinking. The authors argue that JDP foreign policy exhibits some continuity with that of earlier governments in terms of activist policies toward Central Eurasia (comprising the Middle East, Central Asia, and Transcaucasia), but are based on a new conceptual foundation that views Turkey not as part of Western civilization but as the emerging leader of its own "civilizational basin" (consisting of the former Ottoman territories plus adjoining regions inhabited by Muslim and Turkic peoples). They then explore the implications for Turkey's future relations with the Central Eurasian region (of which Turkey is assumed to be the leader) and countries of the West (viewed now as "neighbors" but no longer "one of us").
Open Access
Turkey's search for a third party role in Arab-Israeli conflicts: a neutral facilitator or a principal power mediator?
(Routledge, 2010) Altunisik, M.; Cuhadar E.
This paper examines Turkey's increasing involvement in the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts as a third party in the last decade. The paper first discusses the underlying reasons and motivations behind the change in Turkish foreign policy. Inthissectionwe answer the following question: While the traditional Turkish policy in the Middle East was non- intervention, what factors contributed to this recent change? We discuss these as systemic factors and domestic factors. In the second section of the paper we summarize the theoretical literature on third party intervention and mediation especially focusing on strategies, modes, activities, and tactics used. This section lays the background for the following section which classifies the various Turkish third party strategies and activities in the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts so far. In the final section we focus on the challenges to this new Turkish role from Turkish, Israeli, and Arab perspectives. We also discuss the crises between Israel and Turkey in the last year and how they constitute a barrier to Turkey acting in an effective third party role. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.
Open Access
Turkish identity: national vs state identity in Turkey and implications for US-Turkey relations
(2007) Eide, Karalyn
There is an abundance of oversimplified labels about Turkey, and this thesis attempts, with a strong angle toward history and patterns, to look deeper into Turkish identity. It will be argued that Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, packaged for the Turks an identity to which they could subscribe. The various components of this initial identity will be distinguished. The nation and state of Turkey overlapped nearly perfectly in the republic’s early years, and the goal was for them to stay so, with Turkey being a pure nation-state in the true sense of the word, but a detachment has developed. This is Turkey’s identity crisis, more than any political or social polarizations in the country today. American ignorance of Turkey’s identity has encouraged Turkish anti-Americanism. The two countries are supposedly ‘faithful allies’ on the political level, but what is understood (or rather misunderstood) on the public level does much relational harm. Mutual ignorance of each must be overcome between these two countries. The Kurdish problem will be discussed as an example of mutual misunderstanding.
Open Access
The USA's role in mediating the Cyprus conflict: a story of success or failure?
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2004) Güney, A.
This article is an attempt to assess the role played by the United States in the search for a solution to the Cyprus conflict both during and after the Cold War. The USA's role in mediating the Cyprus conflict during crisis episodes is crucial for understanding the evolution of this 48-year-old stalemate. It was the superpower politics and containment strategy during the Cold War years that determined the course of action in US crisis mediation and determined its success or failure. In the post-Cold War period, on the other hand, the success or failure of the USA's crisis mediation in Cyprus has been determined by the fact that it remained the sole hegemonic power in world politics. This article aims to sort out the implications of success and failure in the USA's role in mediating the crises of 1963, 1967, 1974 and 1998, to account for the variation in the outcomes and speculate on the possible US role to be played regarding a probable major crisis in 2004 when Cyprus joins the EU as a divided island. © 2004 PRIO.