Browsing by Subject "Regional security"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

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
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
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
Hybrid hegemonic masculinity of the EU before and after the Arab Spring: a gender analysis of Euro-Mediterranean security relations
(Routledge, 2015-05-07) Bilgic, A.
In the academic literature on EU–southern Mediterranean relations, a focal point of neglect has been the gendered dimension of Euro-Mediterranean relations. This article argues that the Euro-Mediterranean space has been formed within the gendered global West/non-West relations with the purpose of promoting the West's security interests. Euro-Mediterranean security relations, thus, embody a gendered power hierarchy between the hybrid hegemonic masculinity of the EU (bourgeois-rational and citizen-warrior) and the subordinate (both feminized and hypermasculinized) southern neighbourhood. In addition, it shows that following the Arab Spring the EU has been determined to maintain the status quo by reconstructing these gendered power relations. This gender analysis contributes to the literature on Euro-Mediterranean relations through its specific focus on the (re)construction processes of gendered identities within the West/non-West context in tandem with the EU's competing notions of security.
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
Whose ‘Middle East’? Geopolitical inventions and practices of security
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2004) Bilgin, P.
Contesting those approaches that present the ‘Middle East’ as a region that ‘best fits the realist view of international politics’, this article submits that critical approaches are relevant to this part of the world as well. It is argued that instead of taking the relatively little evidence of enthusiasm for addressing the problem of regional insecurity in the Middle East for granted, a critical place for such approaches to begin is a recognition of the presence of a multitude of contending perspectives on regional security each one of which derives from different conceptions of security that have their roots in alternative worldviews. When rethinking regional security from a Critical Security Studies perspective, both the concepts ‘region’ and ‘security’ need to be opened up to reveal the mutually constitutive relationship between (inventing) regions and (conceptions and practices of) security.