Scholarly Publications - International Relations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11693/115500

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Open Access
Thinking globally about world politics: beyond global IR
(Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2024) Bilgin, Pınar; Smith, Karen
This book asks what it means to think globally about world politics. In an attempt to contextualise the recent ‘globalising turn’ in International Relations (IR), it takes stock of more than 30 years of efforts at addressing IR’s Eurocentric limitations, and explores what ‘thinking globally’ means in practice through focusing on the study of (international) security and foreign policy. The authors offer thinking globally about world politics not as an alternative to, but as a critical engagement with, IR. It involves curiosity about what others think about the world, making a sustained effort to locate the knowledge they have produced, and recognising past and present contributions to what we otherwise view as ‘European’ ideas, practices, and institutions. Rather than focusing on abstract debates about the state of the discipline, the aim is to provide researchers with the conceptual tools to think globally and design their own research projects. © The Editor(s)(if applicable) and The Author(s),under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.
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Against the liberal order: The Soviet Union, Turkey, and statist internationalism, 1919-1939
(Oxford University Press, 2024-06-27) Hirst, Samuel John
Against the Liberal Order is a history of interactions between the interwar Soviet Union and early Republican Turkey, and it documents a distinctly state-led international politics. It begins in the aftermath of the First World War, when the victorious Allies sought to build an interconnected world with connections regulated by Western-led multilateral organizations. In this formative moment, the most prominent challengers to the new liberal order were Soviet and Turkish revolutionaries. As Mustafa Kemal Atatürk took up arms in 1920 to overturn the terms of the Paris Peace Conference, Vladimir Lenin provided military and economic aid as part of a partnership that both sides described as anti-imperialist. Over the course of the next two decades, the Soviet and Turkish states orchestrated bilateral exchange in spheres ranging from aviation to linguistics. Most importantly, Soviet engineers and architects helped colleagues in Ankara launch a five-year plan and erect massive state-owned factories to produce textiles and replace Western imports. As they explored joint measures to accelerate development, Bolshevik and Kemalist elites gradually arrived at a statist alternative to liberal internationalism. Their improvisations reveal much about the international politics of the interwar period, and their solutions prefigured Moscow’s outreach to states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the Cold War and beyond.
Open Access
Cold war echoes: Bipolar lessons for a multipolar world
(Routledge, 2024-09-07) Sezgin, Firuze Simay; Sutton, Connor J. S.; Kalin, İlker
The international arena is transitioning from a period of unipolarity to multipolarity and bearing increasingly dangerous fruit by posing a range of risks to the existing international political order. We argue that the great power politics of the Cold War offer valuable lessons for state behavior in the emerging multipolar world. These lessons draw on Cold War-era behaviors such as balance of power actions, nuclear posturing, proxy conflicts, and economic power competition. Through these behaviors, this article provides a framework for understanding and managing contemporary multipolar competition focusing on the period after the Ukraine invasion. Ultimately, we call for major powers to exercise restraint and strategic foresight to prevent the devastating consequences of unchecked rivalry, ensuring a stable and secure international order.
Open Access
Securitization and authoritarianism the AKP's oppression of dissident groups in Turkey
(Routledge, 2024-01-16) Küçükmeral, Muhammet Furkan
Open Access
To be experienced or not? unpacking the relationship between leader tenure and counterinsurgency efforts
(Routledge, 2024-02-05) Düveroğlu, Buse; Tokdemir, Efe
Although countering insurgencies through violence is common yet costly, we occasionally observe governments take this cost by adopting non-violent strategies. Hence, under what circumstances do leaders choose non-violent or violent ones in tackling with insurgencies? We empirically investigate how leader experience in office affects what type of counterinsurgency measures leaders employ, and how domestic political constraints condition the decision-making process. We argue that inexperienced leaders tend to use violence, while experienced ones may adopt conciliatory tactics, as the former are more risk prone to prove their strong leadership immediately. However, we also contend that institutional mechanisms could moderate this effect depending on the level of constraints they impose. Drawing on Asal et al. dataset on governments’ counterinsurgency activities, we find that inexperienced leaders are more likely to resort to violence as a counterinsurgency strategy; whereas experienced ones are more likely to avoid solely violent measures, and adopt non-violent ones, as well. Plus, the effect is conditional on regime type, as experienced leaders’ acts vary depending on if they maintain a sear in a democratic or anocratic regime. Our findings contribute to the conflict studies by opening the door to the examination of leader-level factors on counterinsurgency more explicitly.
Open Access
Women, gender roles and gender-based violence after war
(Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2024-01-01) Luna K.C.; Whetstone, Crystal
Mainstream postwar studies on violence exclusively focus on violence between previously warring factions and provide less attention to how gender-based violence (GBV) is a barrier to gender equality and women's empowerment. This chapter presents women's experiences of GBV in postwar Nepal and Sri Lanka and asks three questions. (1) How do different forms of GBV erode women's empowerment? (2) How do GBV experiences differ amongst diverse castes (Dalit women, lower-caste women), ethnic groups (Tamil and Muslim women), and regional backgrounds? (3) What possibilities do women see to overcome GBV in Nepal and Sri Lanka? The chapter suggests that GBV functions as a structural barrier that undermines women's empowerment in postwar societies socially, economically, and politically. Methodologically, we build on our previous work in Nepal and Sri and rely on secondary sources such as a review of policy, articles, media, and local NGO documents. We draw upon gender and conflict studies, postwar GBV studies, and intersectionality literature. © Gayle Kaufman, Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, Steven Roberts & Brittany Ralph 2024.
Embargo
Unraveling Türkiye Alums' role as agents of everyday diplomacy
(Elsevier Ltd, 2024-10-16) Atabaş, Hacer; Köse, Mehmet
This research elaborates on the intricate role of Turkish higher education alums in everyday diplomacy, focusing on their contributions to the diplomatic landscape through their personal and professional experiences post-graduation. Employing a phenomenological approach, the study examines the narratives of alums from North Macedonia and Uganda, highlighting how their educational journey in T & uuml;rkiye has equipped them with unique insights and competencies that transcend traditional diplomatic channels. The findings reveal that linguistic proficiency, intellectual engagement, professional acquaintances, relational networks, and spatial familiarity cultivated during their studies have enabled these alums to act as informal ambassadors, promoting mutual understanding and fostering bilateral relations between T & uuml;rkiye and their home countries. The research underscores the significance of international higher education in shaping individuals who, through everyday interactions, contribute to a nuanced form of diplomacy. By embodying the principles of everyday diplomacy, these alums navigate cultural, intellectual, and professional landscapes, enhancing cross-cultural dialogue and international cooperation. This study contributes to understanding how educational exchanges serve as a subtle yet powerful tool in the broader context of international relations and diplomacy.
Open Access
Handbook of human mobility and migration
(Routledge, 2025-01-27) Sefer, Özlem; Recchi, Ettore; Safi, Mirna
Open Access
Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his generation
(Oxford University Press, 2024-10) Hirst, Samuel John
Open Access
Ontological complexity of interpolity orders: the encounter between Choson and Tibet in Qing
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2025-03) Choi, Inho; Kwon, Minju
This article examines the ontological complexity of interpolity orders with a focus on peripheral polities in the Qing order. Existing multiculturalist studies of the Qing order emphasized diverse cultural representations of a single imperial reality, lacking an understanding of multiple realities experienced by peripheral participants. Our analysis reveals the ontological complexity-rather than cultural diversity-of the Qing order, in which multiple ontological agents experienced different lived worlds, from the encounter between Choson Korean envoys and the Tibetan Panchen Lama at Emperor Qianlong's birthday ceremony. By analyzing the Choson envoy member Pak Chiwon's travelog and Tibetan records, we argue that the Choson envoys with Confucian ontology experienced the Panchen Lama as a subhuman, while the Lama experienced the envoys as ignorant lay beings. Observing this ontological dissonance, Pak Chiwon criticized the Qing court's appropriation of peripheral ontologies and proposed experiencing other ontologies to foreground the presence of the pluriverse in the interpolity order. Beyond the Qing, an ontological approach will help reveal heterogeneous lived worlds of interpolity orders and reconceptualize interpolity order under the condition of ontological complexity.
Open Access
Women, peace and security: digitalization and cyber feminist solidarity building in the global South
(Elsevier Ltd, 2024-07-24) Luna, K.C.; Whetstone, Crystal
Since its launch in 2000, the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and resulting WPS agenda are widely used by intergovernmental, governmental, and civil society actors to advance women's participation in peace and security matters. This paper investigates WPS-cyber sphere connections to uncover the implications for the WPS agenda in the digital realm. We ask: How can digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) facilitate solidarity building and efforts to support the WPS agenda? Building on WPS scholarship and cyberfeminism, we explore our question through Nepal and Sri Lanka, both postwar countries located in South Asia that demonstrate digital feminist future possibilities. Using primary sources from social media and secondary publications, we argue that there is potential for solidarity building in WPS digital networks. This paper contributes to understanding the digitalization of women's movements, building digital feminist solidarity, and the cyber realm's potential for the WPS agenda.
Open Access
Election proximity and the effectiveness of economic sanctions
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2024-05-27) Zarplı, Ömer; Peksen, Dursun
Do elections matter for sanction effectiveness? Scholars have long highlighted the importance of domestic political factors in target (i.e. sanctioned) states in explaining when economic sanctions work. This line of research, however, has primarily focused on political regime characteristics and interest groups that are relatively low time-variant during sanction episodes. Building on this literature, we explore the effect of temporal proximity to elections. While the impact of elections have been examined in the context of military conflicts, their possible effects on sanction effectiveness have not been subject to systematic scrutiny. We argue that target governments are more likely to comply with sender demands as elections loom near in order to avoid the likely political costs of sanctions. The effect of elections, however, is likely to vary across different election characteristics and political regime types. We assess the empirical merits of our claims using data on over 1,000 sanction cases between 1950 and 2020. The results from a battery of empirical tests, including those that account for potential selection bias, support our hypotheses. We find that elections have a positive effect on sanction success, and this effect is more prominent in less democratic states that hold competitive elections. This suggests that even if sanctions have a relatively low success rate against non-democratic polities, elections may provide a window of opportunity for senders to extract concessions from target states.
Open Access
Security, ethics, and animals: towards a sentientist security discourse
(Routledge, 2024-10-23) Fougner, Tore
This article argues that it is high time for the (extra)ordinary violence and insecurity that nonhuman animals are subjected to in today’s world to be taken seriously in studies on security. Through a sympathetic yet critical engagement with how animals have appeared in recent posthuman security scholarship, the article insists on the need to differentiate between sentient beings on the one hand, and other beings as well as things on the other; the need to acknowledge and seek ways of eliminating the violence and insecurity internal to entangled human-animal relations; the feasibility of treating individual animals as direct subjects of security; and the feasibility of adopting a strong animal rights position grounded in sentience to supplement the relational or entanglement ethic dominant in posthuman security scholarship. The article proceeds by developing a tentative outline of a sentientist security discourse in terms of referent objects, nature of threats, security agents and security practices, and concludes by discussing some scholarly implications and the potential impact of securitising existential threats to animals.
Open Access
A call for feminist insights in cybersecurity: implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security in cyberspace
(Oxford University Press, 2024-03-21) Whetstone, Crystal; Luna, K.C.; Mhajne, Anwar; Henshaw, Alexis
This chapter is a call for the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and the WPS agenda to be applied within cyberspace. Given the extent of cyberspace, the chapter argues that applying UNSCR 1325 to the virtual sphere will facilitate attention and resources to better address women’s security from a holistic perspective. The chapter focuses on both conflict-affected countries where gender-based violence increases in war environments and fragile states where cybercrime increases due to the vulnerabilities of the population. Following a critical rereading of UNSCR 1325, the chapter outlines a theoretical framework that builds on the work of previous feminist international relations (IR) scholars who have called for the expansion of UNSCR 1325 in innovative ways. The chapter highlights five areas where UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda can move forward in scholarship, advocacy, and policymaking to better secure women, girls, and other minorities in cyberspace.
Open Access
Playing to the audience: responses to violations of international order
(University of Chicago Press, 2024-01) Bas, Muhammet A.; Coe, Andrew J.; Gheorghe, Eliza
When international laws or norms are violated, an enforcer can punish the violator, offer concessions for its renewed compliance, or tolerate it. Punishment is often costlier than concessions or toleration but signals to other states that violation will be met with penalties rather than rewards or acceptance. By influencing other states’ expectations about what will happen if they get caught violating, the choice of response can thus encourage or discourage subsequent compliance. Anticipating this, an enforcer is more willing to punish when it faces a larger audience of potential near-term violators. Focusing on the nuclear nonproliferation norm, we show statistically that enforcer responses appear to have affected whether states subsequently pursued the bomb historically and that this effect is stronger than other hypothesized determinants of proliferation decisions. We also use primary sources to document that policy makers recognized and heeded this influence in a range of cases.
Open Access
Nuclear topsy turvy: the security-economics nexus in Turkish-American relations
(Routledge, 2024-10-16) Gheorghe, Eliza; İplikçi, Murat; Tokatlı, Fatih
This article discusses the shift in Turkey's nuclear alliance with the United States from client to junior partner. Ankara sought to bring the Turkish economy and military forces in line with those of its patron to signal its loyalty. But power asymmetries made it so that Washington became Ankara's lifeline. From the 1950s until the mid-1960s, American policymakers applied a top-down style of alliance management, making important decisions without consulting Ankara. But the mid-1960s marked a turning point in the nature of this relationship, as Turkey became better able to stand on its own feet. Rather than relying on unilateral measures, the Americans had to consult and coordinate with Ankara. Also, Turkey could reject key American proposals involving nuclear weapons, such as the creation of a Multilateral Force for NATO, and even create some ambiguity about its nuclear intentions to signal its loss of faith in the American security guarantee.
Open Access
Turkey: the second republic
(Routledge, 2025-01-03) Özdemir, Ömer Deniz
Open Access
Target state responses to external support of rebel groups: revealing the impact of support level and interstate strategic interaction
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2024-09-27) Kınay Kılıç, Latife; Aydınlı, Ersel; Tokdemir, Efe
How do target states react to third-party sponsorship of rebel groups? In this article, we provide atypology of responses from target states based on their severity and comprehensiveness level. Weargue that the external support level and existing strategic interaction between targets and spon-sors are crucial to explain the variation in target responses toward state sponsors since they affectthe target states’ level of perceived threat. We test our theoretical claims using an original datasetfeaturing target responses between 1991 and 2010. Our ﬁndings show that strategic rivalry is themost crucial factor in increasing the severity and comprehensiveness of responses. Higher levels ofsupport for rebel groups increase only coercive responses and do not impact comprehensiveness,whereas formal alliances decrease the adoption of mixed responses. Our study contributes to theliterature on the external support of rebels and conﬂict management with implications for predict-ing target states’ responses to sponsorship.
Open Access
Unique offerings: Ideological competition and rebel governance
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2025-01-23) Akçınaroğlu, S.; Berkowitz, J.; Leon, C.E.M.; Ogutcu-Fu, S.H.; Sedashov, E.; Tokdemir, Efe
This study examines the factors influencing non-state armed actors’ (NSAAs) ability and willingness to implement rebel governance, with a focus on the group’s ideological distinction from adversaries and the government. We argue that a unique ideology acts as an effective branding tool, enhancing governance success as constituents recognize and align with it. This ideology allows NSAAs to offer a distinct social contract to their followers with minimal risk, fostering strong relationships with their constituents, and hence benefits from such governance. We propose that rebel governance increases when NSAAs are ideologically distinct from other armed factions and the state. We validate our hypotheses using the Rebel Quasi-State Institutions dataset, an original dataset on armed groups’ ideologies, and the Database for Political Institutions for government ideology. This study is the first to explore the link between an armed group’s distinct ideology and its governance capacity in multi-party settings, and offers a novel contribution to the burgeoning literature on group ideology and rebel governance.
Open Access
Enforcement of international human rights law: a comparative exploration of alternative public opinion channels
(SAGE Publications, 2024-12-13) Bayram, A. Burcu; Keels, Eric; Tokdemir, Efe
The existing scholarship implies different mechanisms for the enforcement of international human rights law through the domestic public opinion channel. In this research, we investigate the comparative influence of these alternative mechanisms in a cross-country setting. Using data from original survey experiments from the United States, Germany, and Turkey, we show that public concerns over human rights violations in foreign countries are highly politicised by strategic political relationships. Our results provide a fuller account of the specific micro-mechanisms through which the domestic public opinion channel most effectively constrains government action in enforcing international human rights law. Our findings suggest that naming and shaming by informing the public about the international human rights law violations in foreign states may not provide a consistent and reliable check, as the public defines punishment strategically based on political alliances and interests over legal context.