Costs and benefits to Turkey in its relations with the United States : the Cold War and after

Abstract

Turkey’s relations with the United States have always been a diagnostic element not only for its foreign policy but also its economic and sociological structure. As a global power, the US has always interested in the region from Eurasia to the Middle East, which inevitably highlight Turco-American relations. This thesis is a product of the idea, which gives importance to analyze the key issues in Turco-American relations in order to ferret out costs and benefits of Turkish side from its relations with the US. It probably gives us to chance to see alterations in relations and evaluate Turkish foreign policy vision in the long run. “Indefiniteness” can be accepted as the nature of the global environment of the post Cold War which has appeared specifically in the aftermath of September 11 terrorist attacks. So, following developments in Turkey’s region indicates that there is need to evaluate Turkish position in its relations with the US. This reevaluation period should not only comprise strategic, economic and political relations in Turco-American relations but also some cliché concepts like “strategic partnership”, “dependency”, “global power” and so on. This is why this thesis is analyzing Turco-American relations into two sections; the Cold War and the post Cold War Eras, because it aims to extract and underline in which ways this bilateral relation has changed with changing conjectures, which probably enlighten us about the near future of the relations. Therefore, it is possible to think that this thesis is an attempt to highlight the important linkage between an “established” or “weak” foreign policy and its possible reflections on the state’s international statisko in more general meaning.