Below you may find the abstract of my PhD thesis, completed in 2014, on Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East under the AKP. The thesis was recently released online by the University of Warwick. You may reach the full document here.
Source: thomaspmbarnett.com/
Turkey – the “new Iran”: Revolution & Foreign Policy (Working Paper no. 52) has been published by the Greece-based Academy for Strategic Analyses, in July 2016.
The first draft was completed in March, 2016 and was updated a few days before publication, after the coup attempt in Turkey.
Abstract
One of the most important side-effects of the turmoil in the Middle East has been the crisis in Turkey’s relations with its Western partners. However, the events taking place in the Middle East or the Syria war are not the root causes of this friction; merely a triggering factor. The real reasons lie in the multileveled transformation, a sort of “revolution”, that Turkey has been going through over the past years and particularly since the election of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) to power in 2002. These domestic changes usher in a new era for Turkey’s political scene that has many similarities – as well as differences – with Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979. As a result, its national identity and ideological orientation shifts, something that undoubtedly impacts its foreign policy preferences, and as such will pose significant challenges to Western actors that try to work with Turkey and secure their interests in the region.
You may also find the PDF on Academia.edu, here.
Source: Reuters
A year ago the world witnessed the swift advances of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. Though the emergence of the group was somewhat expected for those who have been following the regional developments of the past years it caught most of the world by surprise. At the same time, its brutal tactics,military victories, resilience, evolution and extreme ideology have led many to characterize it as the greatest regional and international security threat at the moment or the most dangerous Islamist threat contemporary history has seen. Continue reading
Source: Reuters
In early May, 2015 it became known that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are supporting extremist Islamist groups in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. That Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among others, have – mostly indirectly – been supporting Islamist groups is not news as similar reports have been emerging from time to time since 2011, if not earlier. But this policy with regard to the Syrian conflict became increasingly overt amidst growing instability and lack of Western commitment to Assad’s overthrow. According to The Independent and other media, Turkish and Saudi support focuses on the overarching jihadist group Jaish al-Fatah which includes al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra – a rival to both Assad and the self-styled “Islamic State,” also known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham). Continue reading
Source: Reuters
By Ioannis-Sotirios Ioannou & Zenonas Tziarras
The article was first published by The European Levant Observatory, Diplomatic Academy – University of Nicosia, April 29, 2015. Access it here.
The historical provisional deal of Lausanne, between the P5+1 countries (United States, France, Russia, China, United Kingdom + Germany) and Tehran for Iran’s nuclear program, merely concerns the definition of the framework of the two negotiating parties for a final agreement in coming June (2015). As such, any enthusiasm that may exist for the outcome of this negotiation process should be mitigated by a more careful and sober approach. Continue reading
Zenonas Tziarras 