Journal of International Studies

"The balances of power according to a bipolar system has ended,"  said Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs H. E. Ahmet Davutoğlu  at a Brookings event on Monday, "but still we are looking for new axes and new balances" which need to be "adjusted, especially in the UN system." In this statesman's forum address, hosted by the  Center on the United States and Europe , Foreign Minister Davutoğlu focused on how Turkey's foreign policy is evolving to meet challenges in the region and globally. He began with the UN and the humanitarian crisis in Syria: The international system, unfortunately, in charge of—the UN especially—in charge of keeping peace and stability in international order, is not providing quick answers to the questions and crisis which are the threats to the international system. He detailed the crisis: 130,000 people killed, 7 million displaced, 2 million refugees (700,000 of them in Turkey), chemical weapons used, and millions...

There is a temptation to suggest that political life in Turkey and Egypt are both being victimized by a similar deepening of polarization between Islamic and secular orientations, and to some extent this is true, but it is also misleading. Turkey continues to be victimized by such a polarization, especially during the eleven years that the Justice & Development Party (AKP) has governed the country, and arguably more so in the last period. In Egypt, so describing the polarization is far less descriptive of the much more lethal form of unfolding that its political cleavage has taken. It has become an overt struggle for the control of the political destiny of the country being waged between the Egyptian armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood, the two organized political forces capable of projecting their influence throughout the entire country, including rural areas.  This bitter struggle in Egypt engages religious orientations on both sides, and even the military leader...

The history of the Turkish republic that celebrated its ninetieth anniversary on October 29 has been marked by societal discord and political convulsions: three military coups, violence between the left and the right during the 1970s, a Kurdish insurrection since the mid-1980s and a culture war between secularists and religious conservatives during the last decade. The current polarization over secularism and Islam distorts the view of Turkish history; the conventional narrative of Turkey’s march conjures the image of an epic struggle between a supposedly Westernizing secularist state establishment—until the Justice and Development Party (AKP) conquered the state—and a religiously conservative population. But the key word for understanding why Turkey looks the way it does is capitalism, not secularism. It is capitalist development that has determined the political journey of the Turkish republic. The turning points in this journey were all byproducts of the development of capita...

The Turkish government’s  recent decision  to award its high-altitude missile defense contract to China conjured images of the residents of Troy rejoicing the large, Greek-made wooden horse near the end of the Trojan Wars. That story did not have a pleasant end for the Trojans. It is not clear how this one will play out for Ankara and its NATO allies. Turkey’s decision to choose the Chinese-made FD-2000  over the U.S.-made Patriot PAC-3 , the Russian-made S-400, and the French-Italian EUROSAM SAMP/T may seem odd for a country that has been a member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) since 1952. 22 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, commitment to NATO and good relations with Washington remain the cornerstones of Ankara’s foreign policy calculus. That calculation seems irreconcilable with the fact that the manufacturer of the FD-2000, CPMIEC (China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation),  is under U.S. sanctions  for doing busin...

NATO member states are strongly opposed to Turkey’s decision to purchase a Chinese-built missile defense system, with one NATO official calling the missile system a “virus,” according  to a report  in the Turkish newspaper, the  Hurriyet Daily News . “NATO’s own command and control system that ‘mashes’ input from allied networks is far more important than a Chinese air defense system in Turkey,” an unnamed defense attaché from a NATO member state was quoted as saying by  Hurriyet Daily News.  “There is no place for China within this critical system. We would not wish to see a virus in a complex system.” An unnamed NATO ambassador in Ankara, Turkey’s capital city was even blunter, telling  Hurriyet : “I have no idea why the Turks do not see the simple fact that the alliance’s security threat perception in the next 20 years is based on China. Air and missile defense will be the top defense issue in the foreseeable future, wit...

The Fighting Has Stopped -- But the Grievances Remain

As usual, the European Commission's progress report on Turkey and the associated – and politically more significant – ‘strategy paper’, both published yesterday (16 October), are a mix of positive and negative marks. Turkey is reprimanded for the excessive use of force during the Gezi protests and the deteriorating press freedoms, but is also commended for launching a peace process with its Kurdish autonomist movement. While Turkey is no closer to joining the EU now than it was a year ago, negotiations will resume. The EU had already agreed to open a new chapter (Chapter 22, on regional policy) when the Gezi protests began in May. The EU postponed the talks to signal its profound unhappiness at Turkey’s reaction to its comments on the protests. Now that it has shown its discontent, the EU has good reason to open this chapter, as its content relates directly to the regionalisation and decentralisation aspects of Turkey’s negotiations with its Kurdish minority. There is also a...

If the AKP wants to truly strengthen Turkish democracy, it must stop seeing people who stand up quietly but defiantly as a threat to the country’s stability. Turkish activists protest media censorship in 2011. (Yolda.org / Flickr) I arrived in Istanbul last September just as protests were flaring up throughout Turkey. An activist had died at a protest in a southern city, one of several victims of the confrontations with riot police over the last year. By the time I got to Taksim Square in the heart of the city, the riot police had broken up the peaceful demonstration and chased protesters to all points of the compass. I managed to loop around behind the police barricade on the famous pedestrian thoroughfare Istiklal Caddesi. There I discovered a cadre of very well-prepared activists tweeting updates on their location and the activities of the police. The protestors wore hard hats and sophisticated gas masks. I was considerably less prepared, and the tear gas that hung i...

By   Zachary Keck In a move that surprised many, a Chinese defense company has won a US$4billion contract to help Turkey develop a long-range air and missile defense system, winning out over competing bids from U.S., EU, and Russian defense companies. Following a meeting by the Turkish Undersecretariat for Defense Industries’ (SSM) executive committee on Thursday, Turkey announced it had selected a proposal by China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corp. (CPMEIC) to jointly develop its  HQ-9 system  (FT-2000). CPMEIC won out over bids from U.S.-based Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s Patriot missile defense system; Russia’s Rosoboronexport’s S-300; and Italian-French consortium Eurosam’s SAMP/T Aster 30. Although  there have been rumors  that Turkey was leaning toward CPMEIC, the news came as a shock to many. Turkey is a founding member of NATO, which is deploying the Patriot missile defense system in various countries throughout Europe. T...