Collected Papers | Volume 5
On 15 December 2015, the LSE Middle East Centre organised a workshop bringing together key experts on Turkish domestic and foreign policy. The workshop aimed at explaining the relationship between Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy in the Middle East in the midst of a period when both Turkey and the wider region are facing major challenges and undergoing significant transformations. This volume brings together a collection of papers presented at the workshop.
Explaining the links between states’ domestic politics and their foreign policies is no easy task. In tackling this, authors of these papers adopt the principal idea that foreign policy decisions made by governments are shaped internally by the domestic political environment and internationally by the perceptions of threats and opportunities. They suggest that the amount of power vested in a government and the extent to which public opinion in society affects its decisions influence foreign policy-making in significant ways. This view overlooks neither the complexity of the domestic context in Turkey, nor the multiplicity of governmental and non-governmental actors and social, economic, political and historical factors that shape Turkish foreign policy. However, in order to narrow the scope and create a coherent analysis, the papers focus on the governmental level and on the Kurdish issue as domestic and regional factors.
Papers
Introduction
Zeynep N. Kaya
Historical and Contemporary Trends in the Turkish Political Party System
Güneş Murat Tezcür
The Power Strategies of the AKP in Turkey
Menderes Çınar
Post-Election Trends in Turkish Politics and Economy
Naz Masraff
The Pendulum of Democracy: The AKP Government and Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict
Evren Balta
Syrian Refugees in Turkey: Challenges and Impact on Turkey’s Regional Policies
Elizabeth Ferris
KRG–Turkey Relations from the KRG’s Perspective
Bill Park
Turkey’s Relations with Iraq and the KRG
Aydın Selcen
Turkey’s Rojava Policy?
Güney Yıldız
Untangling the AKP’s Kurdish Opening and its Middle East Policies
Cengiz Çandar