TURKISH STUDIES

Markos Troulis
(PhD Candidate, Department of International and European Studies, University of Piraeus, Greece)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS) – www.rieas.gr – based in Athens, Greece - (Date of Publication: 1 February 2014).

It is broadly recognized in the light of contradictory theoretical approaches that states form their grand strategy rationally. This does not mean that their decisions are always right; states make decisions via cost-benefit analyses under the prospect of achieving survival and thus, at least preserving their power status in the region they belong to.  Therefore, balance of power is the crux of the matter. As Arnold Wolfers declared in 1962, ‘[a nation tends] to regard any shift in the balance of power that favors its adversary as at least an indirect threat to its own survival’. .... Read more

by George Protopapas
(RIEAS Media Analyst)

Copyright: www.rieas.gr

Could you explain how the dogma of “strategic depth” of Ahmet Davutoğlu influences the Turkish foreign policy?

“Strategic Depth” is one of the most important analyses about Turkish foreign policy. In order to say that it is important, it is not necessary to agree with Davutoğlu’s ideas. Davutoğlu is not the only academics who have ever supported policy making process in Turkey. However, he brought a different academic perspective to policy making process by starting from a different analysis of world politics. It is important because of a few reasons:.... Read more

Florentia Kallitsi
(RIEAS Internship Senior Student, Department of Asian and Turkish Studies, University of Athens, Greece)

Copyright: www.rieas.gr

We are in a period in which Middle East has experienced the so-called ‘’Arab Spring’’, with whichever changes that means, ethnic, political and strategic power. World experiences significant evolutions in the region of Middle East and this period exactly another strained situation in Syria is noted, where the anti-regimes combat against the Assad’s regime. 

Burak Bekdil
(Journalist, Hurriyet daily News, Turkey)

Copyright: www.hurriyet.com.tr

Belatedly, the State of Israel has done what it ought to have done a long time ago. That was Israel’s moral obligation for the silly operation in which Israeli commandos killed civilians onboard the Mavi Marmara – a moral obligation regardless of whether the activists onboard were activists, sympathizers of terrorists or activists who sympathized with terrorists. The apology is easy to sell on the Turkish market: for most Turks, the “myth of Israel,” cracks after cracks, has eventually bowed before the emerging “myth of neo-Ottoman Turkey.” And the apology is not hard to sell on the Israeli market: many, if not most, Israelis believe that the apology and its de facto / de jure consequence, compensation for the families of victims, is well justified for humane reasons. The apology has not ridiculed, humiliated or belittled the State of Israel..... Read more

Daniel Pipes
(President of the Middle East Forum)

Copyright:  http://www.danielpipes.org

The menu for meals on my Turkish Airlines flight earlier this month assured passengers that food selections "do not contain pork." The menu also offered a serious selection of alcoholic drinks, including champagne, whiskey, gin, vodka, rakı, wine, beer, liqueur, and cognac. This oddity of simultaneously adhering to and ignoring Islamic law, the Shari'a, symbolizes the uniquely complex public role of Islam in today's Turkey, as well as the challenge of understanding the Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish abbreviation, AKP) which has dominated the country's national government since 2002......  Read more

Dr. Srdja Trifkovic
(An expert on foreign affairs, is the author of The Sword of the Prophet and Defeating Jihad. His latest book is The Krajina Chronicle: A History of the Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia)

Copyright: www.rieas.gr

Over the past decade Prime Minister Rejep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government and his AKP (Justice and Development Party) have been successful in undermining Mustafa Kemal’s legacy and the character of the state founded upon that legacy. What remained, until the 2010 referendum on constitutional amendments, was an increasingly empty shell of constitutional secularism. That shell was nevertheless an obstacle to the formal grounding of the new legitimacy in Islam at home and neo-Ottomanism abroad. Erdoğan and his team were determined to remove such vestiges, however, and on September 12, 2010, they succeeded. On that day Turkey’s voters approved, by a large margin, a 26-article package which ended the role of the Army as the guardian of secularism. In 2011 Erdoğan was duly reelected with a substantial majority for a third term.