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This paper examines Turkey's increasing involvement in the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts as a third party in the last decade. The paper first discusses the underlying reasons and motivations behind the change in Turkish foreign policy. In this section we answer the following question: While the traditional Turkish policy in the Middle East was non-intervention, what factors contributed to this recent change? We discuss these as systemic factors and domestic factors. In the second section of the paper we summarize the theoretical literature on third party intervention and mediation especially focusing on strategies, modes, activities, and tactics used. This section lays the background for the following section which classifies the various Turkish third party strategies and activities in the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts so far. In the final section we focus on the challenges to this new Turkish role from Turkish, Israeli, and Arab perspectives. We also discuss the crises between Israel and Turkey in the last year and how they constitute a barrier to Turkey acting in an effective third party role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important component of Turkey's 'pivotal regional power' status was its nonpermanent seat at the UN Security Council in 2009-11. By focusing on two cases - the 2010 flotilla incident and the Iranian nuclearization - this study examines (1) Turkey's regional and global leadership role at the UN Security Council and (2) how the 'rhythmic diplomacy' principle of Turkey's foreign policy is exercised internationally. This paper also demonstrates that Turkey's policy of cooperation with other pivotal states signals possible future alliances among rising middle powers that might challenge western preferences on important issues. This study is timely as Turkey is seeking, again, non-permanent membership in the Security Council for the 2015-16 term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkish-US ties came close to crisis in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, thereby defying the conventional analysis which views the relationship as essentially cooperative. This occurred because experts have based their assessment of the alliance on too selective a view of the historical relationship. This article focuses on a neglected but important issue from the recent past, the opium case of the early 1970s, which provides a more comparable analogy to the 2002–03 Iraq crisis. The paper adopts a thematically analytical approach to the two cases, identifying four factors – national sovereignty, systemic contestation, democratic legitimacy and clientelist reciprocity – as crucial in explaining why the expected cooperation was not forthcoming. More broadly, the article argues that such fundamental issues of domestic importance have to be taken seriously by US foreign policymakers if they wish to galvanize high profile cooperation, even with those regional powers that are already their allies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, which came to power in 2002, has increasingly been using aid as an instrument of foreign policy, including in the Arab world. This increased with the Arab uprisings and has peaked with the ongoing civil war in Syria, reaching $2 billion in 2012. Despite substantial changes in the amount and geographical coverage of aid after the ‘Arab Spring’, there are also substantive continuities in Turkey's aid policy. The AKP has been focused on security and stability, and on consolidating power among new regimes. The direction of aid has thus followed that of regional foreign policy, and the government's interests have been given an ideational framing through notions of historical and cultural affinity and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's growing regional presence in the Middle East has been at the centre of several debates recently. This article approaches the debate on Turkey's foreign policy towards the Middle East from a Europeanization perspective. The article assesses the Europeanization of state capacity in relation to Turkey's foreign policy towards the Arab Middle East from 1999 to 2010. It is argued that Turkey's EU accession process has transformed the state, business and increased state capacity to implement Turkey's foreign policy towards the Middle East. This transformation enabled the Turkish government and business actors to improve Turkey's political and economic relations with the Arab Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Copenhagen School's Regional Security Complex Theory ( RSCT), Turkey is an insulator state as it sits at the intersection of different security complexes without truly being part of any of them. This understanding of Turkey's position in the international security realm has offered a welcome contribution to the eternal debate about the country's security alignment between East and West. Turkey has, in recent years, become more active on the international stage, diversifying its relations and taking a more assertive stance regarding international security issues. This shift in its foreign and security policy is related to the country's ambition to become a great power in the near future. However, according to RSCT, it is quite improbable for there to be an insulator state that is also a great power. This article elaborates on the tension between this theory and Turkey's ambitions in an attempt to understand whether and how RSCT remains a useful theoretical framework for the understanding of Turkey's foreign and security relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the process, style and outcome dimensions of Turkish foreign policy in the 1990s in the light of the 'democratization alongside the European Union [EU ]accession process'. Two possible independent variables are compared and contrasted:the democratization process per se and the democratization as taking place within the context of Turkey's Europeanization process. The main questions addressed are:in which ways has Turkey's democratization alongside the EU accession process impacted on Turkey's foreign policy and why has the increasing quality of Turkish democratization per se not produced pro-EU Turkish foreign policy outcomes in relation to the Cyprus and European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]