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Guner, Serdar S . (2011) Religion and Preferences: A Decision-theoretic Explanation of Turkey’s New Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: 10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00152.x Religious beliefs can affect preferences of decision makers who formulate and guide foreign policy. This article investigates the relationship between preferences affected by Islamic worldview of Turkey’s new leadership and foreign policy the new elite conduct through two simple models. The models are games against nature; thus, Turkey is the only decision maker facing no strategic uncertainty. It is found that the subjective estimates of achieving gains under the new foreign policy (NWP) and the old foreign policy (SQP) are critical and distinct from gains and costs of both policies. The new Turkish foreign policy (NWP) is a reversible move, even though Turkish decision makers evaluate it as generating a higher gain and a lower cost compared with the preservation of the status quo (SQP). The implementation of the NWP does not only depend on its gain but also on how attractive is the SQP.

This paper proposes a simple two-person game of one-sided incomplete information in extensive form to understand strategic choices made in the Turkish-Syrian linkage between water and terrorism. Turkish intelligence established Syrian support of a terrorist group that aims at an independent Kurdish state in eastern Anatolia. Yet, Turkey frequently stipulates the cessation of this support for negotiating with Syria a water agreement over the Euphrates. The game presents Turkey as a player having superior information. Syria is assumed to be uncertain about Turkish preferences with respect to the mutual conflict. This analysis identifies three pooling equilibria indicating that Syrian beliefs do not matter.

Conflicts over the delimitation of territorial waters are abundant around the globe. Greece and Turkey, two NATO allies, are no exceptions. The delimitation of territorial waters and continental shelf, the status of islands, islets, and flight control zones and corridors in the Aegean Sea constitute constant sources of friction between them. We offer an evolutionary game model to explore for directions their relations can take including chances of new crises and the revision of the status quo. We find that crises constitute a norm in bilateral relations of the two littoral states. The crisis equilibrium indicates routinized practices involving first displaying then falling back. Hence aggressive behavior can be periodically observed but the current status quo will persist. A revised status quo becomes a likely prospect only if both countries were posited as single unitary actors maximizing their expected utilities.

[No abstract available]

The issues of water and terrorism are often linked to each other in negotiations between Turkey and Syria, the upstream and the midstream riparians in the Euphrates River basin, respectively. This issue linkage and a deep rooted territorial conflict mark these countries’ bilateral relations. This article explains and predicts the riparians’ propensity to end the issue linkage unilaterally. The results demonstrate a multiplicity of conditions for such behavior. The common view asserting that Turkey has a more powerful position follows a specific set of conditions. The conclusions do not preclude a Syrian superiority over Turkey, or an equality between the riparians in terms of resistance to the temptation to concede unilaterally.