Search

This analysis examines the economic relationship between Turkiye and the GCC countries, focusing notably on the economic and trade ties. It argues that while mutual relations have increased during the AK Party era, historical commercial relations have been subject to fluctuations due to regional and foreign policy preferences. Descriptive analysis using secondary data supports this claim. Cointegration techniques are also employed to empirically analyze the trade relationship between the two sides from 1994 to 2020. The results indicate long-term cointegration in Turkiye-GCC economic relations, with bilateral trade positively affected in the long-term. However, the findings also suggest that as GCC countries' exports to Turkiye increase, Turkiyes exports to the GCC increase even more over the long-term. Keywords: Turkiye, GCC Countries, Economic Interdependence, Economic Relationship, Cointegration Analysis, Empirical Studies of Trade, Introduction Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have become critical players in the global financial markets thanks to [...]

Since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the 1990s, the United States has played the role of security guarantor in the Gulf, and despite prevailing concerns of American retrenchment, it retains a strong military footprint across the region. But China's emergence as a major player in the Gulf—with its geopolitical ambitions, thirst for foreign oil, and attractive offer of business and investment with a "look the other way" policy on human rights—has stoked fears about the eclipse of American power. While the Gulf remains of strategic importance to the US global strategy, Washington's readjustment of its regional goals suggests that it is recalibrating. Drawing on the literature of foreign policy change, this analysis uses three case studies to examine Washington's recalibration toward the Gulf under the Biden presidency: US engagement with the Iran nuclear deal, US defense agreements with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and US‐GCC tech relations, specifically tensions with China over the use of Huawei technology. This article is part of a special issue on the responses of Gulf countries to rising Sino‐American competition, edited by Andrea Ghiselli, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, and Enrico Fardella. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article argues that the Gulf Crisis of 1990–91, the first major international crisis of the post-Cold War era, was a constitutive moment for international law. The Article examines the contests in the United Nations over the meaning of the Crisis and shows that these contests were also over the meaning of cooperation under international law in the "new world order." The Article casts the Gulf Crisis itself as a moment of "worldmaking," in which the United States refashioned foundational concepts like interdependence, sovereignty, and humanity in warfare and deployed them to suit a state-centered vision of international cooperation under hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Bahith Journal is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Over the next three days, President George H.W. Bush, his advisors, and world leaders would debate and determine the United States' goals and objectives. These decisions would compel the country's trajectory for the next several months. The process regarding the determination to reverse Iraqi aggression, if necessary with force, provides a compelling case study regarding the use of historical analogies in presidential decision making. Using original archival research, this in‐depth history reveals that historical analogies played a key role in shaping policy on the eve of the Iraq War. This article provides the most complete history of the use of analogies in the initial response to the Gulf crisis to date, as well as valuable insight into the Gulf War, President H.W. Bush, and the process of presidential decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how Qatar strategically utilized its foreign policy to overcome the implications of the 2017 Gulf crisis. Using neoclassical realism, it investigates the ways in which Qatar used its foreign relations to mitigate the impact of a crisis that barred Qatar from aerial, naval, and land corridors in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, henceforth referred to as the Quartet. The impacts are threefold. Starting from a macro‐level perspective, Qatar leveraged its status as a crucial energy supplier, alongside the resultant financial boon, to prevent an international consensus supporting the claims of the Quartet. From a micro‐level perspective, the likelihood of military escalation was circumvented by Qatar's ties with Turkey and the United States. Finally, the economic impact of the crisis was largely absorbed by Qatar's ties with Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do mediators say "no" and refuse to manage an escalating conflict, even if they meet all of the prerequisites for jumpstarting a peacemaking process? Empirical studies to date have focused primarily on factors that facilitate the start of mediation efforts. Surprisingly, very little is known about the reasons that motivate third parties' refusal to engage. Working against the backdrop of conceptual frameworks that indicate when mediators say "yes," this article offers a novel framework for analysis that explicates three conditions that dissuade third parties from mediating. Using the case of the U.S. resistance to mediate the Gulf diplomatic crisis, the article shows that mediators will refuse to mediate conflicts that are characterized by high levels of power symmetry, pronounced structural linkage with conflicting parties, and extensive strategic interests in the conflict‐affected area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-and-a-half-years into the crisis that struck the heart of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the 41st Gulf Summit, held on January 5, 2021, in the Saudi city of al-Ula, brought the blockade of Qatar to an end. The summits final communique stated that the GCC member states will 'stand together as one to confront any threat to the security of the block' and prevent any 'violation of sovereignty of any member state.' (1) According to the Saudi Foreign Minister, Faisal bin Farhan, 'points of disagreement with Qatar have been solved.' (2) The Saudi minister declined to give more details on the compromises the two sides may have agreed on and the timeframe for their implementation. Lack of enthusiasm in the state-owned media on both sides of the fence suggests, however, that the agreement will merely return the relationship between the parties to the pre-June 5, 2017 position. So far, the two sides blame COVID-19 for 'social distancing.' Trade has not been fully resumed and cross-borders movement of goods and peoples remain low. It is assumed that cold peace is likely to prevail until the two sides re-establish mutual trust, which was badly damaged, especially at the level of the heads of states. Keywords: Gulf Crisis, Al-Ula GCC Summit, President Trump, Riyadh Summit, Al Jazeera, Anti-Qatar Alliance, Roots of the Gulf Crisis The Gulf crisis began only two days after the May 21, 2017, Riyadh summit, the declared goal of which was to confront terrorism and contain [...]

In recent years, Oman has been recognised as a key mediator in the Gulf and the wider Middle East. The successful completion of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, in particular, firmly cemented its reputation as a peacemaker. To fully understand Omani mediation practices in the region, Muscat's mediation must be placed within the context of the Sultanate's wider foreign policy, and all known mediations must be assembled in one place in order to develop a typology to better understand forms and patterns. Ultimately, mediation both serves and is enabled by the Sultanate's foreign policy. This was not an inevitable outcome. Over the course of Qaboos' reign, Oman has developed into an 'Interlocutor State', in which the practice of mediation has become an important tool in furthering the central goals of preserving Oman's independent foreign policy, and thus ultimately the Sultanate's sovereignty and security itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Western influence in the Persian Gulf has continued to expand; this process has also exposed several challenges from rivals of the United States. [...]

The article provides an overview of Gulf War of 1991. It mentions that war was led by the U.S. Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes. It also mentions that in a report to the Pentagon issued many months after the war had finished, leading media organizations finally got up their courage to complain that the government's restrictions had made it impossible for reporters to tell the public the full story of the war.

In response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, Australia's Labor government committed a naval task force to participate in the enforcement of sanctions, and subsequently, the Gulf War to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The Australian government justified its response to the Persian Gulf crisis in various ways, including the threat it posed to national and international security, and by employing representations of Australian identity and the radical Otherness of Saddam Hussein. The paper considers these aspects, then focuses on two ostensibly complementary justifications. Firstly, the rapid commitment was represented as a necessary act of collective security connected to revitalisation of the United Nations. Secondly, it was justified as contributing to the development of a post‐Cold War new world order (NWO), framed within Australian regional security interests and shaped by the US alliance. The paper argues that the Australian discourse melds the justifications, despite collective security, based on UN leadership, sitting uneasily with a NWO premised on US leadership, without having to attend to the tensions between the two justifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Qatar crisis erupted in June 2017, Turkey quickly sided with Qatar, sending tons of food supplies and deploying troops in the Emirate. Yet, from a purely geopolitical and economic perspective, Turkey would have been expected not to take sides given its much larger trade relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and their political clout in the region and beyond. It seems that the path dependence in bilateral relations between Turkey and Qatar pre-ordained the former's reaction. More specifically, by the time the Gulf crisis erupted, Turkey and Qatar had already developed a special relationship, which strongly affected Turkey's pro-Qatar stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qatar Gulf crisis of 2017 saw a number of mediation initiatives, including those of the United States and Kuwait. However, the two countries present two substantially distinct models of third-party intervention: superpower mediation (the United States) and small-state mediation (Kuwait). Comparing the two types of intervention in this crisis in terms of their ability to de-escalate tension and effectively resolve the Gulf crisis with respect to three variables – timing of mediation, leverage of the mediator (hard power versus legitimacy) and interest of the mediator – it would seem that small-state mediation has been more effective in crisis de-escalation, while superpower mediation has further exacerbated the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deconstructs the stated reasons behind the quartet's blockade on Qatar, including i) Iranian-relations; ii) funding 'terror;' iii) supporting 'political Islam' --Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, etc.; and iv) destabilizing the Arab world through Al Jazeera, and scrutinizes their veracity. In actuality, these accusations are mere obfuscation. Henceforth, understanding the quartet's motivation requires employing post-colonialism as an explanatory variable. It does so by assuming the preponderance of U.S. military power in the GCC produces three conflicting ideal-types: i) Saudi-led quartet Arab project, 'subservient' to U.S. hegemony; ii) Iranian- led partisan project, resisting/increasing engagement to U.S. hegemony; iii) Turkish-led 'civic Islam' project, pivoting from engagement to resisting U.S. hegemony. In this, three-rivalry is the roots of the blockade and the larger meta-strategy at behind the blockade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an assessment of three decades of US hegemony over the Arab-majority states of the Middle East's Gulf region. Since its direct military intervention in the 1990 war over Kuwait, the US increasingly engaged itself as an architect forging the region through deployment of its neoliberal economic and financial coercion, Janusfaced support for authoritarian regimes while promoting democracy, human rights and individual freedom rhetorically, as well as repeated direct military interventions into Arab states in an effort to bring about regime change. At the base of diplomatic and public justification for the 1990-91 intervention--or the Gulf War as it became known to Americans--was the assertion that the war was defensive in nature, protecting the territorial integrity of Kuwait as well as the enshrining the norms of non-intervention and the sanctity of borders. Over the following years, however, US military forces came to be active in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya with an expanded coterie of bases littered across the states of the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Oman). While the US and its allies had been engaged in the region's politics throughout the Cold War, from 1990 through 2019, the US escalated its role to preside over regional politics through a hub-and-spoke latticework of relations between itself and regional states. From the perspective of nearly three decades since 1990, an appraisal of this coercive relationship, focusing on the humanitarian impacts it has wrought upon the region's peoples, suggests it has failed according to these criteria. Many of the region's peoples have experienced a marked decline in their economic well-being, personal safety and health, while the state apparatuses established following the retreat of European imperialism now lie in ruin in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The populations of these states now face a precarious future, without the protection of state institutions, against a range of predatory actors. Moreover, these actions have contributed toward the decline of US global influence, thereby encouraging further change in an environment where popular sovereignty and inputs into governance by regional peoples has been frustrated through the exercise of US power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore how the intellectual thinking and political actions of an Islamist could be developed and changed toward a more realistic view. The Kuwaiti Islamic Students' movement in the UK was led by the youth of the Muslim Brotherhood under the Free Kuwait Campaign during the Second Gulf Crisis in 1990-91. This movement went through a significant development and change of ideas and practices with other political and societal groups. Dealing with all segments of Kuwait's society as partners in the country and its destiny, and not as intellectual or party opponents, was the main change in ideas. Moreover, a qualitative leap in realistic political thought emerged among these young people and affected the future of the movement. In the immediate post-invasion era, this action was not invested towards building an open national platform. However, the students' actions were influenced by the event, and pro Islam al-'i'tilafiyah became more accepting of others, leading to many students from other ideologies joining the ranks. Moreover, nationalistic ideas crept into Islamic thoughts in the post-invasion era, leading to a mixture of ideologies rendering one 'moderate' or 'conservative' that was described by stricter Islamists as 'lenient'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines digital expressions of solidarity and unity that emerged on social media platforms in Qatar following the outbreak of the Gulf crisis in June 2017. The study undertakes an analysis of public tweets on the social network site Twitter published around Arabic hashtags in Twitter's Qatar trends in the first two weeks of the blockade. The hashtags attracted thousands of users to form a digitally connected public calling for national unity and solidarity. An qualitative analysis of a sample from 402,962 tweets published around these hashtags reveals that users expressed national unity and solidarity through both visual and textual displays of strength, resilience, loyalty and pride. The article argues that following their emergence, the hashtags not only aimed to cement resistance against the blockade imposed on Qatar but also to forge a national identity that was centred on the persona of the nation's leader, Sheikh Tamim Al-Thani, while denouncing social and cultural divisions that stemmed from transnational tribal identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the dual need to examine the weaponization of social media and the nature of non-Western propaganda, this article explores the use of Twitter bots in the Gulf crisis that began in 2017. Twitter account-creation dates within hashtag samples are used as a primary indicator for detecting Twitter bots. Following identification, the various modalities of their deployment in the crisis are analyzed. It is argued that bots were used during the crisis primarily to increase negative information and propaganda from the blockading countries toward Qatar. In terms of modalities, this study reveals how bots were used to manipulate Twitter trends, promote fake news, increase the ranking of anti-Qatar tweets from specific political figures, present the illusion of grassroots Qatari opposition to the Tamim regime, and pollute the information sphere around Qatar, thus amplifying propaganda discourses beyond regional and national news channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the onset of the Gulf diplomatic crisis in June 2017, citizens and expatriate residents in Qatar affixed patriotic decals to their cars in a show of support. Using visual evidence and ethnographic interviews gathered between August 2017 and September 2018, we analyze Qatari and expatriate participation in this shared ritual of nationalism, and what each group's participation meant to the other. Our conclusions highlight the growth of civic nationalism narratives in Qatar as a response to the diplomatic crisis, and a corresponding reduction in regional ethnic narratives of communal belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a data set of 2,968 articles collected from 22 different newspapers in Turkey, this article maps media responses to the ongoing Gulf Crisis. In doing so, we deploy a pioneering methodology derived from natural language processing and correspondence analysis to test whether categorical variables such as political affiliation, ownership, and ideological outlook had any impact on how a news publication covered the Gulf Crisis. In the results and interpretation sections, we attempt to connect our findings to broader discussions on agenda setting, framing, and building consent. Based on our analysis, we propose the following conclusions: (a) Political affiliation, ownership structure, and the ideological outlook all had unique effects on how a publication covered the Gulf Crisis, (b) the progovernment press embarked on a campaign to sway public opinion about the government's decision to side with Qatar. The dimensions of this campaign strongly resembled an executive act of consent manufacturing, and (c) corporate-owned news organizations were the driving force shaping both the public agenda and the dominant framing of the Gulf Crisis in the Turkish mediascape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are all modern wartime ads that depict combat judged as ethical? The results of a study conducted during the recent Persian Gulf conflict suggest that the social marketing uses of such ads (e.g., to solicit blood donations) are judged as more ethical than the nonsocial uses of such ads (e.g., to increase news program viewership). Furthermore, greater moral conservativism, greater cultural localism, and stronger belief-in-a-just-world are associated with the belief that the use of such ads to promote network news programs is unethical, although stronger belief-in-a-just-world generally is associated with the belief that the use of such ads is ethical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Iraqi claims on and invasion of Kuwait have focused most of the scholarly attention on the drawing and defining of the Kuwaiti border. Issues of material delineation between the two countries have mattered a great deal for asserting sovereignty, but also for the exploration of oil and access to Gulf deep waters. Yet, the identity dimensions of the Kuwaiti border have often been overlooked. Building on the literature that sees more to the border than just a dividing line but seeks to include individual and collective narrative and experiences of borders, this article proposes to investigate the social-cultural perception of the Kuwaiti border and explores the complex connection between border and identities in the Kuwaiti case. Borders, it has been argued, have often played a significant role in identity building processes. Yet in the case of Kuwait where the border, contested by powerful neighbours, cuts across empty desert and tribal territories, the border seems to have played a limited one in shaping the national identity. This article investigates the interplay between the bordering process asserting sovereignty, on the one hand and the notions of identity and sense of belonging, on the other, resulting from a complex mix of socio-cultural legacies inherited from the pre-national period (the hadhar/badû dichotomy) and processes of ordering and othering enacted by the state and its welfare policies. Based on the analysis of the spatial imaginary as constructed by the Nationality Law of 1959, it argues that the urban core of the port-city or the interaction with it have remained the main benchmark of Kuwaiti identity, while the desert periphery has been imagined as culturally distinct and economically backward in the oil era - a representation that nevertheless provides a reservoir of symbols and narratives ready to be reimagined or appropriated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers responses to the Mass Observation Project's Gulf Crisis sub-directive. It argues firstly that observers' responses show how a potential war within Iraq in 1990/1991 was framed by fear of global conflagration and suggests that these fears were rooted in memories of the later cold war. Secondly it argues that the Gulf War was interpreted as a rapid and successful conflict, which dispelled pre-war fears of global conflagration/nuclear war, and demonstrated that the UK could be involved in large-scale modern military conflicts without risking escalation and global catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]