The Deficiency of Decision Making Approach in Explaining Turkish-American Foreign Policy Behavior in 2003 Iraq Crisis.

The Turkish Grand National Assembly's decision not to allow the US troops to use Turkish territory to move into Iraq was widely considered in academic literature as a major turning point in the development of Turkish-American strategic partnership. In this context, this article questions the central role of individual, group and bureaucratic decision making disparities between Turkey and the US during the 2003 Iraq crisis. This article suggests that the divergence of Turkish and American foreign policies towards Iraq in 2003 was connected with their existing perceptions to Kurdish and PKK problem. Therefore this article asserts that whether Turkey had supported the US regime change policy in Iraq or not, Turkey could still not able to receive the US support in her fight against PKK. This article first questions whether the 2003 Iraq Crisis was an out-come of diplomatic and political errors emanating from the mismanagement of the negotiation process between Turkey and the US. Secondly the main disagreement between two parties will be defined and in the final step the main factors which diverged Turkish and American foreign policies towards Iraq in 2003 will be explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]