Evolution of Turkish-Israeli Relations 1992-2008: Causes, Actors and Reactions

Abstract

47 *Kilic Bugra Kanat is a an assistant professor of Political Science at Penn State University, Erie and a non-Resident Fellow at SETA Foundation. He received his PhD degree in Political Science from Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY). He received his MA in International Affairs from Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI) and his undergraduate education in the International Relations and Sociology from the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey). 1 Charles F. Hermann, “Changing Course: When Governments Choose to Redirect Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly 34 (1990): 3-21; Jerel A. Rosati, Martin W. Sampson III, and Joe D. Hagan, “The Study of Change in Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Policy Restructuring: How Governments Respond to Global Change, ed. Jerel A. Rosati, Joe D. Hagan, and Martin W. Sampson, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Jakob Gustavsson, The Politics of Foreign Policy Change: Explaining the Swedish Reorientation on EC Membership, (Lund: Lund University Press, 1998); Jakob Gustavsson, “How Should We Study Foreign Policy Change?” Cooperation and Conflict 34 (1999): 73-95.K. J. Holsti, Why Nations Realign: Foreign Policy Restructuring in the Postwar World, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), 2. Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXVI, No.2, Winter 2012 Evolution of Turkish-Israeli Relations 1992-2008: Causes, Actors and Reactions Kılıç Buğra Kanat* Introduction Although “the change in foreign policy” of a country is one of the most frequently used phrases in the field of foreign policy, the issue has remained one of the most understudied topics in academia. Despite developments in other fields, including foreign policy analysis, foreign policy decision-making, and comparative foreign policy, foreign policy change has not generated enough scholarship to be considered a separate field of study. In different instances, several scholars raised red flags about the lack of systematic scholarship on this topic in foreign policy literature and asserted the necessity to form a systemic research program to deal with the issue of foreign policy change.1 Although these calls resulted in the 48 formation of certain theoretical models to understand foreign policy change, these models have not been implemented sufficiently through case studies, and thus their efficacy and empirical relevance have still not been researched or discussed properly. Moreover, different studies in this field rarely engage in a dialogue and there is a significant lack of integrative studies in the field, which would bring together the salient aspects of different studies to create a more comprehensive approach toward foreign policy change. As a result, there is deep disagreement among scholars about the definition, causes, process and outcome of foreign policy change in countries. In this study, I aim to contribute to the literature of foreign policy change scholarship by integrating the findings of different foreign policy change studies with empirical findings on Turkish-Israeli relations. The study will take foreign policy change as a process instead of a single breaking point. It will be argued that, other than in the case of major crises and revolutionary changes, the foreign policy transformation of countries takes place in a gradual fashion as a result of the cumulative effect of domestic, regional and international factors. Monocausal explanations will fail to provide an accurate portrait of the changes in foreign policy and will lead to reductionism in this field. Although some of these factors may play a more prominent role in the path to the policy change, at the end of the day there are only a number of major transformations in foreign policy which took place as a result of only a single factor. In addition, in most instances of foreign policy transformation, change necessitates either a consensus among different actors within an authoritative foreign policy decision unit or an effective and strong leadership. The changes in Turkish foreign policy towards Israel throughout a twenty year period will be used to demonstrate this form of multicausal and gradual evolution in foreign policy. In addition to showing the causes and process of foreign policy changes, the study will also take into account the outcome of those changes. Changes in a country’s foreign policy elicit varied reactions from...