Forever the Frenemies of the Middle East? Türkiye’s Regional Relations with Iran, 2002 to 2023

North American Regional Security: A Trilateral Framework. By Richard J. Kilroy, Jr., Abelardo Rodriquez Sumano, and Todd S. Hataley, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-58826-854-9.

Despite areas of synergy, international relations theory has typically considered South and West Asia as analytically distinct. Following the work of Barry Buzan, whose work on regional security complexes is formative in shaping the intellectual debate, the Gulf is considered a subregion of a larger Middle Eastern regional security complex, while South Asia is regarded as its own regional security complex. This article argues that the analytical distinction between these different (sub)regional security complexes has become blurred, reflecting the emergence of a supercomplex. We contend that strong patterns of amity, enmity and securitisation that link the two regional security complexes suggest a thinning boundary between them, with the potential for them to merge. We distinguish between a supercomplex and a merger using the concepts of amity, enmity and securitisation provided by regional security complex theory. We add the English School’s ideas of order, justice and regional society to enhance our understanding. We focus on three issues in which the two regions interact: the Abraham Accords; the Iran nuclear crisis, and Jammu and Kashmir. We argue that increasing relations between the two regional security complexes have resulted in a supercomplex, with powerful states in both regional security complexes seeking to project their power into the adjacent regional security complex. We further note the strengthening patterns of amity, enmity and securitisation connecting the two regions, leading to a thinning of the boundary separating South and West Asia. We contribute to the literature on regional security complex theory by clarifying the distinction between a supercomplex and a merger through the South-West Asian case.

This paper presents an analytical framework as an adaptation for the regional security complex theory (RSCT). Following the end of the Cold War, regional systems have become imperative for understanding security dynamics. Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver's expanded version of the regional security complex (RSC) concept described the regional level as the level where most of the action of security occurs. In fact, the RSCT is one of the most comprehensive frameworks that outline distinct variables necessary for regional security analysis. However, the RSCT overlooked how these RSCs (security regions) emerge and evolve into fully fledged security complexes as described by Buzan and Wæver (2003). Thus, the concept remains under-theorized on how the nascent structures of an RSC build—as it prioritizes already established RSCs. In this respect, this study develops an analytical framework with a set of criteria for identifying the nascent stages of an RSC, as an adaptation for the RSCT. The framework examines the nascent structures of an RSC and highlights the roles played by external great powers in the emergence and evolution of RSCs.

This paper aims to analyse the Regional Security Complex (RSC) in the Asia-Pacific region from 1931-1945, from the perspective of the Empire of Japan. Along with the rise of Germany, the rise of Imperial Japan in the Asia-Pacific region is crucial to international relations. The challenge that Imperial Japan posed to the Status Quo in the region has had lasting effects that molded the current RSC. The RSC of the Asia-Pacific has risen to be critically important to the International System at large. With so many eyes peering in its direction, the importance of examining its past challenges is of utmost importance to orient present and future decision making. After all, the past is not dead, it’s not even past. The hipothesis of this paper is that internal factors (such as faulty institutions struggling to adapt to new social conditions, militarism, extremist politics and a lack of responsible leadership) were as important to the destabilisaton of the RSC in the Asia-Pacific region as the general disruption to the balance of power. The analyzes stresses out the importance of adopting a regional perspective and focusing not only on states but also on other security actors. Data will be used interpretatively; meaning that the focus will be on understanding events in a comprehensive/holistic way. Keywords: Regional Security Complex Theory, balance of power, soft power, international relations, foreign policy.

China-Iran relations have witnessed a new ascendency. Where China-Iran ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ (CSP) is characterized by deepening economic, trade and investment ties, cooperation through Belt and Road Initiative and shared interests in promoting stability and security, it has raised concerns of the international community, especially by the US. The prime concern is regarding the shift in the balance of power in the region. China through its diplomatic efforts has somehow addressed the concerns by brokering raproachment agreement between Saudi-Arabia and Iran, but Western and US concerns persist as they view the new partnership as a challenge to their influence and interests of its regional allies. This paper hypothesizes that China-Iran CSP, if fully realized would establish a new regional security complex that would undermine the US-led status quo regional order. This paper analyzes this very research puzzle by enquiring about the evolving nature of the China-Iran economic, political and security relationship and its implications for the regional political and security complex through the lens of Regional Security Complex theory (RSCT). Through Qualitative methodology, it explains the convergences of interests of Iran and China, the dynamism in the relationship and its implications for the regional security complex.

This chapter explores the problems of using regional analysis to think through the security agenda of the post-Cold War world. It starts with a summary of traditional regional security complex (RSC) theory, with its military-political focus, and its firm regionalizing logic, and looks at how that view is still relevant in the post-Cold War world. Section 2 surveys the changes in the nature of the security agenda, examining the rise of economic and environmental security, with their new types of threat and new referent objects, and the decline in salience of military-political security issues amongst the great powers. Section 3 investigates whether three of the ‘new’ security sectors — economic, environmental, societal — contain a regionalizing logic, and if so, how it works. Section 4 reintegrates the analysis. It looks at the merits of treating sectors separately, or amalgamating them into single, multi-sectoral security complexes.

Türkiye pursues an effective and assertive foreign policy as a decisive power in the transformations in the regional security architecture in its immediate basin. It is a generally accepted idea today that foreign policy moves are parts of an interconnected and systemic strategy rather than individual initiatives. Recently, the basin extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea have brought substantial threats, risks and advantages for Turkish foreign policy. Türkiye has resorted to using bilateral cooperation instruments against these challenges. At a time of evolving global and regional dynamics, a set of foreign policy moves and bilateral cooperations established with certain states in the region has served the common purpose of increasing Türkiye’s political presence and leverage in this basin, leading to the formation of an ad-hoc regional security complex. The study deals with the regional security complex theory with a qualitative approach, analyzes Türkiye's recent engagement with the subject basin in the light of this theory, and puts forward general implications regarding the regional balance of power. The study is assessed to make a unique contribution to the literature as it considers Türkiye's foreign policy moves related to the subject basin as connected and systematic initiatives.

This chapter presents an operational version of regional security complex theory (RSCT). RSCT provides a conceptual frame that captures the emergent new structure of international security (1 + 4 + regions): hence our title Regions and Powers . As we have shown, RSCT has a historical dimension that enables current developments to be linked to both Cold War and pre-Cold War patterns in the international system. It contains a model of regional security that enables one to analyse, and up to a point anticipate and explain, developments within any region. RSCT provides a more nuanced view than strongly simplifying ideas such as unipolarity or centre–periphery. But it remains complementary with them, and provides considerable theoretical leverage of its own. In an anarchically structured international system of sufficient size and geographical complexity, RSCs will be an expected substructure, and one that has important mediating effects on how the global dynamics of great power polarity actually operate across the international system. This makes the theory interoperable with most mainstream realist, and much liberal-based, thinking about the international system. In another sense, the theory has constructivist roots, because the formation and operation of RSCs hinge on patterns of amity and enmity among the units in the system, which makes regional systems dependent on the actions and interpretations of actors, not just a mechanical reflection of the distribution of power. Wendt (1999: 257, 301), for example, makes the connection explicit, pointing out that his social theory can be applied to regional security complexes.

The author aims to evaluate Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) withregard to another theoretical approach to security - Network ActorsPerspective (NAP). The evaluation will focus on how RSCT takes into accountthe influence of non-state actors on regional security dynamics and theirgrowing deterritorialization. Firstly the regional level of analysis approachwill be sketched, and the emphasis will lie on RSCT as defined by BarryBuzan and Ole Wæver. Its important characteristics and features will becritically compared with those of NAP. Theresult will be further illustratedthrough a case of a regional security complex - the Horn of Africa.

This article revisits Buzan and Waever’s Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT), and asks what is the utility of Buzan and Waever’s RSCT framework in understanding African security issues? It includes theoretical insight and criticism of RSCT whilst simultaneously providing an empirical case study of Uganda’s President Museveni within East Africa. It focuses in particular on a period between 2010 and 2015 when East African security dynamics were in flux. The article argues, primarily, that Regional Security Complex Theory can be improved by including a clearer articulation of how African leaders assert influence within, and shape, regional security dynamics in Africa. Doing so allows for a better realization of how Regional Security Complexes come into being. The article draws on over four years of desktop research and over one hundred field-work interviews in East Africa and South Africa with regional security specialists, military personnel, politicians, government officials, journalists, academics, market traders and economists. The paper highlights President Museveni’s uniquely active and influential role in shaping regional security dynamics in East Africa.

When confronted by the competing zero‐sum regional strategies of the EU and Russia between 2010 and 2013, Ukraine chose to aggressively pursue a dual‐aligned hedge. This policy choice, in part, helped precipitate a disastrous outcome: the Ukraine crisis. Using the insights of the literature on smaller power hedging and regional security complex theory, it is argued that Viktor Yanukovych misperceived the geopolitical feedback emanating from the Eastern Europe security complex, leading it to pursuing a suboptimal foreign policy. Hedging was still the optimal foreign policy for Ukraine, but arguably a more modest form of hedging was required. It is argued that Ukraine’s experience raises important questions about the actorness of smaller powers to pursue hedging strategies in geopolitically‐charged regional security complexes.

Regional development and stability in many parts of the Global South is threatened by violent conflicts – deep-rooted in complex ‘geo-politico-economic challenges’. This reflects the causality of Boko Haram threats and security-development crises in the Sahel. To extrapolate the patterns of insecurity and their effects on peace and development in the region, a thematic analysis of empirical and secondary data was conducted using the Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT). This expatiates on the role of actors, geopolitics (external) interventions, the environment, and resources in the Sahel’s complex security-development milieu. The study deduced that escalation of conflicts and negative consequences of interventions exacerbate states’ fragility and human insecurity, amidst displacement, destruction, and impairment of livelihoods and regional resilience capacities across the Sahel. Therefore, it recommends a holistic regional security-development mechanism, that is evidence-based, to sustainably address the root causes and effects of Sahel’s insecurity and socio-economic predicaments.

Somalia sits at the epicenter of the Horn of Africa regional security complex (RSC), and security actors seeking to alter the security conditions within Somalia have the potential to impact the broader RSC of the Horn of Africa. Turkey’s engagement within Somalia is largely built on soft power toolsets, including economic support, extensive aid programs, and emergency humanitarian assistance. The soft power toolsets mentioned in this chapter empower Turkey to bolster its strategic visibility in the Horn of Africa and thus to backup alliances formed in other regional security complexes in the Gulf Region and the broader Middle East. Ankara’s engagement with Somalia raises pertinent questions about how the Regional Security Complex Theory can account specifically for soft power capacities that enable actors who do not hold great or superpower status to act outside their major RSC.

The article is devoted to the applicability of the Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT), developed by Copenhagen School scholars Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, to the study of security issues in the Black Sea region in the post-bipolar period, starting from the collapse of the USSR in 1991 to 2025. The disappearance of one of the two poles of the bipolar world (the USSR), uneven globalization, the emergence of regional powers, the growth of old threats and the emergence of new ones, and the overall fragmentation of global security require a more in-depth theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing regional security issues. Classical geopolitics does not fully address these new challenges. The aim of this study is is to to identify the main factors influencing the transformation of the Black Sea regional security complex (1991–2025). The object of this study is the Black Sea region in the post-bipolar period, and the subject is the dynamics of the security configuration in the Black Sea region in the post-bipolar period. The methodological basis of the study is the theory of regional security complex, based on the principles of which the characteristics of the security system in the Black Sea region are identified, as well as the features of its evolution over the past 34 years. The study's results demonstrate that the Black Sea region does not constitute a fully-fledged regional security complex, as it lacks autonomous internal dynamics. The novelty of this article lies in the fact that it examines the Black Sea region for the first time as a distinct sub-complex of regional security, located on the borders of the post-Soviet and European regional security complexes. We conclude that the main factor hindering the Black Sea region's transformation into a security complex is external pressure, reflected in Euro-Atlantic integration processes that contribute to the polarization of security interests within the sub-complex and thereby contribute to the deterioration of the region's security configuration, manifested in increased conflict potential, militarization, regional disintegration, and growing hostility. Thus, the study contributes to the development of the theory of regional security complex and its use in studying the Black Sea region in the modern period.

The phenomenon of migration varies according to factors in many different dimensions, this study deals with irregular migration and the events that occur in this context. Turkey, due to its geopolitical position, is a transit country in the irregular migration issue, in comparison with neighboring countries, Turkey has become a transit country for migrants due to its relatively higher level of development compared to Middle Eastern countries located to its south and east, and its lower level of development compared to European countries. In this study, the results and reasons for Syrian refugee’s attempts to use Turkey as a transit country and cross to Greece over the Aegean Sea will be analyzed from the perspective of Barry Buzan’s ‘Regional Security Complex Theory. This study focuses on the problem of whether a regional security complex has emerged in the Balkans due to the migration movement resulting from the Syrian Civil War, using Buzan’s theory as a framework, between Turkey and Greece.