Middle Eastern Neighbors Research Articles

Восприятие греками лидийцев в архаическое и раннеклассическое время

The article is devoted to the study of the relationship between the ancient Greeks and the Middle Eastern tribe of the Lydians in the 7–5th centuries BCE. The evidence of ancient authors analyzed in the article helps to understand the evolution of the Greeks' ideas about the Lydians and highlights the changes in the Hellenes' relationship to the Middle Eastern neighbors. The central question of the work is the analysis of the period in which the Hellenes begin to perceive the Lydians as barbarians, and what was associated with this attitude to the people. The article raises the question of what role Greco-Persian wars have played in the relationship between the Greeks and the Lydians.

Calling for a Reset in Turkish-American Relations in the post-COVID International Order

Analysts emphasize that nothing will be the same after the pandemic and refer to the “new normal” that is likely to prevail everywhere in the world. It would be a legitimate question to ask if this would provide a conducive environment for Turkey and the United States to reset their relations that have much deteriorated lately. This article will, first, highlight the contours of the “new normal” narrative by referring to the views expressed by politicians, academics, analysts, journalists and intellectuals from around the world. Second, the article will assess the implications of the parameters of the “new normal” for key actors in world politics, such as the United States, China, the European Union and Russia, as well as Turkey’s Middle Eastern neighbors, with respect to the issues that will be at stake in the international security environment. Finally, the article will make a call for a reset in Turkish-American relations in order for the two long-standing allies to adapt themselves better to post-COVID international politics.

Arab geopolitics in turmoil: Implications of Qatar-Gulf crisis for business

On June 5, 2017 Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain (known as the quartet) announced they were breaking diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of destabilizing the region. The more than two-year-old rancorous dispute between Qatar and its neighbors is forging a new Gulf, transforming what was a stable region of the Arab world. This research examines the regional business costs of this blockade which cut off all diplomatic and commercial relations with Doha. We compare the stock market performances of Qatar and its Middle Eastern neighbors before and after the Saudi-led Qatar boycott. We focus our attention on the conditional volatility process of stock market returns and risks related to financial interconnectedness. Our results robustly reveal that this crisis had the most adverse impact on Qatar together with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Although not to the same degree as these three countries, Bahrain and Egypt were also adversely affected. But the effects seem transitory. Overall, the quartet lobbying efforts did not achieve the intended result. Despite the vulnerability of its business, Qatar has demonstrated remarkable resilience post blockade. The availability of significant external and fiscal buffers and the strong financial sector allow Qatar to successfully withstand an escalation of the siege crisis. Interestingly, the diplomatic efforts of Qatar to circumvent the economic and political embargo on the country by a number of allies in the region seems to be working well, with the US government emphasizing its support for Doha.

Turkish-Iranian Relations in the Middle East: in Search of the Regional Balance

Turkey and Iran are two Middle Eastern neighbors building their relationship on the basis of competition and cooperation. Both countries aim at the position of regional leader and want to offer their own «model» of development to the Middle East. Historical neighborship has provided Turkey and Iran not only with the experience of struggle for influence, but an ability to interact in the spheres of overlapping interests as well. Turmoil in the Middle East attracts the attention of researchers to the issue of Turkish-Iranian relations. The article deals with the key areas of regional relations of the two countries reflecting their efforts to keep the power balance though they have contradicting interest. Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 has put Turkish and Iranian «models» in adversary positions to one another emphasizing religion vs secularism.The Turkish side has broadened the range of its instruments after Justice and Development Party coming to power in Ankara, although its aim remains to be the promotion of Western concepts in the Middle East. The Party’s strategy to expand Turkish influence in the region takes into account the Ottoman heritage, which modern Ankara seeks to popularize in order to reinforce its claims to regional leadership. The competitive arsenal of the Turkish leadership includes historical ties with the peoples of the region and the experience of the Europeanization of the Muslim state.Iran is promoting its vision of Muslim democracy, positioning itself as a staunch fighter against the expansionism of the West and, despite the decline in warlike rhetoric, does not refuse to export the values of the Islamic revolution. Ankara is at odds with Western countries on private issues or methods, but generally it shares the same strategic approaches. Tehran, on the contrary, rejects the ideological rapprochement with the West and the borrowing of Western development models, advocating maintaining its own path. In fact, Iran and Turkey offer Middle Eastern countries alternative political transformation options.Iraq and Syria represent both the sphere of Turkish-Iranian competition and the possibility for tactical alignment on the basis of converging interests. The events of recent years have demonstrated that at the times when the Turkey and Iran sense common threats, they put their contradictions on the back burner. Pragmatism and rivalry in Turkish-Iranian relations are not alternatives but exist in parallel as a way of maintaining a regional balance of power between the two countries. This explains the ability of Ankara and Tehran to seek compromises. At the same time, the various approaches of these states to the future structure of the Middle East region will continue to hinder the creation of a stable alliance between them. These realities must be taken into account when assessing the prospects for the development of the regional situation and the potential of Turkish-Iranian relations, the study of which is especially important for Russia, taking into account trilateral cooperation to resolve the crisis in Syria.

Turkey and India: From Distant Acquaintances to Partners in World Politics and Trade

Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XL, No.1 Fall 2016 Turkey and India: From Distant Acquaintances to Partners in World Politics and Trade Michael B. Bishku* William Hale in his comprehensive work Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774-2000 has only one mention of India and it is not in regard to bilateral relations: In the post- [Second World] war world, and faced with the classic choice between alliance and non-alignment, Turkey was almost bound to take the first option. In effect, it was in the same position as most of the medium and small powers of Western Europe, which preferred defensive alliance with the United States to active non-alignment. Unlike say, India, it was in the middle of a zone of intense rivalry between the superpowers , and if unaided, it could not expect to hold off a direct attack by the Warsaw Pact for more than a limited time—especially, if as expected, this was launched against the straits [i.e. Bosporus and Dardanelles].1 Indeed, security was of prime interest to Turkey given common borders with the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. However, this statement alludes to one important reason for the more distant nature of Turkish-Indian relations during the Cold War. In addition, Turkey and India were overwhelmingly concerned about two respective issues—1) the political situation regarding Cyprus and 2) land and political disputes with Pakistan, especially over Kashmir. The ethnic Greek leader and later President of Cyprus from 1960-1977, Archbishop Makarios, was an influential figure in the Non-Aligned Movement, while Pakistan was a member of two Western alliances, one of which together with Turkey—the Baghdad Pact, later 80 *Michael B. Bishku is a Professor of History at Augusta University in Georgia. He is a former President of both the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies and the Association of Third World Studies and an advisory editor for Oxford Bibliographies Online for Islamic Studies. He has published numerous academic articles on the history and politics of the Islamic World and on connections between the Middle East and other regions of the world. 1 William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774-2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 325-326. 81 known as the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO)—and many Pakistani leaders shared a secular Muslim identity with their Turkish counterparts. Both Turkey and India were (and still are) regional powers, but the former has had more immediate threats historically to its territorial integrity. The Republic of Turkey was established in 1923 out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and its founder Kemal Atatürk saw his country’s future in being associated with Europe and its culture; also, with the exception of Iran its Middle Eastern neighbors were under the control of either Britain or France, with whom (as well as with the Soviet Union) it had good working relations. During the interwar years, Fascist Italy’s interests in the Balkans and Mediterranean Sea presented the greatest security threat and during the Second World War neutrality and Germany overextending itself in its invasion of the Soviet Union provided some sense of protection. India, on the other hand, received its independence from Britain in 1947 with a partition that provided it with greater resources than Pakistan, had no border with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China was in no position to present a military challenge until the early 1960s. Later, the post-Cold War era offered both Turkey and India more flexibility regarding foreign relations, while India liberalized its economic policies. However, it was not until Turkey’s Justice and Development (AK) Party came to power in 2002 when that country began to pay greater attention to Asian (and African) countries outside the Middle East. At the same time, both Turkey and India have dealt with their relations and common areas of interest separate from the respective problems associated with either Cyprus or Pakistan. This article examines Turkish-Indian relations since the beginning of the Cold War, a subject that only has been given attention in recent years. Indeed, Prithvi Ram Mudiam’s work India and the Middle East published in 1994 makes...

The Middle Eastern Relations of Cyprus and Malta: From Independence to Nonalignment to the European Union

Cyprus and Malta are small Mediterranean states located on the periphery of Europe that have had unusual political affiliations following independence from Great Britain in 1960 and 1964, respectively. Historically and culturally they have had Middle Eastern connections. Cyprus was the scene of Arab settlement and later Ottoman rule, and today one-fifth of the population is Muslim Turkish, while the rest is predominantly Greek Orthodox. Malta was under direct Arab rule and its language is Semitic in origin, although its population today is almost exclusively Roman Catholic. Both countries used membership in the Non-Aligned Movement and later their connections with the European Union to gain leverage in foreign relations with more powerful states, especially in matters involving the Mediterranean region. During the Cold War and its aftermath, their ties with Middle Eastern neighbors have also brought economic benefits and a greater sense of security without their having to join military alliances.

Arab Spring vs. Zero Problems Policy Impact of the Arab Spring on the Trade Expansion of Turkey

Although Turkey has historically concentrated its trade with the European Union (EU) it has diversified its trade markets with the neighbouring regions and different group of countries during the last decade. Among them, Arab countries have come into prominence. Especially, following the “zero problems with neighbours” policy (ZPN), pursued by Turkey since 2002, the trade volume with the Middle Eastern neighbours has increased faster than that with its traditional partners. Nevertheless so called “Arab Spring” has started to manifest its effects on this trend. It deteriorates not only the economies of the concerned countries but also Turkey’s trade expansion. This paper aims: (i) to test through a gravity model the positive impacts of the ZPN policy and the negative impact of the Arab Spring on the trade expansion with the Spring Countries; and (ii) to reveal the positive impact of the policy change and the negative impact of the uprising movements on the realization of trade potential by Turkey in the Spring Countries.

Charting the New Turkish Foreign Policy

Turkey's foreign policy activism on a range of regional and global issues has sparked enormous interest in academic and policy circles in recent years. Turkey occupied a central place in discussions on the Iranian nuclear program when it formulated, with Brazil, a plan to transfer part of Iran's nuclear stockpile to Turkey in apparent opposition to the US policy of spearheading a new round of sanctions in the summer of 2010. Turkey's attempts to interject itself as a mediator into regional crises - be it between Israel and the Arabs; Afghanistan and Pakistan; Bosnia- Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia; various Iraqi groups; various Lebanese groups; or Russia and Georgia - has been another area of activism for Turkish diplomacy. At the same time, Turkey has initiated dialogue with such neighbours as Armenia, Greece, and Iraq to resolve decades-old disputes and normalize bilateral relations. Turkey's efforts to capitalize on its geographic location to turn the country into a major hub for the transportation and marketing of Eurasian and Middle Eastern energy resources to global markets has provided yet another dimension of Turkey's growing visibility in international affairs.In a rather ambitious development, Turkey has undertaken steps towards closer social, economic, and political exchanges with its neighbours. In the Middle East, Turkey has moved towards economic integration through the creation of a prospective free trade zone, accompanied by the removal of visa requirements. Turkey also has established high-level strategic cooperation councils with several Middle Eastern neighbours as a way of bolstering dialogue and resolving political disputes. These initiatives have been in no way confined to the Middle East and they have been replicated in one form or another with countries in other regions surrounding Turkey.The wave of popular uprisings that has swept through North Africa and the Middle East has also imbued Turkish foreign policy with a new dose of activism. Ankara was initially caught by surprise but gradually moved to embrace the popular movements, coming to champion democratic legitimacy and respect for fundamental human rights as the cornerstones of the new regional order in the Middle East. At the risk of breaking ties with leaders with whom it had forged collegial ties, Turkey has been an indispensable actor in the international coalitions that have sought to topple the authoritarian leaders in Libya and Syria. In the new era marked by the onset of the Arab Spring, interestingly, security concerns have become more pronounced in the making of Turkish foreign policy. While Turkey had previously been pursuing cooperative initiatives, in the last year or so it has also become embroiled in an increasing number of disputes or confrontations with its neighbours, sometimes bordering on brinkmanship on its part. Its decision to host an early warning radar as part of NATO's missile shield project, which is being developed to intercept missiles from the Middle East, its row with Israel over the latter's killing of Turkish citizens who were seeking to protest the naval blockade on Gaza, or its confrontational rhetoric against the Greek Cypriot administration are only a few examples of a recent proactive period in Turkish foreign policy.While Turkey's policies in those specific issue areas have received close scholarly interest, what has been overlooked has been the conceptual framework that under girds this new foreign policy vision. Many attribute the drastic transformation to the ideas of Ahmet Davutoglu, who is considered the architect of the Justice and Development party s foreign policy, first as the chief advisor to the prime minister and then as foreign minister. Davutoglu's thinking, which was formulated while he was an academic studying international affairs and the role of civilizations in world history, reflects the influence of geopolitics and ideational factors. Granted, Turkish foreign policy has been blended, at times in an eclectic manner, with elements from different international relations theories. …

Realist-normative power Europe? Explaining EU policies toward Lebanon from an IR perspective

This article seeks to explain the relationship between the European Union (EU) and one of its Middle Eastern neighbors: Lebanon. By conducting an in-depth empirical single case study and engaging in competitive theory testing, this article shows that the EU in Lebanon behaves at the same time as a normative and a realist power. This article challenges both the scholarship on the EU that sees the EU as a normative power as well as scholarship that focuses on structural neorealism to explain the EU's role in its neighborhood. This article adopts an approach that is different from the mainstream approaches in two ways. First, it focuses on the entire set of policies that the EU has implemented or not in Lebanon. Second, it provides an in-depth case study centered on the interaction between the EU and Lebanon, while also looking at the regional dynamics and at the domestic tensions within Lebanon. By doing so, it shows that the EU is a ‘realist-normative’ power in the specific case of Lebanon. Thus, these two frameworks are a false dichotomy and the argument shall be tested on other cases to make it generalizable. This suggests that the constructivist-realist divide coexists in practice.

The South Caucasus Republics and the Muslim Middle East: Political and Economic Imperatives

The South Caucasus republics have given great importance to their respective ties with their Middle Eastern neighbors. In general, they have attempted to expand trade with those countries and to avoid involvement in regional disputes. Relations with Turkey and Iran have held the greatest importance, but ties with individual Arab countries and Israel have also served useful economic and political purposes. The South Caucasus republics have needed to balance their relations with their neighbors and the major powers in the interests of political and economic security. Matters of territorial integrity, the status of ethnic brethren residing in foreign countries, trade routes, and historical memory have all shaped the development of foreign policy in the countries of this region.

Is There a Europeanization of Turkish Foreign Policy? An Addendum to the Literature on EU Candidates

The beginning of Turkey’s accession negotiations with the European Union on October 3, 2005 constituted an important turning point for Turkey’s relations with the EU and for Turkish socio‐political transformation. This paper poses the following questions: (i) Is there a Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy as a result of Turkey’s accession negotiations with the EU? (ii) If so, then what are the main areas and limits in which Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy has occurred? This paper answers these questions by providing a background of Europeanization; first by differentiating between the member states and the candidate countries; second by analyzing the Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy through an investigation of the changes in Turkish foreign policy since 1999 with regards to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), NATO‐EU cooperation and Turkey’s Middle Eastern neighbors.

Turkey at the crossroads: Ottoman legacies and a greater Middle East

* Introduction: The Turkish puzzle * PART 1: THE CONTINUITIES OF OTTOMAN-TURKISH MODERNISATION * 1. Modernisation as a theoretical concept * 2. Reform and decline: modernisation in the Ottoman Empire * 3. National resurrection: the early Turkish Republic * 4. Western integration: the multi-party period * PART 2: TURKEY IN THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST * 5. Kemalism challenged: Susurluk, political Islam and Kurdish nationalism * 6. Encircled by enemies? Turkey's foreign policy and its Middle Eastern neighbours * 7. The uneasy alignment: Turkey and Israel * 8. The revival of Pan-Turkism: Turkish policies in C.A. and Transcaucasus * Conclusions: the impasse of Kemalist modernisation

Iraq's external relations 1921–26

From the beginning of the mandate in Iraq the shaping of Iraq's external relations with her Middle Eastern neighbours and, after the Lausanne Conference, with the international world at large as well, was a delicate matter for British policy-making. Its delicacy sprang from a variety of reasons. They can briefly be classified. First Iraq's own endeavours to establish diplomatic links with her brethren in dar al-Islam, and her claim of international status or, at least, the satisfaction of amour propre; second the necessity for the British to solve problems arising from external situations that affected Iraq such as the (anti-Hashimite) caliphate movement among Indian Moslems, the Turkish menace to Mosul, the French suspicion about the motives of Britain's Middle Eastern policy and, finally, the disturbance of the Middle East by the Wahabi movement led by Ibn Sa'ud; third Britain's strong imperial interests in safeguarding the acquired strategic and economic assets against any future interference, be it by the Arabs or her imperial rivals at large. Owing to this last overriding British concern the shaping of Iraq's external relations, i.e. the partial transfer of external sovereignty to indigenous institutions in the sphere of diplomatic negotiations and international law such as diplomatic recognition, tended, on the whole, to be judged more by imperial calculation than by the provisions of the mandate concept. For instance, in 1925, when peace was concluded with Turkey (over Mosul), the Middle East department at the colonial office happened to discuss the recognition of the Iraq Government by the United States.' In accordance with British imperial interests the department deemed it an indispensable American duty to acknowledge the Palestine mandate first before recognising Iraq as a state. On the surface such conditions imposed on Iraq's diplomatic recognition by foreign powers implied the logical stipulation that whoever recognised a product of the mandate concept should also approve of the concept wherever it was worked. But, logic apart, politically, such conditions stemmed from the imperial notion that Iraq was an inextricable part of the strategic whole of the British Middle East. In other words, in an imperial context, the purpose of making U.S. recognition of Iraq conditional upon prior acknowledgement of the British mandate in Palestine was to consolidate the political security of the strategically important trans-desert motor and air route from the Mediterranean via Amman to Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Complementary to the British conception of the Middle East as a strategic whole, there emerged from the concessions made to Faisal's plea for international status the concept of a British-controlled Middle East as a diplomatic unity. Thus, at the Cairo Conference in March 1921, Faisal was given the right to establish diplomatic relations with the ruler of the Pusht-Ikuh and Ibn Sa'ud of Nejd,2 whose foreign relations with the outside world were solely conducted by Britain. Further, from 1922 onwards, officials of the Middle East department began to ventilate the idea of diplomatically modelling Iraq after the dominions3 which, as is known, constituted a pluralism within the diplomatic unity of the British Empire.4 However, the concept of Iraq as