Most analysts agree that Turkey's foreign policy is essentially peaceful, using diplomacy and multilateralism in the resolution of its conflicts with other states. Here, Umut Uzer offers a necessary corrective to this standard analysis by revealing the Kemalist influence in Turkey's state ideology. This defined the identity of the state as Turkish, resulting in responsibilities towards Turks residing beyond its borders, and a more engaged foreign policy that ranged from declarations of support for ethnic kin outside Turkey to outright takeover of territory. Focusing on the annexation of Hatay from Syria in 1939, Turkey's involvement in Cyprus culminating in a military operation in 1974 and its policy toward the Karabagh dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the 1990s, "Identity and Turkish Foreign Policy" is indispensable for all those interested in Middle East politics and international relations as well as Turkey more specifically.

This collection explores foreign policy crises and the way the states/leaders deal with them. Being at the juncture of a highly sensitive political zone, consisting of the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia, the Republic of Turkey has been the subject of various foreign policy crises since its foundation. These political, military, economic or humanitarian crises were triggered either by the states themselves or by the NGOs and armed non-state actors. By examining literature in the field of foreign policy crises literature, this volume scrutinizes some of the most prominent Turkish foreign policy crises. Among these, there are protracted crises such as that of Cyprus and the Aegean Sea; a humanitarian one such as the 1989 migration of the Bulgarian Turks; an NGO-triggered crisis, such as the Mavi Marmara Confrontation; and an ongoing case such as the Syrian civil war. Looking at these crises from various aspects, the text sheds light on whether, or how, the reactions of the Turkish ruling elite change while trying to manage these crises. The book is a timely contribution to literature in the field of Politics and International Relations and will be useful to academics, diplomats and historians interested in foreign policy crises in general and Turkish foreign policy crises in particular.

This edited volume, comprising chapters by leading academics and experts, aims to clarify the complexity of Turkey’s Kurdish question. The Kurdish question is a long-standing, protracted issue, which gained regional and international significance largely in the last thirty years. The Kurdish people who represent the largest ethnic minority in the Middle East without a state have demanded autonomy and recognition since the post-World I wave of self-governance in the region, and their nationalist claims have further intensified since the end of the Cold War. The present volume first describes the evolution of Kurdish nationalism, its genesis during the late nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, and its legacy into the new Turkish republic. Second, the volume takes up the violent legacy of Kurdish nationalism and analyzes the conflict through the actions of the PKK, the militant pro-Kurdish organization which grew to be the most important actor in the process. Third, the volume deals with the international dimensions of the Kurdish question, as manifested in Turkey’s evolving relationships with Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the issue regarding the status of the Kurdish minorities in these countries, and the debate over the Kurdish problem in Western capitals.