Suchergebnisse

In January 2013, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government initiated a peace process in order to settle the Kurdish question through peaceful means. However, this sanguine atmosphere gradually disappeared, before finally collapsing after the general elections of 7 June 2015. This book addresses the question of why the peace building attempts that culminated between 2013 and 2015 failed. It deals with the historical background of the Kurdish Question and contemporary complexities of the Turkish politics to explain how they eventually jeopardized the peace process. This is an important and relevant research question because the Kurdish Question has been viewed as a variable shaping Turkey's domestic politics and its foreign relations. the Kurdish question's influence on Turkish foreign policy is not confined to its neighbors. Turkey's relations with the United States and the European Union was also shaped by the issues stemmed from the Kurdish question. As this was the first serious peace attempt in a conflict that lasted over three decades, examination of why it failed will inform any future attempts at peace and will help pinpoint the potential path that Turkey might face in both the domestic and international realm. This book will appeal to students and scholars with an interest in Turkey and the Kurdish issue, peacekeeping, security studies and Middle East Politics

Disappearance of the established security paradigm of Kemalist state has not helped to create strong institutions and legal-bureaucratic structures that are supposed to prevent a certain political elite to dominate the political system and criminalize its adversaries by security reasons. Instead, survival concerns and political will of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has become replacement of the established paradigm. This has created a systemic crisis. On the one hand, the AKP has played the role of a regular political party, which is supposed to have equal rights and privileges with other players in the game. On the other hand, the AKP has been the tutelary actor that determines what national security is and who threatens national security. As a result of this picture, the AKP has exploited its monopoly over securitization to eliminate the criticisms of the opposition groups. Therefore, any political party or political group has not been viewed as a national security threat only if it has not threatened the political survival of the AKP. Such a crisis has also affected the AKP's approach toward the Kurdish question. Unlike the established paradigm's allergy toward the political demands of Kurds due to its commitment to nation-state principle, the AKP's fluctuated policy toward the Kurds resembles to a political party's survival strategy rather than a policy stemming from a consistent national security paradigm.

"Focused on the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) over the last two decades, this book discusses and contextualises key events and developments in Turkish politics, economics, and foreign policy. The authors begin by exploring the longer-term historical trends that shaped the country, focusing on Ottoman and Republican legacies, culminating in the formation of the modern state in Turkey. This context, it is argued, is key in understanding the AKP's emergence since 2002 as the preeminent political power. The book further argues that the AKP achieved this position due to political manoeuvres aimed at undermining military influence within politics, its management of the economy, and its approach to foreign policy. These three domains are dealt with in successive chapters to help explicate how the AKP built broad societal coalitions and consolidated its power. The book concludes by analysing contemporary developments: in the face of mounting economic and political challenges, the fate of the AKP, and of Turkey, remain uncertain. Written in an accessible style and grounded in data-driven analysis, the book will appeal to journalists, policymakers, researchers and general audiences interested in the contemporary Middle East, Turkish political economy, and international relations"--

The debates dealing with ISIS address the questions of how ISIS is conceptualized, what its aim is, and how it has successfully retained a core sovereignty zone. This study attempts to answer these questions by proposing that ISIS is a de facto state and uses jihadism as a survival strategy. The term 'competitive jihadism' is used to argue that ISIS competes with its metropole states, Syria and Iraq, on the basis of jihadism. This is a deliberate strategy, which aims to attract Muslims inclined to radicalization as well as to recruit foreign fighters by showing the jihadist deficits of the metropole states. As the research shows, ISIS is successful at this game and has become a magnet for foreign fighters. Thus, it is able to increase its military capabilities and continue to survive.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government initiated a peace process with the Kurds in January 2013 to become the first government since 1984 to systematically negotiate with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) instead of using the military against them. Nevertheless, a bloody war restarted after AKP lost its majority in the parliament due to the Kurdish backed Peoples' Democratic Party's (HDP) success in the 7 June 2015 elections. In the coalition negotiation process, the AKP, which is under the strict control of Erdoğan, did not make a serious offer to any of the opposition parties, and Erdoğan did not mandate other parties to form a coalition government. Thus, holding a snap election remained the only option. Erdoğan's strategy to attract the nationalist voters worked, and the AKP re-gained the overall majority in the parliament by receiving the nationalist votes again. Nevertheless, this was a Pyrrhic victory for the AKP. In addition to the domestic polarization, the new AKP government has needed to deal with the Kurdish Question, which has turned into armed conflict since the 7 June elections, along with re-formulating its relations with the allies of the PKK in Northern Syria and in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. Furthermore, increasing activism in the ISIS issue and the "jet crisis" experienced with Russia seems to have complicated Turkey's foreign policy and compelled the AKP to revise its approach towards the Kurdish Question.