Özgür Özdamar

Religion as a Factor in Ethnic Conflict: Kashmir and Indian Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT Ethnic conflicts with a strong religious component do not have merely domestic or foreign causes and consequences. As a result, internationalization of ethnic conflict has become an important subject of inquiry both in terms of pure research and policy-oriented studies. This article presents a case study of Indian-Pakistani relations over Kashmir, used to evaluate the role of religion and the explanatory power of the approach presented here. The aim of the study is to apply a foreign policy approach that simultaneously incorporates domestic and external factors in an analysis of how and in what ways religious elements of the Kashmir question affect Indias foreign policy. The approach, an application of “systemism,” contributes to current developments in the realist school of international relations through its emphasis on the need to look at both international and state levels in combination. Earlier applications of realism, as both neotraditional and structural realism clearly demonstrate, tend to remain restricted to one level or the other. In this approach, a religious dynamic can have a domestic source yet be effectively examined in terms of international ramifications.

Security and military balance in the Black Sea region

This paper analyses the current security challenges and military balance in the Black Sea region. The region, which has been going through vast political and economic transformations since the end of the Cold War, has become a platform for great power rivalry in the last few years. NATO expansion and Russian resistance to it, combined with the existing protracted conflicts, resulted in the first major regional war in a decade. The Russia–Georgia war of 2008 proved that regional actors still perceive the use of force as an acceptable tool of foreign policy. The changing military balance and abrupt increases in military expenditure from some actors suggest that the likelihood of other interstate conflicts in the region is high. Providing security and stability in the Black Sea seems more difficult than the pre‐August 2008 war period.

Man vs. the System: Turkish Foreign Policy After the Arab Uprisings

The aim of this article is to examine the much-debated Turkish foreign policy preferences towards the Middle East during the Arab uprisings through a neoclassical realist framework. Turkey is a middle power in the international system and in order to grasp Turkey’s decision makers’ policy toward the region, it is important to comprehend human factors (perceptions, analysis, heuristics, analogies, cultural references) and variables of domestic politics (public opinion, electoral processes, border cities, Turkey’s own ethno-religious structure). If we only examine systemic factors, it is impossible to explain tensions derived from asymmetries between roles and motivations of a state prescribed by its leaders and its actual abilities. In this context, explanations regarding domestic politics and character of leadership become important. Examining how decision makers reach specific decisions through interpreting structural pressures and Turkey’s desire to “shape” the region with its own cognitive perspectives as well as how they synthesize this with the necessities of the domestic political cycles will provide an insight to understand decisions that seem unintelligible at first glance.

Understanding New Middle Eastern Leadership: An Operational Code Approach:

Political Islam and Islamist organizations have broadly gained strength across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the post-Cold War era. Following the Arab uprisings, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), generally viewed as the world’s largest and most influential Islamist organization, has shaped the wider landscape of MENA politics. This study examines MB leadership by comparing M. Morsi of Egypt, R. Ghannouchi of Tunisia, and K. Meshaal of Gaza as examples of Islamist leaders to explain their political belief systems and predict their foreign-policy behavior. We use the operational code approach, a content-analysis software and statistical tests to conduct the study. Results show that the three leaders’ foreign policy beliefs are analogous to the averages of world leaders. Results also partially support the hypothesis that their foreign-policy propensities are similar to each other. We conclude that despite the conventional portrayal of MB leadership, these leaders use negotiation and cooperation to settle their differences in foreign affairs, and the best way to approach them is to engage in a Rousseauvian assurance game that emphasizes international social cooperation. Results also suggest important implications in terms of mainstream international relations theories.

The United States and North Korea: Avoiding a Worst-Case Scenario

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