Articles

Global warming is profoundly affecting the world's nature. As the population grows, so its dramatic impact increases. The increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the leading cause of melting icebergs in the Arctic region; on the other hand, it paves the way for maritime transportation without using the ice-cutters. Today's economic giant China is sending its products to the European markets via Suez Canal. However, if the Arctic route provides an opportunity, shipping time will fall by nearly a third. Usage of the new path will have increased the export of moreChinese goods from China. So, it would positively influence its economy in the future. Aware of this fact, Xi Jinping wants to work with regional states such as Russia by allocating a considerable amount of funding in opening anew Arctic passage as an alternative to the southern route. This study tries to explain the potential transit situation of the Arctic and its impact onChina’s economy by the transportation of goods to Europe and North America.

Hard power, the unorthodox foreign policy mechanism, has emerged recently as a complex agency that uses military power to regulate diplomatic relations between military and civilian actors. Although national governments use hard power rather frequently to influence foreign public opinions, the field’s scholarship tends to downplay the role of military instruments in the development of public diplomacy. Almost all armed forces contribute to various public diplomacy efforts by applying basic tools, including humanitarian-relief operations and construction works, and international military education and training programs. This article analyzes these tools in the context of soft power and public diplomacy and demonstrates the impact of military power on public diplomacy. It also reconstructs the effective time frames of public diplomacy works of the military by introducing a novel pattern to understanding these works.

The relationship between academics and policymakers has a complex and multi-layered structure, and there are different views on how this relationship should be. While discussing the political processes in the context of Turkey’s membership, the interactions between academics and policymakers in the relations between Turkey and the EU have the potential to provide solutions in the steps that need to be taken. However, the academic tendency of EU studies in Turkey will be revealed by answering questions such as what subjects are preferred by academics working on the EU in Turkey to study in the knowledge-production process, which subjects they prioritize in EU studies, what the effects of the ups and downs in Turkey-EU relations are on the academy, and how the academy positions itself in the field of EU studies. It is considered that such a study will contribute to further studies on how the academy’s relations with policymakers are and how they should be in studying Turkey-EU relations.

Multidimensional relations have protected Turkey and Israel from the effects of political crises. The main question of this article is how Turkey-Israel relations impact Turkish Jews business representatives. Interviews with Turkish Jewish businesspeople, who are primarily influenced by the developments in foreign policy due to their international business volumes, answered the question of how Turkish Jews were influenced by foreign policy, and emphasised the importance of minorities in foreign policy issues. The article explores the role of minorities in foreign policy and sheds light on how ethnic minorities, who are viewed as secondary agents in foreign policy, are influenced by the Turkey-Israel relations.

“Public diplomacy”, named by Tufts University Dean Edmund Gullion in 1965, has had an important share in 20th century political history. The concept in question emerged as a foreign policy technique used in the competition between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), especially during the Cold War period. As Joseph S. Nye briefly expressed the concept of soft power as “winning hearts and minds” in his book titled “The Means to Successin World Politics: Soft Power” (2004). The concept of public diplomacy, on the other hand, has increased the interest in question and has led to the concept being mentioned more in the discipline of International Relations. There is also a large amount of work written on the concept of propaganda, which can be expressed as a technique of influencing human activities through manipulation in general. However, it is a fact that Hitler Germany, with the establishment of the ministry of propaganda during the World War II, contributed to the enrichment of the aforementioned literature with the methods put into practice in institutionalization. But today, the concept of public diplomacy, which has just emerged, has been confused with the conceptualization of propaganda by the academics of the discipline of International Relations. This article aims to reveal the similarities and different aspects of these concepts by analyzing them both their etymological and historical contexts. Thus, it aims to prevent the semantic complexity by ensuring that concepts are used correctly.

Terrorism is affecting all human beings regardless of time, place, and nationality such as the case of brutal ISIS/ISIL attacks that took place in the center of Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2016. Mostly foreigners, twenty-two people have killed in the Holey Artisan Café during this attack. The terrorist organization of ISIS/ISIL claimed responsibility for this criminal act. This violent assault made one thing certain that the struggle against terrorism is increasingly getting more problematic and solutions are becoming more complicated. On the other side terrorist organization of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK/KCK/KONGRA-GEL) has been trying to terrorize provinces in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. In Turkey, PKK made strategic changes many times since its first action in 1984. However, there are some basic differences between these two terrorist organizations. For instance, while secular terrorist organization PKK restricts its violence, ISIS/ISIL as a religiously motivated terrorist organization has no limit in its violence. This article offers one of the first systematic comparative analyses based on PKK vs. ISIS/ISIL in terms of their major components. By doing so, the study is aiming to make a significant contribution to the existing terrorism literature by using the cases of PKK andISIS/ISIL. Besides, although there are abundant definitions of terrorism in the literature, this article will also try to find out a common and concise expression for terrorism.

The United States separated the world into several geographical commands from the perspective of global security and built military commands in these bases after theSecond World War. Following that period mono polar World system had been started and the United States has emerged as a hegemonic power. The securitization process of the world by the United States as a sole prevailing protective power has been going under risk by the emergence of a rival state popped up in Asia. While development moves of the People‘s Republic of China (PRC) especially in the economics has been successful under the slogan of ―peaceful rise‖, the military modernization processes of it were being perceived as a direct threat by the United States after 2000. The main hypothesis of this study is to clarify whether China‘s increase in its military power would threatening the national interests of the United States in the China Sea and to analyze the period which has been started by usage of the hard power assets of both states. In this article a state-level analysis had been made and only the military side of the competition between the United States and PRC had been focused.

There has been a paradigm change in terrorism studies which is a subfield of security studies, especially after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. This substantial change forced NATO to put into practice article 5 for the first time in the history of the organization. New job descriptions were included in the agenda of the organization such as struggling with uncertainty, instability, and multifaceted threats after the Cold War which initiated a new phase however, caused several fields and disciplines interested in terrorism. In this study, it is explored the extent to which can public diplomacy as a technique of soft power be used, which was coined by Joseph S.Nye and associated with neoliberalism, under the categories of security and terrorism.In addition to that, it attempts to find out the instruments for weakening and eliminating the terrorist organizations with the dialectical concepts of soft power and terrorism. This study is also aiming at a detachment of terrorists from the organization by using a new methodology of “persuasion processes” in public diplomacy as quite a new concept in the security and terrorism studies, which was known as “istimalet policy” in the history. Furthermore, it is aiming to contribute to the literature of terrorism by testing the hypothesis of the applicability of public diplomacy techniques in security and terrorism studies.

The United States received a lot of foreign support in struggle with terrorism aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, however the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq had created a number of growing problems. Even though intervention to Iraq revealed the legitimacy issue in international arena, the operation was carried out by leading United States military forces with the other coalition forces. Just after the invasions, religious terrorist organizations such as Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS/ISI and terror originated problems such as refugee crisis emerged in those chaotic environments. Having faced with economic problems, the Unites States was also loosing prestige in international area. Since the end of the Cold War mono polar international system has been transformed into the multipolar system due to the new world powers Russia and China. Because of the major shift in the balance of power, China did not interfere to the other problematic areas in the world on the contrary to Russia, and tried to follow a stable and legitimate foreign policy abroad. Especially China wants to take more active responsibility under the UN flag, and other official organizations.This article seeks to identify the main idea and motives of People’sRepublic of China, one of the significant contributor to UN peace operations in recent years.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has also been added to the last ring of the chain of possessing to the aircraft carrier which has been considered as being a regional or hegemonic power. Today Liaoning aircraft carrier, considered as the most valuable asset of Chinese Navy, has been the source of pride for all Chinese citizens. The ship named Varyag which had been purchased from Ukraine by a Chinese private company named Macau to be specifically used as a gambling and entertainment purposes, was sent to the China at the beginning of 2000s, and has been in the service for the use of 36 aircrafts as a floating airfield. However, this source of pride for Chinese people is perceived as a thread for the neighboring countries. In addition to the countries in the region, the United States is also monitoring the military activities of China and trying to keep the strategic balance of powers in the region. Here there are some questions related to the capacity expansion of PRC to bear in mind. Why does China want to increase its military power over the region? To what extend is she planning to increase its military power, which is one of the elements of national power concept of Hans J.Morgenthau? How does China want to realize its “peaceful rise” rhetoric? While seeking answers to these kinds of questions, this study will try to identify the technological capacity expansion of China.

Over the last few years a political transformation period has been started in theMiddle East and North Africa (MENA) region. An unfortunate event of a street vendor’s death in Tunisia initiated the period of “Arab Spring”, “Arab Awakening”or “Arab Uprisings”. In addition to that, problems among Israel and Palestine, and crisis in Syria and Iraq have made the things more complicated in this part of the world. Although it seems difficult to finda solution to stabilize and ease the tensions in the short run, there are needed new kinds of power(s) or coalitions. In order to achieve peace and tranquility how should be formed a new balance/nodes of power in the region and what should be the role of the United States in this unstable environment? This article attempts to find out feasible solutions and alternative suggestions by focusing on hard and soft power resources of the regional states and shifting alliances in MENA.

The study of political institutions over the last fifty years has demonstrated that they are, perhaps not surprisingly, critical to governance. While this statement may sound obvious to the reader, over the course of the last fifty to hundred years of scholarship on these issues, scholars and others have come up with many other ideas about what makes politics work, many of them centered on the individual action of charismatic leaders or strongmen, elections of the same, perhaps strong economic institutions, or even simply the hegemonic assertions of political corruption and domination on the part of power elites. Political institutions do not always receive enough of our attention.