Turkey and the Middle East in the 1990s

1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 44-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabri Sayari

With the end of the cold war, and particularly following the Gulf War, Turkey abandoned its low-profile posture in the Middle East for a more activist regional role. The Kurdish issue, the single most important item on the country's domestic and foreign policy agendas, has also had important implications for Turkey's Middle East policy, further exacerbating longstanding problems with Syria that in turn contributed to Ankara's decision to sign a military agreement with Israel. The rise to power of the Islamist Refah party in July 1996 in a coalition government is likely to have significant implications for the country's identity and relations both with the West and the Islamic world.

1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark N. Katz

AbstractSince the breakup of the USSR in 1991, there has been significant change in Moscow's Middle East policy. During much of the Cold War, Moscow sought to project Soviet influence throughout even the far off Arab region of the Middle East. In the post-Cold War era, though, Russian foreign policy has focused on that part of the Middle East closest to the former USSR-the Northern Tier. This article will examine the major aspects of post-Cold War Russian foreign policy toward the Middle East in order to identify Moscow's multiple goals in the region and discuss Moscow's capacity for achieving them. First, though, a brief review of the different stages of Imperial and Soviet foreign policy toward the region is necessary in order to show the extent to which post-Cold War Russian foreign policy toward the Middle East has and has not changed.


1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Paul-Marie de La Gorce

With France in the lead, the European Community in 1996 seemed on the verge of cautiously asserting a more independent role in the Middle East peace process. This is in marked contrast to Europe's passive role for more than a decade following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and especially since the Gulf War, a period during which France and other major European powers acquiesced in U.S. domination of Arab-Israeli peace issues. Reviewing the history of European initiatives and absences during the cold war era, the author examines whether Europe now has the determination to chart its own peace policy despite U.S. and Israeli antagonism to its involvement.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 313-347
Author(s):  
Itamar Y. Lee

This article adopts a unique angle to analyze China’s Middle East policy in “Chasing the Rising Red Crescent: Sino-Shi’i Relations in the Post-Cold War Era.” With the end of the Cold War and the political renaissance of Islam, the author argues that China’s strategic approaches towards the Middle East have changed fundamentally. The rise of China on the Middle East coupled with the strategic ascendancy of Shi’i Islam in the Middle East invites a strategic window for the emerging architecture of global geopolitics and world economy. The aim of Lee’s study is to make clear the historical trajectories and evolving strategic calculations in China’s Middle East policy and its global implications by reviewing Sino-Shi’i relations in general and introducing Chinese strategic interactions with Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas in particular. Since the establishment of zhongguo zhongdong wenti teshi [Chinese Special Envoy for Middle Eastern Affairs] in 2002, China’s economic presence and political clout in the Middle East including the Shi’i region have been advanced obviously. Sino-Shi’i relations in the post-Cold War era, thus, should be seriously examined not only for understanding China’s strategic perceptions of the Middle East but also for explaining the pattern of Chinese foreign behaviours, as well as for expecting the impact of China’s rising in the region and its geopolitical implications for the future of China-U.S. relations


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Kübra Dilek Azman

The aim of this study is to discuss the Middle East policy of the United States’ (U.S.) after the Cold War. In the period following the Cold War, the Middle East has been a place that the U.S’ has projected upon as if it were its own private land. This is an attractive and important issue for political research area. In briefly, it can be divided the policies of the U.S. in the post-Cold War concerning the Middle East into three just like a tripod and these are security, economy and politics. Firstly, eliminate the danger of radical Islamic groups, especially war against to acts of terrorism, secondly; controlling oil and energy resources and the finally is ensuring the security of Israel state. This paper will examine the September 11 attacks and the U.S. Greater Middle East Project and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In that period U.S. tend to use the hard power. Than after this period, new President Barack Obama has changed the American Middle East policy discourses. The Obama’s foreign policy discourses show us that he is tend to use soft power instruments. This study argues that the U.S. foreign policy in Middle East after the Cold War has changed periodically. However the aim of Middle East policy of the U.S.’ has not changed, but the policy instruments have been changed from hard power to soft power Then, the question has been raised about the whether the U.S. will be success or not with this new policy. These concerning issues are going to be discussed.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Tülin Tuna

Abstract This article aims to explain the Middle East policy of America during the cold war. The structure of international politics has changed after World War II. Two new powers, the United States of America and the Soviet Russia, have dominated the world politics. In this period, the Middle East was of great importance for the United States economically, politically and strategically. The United States has been struggling to prevent a power threatening the interests of the West from controlling or dominating the Middle East. Especially in the period after 1945, it has been responsive to the Soviet Union’s developing control or influence over the region. In the present article, the importance of the Middle East for the United States is going to be emphasized first. Then, the doctrines called by the names of the US presidents and some conflicts and depressions experienced in this period are going to be discussed. Key Words: the Middle East policy of USA, the Cold War, Doctrines. 


2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyrus Schayegh

AbstractUsing Arabic, English, and French sources, and engaging Middle East and Cold War historians, this article makes a threefold argument. First, in United Arab Republic (UAR)–Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, the 1958–59 explosion of domestic and regional tensions triggered state-formation surges. Second, these formed one process, which made those states more alike, with state-led socioeconomic planning playing a key role. Third, that process partook of a global Third World trend intersecting with the early Cold War. I draw three conclusions. Although existing scholarly readings that the events of 1958–59 in the Arab Middle East formed a crisis but not an ideological or political watershed are correct, from the viewpoint of state formation this crisis was a milestone. Moreover, UAR–Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon had persisting affinities and shared regional positions—notably, the fact that all were sandwiched between the unstable poles of the Arab state system, Iraq and Egypt—that shaped their individual postindependence histories of state formation. Last, Washington's low-profile involvement in this state-formation surge illustrates how domestic sociopolitics and regional geopolitics—including the UAR's peaking popularity and influence in 1958–59—affected U.S. policy in the Cold War postcolonial world.


Author(s):  
Jesse Ferris

This book draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as “my Vietnam.” The book argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi–Egyptian struggle over Yemen, the book demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the “Arab Cold War” set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, this book brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.


Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney

The end of the Cold War left the USA as uncontested hegemon and shaper of the globalization and international order. Yet the international order has been unintentionally but repeatedly shaken by American interventionism and affronts to both allies and rivals. This is particularly the case in the Middle East as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the nuclear negotiations with Iran show. Therefore, the once unquestioned authority and power of the USA have been challenged at home as well as abroad. By bringing disorder rather than order to the world, US behavior in these conflicts has also caused domestic exhaustion and division. This, in turn, has led to a more restrained and as of late isolationist foreign policy from the USA, leaving the role as shaper of the international order increasingly to others.


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