Turkish Politics and Forign Policy

Course content

Foreign policy has conventionally been understood as detached from the domestic policy environment. This is derived from the realist assumption that there exists a clear demarcation line between the domestic and the international. Yet this assumption has been questioned by theoretical analysis as well as practical developments in recent years. This course aims at elaborating domestic sources of foreign policy making in the context of Turkish politics. It is based on the hypothesis that an `interactional` approach better serves to the understanding of both Turkish domestic politics and Turkish foreign policy. Thus the course will explain domestic sources of foreign policy issues, like democratization, human rights, the Kurdish question, the role of the military in Turkish politics etc.