The Analysis of the Turkish Hotile Policies aginst the Syrian Kurds 2015-2017
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2017-07-11
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en
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Abstract
This research revolves around a puzzle concerning the decision of the Turkish Government to carry out a series of military attacks against the Syrian Kurds during the period of 2015-2017. This hostile policy appears to violate the principle of ‘balancing’, according to which the Turkish Government would be expected to cooperate with the Syrian Kurds as its potential ally against ISIS as a common enemy. Thus, there is a gap between the expectations of Turkish behavior in the international system and the reality of Turkish actual policy. To examine this gap and seek for the causes behind the Turkish hostility, this study applies theory-testing process tracing method with three different theoretical approaches, namely balance of threat, neo-classical realism, and social constructivism.
Based on the overall findings, it has been proven that the hostility against the Syrian Kurds is precipitated by the combination of both domestic factor from neo-classical realist perspective and ideational factor from constructivist perspective. One the one hand, the growing threat from The Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the domestic environment managed to exceed the threat from ISIS in the external environment and caused the Turkish Government to switch the focus of its policy to counter the Syrian Kurds. On the other hand, a taken for granted idea in form of growing antagonism among the Turkish foreign policy elites also took a part in generating the hostile policies.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen