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Approaches to Turkish ForeignPolicy: A Critical Realist AnalysisFaruk Yalvaça

a Department of International Relations, Middle EastTechnical University, Ankara, TurkeyPublished online: 14 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Faruk Yalvaç (2014) Approaches to Turkish Foreign Policy: A CriticalRealist Analysis, Turkish Studies, 15:1, 117-138, DOI: 10.1080/14683849.2014.892238

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Approaches to Turkish Foreign Policy:A Critical Realist Analysis

FARUK YALVAÇDepartment of International Relations, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

ABSTRACT This article analyses different approaches to Turkish foreign policy (TFP) from acritical realist perspective. It seeks to criticize positivist and post-positivist approaches to TFP,arguing for a non-reductionist, historical materialist approach based on the principles of criti-cal realism. It argues that historical materialist approaches are missing both from the analysisof TFP and from the mainstream foreign-policy analysis in general. In emphasizing the impor-tance of a historical materialist approach, the paper also underlines the importance ofacknowledging the structural context of foreign policy-making as a complement to theagent-centric, micro-level analyses that dominate the mainstream TFP analysis. Finally, itadvocates a research agenda that focuses on the development of a historical materialistapproach to TFP.

Introduction

The aim of this article is to critically assess different approaches to Turkish foreignpolicy (TFP). Although TFP has long been dominated by different positivistapproaches such as (neo)realism and (neo)liberalism, recent years have witnessedthe very welcome development of post-positivist and recently critical realist alterna-tives to studying TFP. The main argument of this paper is that despite the construc-tivist and post-structuralist turn in TFP analysis (TFPA), there are still unresolvedproblems in these approaches that can be more adequately addressed by criticalrealism. It is argued that the metatheoretical perspective provided by criticalrealism supports a structural, emergent, complex and ontological approach to theanalysis of TFP that is conspicuously missing in the analysis of TFP.

This article accordingly is organized in four parts. The first part outlines the chan-ging context of TFP. The second part sets out to assess, respectively, different posi-tivist and post-positivist (especially constructivist and post-structuralist) approachesto TFP. The third part introduces critical realism and discusses the compatibility ofhistorical materialism with critical realism. It is argued that a historical materialistapproach to TFPA is missing and a historical materialist perspective using the

Correspondence Address: Faruk Yalvac, Department of International Relations, Middle East TechnicalUniversity, Inonu Bulvarı, 06531 Ankara, Turkey. Email: fyalvac@metu.edu.tr

Turkish Studies, 2014Vol. 15, No. 1, 117–138, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2014.892238

# 2014 Taylor & Francis

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insights of critical realism offers a very promising alternative to the rational actormodel of conventional FPA by providing an analysis of the social origins and deter-minants of foreign policy and the way state–society complex effects foreign policy-making. The paper concludes by summarizing and discussing the implications of thearguments presented in the paper.

Changing Context of TFP

Recent years have witnessed different interpretations of the changing dynamics ofTFP. The pace of change occurring in the international system after the end of theCold War naturally affected the dynamics and directions of TFP. For instance, it isgenerally argued that transformations of the world system after the end of the ColdWar and in the post-September-11 period coupled with domestic social and economicchanges within Turkey brought an end to Turkey’s geopolitically grounded “bufferstate” identity and led to new forms of foreign-policy behavior based on the country’s“soft power.”1 The end of the Cold War and the accompanying geopolitical changesare said to have facilitated the formation of a “new geographic imagination,”2 knownas Neo-Ottomanism, based on Turkey’s “strategic depth”3 as well as its “civiliza-tional depth.”4 Turkey is also seen as a good example of a form of modernitywhere “Islam, democracy and free market values”5 meet, providing a model forthe future modernization of a currently unstable Middle East. The characterizationof Turkey as a “post-Cold-War warrior” or a “regional coercive power” has beentransformed to that of a “benign power”6 and “key and pivotal actor”7 with strongsoft power capabilities in both the region and the world.8 In line with this character-ization, current TFP has been described as “more independent, assertive”9 or “moreactive, multidimensional and integrated.”10

Some scholars have demonstrated a more critical attitude in analyzing these changesin TFP. Gozen, for instance, argues that the recent changes observed in TFP are largelyin form rather than leading to substantial changes in the traditional foreign-policy com-mitments of Turkey.11 He suggests that changes observed in TFP are not an “alterna-tive to US-NATO-Western centered foreign policy” but conform to Turkey’straditional policy practices. There is, he suggests, no contradiction between US imper-ial ambitions in the region and Turkey’s neo-liberal/identity-based foreign policy.12

Similarly, Mustafa Aydın argues that it is wrong to interpret the turn in TFP as onein the direction of Islamism, as is commonly believed. Rather, he suggests that “Isla-mism” has been used mainly as a tool for legitimizing foreign-policy preferences.13

Oguzlu argues that Turkey’s approach to the West has “evolved into” what he calls“Turkey-centric westernism” denoting a change in the “idea that membership inWestern Institutions, most notably the European Union, is a must for this tohappen.”14 Finally, Uzgel15 criticizes the idea that Turkey is gaining strategicdepth, arguing instead that what is crucial is not Turkey’s becoming a “centralpower or regional power” but its new mode of articulation with the global systemvia a new coalition of class forces. This, says Uzgel, indicates a change fromTurkey’s security- and geography-based integration into the world system to a form

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of integration based on “civil society, speculative capital movements [and] identitypolitics.”16

One positive outcome of the apparent changes in TFP and the diverse interpret-ations surrounding these developments has been the accompanying proliferation ofnew theoretical efforts aiming to understand and analyze TFP as an alternative tothe conventional realist-based traditional geopolitical approaches. Indeed, newforeign-policy practices have raised interest in the application of novel approachesto the analysis of TFP ranging from revised neorealist and neo-liberal approachesto constructivist, post-structuralist ones. Rather than focusing on the roots of thesechanges in TFP17 this paper emphasizes how these changes are explained and thetheoretical tools used to explain them.

Positivist Approaches to TFP: Realism and Liberalism

Turkish International Relations (IR) studies are mostly security-oriented in content,realist and state-centric in form and mostly adopt a positivist ontology and epistem-ology. This is an outgrowth of IR discipline’s development in Turkey during the ColdWar period.18 In Turkey, the discipline of IR is for the most part equated with foreign-policy analysis, which is “actor oriented” or “actor specific” with foreign policy itselfdefined narrowly as decision-making, diplomacy and negotiation. Accordingly, FPAis predominantly “actor oriented” or “actor specific”19 and focuses on the decision-making process, ignoring the (social) structural context of foreign policy decision-making altogether. Structure, if it is referred to at all, is understood in terms ofdifferent variables—e.g. internal and external determinants of foreign policy—withno analysis, for instance, of the relationship between social relations and the stateor how this relationship affects the decision-making process. It is this narrow defi-nition of foreign policy that explains why foreign-policy papers are written notonly by academics, but also by diplomats and journalists. On the whole, as Cox20

would say, these works are ahistorical and problem solving oriented and “runs thegreater risk of falling into the trap of unconscious ideology.”21 This is not to saythat these approaches do not use history; rather, the conception of history thatunderlies them is traditional, event-driven and usually positivist in their understand-ing.22 In Ashley’s words, in positivist IR “the state is regarded as the stuff of theorists’unexamined assumptions” and “not as a problematic relation whose consensualacceptance needs explanation.”23

Most of the work done on TFP relies on similar positivist assumptions and repro-duces its main features,24 a situation that is not very different from mainstreamforeign-policy analysis.25 It is certainly not easy to define positivism or to label atheory positivist. One common mistake is to look at positivism as an epistemologybased on scientific method of observation and hypothesis testing, whereas, in fact,the ontology of positivism is more crucial than its epistemological outlook. Ontologi-cally, positivism possesses atomistic assumptions about social reality and is rep-resented by realist as well as neorealist and rationalist theories of IR. As Josephemphasizes, “mainstream IR is underpinned by positivist assumptions about rational

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behavior, taking states as the (atomistic) units of analysis, employing a billiard-ballmodel of state interaction, focusing on regularities and predictable outcomes, andgenerally presenting a reified social ontology that excludes underlying structures,causal mechanisms and constitutive processes.”26 In fact, from the perspective ofcritical realism that will be discussed in the third section, realism in IR is basicallyunreal, as it denies “complexity,” “favoring the present over the absent and areduction of reality to the actual” and ignoring the “unobservable social structures,causal processes and generative mechanisms that produce the events.”27 This is par-ticularly important in analyzing the relation between social structures, the historicallyevolved state structures and decision-makers allowing variation in different foreign-policy strategies adopted in different periods of Turkey’s history as a result of differ-ent configurations of relations of production, social classes and the state.

In the analysis of TFP, positivism has different manifestations, the most importantof which appears as a theoretically uninformed narrative and chronology of eventsthat has resulted in an analysis of TFP in terms of periods, such as “TFP duringWWI” or “Post-2002 TFP.” This form of analysis is generally grounded inrealism, with constructivist approaches grafted to a realist framework also seen inrecent years. These analyses adopt an empiricist epistemology based on an eventistconception of foreign policy. However, even from a positivist perspective, theseworks are limited to the “collection of data,” having been unsuccessful in developinginductive-ist generalizations.28 This event-ist, empiricist tradition is best representedby Mehmet Gonlubol’s well-known book, Turkish Foreign Policy with Events (Olay-larla Turk Dıs Politikası), which, as the title suggests, possesses an empiricist under-standing of foreign policy.29

Positivists adopt an analytical approach, dividing determinants of foreign policyinto domestic and international components without attempting to explain theoreti-cally how these different determinants constitute each other. Rather, the state is con-sidered an ontological given located as the crossroads at which these componentsmeet to produce foreign-policy outcomes30 and no attempt is made to define whata state is, whether it be Weberian, liberal or Marxist. The lack of concern withhow these different factors effect state action is not considered problematical. Thisis particularly evident in approaches that adopt a realist framework that conceivesof the state as totally abstracted from society. This abstraction makes it possible toconceptualize foreign policy as an autonomous level of political activity narrowlydefined as the decisions of different governmental institutions or different policiespursued by the government at different conjunctures; i.e. conflictual, cooperative,rational.31 Thus, FPA is reduced to a description of events, official visits, negotiationsand mediations, leadership style and other observable daily phenomena—i.e. thoseelements that constitute, in critical realist terms, the actual and the empirical levelsof social reality.

Apart from neoclassical realism whose specificity is discussed below, an asocialconcept of state and an asocial concept of international politics are combined inneorealism to produce an asocial concept of foreign policy. The majority of TFPscholars take for granted that the only way of analyzing foreign policy is with the

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state-centrism of realist as well as liberal approaches. The concept of soft power thathas recently come into use to describe Turkey’s new foreign-policy strategy is alsoproblematic, since it is just as state-centric as realism, despite the liberal implicationsin the references to soft power as an instrument of foreign policy. The concepts of softand hard power are used as if they reflect substantial theoretical differences. Howeverthey are not as different as they appear to be since they refer to different policy instru-ments rather than to differences of a theoretical nature. Their apparent differenceamounts to what in traditional literature refers to realist versus liberal approachesto foreign policy within a state-centric framework.

Another state-centered, realist concept used to define Turkey’s recent foreignpolicy has been Davutoglu’s concept of “strategic depth,” used to denote the geo-graphical and historical relations of Turkey in the Middle East that, as the namesuggests, prioritizes military-strategic power.32 Despite its claims to the contrary,the concept of strategic depth refers more to geopolitical depth than to social depthas defined here33 in line with critical realism as embedded in and constituted byunderlying social relations.

Although rare, despite neorealism’s distaste for foreign-policy analysis, one mayencounter a few neorealist explanations of TFP. For instance, Tarık Oguzlu appliesa neorealist structural framework to his analysis of Turkish–Israeli relations.34

Based on the positivist premises underlying his approach, Oguzlu is motivated bya desire to “predict the future” of the bilateral relations between Turkey and Israelon the basis of a neorealist logic.

Recently, there have also been some attempts to apply neoclassical realism inexplaining Turkey’s “New Foreign Policy Activism.”35 In addition to the constrain-ing effects of systemic variables emphasized by neorealism, neoclassical realismattaches importance to a state’s domestic arrangements, particularly decision-makers’ perceptions and state structures in explaining its foreign policy. By adoptinginsights from neoclassical realist perspective, Iseri and Dilek argue that state struc-tures and their leaders’ perceptions play a significant role in foreign-policy behav-ior.36 However, the authors do not dwell on what these state structures are andconcentrate more on the perceptions variable. Therefore it is not clear from theiranalysis how structures enable/limit foreign policies and what exactly is meant bystate structures. Therefore their conclusion that “as is the case for the conflictbetween Armenia and Azerbaijan, the ruling elites in this region are constrained bytheir state-structures and perceptions of their policymaking elites, which keep themfrom leading more rational foreign policy courses” remain unsubstantiated andvague.

In addition to the above-mentioned forms of realist analysis, recent years have alsoseen the expansion of liberal approaches37 in the analysis of TFP. The Justice andDevelopment Part (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) government’s pursuance ofliberal/neoliberal international policies has made liberal analysis of TFP increasinglypopular. Where IR theory is concerned, there is more uniting realism and liberalismthan there is separating them and most IR scholars would agree that liberal policiesare often used in IR as a cover for realist politics. Liberalism, like realism, is also

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state-centric. Realists and liberals both agree that states rationally pursue a set ofgoals, and both believe that states possess fixed identities and preferences. Liberalsalso believe in the importance of international institutional cooperation to overcomeanarchy. Another feature of liberal thought is its association of liberal democraticregimes with peaceful policies. Liberals support the “democratic peace” theory,arguing that mature democracies do not go to war against one another.

There are different variants of this line of thinking in TFPA. It is best representedby Fuat Keyman,38 who comes closest to the democratic realist view, at least in itsdefense of democratization and modernization, although it is defended with a moretheoretical content compared to the policy-oriented approaches of US democratic rea-lists. Some of the proponents of the ideas associated with Keyman’s position, knownin Turkey as the “liberal left,”39 highlight the importance of democratization againstthe background of traditional statist–Kemalist policies of governance. Keyman ana-lyses the changing nature of foreign policy in Turkey in terms of “the interactionbetween geopolitics, consolidation of democracy and the achievement of a ‘liberal,plural and multicultural modernity.’” It is suggested that democracies are in abetter position to pursue “constructive and multidimensional” policies and toachieve and consolidate a “liberal, plural, multicultural modernity.”40 Other scholarshave similarly argued that democratization will lead to an “area of maneuver andflexibility” in foreign policy that Turkey did not previously enjoy.41

This liberal emphasis on democratization rather than nationalism in the formationof foreign policy has led liberals to put great emphasis on Turkish–EU relations,given their belief in Europeanization as a “system-transforming” relationship thatwill help increase the pace of democratization in Turkey.42 A similar line of analysiswhich however underlines more the economic basis of “new TFP” is present in Kir-isci’s analysis of the “trading state”43 and his “synthetic” and “multidimensional lookat Turkey’s foreign policy transformation.”44 According to Kirisci a process of “de-securitization” has been going on in Turkish attitudes toward its neighborhood.Similar to theorists of complex interdependence, Kirisci argues that the “interdepen-dent and integrated neighborhood around Turkey” created by the “movement ofpeople, civil society interactions and economic exchanges” “may eventually leadto a ‘democratic peace’” in the Middle East region.45 The liberal view in summaryis based on the one hand implicitly on the democratic peace theory that argues forthe peaceful nature of democracies and to a pluralist understanding of the statesociety relationship. As a result, although the liberal view appears to include amore detailed analysis of the domestic dimension, its understanding of internationalpolitics is still state-centric and shares many of the assumptions of realist theory.

Post-Positivist Approaches: Constructivism and Post-Structuralism

Post-positivist approaches including critical theory (particularly critical securitystudies), constructivism and post-structuralism have also found their way into TFPanalysis. Of these, constructivist approaches have taken the lead, although post-struc-turalist approaches have also increased over the last decade. Neither constructivism

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nor post-structuralism are unified systems of thought. There are different variants ofeach. However, this variation in constructivist thinking is not clearly observed inthe works on TFP where constructivism is taken in a lump sum manner. Most scholarsadopt Wendtian constructivism although some lean toward post-structural interpret-ative constructivism, which emphasizes the linguistic mediation and construction ofsocial reality and its emphasis of production of meanings.

Wendt46 has been the key representative of conventional constructivism in inter-national relations. This form of constructivism has developed as a reaction to whatWendt has termed, somewhat narrowly, the materialism of neorealist theory. Thekey tenet of constructivism is the idea that the “structure of society is constitutedby ideas rather than material forces.”47 Constructivists define structures in terms ofinter-subjective understanding and meanings, and their understanding of the materialis restricted to powers, resources and material capabilities themselves, rather than thesocial relations that give rise to them. The material assumes importance only in asocial context, which is itself defined idealistically in terms of social rules, sharedknowledge and inter-subjective meanings.48 Foreign policy is also a social constructaccording to constructivists49 who emphasize the way in which identities and inter-ests mutually constitute and effect foreign-policy behavior. In contrast to neo-realists,who see state identities as given and interests as determined by the structure of thesystem, constructivists see these identities as constructed and as the basis of astate’s interests. Thus, whereas the realists see “defending the national interest” asimportant, the constructivists see “defining the national interest” as the crucialissue50 given that it is not the material distribution of power but identities thatdefine states’ interests and, therefore, their foreign policy.

There are different accounts of constructivist TFP in the literature underlining theissue of how identities effect the formation of foreign policy.51 Constructivist ana-lyses differ slightly in their descriptions of how TFP is affected by changes in the defi-nition of Turkish identity. Some scholars have emphasized differences in identity todevelop a constructivist analysis of national security52 which is particularly visible inthe literature explaining the conflict between Greece and Turkey53 and Turkey’srelationship with the EU, where each side has a different perception of their respect-ive identities.54 Other constructivist approaches, particularly that of Pınar Bilgin,55

originate from critical security analyses56 with security understood not in therealist sense as some external threat, but as an issue defined by agents throughtheir insecurities. Unlike culturalist analyses which depict foreign policy as a reactionby a “given unchanging and independent identity” to some externally static threat,57

“security” is understood as determined by a constitutive relation between identitiesand (in)securities, which are considered “dependent variables.”58

Similarly, in a mix of constructivist/post-structuralist analysis, Kıvanc Ços andPınar Bilgin explore the “conditions of possibility” in Turkey’s turning away fromthe USSR toward the USA after WWII, complementing the “efficacy of materialinterest/threat explanations” by demonstrating the importance of the “interpretativelabor of policymakers in portraying events as ‘threats’ or mere ‘challenges.’”59 Ina similar vein, Balcı and Kardas60 make use of the Copenhagen School’s theory of

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securitization to understand the changing dynamics of Turkey’s relations with Israel.They analyze Turkey’s relationship with Israel through the threat perceptions of themain actors involved in foreign-policy decision-making, i.e. the military, the Kemal-ist elite and the AKP government and criticize rationalist–realist explanations.

Umut Uzer argues in his Identity and Turkish Foreign Policy that identities andideologies as well as national interests are important in determining state behavior.61

Uzer states that the approach which he adopts is an “eclectic” one whose argumentfalls somewhere between an identity-based constructivist analysis and a realist analy-sis. However, the argument suffers from trying to combine two diametrically opposedpositions, namely, the rationalist epistemology of conventional constructivism(which provides a “framework of prediction for future Turkish behavior”62) andthe subjectivist ontology of constructivism. Criticizing Wendt’s model for failingto analyze the actors before interaction, Yucel Bozdaglıoglu63 offers another con-structivist analysis of TFP that emphasizes the importance of the domestic construc-tion of identities in explaining FP preferences and interests. Bozdaglıoglu stressesthat identities are constructed before states interact with each other, explaining differ-ent foreign-policy stances by referencing differences in perceptions of Turkish iden-tity among Turkey’s Kemalists, Islamists and Nationalists. He combines his analysiswith a liberal–pluralist understanding of society, suggesting that “the state’s identitywill emerge as a result of domestic struggles among various groups—each pressingfor an identity that would conform to their identity conceptions;” however, he doesnot elaborate on the nature of these domestic struggles or how they relate to widersocial relations. Similar to Uzer’s analysis, a state-centric constructivism is combinedwith a liberal understanding of the state as the arena where different group conflictsare solved, and foreign policy is explained by the “different cultural backgrounds andidentity conceptions” of different groups and institutions.64 However identity for-mation is defined in culturalist terms, without an explanation of how identities arerelated to concrete social power relations.

One problem that all these constructivist accounts share is that they fail to discusshow identities are translated into state power, nor is it so clear that identity-basedforeign policy is based less on geopolitical considerations leading, for instance, todifferent policies when and if security of a state is at stake. Can Turkey be said tobe following a less state-interested policy today due to its changing social identity?On an empirical or actual level, that a change in identity leads to a change inforeign policy is a conjunctural issues that may not be determined in advance. Infact, there are more structural forces to foreign policy that make it impossible to con-ceptualize identity change as leading directly to policy change, but most constructi-vist approaches ignore the fact that inter-subjectivity assumes its meaning only withinan objective social context when addressing the question of how identities lead todifferent policies.

Similar to constructivists, poststructuralists see the world in terms of inter-subjec-tive praxes and human actions and understandings, rather than objective materialsocial relations. Poststructuralists emphasize the role that language and discourseplay in the construction of reality and identity, possessing an inter-subjective

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understanding of discourse, with language considered not as a neutral tool that pas-sively reflects reality, but as something that constructs it as well. Thus, a poststructur-alist approach may be said to be based on a subjective epistemology and a subjective(ideational) ontology that aims to deconstruct received truths, discourses, narrativesand binary oppositions in order to understand how identities/ differences areformed.65

The poststructuralist discourse in TFP analysis focuses on how different foreign-policy practices are constructed through different discourses. The emphasis is onthe deconstruction of different discursive structures, challenging binary oppositionsand demonstrating the instability of meanings attached to the discourses. In oneexample of a poststructuralist analysis of TFP, Senem Aydın Duzgit, in her analysisof European Union (EU)–Turkish relations, defines foreign policy “as a discursivepractice,”66 arguing along the lines of Roxanne Doty67 that foreign-policy actors“produce meanings” through discourse and “actively construct the reality on whichforeign policy is based.”68 Other scholars have also attempted to use post-structuralapproaches to understand how the discourses against Turkey’s membership of the EUare constructed.69 In an analysis bringing together post-structural and post-colonialapproaches, Bahar Rumelili discusses the construction of “Turkey as a liminalsubject” “which eludes the identity categories constituted by discourses on inter-national politics, such as, Western/non-Western, developed/under-developed, demo-cratic/non-democratic.”70 Turkey’s liminal status is described as “being in but not ofEurope.” This is meant to demonstrate “how social categories constituted by the dis-courses of international politics are inevitably negotiated, contested and ultimatelytransversed by actors positioned in liminal spaces.”71 Similarly, Lerna Yanık ana-lyses the “discursive formation of exceptionalism” in TFP and “illustrate[s] how his-torical and geographical features of a country are used discursively to construct anexceptional identity that in turn justifies and rationalizes foreign policy actions.”72

Despite its radical claims, this form of analysis is based on an acceptance of the tra-ditional domestic/international distinction, replicating this in a discursive analysis.Thus, Yanık notes a contradiction between the discourse on exceptionalism inforeign policy and the domestic Kemalist nation-building project based on the“idea of purity” of a nation. From the emergent perspective of critical realism, thiscontradiction between domestic and foreign-policy practices can be traced back tothe same social relations and processes without being reduced to them and thereforethey stop appearing to be contradictory. Therefore, the contradiction can be resolvedif the domestic and the international “levels” can be seen to arise from similar socialprocesses and conditions. This, however, would imply a different ontological startingpoint, that of social relations rather than the discursive practices that are rooted inthose relations.

Ali Balcı’s analysis of TFP most closely follows a “poststructuralist line.”73 As isoften the case in post-structural writings that criticize modernist approaches to thestate and foreign policy, his analysis is based on a criticism of the internal/externaldivide. Similar to other poststructuralists such as Walker and Weber, he deconstructsthis as a myth whereby the state “imposes specific meanings” on who is inside and

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who is outside. Foreign policy “does not have an a priori reality, but is a constructedmyth;” it is a “strategy” that involves “internal power relations.”74 As with Yucel,Balcı takes the construction of identities as dependent upon different power relationsinside; however, what these power relations are and how they are constructed is notclearly analyzed. Despite their different starting points, both Balcı and Yucel possessa liberal–pluralist understanding of the state as an arena of power struggle withoutrelating power relations to a structural context of state–society relations. If foreignpolicy is a myth, then the circumstances that “produce” this myth need to be under-stood. Moreover, although Balcı underlines the importance of power relations in theformation of identities, he ignores more concrete social relations such as the relationsof property and production out of which these power relations emerge and how theyare translated into state policies. Thus, as Joseph might argue, Balcı’s “critique isdeconstructive but not ontological,”75 ignoring how power relations emerge andare formed within a structural context and as an outcome of social processes. In con-trast, Balcı’s analysis reduces power to a performative strategy76 or to its exercise.This argument lacks “an adequate notion of social stratification and hierarchy,”and assumes “a flat ontology that remains at the level of the surface play of powerrelations.”77

Critical Realism and Historical Materialist Approaches to TFPA

Despite its radical implications and its insights into a substantial reorientation offoreign-policy analysis, critical realism has not yet substantively found its way intoIR theory and its implications for IR in general and for FPA in particular are in itsinitial stages of development.78 Critical realism should not be confused with classicalor structural realism in IR. Critical realism is not a social theory, but a philosophy ofscience associated primarily with the views of Roy Bhaskar.79 It is a Meta theoryunder-laboring the arguments of existing theories or criticizing their fundamentalassumptions. Its main assumption is the existence of an objective world independentof ideas, beliefs and worldviews. Therefore, it differs from other philosophies ofscience in its emphasis on realist ontology and the structural context of humanaction. The differences between constructivists, post-structuralists and critical realistscan be summarized as follows: Unlike traditional constructivists, who have a positi-vist epistemology and an inter-subjective ontology, and poststructuralists, who have asubjectivist epistemology and ontology, critical realists have a realist ontology and asubjectivist fallibilist epistemology.80

According to critical realism, “social reality is ordered and structured before weimpose our cognitive categories on it.”81 Critical realists make a distinctionbetween the transitive dimension of knowledge referring to the thought objects (con-cepts) and the apparent phenomena identified by our concepts and the intransitivedimension referring to the real things this knowledge is about, the underlyingsocial structures and generative mechanisms that make the apparent phenomenonpossible. It questions not only the empirical realism of positivist approaches whichreduce reality to the level of the empirical, but idealist philosophical positions such

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as constructivism and post-structuralism, which reduce reality to rules, norms, ideasor to theories, texts, discourses and linguistic constructs. As Joseph indicates, both theconstructivist belief in the social construction of reality and the poststructuralistemphasis on discourse and language “conflate the ontological status of reality withthe epistemological issue of the knowledge we have of that reality.”82

Critical realism accordingly argues for depth ontology of social relations and a dif-ferentiated, stratified and structured reality. A distinction is made between three levelsof reality: the empirical (that which is experienced), the actual (for example, foreign-policy events) and the real (underlying powers and mechanisms that produce foreign-policy events).83 The relation between these different levels of reality is explained bythe concept of emergence, which locates political processes within a “stratified anddifferentiated totality of social relations”84 without reducing them to any one levelof social reality. Therefore, in contrast to mainstream IR and foreign-policy analyseswhich focus on and prioritize the level of events or the level of actual, critical realismtakes a structural but non-reductionist approach to the different strata of social reality.

In its essence, critical realism provides an alternative starting point for thinkingabout TFP within the context of underlying social structures. Although discussedmore in metatheoretical terms, critical realism is known in TFPA through its viewon the agent-structure problem, proposing a structural approach without ignoringforeign-policy agency.85 Critical realist arguments thus address the much often-cited need to integrate the micro focus of foreign-policy theory with the moremacro-focus of IR.86 However what is noticed in these discussions is that structuresare more thought of as institutions (as in the discussions of Carlsnaes) rather than realsocial relations that are the foci of a critical realist-inspired historical materialistapproach outlined in this section.

A historical materialist alternative fares better in the discussion of the relationbetween social structures and foreign-policy strategies. The space here does notallow for an extensive discussion of the relation between critical realism and histori-cal materialist approaches87 However, critical realism under-labors Marxism promis-ing to provide an alternative reading that is neither naturalist, reductionist norteleological.88 Indeed, Marxism’s realist ontology contrasts with both the constructi-vist and post-structuralist conceptions of an inter-subjectively determined reality andthe positivist conception of reality as limited to observable phenomena which is thedominant way of theorizing in foreign-policy analysis.

Those who are in the post-positivist camp and who adopt constructivist and post-structuralist positions toward TFP consider themselves critical in rejecting realist andneorealist approaches to the analysis of TFP. They base this claim on their adopting asocial understanding of state behavior but they fail to relate state power to socialpower. When they refer to the “social” constructivists emphasize the role of ideasand identities in the shaping of foreign-policy behavior whereas the poststructuralistsunderline the importance of different discourses and emphasize the linguistic deter-mination of reality. However, as argued above both of these approaches are unitedin adopting anti-realist positions philosophically and this differs from what isimplied in the term “critical” in the philosophy of critical realism. The concept of

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critical used in this paper is different and refers to an explanatory critique of dominantsocial structures and mechanisms and the way they are “maintained and reproduced”through different social practices.89 The concept of the social in the constructivist orpoststructuralist positions is used very loosely and in a limited manner. Therefore,although these approaches claim to be critical, most of the time they remain withinthe same ideological terrain that they attempt to criticize.

Compared to the constructivist or poststructuralist stances, historical materialistapproaches offer the most promise for a critical explanation of TFP in theirattempt to identify social sources of foreign-policy strategies and projects. Themain thrust of historical materialist arguments is that the social relations of productionand property relations in a social formation are internally related with political, econ-omic and ideological relations to form a contradictory totality.90 From a historicalmaterialist perspective the essential elements relevant to foreign-policy analysis arethe institutional separation of the political and economic spheres in social formationsdominated by capitalist mode of production91 and the abstraction of political powerfrom civil society that gives the political sphere an appearance of autonomy. This sep-aration further explains why capital interests may not always be served by the(foreign policy) actions of the state agency as well as the reason why the state appar-atus does not need to be directly run by the capitalist classes, to serve the interests ofcapital accumulation.

In line with this perspective, a historical materialist approach developed using theinsights of critical realism would shift the emphasis from state agency (or agency ofgovernmental elites, bureaucrats or interest groups) to class agency as affecting theformation of FP92 and emphasizes the importance of the structural context offoreign policy-making, defined in terms of the state–society relationship in whichforeign policy takes place, and how foreign-policy decisions reproduce or transformthis structural complex.93 This does not refer to the “anarchy vs. hierarchy” dichot-omy of neo-realists or to the “conflict between interest groups” put forth by the lib-erals, but to the structure of social relations formed around a dominant mode ofproduction where different class interests materialize.

The crucial issue here is a criticism of the way in which state–society relations areabstracted in the conventional foreign-policy analysis. The argument is that with itsfocus on class and class conflict, an analysis of the dominant social forces and theirrelation to the state is crucial in understanding foreign-policy practices. The precisenature of the relation between social classes and the state apparatus and in theTurkish case with the civil and the military bureaucracy and how class interests aretranslated into and reflected in foreign policy is a controversial theoretical issuethat cannot be addressed in detail in this context. The differences between the pro-cesses of state formation in the core and the periphery of world capitalism alsoneed to be taken into account in analyzing how class interests are mediated and trans-lated into state policies. In addition, the way in which the territorial logic of power isintertwined with capitalist logics of power and the way this relation affects domesticclass structures and in turn foreign policies and projects of the state is a further com-plicating factor and has been the focus of discussions in recent years.94

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It should first be underscored that despite some critically oriented attempts, a theor-etically informed foreign-policy analysis along historical materialist lines as definedabove is hard to find in TFPA. An initial effort in this direction can be seen in BaskınOran95 and Uzgel’s96 analyses of TFP as a relatively autonomous level of activitytrying to link foreign-policy formation to domestic social (class interest) determi-nants. Their emphasis is on the effects of class interests on the formation of nationalinterest, and the way this effects foreign policy. However, their use of the concept ofthe relative autonomy of the state has familiar theoretical problems that need to beresolved, the main issue being how the level of politics is simultaneously determinedby and autonomous of social forces. For instance, according to Uzgel, states pursueforeign economic policies in line with and as constrained by the interests of the domi-nant classes, but can act against their interests when security and defense of the stateare at stake. This makes it easier to resort to the idea of a national interest, a line ofanalysis Uzgel takes from the Weberian state conception of Skocpol and her under-standing of the “potential autonomy of the state,”97 a position incompatible with ahistorical materialist analysis. As Pozo98 notes in a different context, this commonformulation “cannot explain how state managers come to articulate and implementa foreign policy that responds, efficiently or not, to capitalism’s needs” and fails to“clarify in any systematic way the relation between the economic national interestand other interests specific to the state.” This “incomplete articulation of the state-capitalist link,”99 he argues, renders the putative relation between the economicand political interests vague and under-theorized.

The emergent argument of critical realism fares better in this conceptualization byshowing how “relatively autonomous” strata are in fact constituted by underlyinglayers without which they could not exist. Against determinist structural expla-nations, these strata are not reducible to these underlying layers; however againstthe relative autonomy thesis, they influence them. From the critical realist perspec-tive, foreign policy represents a higher-order level of reality, where different con-figurations of power are conjuncturally manifested and where “counteractingprocesses and tendencies” come into play.100 This does not imply the relative auton-omy of foreign policy, but a distinct level of social reality that emerges from otherunderlying social strata. Jessop’s non-essentialist definition of the state as “an insti-tutional ensemble of different social relations”101 and Patomaki’s102 definition as“complex layered assemblies of social relations” can be noted as examples of anemergent understanding of critical realism whereby foreign policy can be analyzed.

Within the context of a stratified and structured social reality and the way in whichthese are connected to state institutions, it is important to avoid a purely structural oragential approach to the analysis of structures and agents.103 The link between struc-tures and agents can be conceptualized through a critical-realist interpretation of theGramscian concept of hegemony104 and how hegemony is formed, maintained andreproduced through different hegemonic projects. The concept of hegemonicproject is particularly important in linking class agents and their interests with differ-ent foreign-policy projects. Hegemonic projects are “national-popular programs ofpolitical, intellectual and moral leadership that advance the long-term accumulation

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strategy while granting concessions to the masses in return for their support.”105

Accordingly, the structural basis of TFP can be defined as the struggle of differentclasses to control the state apparatus in line with specific “hegemonic projects”pursued both nationally and increasingly transnationally. TFP thus will be viewedin light of the changing dynamics of the domestic class struggles for hegemonythat occurs at the economic, political and ideological levels and through their linksto the global social formation. The trajectory of TFP can then be analyzed in termsof different hegemonic projects such as the transition from a Kemalist hegemonybased on state classes106—the civil–military bureaucracy—to a predominantlyclass cum identity-based hegemony facilitated by the neo-liberal transformation ofTurkey. The policy of strategic depth advocated by Ahmet Davutoglu and the ideaof Neo-Ottomanism associated with this policy can accordingly be seen as a hegemo-nic project of an emerging bourgeoisie class for reproducing and consolidating itsrule107 Particularly significant here would be to link this new mode of foreign-policy strategy to the conditions of capitalist accumulation and reproduction spatiallyand demonstrate how foreign-policy strategies are related to the way the new Islamicbourgeoisie defines and articulates its interests nationally as well as transnationally.

The preceding argument in summary emphasizes the need to incorporate a sociallydefined structural dimension to FPA that has so far been mostly dominated by agent-centric analyses adopted from micro-economic theories of rational behavior. An his-torical materialist approach supported by critical realism allows a more sociologicallyoriented foreign-policy analysis that incorporates the real social context (underlyingsocial relations) of foreign policy-making, a form of analysis that is markedly absentin the analysis of TFP. In the words of Rupert a foreign-policy analysis compatiblewith critical realism would then look like a “dialectical layer cake” attempting toexplain FP as part of the dynamics of social relations and structures of capitalist mod-ernity and how these relations create and limit “particular kinds of world politics”without falling into a Weberian “multi-causal cul de sac.”108

Conclusion

This article has attempted to analyze different approaches to TFP.109 The argument ofthe paper is that TFP analysis overall has been dominated by state-centric, decision-making approaches adopting a positivist ontology and epistemology. There has beena recent upsurge of post-positivist analyses in TFP, most of them being constructivistand poststructuralist. As mentioned above, although the introduction of these newapproaches has enriched and developed TFP analysis to a great extent, these newapproaches have contained problematic assumptions in their analytical frameworks.One obvious shortcoming of these approaches is the lack of a critical consideration ofthe meaning of the terms that are used and the lack of a meta-theoretical discussion ofthe different approaches that have been uncritically adopted. As Wight and Josephargue, the least critical realism can offer to IR “is a critique of the assumptions ofdominant theories . . . which prevent [in] depth enquiry and hide the real nature ofthings.”110 What is most evident is the absence of a historical materialist approach

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to TFPA. This paper has argued that within the realm of social theory, historical mate-rialist approaches under-labored by critical realism pose important challenges both tocurrent TFPA as well as to mainstream FPA which, as defined by historical materi-alism, lacks a socially understood structural dimension. The social ontology of a his-torical materialist approach to TFPA would thus give priority to the historicallyevolved social relations of production and the connection between these relationsand the state as a political form thus providing a social account of foreign-policy prac-tices. The insights of critical realism concerning the relationship between differentlevels of social reality makes it possible to conceive of foreign policy in termsother than agent- or actor-centric (without ignoring the dialectical relation betweenstructure and agency) as well as allowing for the possibility of a sociologicalapproach that is missing in conventional FPA. The arguments of historical material-ism also help to unite foreign-policy analysis with the systemic focus of IR theory byconceptualizing FP as part of a structured totality of social relations that include boththe domestic and the international. The overall implication of this argument is to openthe black box of the state in TFPA by emphasizing the importance of both the dom-estic and the international structural context of foreign policy-making. Together withcritical realism, a non-reductionist historical materialist approach can help providefresh insights into TFP by bringing into focus the power struggle among socialclasses as the basis of the different hegemonic projects that lie at the basis of the poli-tics of Turkish foreign policy-making. This will allow the development of a socialtheory of TFP and facilitate the rejection of the naturalizing and universalizingsocial and historical categories with which it is customary to analyze and explainforeign policy.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous referees for their supportive comments and sug-gestions. My special thanks to Jonathan Joseph who has read and commented on anearlier version of this article.

Notes

1. Keyman, “Globalization, Modernity and Democracy,” 2; Altunısık, “The Possibilities and Limits ofTurkey’s Soft Power”; Oguzlu, “Soft power,” 81–97.

2. Aras and Fidan, “Turkey and Eurasia,” 193–214.3. Davutoglu, Stratejik Derinlik.4. Duran, “Turk Dıs Politikasının Ic Siyaset Boyutu,” 20.5. Keyman, “Globalization, Modernity and Democracy,” 12; also Keyman, “Globalization, Modernity

and Democracy: In Search of a Viable Domestic Polity,” 22.6. Kirisci, “The transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy,” 52.7. Larrabee and Lesser, Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty, 3. See also Fuller, The New

Turkish Republic.8. Keyman, “Globalization, Modernity and Democracy,” 3.9. Onis, “Multiple Faces of the ‘New’ Turkish Foreign Policy,” 48.

10. Gozen, “Turk Dıs Politikasında Degisim Var mı?,” 31.

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11. Ibid., 31.12. Ibid., 32.13. Aydın, “Twenty Years Before, Twenty Years After,” 13.14. Oguzlu, “Turkey and the West,” 981.15. Uzgel, “Dıs Politikada AKP,” 379.16. Ibid.17. See Kirisci, “ Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy,” 34–41 for a summary of different causes of

the transformation in Turkish foreign policy.18. See the Special Issue of Uluslararası Iliskiler (International Relations) 2, no. 6 (2005) for a discus-

sion of the state of IR discipline in Turkey.19. Hudson, “Foreign Policy Analysis,” 1–30.20. Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders,” 209.21. Ibid., 247.22. See Hobson and Lawson, “What is History in International Relations,” 415–35.23. Ashley, “The Poverty of Neorealism,” 268, 270.24. Aydınlı, Kurubas, Ozdemir, Yontem, Kuram, Komplo, 126, 135 although correctly observe the dom-

inance of positivism in Turkish IR studies, nevertheless very narrowly define what positivism is.25. Houghton, “Reinvigorating the Study of Foreign Policy Decision-Making,” 24–45.26. Joseph, “Philosophy in International Relations,” 349.27. Ibid., 355, ftn. 34, 348.28. Aydınlı, Kurubas, Ozdemir, Yontem, Kuram, Komplo, 125.29. Gonlubol, Olaylarla Turk Dıs Politikası; Oran, Turk Dıs Politikası.30. For example, Ulman and Sander, “Turk Dıs Politikasına Yon Veren Etkenler.”31. Bayram Sinkaya, “Rationalization of Turkey-Iran Relations: Prospects and Limits,” 137–56.32. Gozen, “Turk Dıs Politikasında Degisim Varmı?” 29.33. Yalvac, “Strategic Depth or Hegemonic Depth,” 165–80.34. Oguzlu, “The Changing Dynamics of Turkey-Isreal Relations,” 273–88.35. Iseri and Dilek, “The Limitations of Turkey’s New Foreign Policy Activism,” 41–54, particulary

43–5.36. Ibid., 44.37. See Doyle, “Liberalism and Foreign Policy,” 50–70.38. References to Keyman are from “Globalization, Modernity and Democracy,” and “Globalization,

Modernity and Democracy: In Search of a Viable Domestic Polity for a Sustainable TurkishForeign Policy.”

39. See Gurpınar, “The Trajectory of Left Liberalism in Turkey,” 147–68 for a discussion of leftliberalism.

40. Keyman, “Globalization, Modernity and Democracy: Turkish Foreign Policy 2009 and Beyond,”12–14.

41. Duran, “Turk Dıs Politikasının Ic Siyaset Boyutu: 2010,” 53; Bulent Aras, “Ic Politika, Dıs Politika,”Sabah, 27 Ocak 2010.

42. Keyman, “Globalization, Modernity and Democracy: Turkish Foreign Policy 2009 and Beyond,” 17.43. Kirisci, “The transformation of Turkish foreign policy,” 29–57: see also and Kaptanoglu, “The Poli-

tics of Trade and Turkish Foreign Policy,” 705–24.44. See Kirisci, “Turkey’s Engagement with its Neighborhood,” 319–41.45. Ibid., 320, 321.46. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics.47. Ibid., 1, 20, 25; Joseph, “Philosophy in International Relations,” 351.48. Carlsnaes, “Actors, Structures and Foreign Policy Analysis,” 93.49. See Doty, “Foreign Policy as a Social Construction,” 297–320.50. Checkel, “Constructivism and Foreign Policy,” 75.51. See Aksoy and Çemrek, “Turk Dıs Politikasında Kimlik Sorunu,” 151–69.

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52. Cizre, “Demythologizing the National Security Concept,” 213–30; Bilgin, “Turkey’s ChangingSecurity Discurse,” 175–201.

53. Gundogdu, “Identities in Question,” 106–17; Rumelili, “Impacting the Greek-Turkish Conflicts”;“Transforming Conflicts on EU Borders,” 105–26.

54. See Kosebalaban, “The Permanent ‘Other’,” 87–111.55. Bilgin, “Securing Turkey Through Western-oriented Foreign Policy,” 105–25; also “Turkiye’nin

Guvenliginde Batı Yonelimli Dıs Politikaların Rolu Anlamak,” 1–20.56. Booth, Critical Security Studies and World Politics; Booth, Theory of World Security.57. Kosebalaban, “The Permanent ‘Other’,” 110.58. Bilgin, “Turkiye’nin Guvenliginde Batı Yonelimli Dıs Politikaların Rolu Anlamak,” 7. See also

Rumelili, “Constructing Identity and Relating to Difference,” 27–47; “Turkey,” 135–249; “Nego-tiating Europe,” 97–100.

59. Cos and Bilgin, “Stalin’s Demands,” 43–60.60. Balcı and Kardas, “The Changing Dynamics of Turkey’s Relations with Israel,” 99–120.61. Uzer, Identity and Turkish Foreign Policy, 9.62. Ibid., 184, 186.63. Bozdaglıoglu, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Identity.64. Ibid., 7, 27, 25.65. Rivas, “Realism. For Real this Time,” 203.66. Duzgit, “Avrupa Birligi- Turkiye Iliskilerine Postyapısalcı Yaklasım,” 49–70.67. Doty, “Foreign Policy as Social Construction”; Mark Laffey, “Locating Identity,” 429–44.68. Ibid., 52.69. See Tekin, “The Construction of Turkey’s Possible EU Membership in French Political Discourse,”

727–63. Also Yılmaz, “Turkish Identity on the Road to the EU,” 293–305.70. Rumelili, “Liminal Identities,” 496.71. Ibid., 500.72. Yanık, “Constructing Turkish ‘Exceptionalism,’” 82, 87.73. Balcı, “1990 Sonrası Turk Dıs Politikası Uzerine Bazı Notlar,” 87–99.74. Ibid., 87, 88, 89, 91, 89.75. Joseph, “Foucoult and Reality,” 150, 158.76. Ashley, “Foreign Policy as Political Performance,” 51.77. Joseph, “Foucoult and Reality,” 159, 154.78. See Joseph and Wight, Scientific Realism and International Relations for different aspects of the

relation between IR theory and critical realism.79. Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science; The Possibility of Naturalism; “Philosophy and Scientific

Realism.”80. Rivas, “Realism: For Real this Time,” 203–27.81. Teschke and Smith, “The Dialectics of Globalization,” 171–2.82. Joseph, “Philosophy in International Relations,” 345, 346, 347.83. Bhaskar, “Philosophy and Scientific Realism,” 41.84. Wight and Joseph, “Scientific Realism and International Relations,” 19.85. See Carlsnaes, “The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis,” 245–70. See also Altu-

nısık and Martin, “Making Sense of Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East under AKP,” 575–81.86. Hudson, “Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International Relations,” Chp. 6.87. See Yalvac, “Strategic Depth or Hegemonic Depth,” 167–87.88. For a discussion of the relation between critical realism and Marxism, see, Yalvac, “Critical Realism,

International Relations Theory and Marxism,” 167–85.89. Wight and Joseph, “Scientific Realism and International Relations,” 21–3.90. For the concept of totality and its significance for international relations theory see Yalvac, “Critical

Realism, International Relations Theory and Marxim,” 177–84.91. Wood, “The Separation of the Economic and the Political in Capitalism,” 66–95; Teschke and Smith,

“The Dialectics of Globalization, 177.

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92. Apeldoorn, “Theorizing the transnational,” 142–76.93. See Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism.94. Callinicos, “Does capitalism need the state system?” 162–75; Teschke, The Myth of 1648. Teschke’s

“property relations approach” linking geopolitical orders with social structures of property relations isparticularly relevant. In Teschke’s view, “property relations define the ruling-class strategies thatexplain international conduct,” 220.

95. Oran, Turkish Foreign Policy, 15 and passim.96. Uzgel, Ulusal Çıkar ve Dıs Politika, 89–104.97. Ibid., 90, 96–7, 101.98. Pozo-Martin, “Autonomous or Materialist Geopolitics?” 551–63.99. Ibid., 552–3.

100. Joseph “The International as Emergent,” 63.101. Jessop, State Theory, s. 61.102. Patomaki, After International Relations, 81. See also Joseph, “The International as Emergent,” 64.103. Carlsnaes, “The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis.”104. Joseph, “A Realist Theory of Hegemony,” 179–202.105. Bob Jessop, State Theory, 162.106. For a discussion of the concept of state classes see van der Pijl, Transnational Classes and Inter-

national Relations, 79–83. Pijl argues that state classes dominated social formations in what hecalls the Hobbesian contender states (including Turkey) to the liberal Lockean heardland. The impli-cations of this concept need to be separately analyzed and discussed in the context of Turkey.

107. SeeYalvac, “Strategic Depth or Hegemonic Depth.”108. Rupert, “Marxism and Critical Theory,” 170.109. This article does not directly deal with the implications of different approaches in terms of specific

foreign policy strategies. Its focus is on the alternative approaches to TFP analysis. I would like tothank one of the referees for pointing this out. My current work explicitly deals with what a criticalrealist and historical materialist TFP entails.

110. Wight and Joseph, “Scientific Realism annd International Relations,” 24.

Notes on Contributor

Faruk Yalvac is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations of the Middle East Tech-nical University, Ankara, Turkey. He holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and an MAfrom Tufts University, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he was on a Fulbright Scholar-ship. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics in International Relations. His main inter-ests are international relations theory, critical realism, historical sociology, Marxism, international politicaltheory, Turkish foreign policy and political economy of Turkey.

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