Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in the Turkish and Qatari Foreign Policy on the Arab Spring

Abstract

As a regional power, Turkey aspires to become an influential international actor. As a small state, Qatar seeks to enhance its security and sovereignty and become an indispensable regional middle power. The Arab Spring protests have created an ideal context for both actors to realize their geopolitical goals. However, adverse political developments have turned most Arab Spring countries into battlegrounds wherein old geopolitical rivalries deepened and new regional alliances were constructed. Taking Gaza, Syria and Egypt as cases in point, this paper investigates how Ankara and Doha's evolving practical geopolitical reasoning and its domestic and international representations converged to create venues for cooperation and promotion of relations to a level of political alignment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

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^[66] B. Tufft, ‘Senior Muslim cleric Qaradawi denounces death sentences against Mohamed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders as nonsense’, The Independent, 17 May 2015.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Özgür Pala

Özgür Pala is a PhD student in the Gulf Studies Program at Qatar University. His research interests include (state) identity, security and foreign policymaking in the Gulf. He earned his Master's degree in Gulf Studies from Qatar University in 2014. His MA thesis is titled ‘The Evolution of the Turkish–Qatari Relations from 2002 to 2013: Converging Policies, Identities and Interests’. Previously, he earned a Master's degree in English Language Teaching from University of Oregon, USA, in 2005.

Bülent Aras

Bülent Aras is Senior Scholar and Coordinator of the Conflict Resolution and Mediation stream at Istanbul Policy Center, Professor of International Relations in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University and Global Fellow at Wilson Center. He is the Academic Coordinator of POMEAS (Project on the Middle East and Arab Spring). His current research interests include the geopolitics of the Arab Spring, non-state actors in peacebuilding, and bridging the gap between theory and practice in foreign policy. His recent work has been published in Third World Quarterly, Middle East Policy, International Peacekeeping, Political Science Quarterly, International Journal, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies and Journal of Third World Studies.