The Academic Perceptions of Turkish-Israeli Relations

Yıl 2002, Cilt: 1 Sayı: 1, - , 01.01.2005

Bülent Aras

Öz

Expert communities play important roles in the formation of negative and positive positions with respect to certain public policy trends or positions groups and they do exercise an important influence over the process of foreign policy development. The focus of this article, is on those analysts who have taken a special interest in Turkish- Israeli relations. Our aim is to explore and elucidate the perspectives of those analysts and their input on the decision making process. These analysts hold common, as well as divergent and even confrontational views with respect to the reasons behind the course of development of Turkish-Israeli relations; therefore, they assess the impact of these relations on regional and global actors in different ways. Political analysts are, of course, well aware that Turkish-Israeli relations are not free of problems and include multiple variables that should be taken into consideration. What is clear is that these relations are an extension of the changing dynamics of the domestic politics of the two countries. Turkish-Israeli relations are en especially clear example of the way in which national identity serves to guide foreign policy decisions. A Western identity for Turkey and a Middle Eastern identity for Israel are a crucial preoccupation of the ruling establishments of these states. The rapid flux of ideological and foreign policy development, however, makes it difficult to clearly identify the roles that identity issues and realpolitik have played in the acceleration of relations between Turkey and Israel in the 1990s. In the discussion of the literature that follows, special attention is paid, among others, to U.S involvement and what have been seen as the negative consequences of the development of closer relations between Turkey and Israel. 

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