Southeast European and Black Sea Studies

ISSN: 1468-3857 (Print) 1743-9639 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fbss20

Turkey as a mediator stories of success and failure

Çiğdem Üstün

To cite this article: Çiğdem Üstün (2018) Turkey as a mediator stories of success and failure,
Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 18:1, 145-146, DOI: 10.1080/14683857.2017.1397973

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2017.1397973

Published online: 04 Nov 2017.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 53

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fbss20
Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2018
VOL. 18, NO. 1, 145–148

BOOK REVIEWS

Turkey as a mediator stories of success and failure, edited by Doğa Ulaş Eralp,
Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books, 2016, xix+138 pp., $68.93, ISBN 9780739193631

As part of Turkey’s rhythmic diplomacy, mediation has been one of the key words of Turkish
foreign policy since JDP won the elections at the beginning of the 2000s. This edited book anal-
yses this role that Turkey was actively willing to play in the Western Balkans, Middle East, Iran
and Somalia. Nimet Beriker, in the first chapter of the book, provides a framework for analysing
Turkey’s foreign policies vis-a-vis US’ global politics. The author examines US politics under
the Bush and Obama administrations from 2001 to 2013 and categorizes them as revisionist,
multipolar and balanced internationalism while explaining the changes in Turkish foreign policy
during each period. Her conclusions suggest that Turkey increased its activist policies as the
perception of decline of the US hegemony increased during the Obama administrations, which
in turn decreased Turkey’s mediator role mainly in its neighbourhood.
The second chapter by Doğa Ulaş Eralp, also the editor of the book, gives an overview of
the steps taken by Turkey in Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo through social and economic
aids, encouragement of private sector, support for inclusion of regional countries to interna-
tional organizations. This chapter serves as a good resource for researchers and scholars to get a
grip on Turkey’s policies in the region; however, one of the most common criticisms regarding
Turkey in the region, that is references given to neo-Ottomanism, seems to be less mentioned
than expected.
In the third chapter, Turkey’s policies towards the Middle East and the impact of the Arab
uprisings are analysed by Şebnem Gümüşçü. The reader sees an emphasis on efforts by Turkey
to take on a regional leadership role using Islam as a common denominator of the region. This
chapter not only thoroughly analyses Turkish foreign policy in Egypt, Syria and during the
Gaza crisis, it also provides a great demonstration of how regional developments are utilized
in domestic politics.
Chapters 4 and 5 are dedicated to mediating efforts on the Iranian nuclear deal. In their
chapter, Havva Kök and İmdat Öner, after laying out the background information on Iran’s
nuclear activities, give insight on Turkish motivations to act as a mediator in the talks through
semi-structured interviews conducted with diplomats from the Turkish Republic’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and Turkish academics. As a result of these interviews, the authors categorize
Turkey’s material interest-oriented motive under three titles: political, economic and energy-fo-
cused interests. In addition to these interests, this chapter also examines Turkey’s aspiration to
increase its international prestige and become a regional mediator. In Chapter 5, Arunjana Das
and Anthony Wanis-St.John evaluate efforts by Brazil and Turkey together by looking at the
historical, political, strategic and economic dimensions of their engagements. Throughout the
chapter, the authors try to demonstrate that these two countries’ efforts are not failures since
they were instrumental in keeping the focus on diplomacy.
The last country-specific chapter, by S. Ayşe Kadayıfçı-Orellana, is on Turkey’s mediation
efforts in Somalia. The chapter provides the historical background of relations between Turkey
and Somalia and international efforts of mediation in Somalia starting from the 1990s. The
author details factors contributing to Turkey’s credibility as a mediator by focusing on Islamic
identity, Ottoman legacy and humanitarian diplomacy stressed by Davutoğlu and Erdoğan.
This chapter also features critical voices by academics arguing that Turkey promotes human-
itarian diplomacy to promote its strategic interests, i.e. reaching the energy resources. In the
146   BOOK REVIEWS

conclusion, Turkey’s lack of knowledge of the region is depicted as one of the biggest challenges
that it is facing.
In the conclusion chapter, Eralp analyses and summarizes Turkey’s assets, limitations and
opportunities as a mediator. Turkey’s willingness to be a mediator and business-oriented nature
could be examined as assets, while increasing authoritarian image and fragile domestic peace
could delegitimize Turkey’s initiatives as a mediator. Increasing FDI in conflict regions, longer
term collaborations with Global South, and systematic thinking about mediation are suggested
as opportunities if Turkey would continue to act as a mediator and be an effective player.
This volume is a resourceful contribution to the literature, since it portrays Turkey’s changing
characteristic from hard power to soft power foreign policy in the 2000s while providing the
limitations and challenges in this process. Throughout the chapters, the authors give references
(sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly) on the eagerness of Turkey to become a regional
leader using religion as the common point and how this leadership aspiration affected its rela-
tions undesirably, especially with its neighbours.

Çiğdem Üstün
Association for Development, Migration and Social Policies (DEMIS)
cigdem.ustun@gmail.com, cigdem.ustun@demis.org.tr
© 2017 Çiğdem Üstün
https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2017.1397973

The foreign policies of post-Yugoslav states: from Yugoslavia to Europe, edited

by Soeren Keil and Bernhard Stahl, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, December 2014,
280 pp., $110.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-137-38412-6

The variety of transformations of the post-Yugoslav space overall and the states (re)established
in it have been foremost of interest to scholars of democratization, conflict resolution and more
recently Europeanization. With these lenses, the geographical and political area of interest has
predominantly been studied from the outside, i.e., as a subject of a multitude of international
policies and/or processes. In this habitat, the edited volume Foreign policies of post-Yugoslav
states, approaching the seven countries in their own right as actors, rather than subjects of the
international system comes as a much needed refreshment.
For the reader and follower of the political science research of the Balkans, the book has
three major strengths. First, as mentioned above, the Foreign policies of post-Yugoslav states
looks at the Balkan region and the selected countries as actors in their own right as creators of
foreign policy, rather than recipients of various conditionalities. As a result, the edited volume
sheds light on contextual actors that have been largely neglected in the contemporary study of
the region. Second, and largely related to the former, the book successfully dispels the myth
that all of these states are the same in terms of their foreign policy orientation simply because
they’re all at least declaratively committed to joining the European Union. In fact, the reader
of the book is immediately struck with the diverging trends and policies in the seven countries
that have sprung out from the Yugoslav dissolution. In this manner, the editors Soeren Keil and
Bernhard Stahl correctly identify the quest for identity in the region confirmed even more after
the publication of the volume in 2014. Third, this edited volume is one of the rare examples that
provides not only a minor reference to legacies but makes an attempt to examine the Yugoslav
foreign policy in a meaningful way so as to describe the starting point(s) for these countries.
Yet, though a strength from the perspective of the clear analysis of Yugoslav foreign policy, this