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Description
This paper will show how the AKP’s utilization of political Islam together with framing of neo-Ottomanism as a prerequisite for its opening to the Muslim world as the former Ottoman lands in the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Arab Peninsula exacerbate tensions with it western partners. At the domestic politics level, the Islamic-conservative Justice and Development Party is generally accepted more libertarian than its predecessor the Islamist Welfare party with a platform based on strong national security, free markets and social and fiscal conservatism. The Islamists and the libertarians are often competing for influence in the AKP. The study counters the neo-Gramscian theory by illuminating how policy-planning organisations mobilized this rivalry for influence within the party which reshaped the foreign policy agendas in a time of political transformation and regional crises after the Arab Spring. In addition to preparing papers drawing on this postdoctoral work, a concrete goal was to convert my research in the US into a book entitled "Think Tanks, Game-Changers in Turkish Foreign Policy?"
Publication Date
6-2015
Publisher
Center for Turkish Studies & The Contemporary Turkish Studies Program, Portland State University
Subjects
Turkey -- Politics and Government, AK Parti (Turkey)
Disciplines
Islamic World and Near East History | Political Science
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/16291
Comments
Occasional Paper Series Vol.4- No.1
Editor in Chief: Birol Yesilada