Strategic Relations between the US and Turkey by Ekavi Athanassopoulou explores the evolution of the strategic relationship between the United States and Turkey from 1979 until the late 1990s. Based on archival documents as well as interviews with experts and US, Turkish, and Israeli officials, some of whom were involved in critical decisions that shaped US–Turkey relations, it traces the convergence and divergence of the interests of the two countries and the resultant elements of cooperation and discord in their relationship. The book undertakes an analysis of foreign policy making process in the United States and Turkey in conjunction with changes in the international environment, with a specific emphasis on the Middle East. It proposes to examine the broad trends in and provide new ways of looking at the evolution of the strategic relations. The author argues that Turkey's weakness relative to the United States, ambitious plans of the Turkish leaders for military modernization, and geopolitical factors are three parameters that affect the progression of bilateral relations.
The book contributes to the literature on strategic relations between the United States and Turkey in three ways. First, it interweaves an analysis of issues and events that affect the bilateral relations with an analysis of broad transitions in foreign policy orientations of the two states. An example is the author's discussion of the military cooperation between Israel and Turkey in the context of Turkey's shift away from the policy of “keeping a safe distance from the US objectives” in the Middle East (p. 152). Taking transitions in the foreign policy orientations of the two countries into account enables a deep and nuanced understanding of how the bilateral relationship responds to domestic and international developments.
Second, and perhaps most valuable, the book challenges prevalent arguments in the literature by introducing new interpretations of some of the defining moments in the evolution of the relationship between the two countries. The author shows that the revitalization of Turkey–US ties in the beginning of the 1980s can be explained by Turkey's concern over its economic crisis rather than the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as has been suggested by previous studies. She also discusses the effective US diplomatic effort to foster cooperation between Israel and Turkey, an issue that has not been discussed in the literature. The book criticizes the studies on Turkey's foreign policy in the 1980s and early 1990s for paying too much attention to Turkish Prime Minister (1983–89) and President (1989–93) Turgut Özal's personality and calculations (p. 96). It makes a compelling argument that Özal's wishes did not always prevail, and in the case of allowing the United States to use Turkish military bases for launching attacks against Iraq, his demands prevailed only because the military did not oppose them (p. 97). The author's analysis presents a multifaceted account of the functioning of civilian–military relations under Özal's presidency.
Third, the book stands out in the literature, in which discussions of theoretical approaches are scarce, in its effort to link empirical analysis with theoretical generalizations. However, these links, rather than pursued systematically, are interspersed throughout the text. The author draws attention to various aspects of the US–Turkey relationship that from a classical realist point of view exemplify characteristics of the relationship between a strong and a weak state. In addition, without mentioning the theories of foreign policy analysis, she discusses the role of perceptions and actions of bureaucrats and political leaders in the US and Turkey's foreign policy making process. She also addresses the role of lobbies and the interaction between the US executive and legislative branches in explaining the ebbs and flows of US interests with regard to Turkey.
Referring to theoretical generalizations when necessary instead of using them as a framework has the advantage of avoiding being straight jacketed by the theory. However, in the case of Athanassoupoulu's book, this flexibility comes at the expense of clarifying the criteria for selecting the parameters that affect the evolution of the bilateral relationship. The book does not claim to provide such a systematic analysis, but it has a lot of potential for developing theoretical insights into the relationship between weak and strong states, foreign policy analysis, and the agency–structure debate. The author does mention that offering insights regarding the agency–structure debate is not one of the goals of her study (p. 181), and thus she does not analyze the interaction between these concepts. Nevertheless, the book does present a variety of cases that shed some light on how agency operates under different conditions.
The author criticizes the extensive attention in the literature to structure at the expense of agency. Yet in her explanation of the Turkish decision to allow the United States to use the military airbases in Turkey during the Gulf War, she gives rather limited agency to the “weak state.” Regarding this decision, she argues that “Turkey's involvement could not be helped” (p. 88). An alternative argument would be that Turkey's decisions during the Gulf War served its own interests. A focus on how the weak power makes cost-benefit calculations and manages to pursue its interests under unfavorable political conditions would have further contributed to the author's goal of redressing the imbalance between structure and agency in the literature.
The book omits a crucial aspect of US–Turkey relations regarding Turkey's Kurdish issue: US political support for Turkey's fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and how this support affected Turkey's relations with the United States. The author only briefly mentions that Turkey sought US support against the PKK (p. 112) and that this issue was a factor in Turkey's decision to establish strategic cooperation with Israel (p. 147). She explains that US policy in northern Iraq, which led to the creation of an autonomous Kurdish entity in the region, has worked to the disadvantage of Turkey by allowing the PKK to take refuge there. However, she does not discuss the effects of Turkey's fight against the PKK on Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East or the Turkish reception of extensive US support on this issue.
A central argument in the book is that Turkish foreign policy making is constrained by a dilemma Turkey faces between its desire for independence from the United States in foreign policy decision making and its need for US support in pursuing some of its foreign policy goals. The author mentions that Turkish political and military leaders were totally “dependent on the US for the strengthening of their military machine upon which the pursuit of an independent policy rested to a large extent” (p. 90). Although this view limits the sources of foreign policy independence to a strong military, the book does paint a clear picture of how Turkish dependence on US military support affects its foreign policy making. This account may be useful in future scholarship aimed at providing a multifaceted understanding of the diverse sources of the dependency relationship between the two countries.
Athanassopolou's study is a nuanced and informative account of how the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey evolved in the 1980s and 1990s. For future studies that aim to contribute to theory building on Foreign Policy Analysis, Classical Realism, or the interaction between structure and agency in particular, it presents an excellent source of material. By presenting new arguments concerning bilateral relations between the United States and Turkey, identifying broad patterns and parameters that affect these bilateral relations, and connecting the evidence to theoretical generalizations on the relationship between strong and weak states, Athanassopolou's sophisticated analysis makes an outstanding contribution to the literature on US–Turkey relations.
