TURKEY’S FLUCTUATING RELATIONS WITH IRAN, 2002-2019: THE REGIONALIST PERSPECTIVE A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BY ZEHRA FUNDA SAVAŞ YALÇINKAYA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS JANUARY 2021 1 2 Approval of the thesis: TURKEY’S FLUCTUATING RELATIONS WITH IRAN, 2002-2019: THE REGIONALIST PERSPECTIVE submitted by ZEHRA FUNDA SAVAŞ YALÇINKAYA in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations, the Graduate School of Social Sciences of Middle East Technical University by, Prof. Dr. Yaşar KONDAKÇI Dean Graduate School of Social Sciences Prof. Dr. Oktay TANRISEVER Head of Department International Relations Prof. Dr. Meliha BENLİ ALTUNIŞIK Supervisor International Relations Examining Committee Members: Assist. Prof. Dr. Şerif Onur BAHÇECİK (Head of the Examining Committee) Middle East Technical University International Relations Prof. Dr. Meliha BENLİ ALTUNIŞIK (Supervisor) Middle East Technical University International Relations Assist. Prof. Dr. Derya GÖÇER AKDER Middle East Technical University Area Studies Assist. Prof. Dr. Gülriz ŞEN TOBB University of Economics and Technology Political Science and International Relations Assist. Prof. Dr. Bayram SİNKAYA Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University International Relations 3 4 PLAGIARISM I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work Name, Last Name: ZEHRA FUNDA SAVAŞ YALÇINKAYA Signature: iii ABSTRACT TURKEY’S FLUCTUATING RELATIONS WITH IRAN, 2002-2019: THE REGIONALIST PERSPECTIVE SAVAŞ YALÇINKAYA, Zehra Funda Ph.D., The Department of International Relations Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Meliha BENLİ ALTUNIŞIK January 2021, 295 pages This thesis examines Turkey’s fluctuating foreign policy attitudes toward Iran between 2002-2019 based on the regionalist perspective. While there was a significant improvement in Turkey’s relations with Iran in the early 2000s, Turkish foreign policy attitude toward Iran became tense following the Arab Uprisings that started in 2011 and has become manageable again since 2016. To understand such a floating change of relations between two regional powers, this thesis uses the regionalist perspectives of both Buzan and Wæver’s Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) and Lake and Morgan’s theory of regional orders. In this sense, it focuses on the local security externalities of Middle Eastern security complex and analyzes to what extent they have an impact on the regional positions of both Turkey and Iran. By considering their relations with the extra-regional powers and non-state armed groups in the region, it argues that the regional level, where the actions of both local and global actors intersect, is the most appropriate level of analysis for understanding Turkey-Iran relations during this period. Keywords: Regional Security Complex Theory, Theory of Regional Orders, Turkey, Iran, Foreign Policy iv ÖZ TÜRKİYE’NİN İRAN İLE DEĞİŞEN İLİŞKİLERİ, 2002-2019: BÖLGECİ PERSPEKTİF SAVAŞ YALÇINKAYA, Zehra Funda Doktora, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Prof. Dr. Meliha BENLİ ALTUNIŞIK Ocak 2021, 295 sayfa Bu tez 2002-2019 yılları arasında Türkiye’nin İran’a yönelik değişen dış politika tutumunu bölgeci perspektif ile ele almayı amaçlamaktadır. Buna göre, 2000’lerin başında Türkiye’nin İran ile ilişkileri önemli biçimde iyileşme gösterirken 2011’de başlayan Arap İsyanları sonrası gergin bir hal almıştır ve 2016 sonrası tekrar yönetilebilir bir hale gelmiştir. İki bölgesel güç arasındaki değişken ilişkileri anlamak için bu tez Buzan ve Wæver’in Bölgesel Güvenlik Kompleksi Teorisi (RSCT) ile Lake ve Morgan’ın bölgesel düzenler teorisini kullanmaktadır. Buna göre, Orta Doğu güvenlik kompleksinin yerel güvenlik dışsallıklarına odaklanılmış olup bunların Türkiye ve İran’ın bölgesel pozisyonlarına nasıl bir etkide bulunduğu analiz edilmektedir. Bu iki devletin bölge-dışı güçler ve devlet-dışı silahlı gruplarla olan ilişkileri de göz önünde bulundurularak, bu tez hem yerel hem de küresel aktörlerin eylemlerinin kesiştiği bölgesel düzlemin bu dönem boyunca Türkiye-İran ilişkilerini anlamak için en uygun analiz seviyesi olduğunu savunmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Bölgesel Güvenlik Kompleksi Teorisi, Bölgesel Düzenler Teorisi, Türkiye, İran, Dış Politika v DEDICATION Dedication to my whole family, vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Prof.Dr.Meliha Benli Altunışık for her invaluable guidance, advice, criticism, encouragements and insight throughout my PhD research. Her guidance assisted me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. Besides my advisor, I would like to thank the rest of my thesis committee: Assist.Prof. Dr.Bayram Sinkaya, Assist.Prof.Dr.Gülriz Şen, Assist.Prof. Dr.Derya Göçer Akder and Assist.Prof.Dr.Şerif Onur Bahçecik, for their insightful comments and encouragement. I would also like to thank to all Professors at the Department of International Relations of Middle East Technical University. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of Research Centre for International Relations, European Politics and Political Theory at Bremen University for their hospitality during my research stay in July 2019. I would like to express my special thanks to Dr.Roy Karadag for his sincere support and help for my thesis. I would also like to thank to the members of Department of International Relations at Tehran University for allowing me to having academic interviews with them. I am grateful for Assoc.Prof.Dr.Homeira Moshirzadeh and Prof.Dr.Abdolmajid Eskandari for their invaluable support during my research stay in May 2019 in Tehran. I would also like to express my special thanks to my ex-colleagues at Department of Political Science and International Relations at Izmir University of Economics. I am especially grateful to Prof.Dr. Filiz Başkan and Assoc.Prof.Dr.Balkan Devlen for supporting and guiding me throughout my PhD research. vii Last but not the least, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my mother Hatice Savaş, my father Uğur Savaş and my sister Fulya Güloğlu for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis and my life in general. And finally, I would like to express my dearest thanks to my husband Caner Yalçınkaya for his love, encouragement, support, and patience. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS PLAGIARISM ...................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................... iv ÖZ .......................................................................................................................... v DEDICATION ..................................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ................................................................................... vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................... ix LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................. xiii LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................ xiv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................. xv CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 1.1. The Place of This Study in the Literature on Turkey-Iran Relations ......... 7 2. THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ............................. 17 2.1. The Regionalist Perspective in the Discipline of International Relations .......................................................................................................... 18 2.2. Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) ........................................... 21 2.3 Regional Security Complexes as Local Security Externalities ................. 26 2.4. Differentiating the Regional Level from the Other Levels in the IR Theory ............................................................................................................. 32 2.5. The Middle East as a Regional Security Complex ................................... 36 2.6. The Concept of Regional Power in the Regional Security Complexes: How to Explain Their Behavior in the Middle East ........................................ 43 2.6.1. The Regional Powers’ Responses to Local Security Externalities of the Middle East ...................................................................................... 48 3. THE HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO TURKISH-IRANIAN RELATIONS: THE REGIONALIST PERSPECTIVE ...................................... 53 4. TURKEY’S COOPERATION WITH IRAN IN THE POST-2003 ix MIDDLE EAST: THE REGIONALIST PERSPECTIVE .................................. 66 4.1. Local Security Externalities of the post-2003 Middle Eastern Security Complex: Regional Instability and Polarization ............................................. 69 4.1.1. The Rise of Anti-Western ‘Radical’ Camp and its Local Security Externalities for Regional Powers ..............................................................