Turkey and the Arab Spring: Between Ethics and Self-Interest
Abstract:
Turkey redefined its geographical security environment over the last decade by deepening its engagement with neighboring regions, especially with the Middle East. The Arab spring, however, challenged not only the authoritarian regimes in the region but also Turkish foreign policy strategy. This strategy was based on cooperation with the existing regimes and did not prioritize the democracy promotion dimension of the issue. The upheavals in the Arab world, therefore, created a dilemma between ethics and self-interest in Turkish foreign policy. Amid the flux of geopolitical shifts in one of the world’s most unstable regions, Turkish foreign policy-making elites are attempting to reformulate their strategies to overcome this inherent dilemma. The central argument of the present paper is that Turkey could make a bigger and more constructive impact in the region by trying to take a more detached stand and through controlled activism. Thus, Turkey could take action through the formation of coalitions and in close alignments with the United States and Europe rather than basing its policies on a self-attributed unilateral pro-activism.
Ziya Öniş is Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Center for Research on Globalization and Democratic Governance (GLODEM) at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. He received his BSc. and MSc. in Economics from London School of Economics, and his Ph.D. in Development Economics from University of Manchester. He also taught at Boğaziçi University (Istanbul), Işık University (Istanbul), and University of Manchester. He has written extensively on various aspects of Turkish political economy. His most recent research focuses on the political economy of globalization, crises and post-crises transformations, Turkey’s Europeanization and democratization experience and the analysis of new directions in Turkish foreign policy. Among his most recent publications are “Beyond the Global Economic Crisis: Structural Continuities as Impediments to a Sustainable Recovery” (All Azimuth, 2012), “Power, Interests and Coalitions: The Political Economy of Mass Privatization in Turkey” (Third World Quarterly, 2011), “Europe and the Impasse of Center-Left Politics in Turkey: Lessons from the Greek Experience” (Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2010), Turkey and the Global Economy: Neo-liberal Restructuring and Integration in the Post-Crisis Era (2009), and Turkish Politics in a Changing World: Global Dynamics and Domestic Transformations (2007)
The event is organized as part of the Annual Koç Lecture Series, a three-year project organized under the framework of the Mediterranean Studies Forum’s Turkish Studies Initiative and in collaboration with Stanford Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the Sohaib & Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. It is also co-sponsored by the CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy.
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room
A Bridge between East and West? Czechoslovakia's Road to the Soviet Bloc
Although Czechoslovak politicians in exile frequently proclaimed towards the end of the Second World War an ambition for their country to mediate between the U.S.S.R. and the Western powers, their deeds and utterances, imprinted in Soviet, Czech and other archival materials, testify to something else. With their faith in the West fatally shaken by Munich 1938, which was only amplified by the U.S. failure to liberate Prague in May 1945, they relied on a Soviet security guarantee against any further German aggression and on Stalin's promises of non-interference in internal Czechoslovak affairs. However, numerous concessions to the Soviet wishes and a growing domestic power of the Czechoslovak Communists undermined this cardboard castle that in the atmosphere of the growing East-West confrontation finally collapsed in February 1948.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) and the Department of History
Building 200 (History Corner),
Room 307
Vit Smetana
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street, C205-4
Stanford, CA 94305
Vit Smetana is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History – Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and also teaches modern international history at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. His professional interest lies primarily in the policies of the great powers towards Czechoslovakia and Central Europe in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s. His research during his stay at Stanford focuses on the topic “The Czech, Slovak and other Central European exiles in the Second World War and beyond”.
Dr. Smetana is the author of In the Shadow of Munich. British Policy towards Czechoslovakia from the Endorsement to the Renunciation of the Munich Agreement (1938-1942) (2008) and co-author of Draze zaplacená svoboda. Osvobození Československa 1944-45 (Dearly Paid Freedom. The Liberation of Czechoslovakia 1944-45) in two volumes (2009). He also edited the Czech version of the Robert F. Kennedy memoir of the Cuban Missle Crisis, Thirteen Days (1999).
Too-Systemic-To-Fail: What Option Markets Teach Us About Government Guarantees For The Financial Sector
In this second seminar of the Europe Center's "European and Global Economic Crisis Series", Professor Hanno Lustig will discuss how a conspicuous amount of risk is missing from the price of financial sector crash insurance during the 2007-2009 crisis and that the difference in costs of put options for individual banks, and puts on the financial sector index, increases fourfold from its pre-crisis level. He provides evidence that a collective government guarantee for the financial sector lowers index put prices far more than those of individual banks, explaining the divergence. By embedding a bailout in the standard option pricing model, observed put spread dynamics is closely replicated. During the crisis, the spread responds acutely to government intervention announcements.
CISAC Conference Room
Karen Del Biondo
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Karen Del Biondo is a 2012-2013 postdoctoral scholar at CDDRL. Her research is funded with a Fulbright-Schuman award and a postdoctoral grant from the Belgian-American Educational Foundation (BAEF). She holds an MA in Political Science (International Relations) from Ghent University and an MA in European Studies from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 2007-2008 she obtained a Bernheim fellowship for an internship in European affairs at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Permanent Representation to the EU.
Karen Del Biondo obtained her PhD at the Centre for EU Studies, Ghent University in September 2012 with a dissertation entitled ‘Norms, self-interest and effectiveness: Explaining double standards in EU reactions to violations of democratic principles in sub-Saharan Africa’. Her PhD research was funded by the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO). Apart from her PhD research, she has been involved in the research project ‘The Substance of EU Democracy Promotion’ (Ghent University/University of Mannheim/Centre of European Policy Studies) and has published on the securitisation of EU development policies. In January 2011 she conducted field research in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her postdoctoral research will focus on the comparison between EU and US democracy assistance in sub-Saharan Africa.
Karen Del Biondo’s recent publications include: ‘Security and Development in EU External Relations: Converging, but in which direction?’ (with Stefan Oltsch and Jan Orbie), in S. Biscop & R. Whitman (eds.) Handbook of European Union Security, Routledge (2012); ‘Democracy Promotion Meets Development Cooperation: The EU as a Promoter of Democratic Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa’, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 16, N°5, 2011, 659-672; and ‘EU Aid Conditionality in ACP Countries. Explaining Inconsistency in EU Sanctions Practice’, Journal of Contemporary European Research, Vol. 7, N°3, 2011, 380-395.
Climbing the Summits: ASEAN, America, and the Future of Asia
From 18 to 20 November 2012 Phnom Penh in Cambodia will be the summit capital of the world. President Obama and the heads of nearly 20 other countries will gather there for a series of high-level meetings organized by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Events will include the ASEAN Summit, the ASEAN Plus Three Summit, and the East Asia Summit (EAS). Obama will attend the EAS and the US-ASEAN Leaders Summit as well.
Here at Stanford the issues at stake in these summits will be assessed in conversation among the ambassadors to the United States from five ASEAN member countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Viet Nam—and the president of the US-ASEAN Business Council. How will the ASEAN Community planned for 2015 affect economy, security, and democracy in Southeast Asia? What are China’s intentions in East Asia? How should ASEAN respond to Chinese behavior? Will a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea be announced in Phnom Penh? What can we expect from Indonesia’s leadership of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in 2013? Is protectionism in Southeast Asia on the rise? Has Europe’s recent experience discredited economic regionalism? Is the US-backed Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) good or bad for Southeast Asia? Should the controversial American “rebalance” toward Asia be rebalanced? How reversible are the reforms in Myanmar (Burma)? What changes inside ASEAN will make the organization more effective? What is the single change in US policy that each ambassador would most like to see?
Bechtel Conference Center
Donald K. Emmerson
At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”
Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces. Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).
Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).
Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.
China and the World
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US Power, the Emerging Economies, and International Order
Dr. Bruce Jones is Director and Senior Fellow of the NYU Center on International Cooperation, and Senior Fellow and Director of the Managing Global Order Program at the Brookings Institution.
Dr. Jones’ research focuses on US policy on global order and transnational threats; on the emerging powers’ strategic policy; on multilateral institutions in peace and security issues; on the role of the United Nations in crisis management and international security; and on fragile states.
Dr. Jones has served as Senior External Advisor for the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 on Conflict, Security and Development; as a member of the Secretary-General’s Senior Advisory Group to guide the Review of International Civilian Capacities (2010-2011); as the Lead Scholar on the International Task Force on Global Public Goods (2007); and as deputy research director for the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004-2005).
Prior to assuming the Directorship of the Center, Dr. Jones served in several capacities at the United Nations. He was Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary-General during the UN reform effort leading up to the World Summit 2005, and in the same period was Acting Secretary of the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee. From 2000-2002 he was Special Assistant to the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process; and held assignments in the UN Interim Mission in Kosovo, and in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Dr. Jones holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics; and was Hamburg Fellow in Conflict Prevention at Stanford University. He is co-author with Carlos Pascual and Stephen Stedman of Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Brookings Press, 2009); co-editor with Shepard Forman of Cooperating for Peace and Security (Cambridge University Press, 2009); author of Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failures; Series Editor of the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations (Lynne Reinner) and author of several book chapters and journal articles on US strategy, global order, the Middle East, peacekeeping, post-conflict peacebuilding, and strategic coordination.
He is Consulting Professor at Stanford University, Adjunct Faculty at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service, and Professor by Courtesy at the NYU Department of Politics.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Stephen J. Stedman
CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.
In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.
In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.
In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.
His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).
The Debt Crisis Consummates the End of the European Nation States
The debt crisis is clear: Smaller areas can be managed better than large nations. Therefore they should be autonomous - under the umbrella of the European Union.
Stanford Scholar Roland Benedikter wins Klaus Reichert Award in Karlsruhe, Germany
Europe Center scholar Dr. Roland Benedikter (47), has been honored with the 2012 Klaus Reichert Award for Medical Philosophy. This award, given by the Center for Medical Philosophy in Karlsruhe, Germany, was bestowed on Benedikter in recognition of his outstanding merits for medical ethics, for advancing the debate on avant-garde issues at the interplay between contemporary politics, sociology, ethics and medicine, and for his efforts to re-humanize the contemporary thought and international debate about the future of the human being in times of "transhumanism" and "hyper-technologization". The award is the most highly regarded academic award of this genre in Germany.
The award ceremony will be held on October 6, 2012 in Karlsruhe. In his award speech "What future for the human being: Humanism or Transhumanism? Aspects at the interplay between technology, politics and ethics", Benedikter will give an overview of the current "global systemic shift", its trend towards a "neuromorphosis" of global culture (two notions co-coined by him) and the future of the human being in the age of "transhumanism" and invasive new technologies. Benedikter will in particular elucidate the contemporary relation between macro-philosophical trends that will dominate the years ahead in the advanced international thought on the interplay between medicine and society.
Benedikter shares the award with his long time collaborator Prof. James Giordano, director of the Center on Neurotechnology at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Washington DC.