Protracted Conflicts in Turkey's Neighborhood: Between Cold Peace and Hot War

From The Desk Of The EditorTuesday, March 14, 2017
The Winter 2017 issue of Turkish Policy Quarterly (TPQ) marks a significant 15-year milestone in providing independent and balanced analyses on dynamics in Turkey and its neighborhood. Over the past 15 years, we have remained steadfast in our...

Süreya Martha Köprülü

The Ukrainian Crisis: The OSCE’s Special Monitoring MissionTuesday, March 14, 2017
Over the past years, a greater focus on conflict prevention has developed in theory – as well as in practice – particularly in the UN. In this context, there is an ongoing debate about creative new peace operations that combine innovative...

A Common Vision for a Way Out of the Cyprus ConflictTuesday, March 14, 2017
The Cyprus problem ranks among the top unresolved protracted conflicts in the world. It first entered into the UN Security Council’s agenda in the 1950s, and has remained on the agenda in various UN bodies ever since. Although many stakeholders...

Ahmet Sözen

Revisiting the Cyprus Question and the Way ForwardTuesday, March 14, 2017
Despite years of intercommunal negotiations and repeated efforts by the international community, the Cyprus problem remains unresolved. The overwhelming presence of Turkish troops on the island since 1974 and Ankara’s objective to strategically...

Andreas Theophanous

The “Four-Day War”: Changing Paradigms in the Nagorno-Karabakh ConflictTuesday, March 14, 2017
The “four-day war” in April 2016 marked the most serious escalation in hostilities in terms of both military hardware and human loss. This particular outbreak of conflict brought Azerbaijan and Armenia the closest they have been to...

Zaur Shiriyev

Turkey’s Security Sector after July 15: Democratizing Security or Securitizing the State?Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Turkey has been under a perpetual state of emergency since 20 July 2016, just five days after the bloody coup attempt that claimed over 240 lives. While initially this state was declared for a single 90-day period, the Justice and Development Party...

Turkey’s Role in the Arab Spring and the Syrian ConflictTuesday, March 14, 2017
Turkish involvement in the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war began at a time when Turkey’s impressive record of democratic progress[1] and economic growth in the 2000s fueled remarkable optimism domestically and internationally about the...

Şener Aktürk

Shifting Human Smuggling Networks Along Turkey’s BordersTuesday, March 14, 2017
Although the media often portrays human smuggling as a new phenomenon, boat migration across the Mediterranean actually started when Spain and Italy introduced Schengen visas for North Africans in 1991.[1] Prior to this, Moroccans, Algerians, and...

Ayşem Biriz Karaçay

The Karabakh Conflict after the “Four-Day War”: A Dynamic Status QuoTuesday, March 14, 2017
The escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh, sometimes called “the four-day war,” which took place in April 2016, did not come out of the blue.[1] There have been a number of major incidents on the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as...

Mikayel Zolyan

Turkey and Russia: A Fragile FriendshipTuesday, March 14, 2017
The shooting down of the Russian Su-24 bomber by a Turkish airforce F-16 fighter jet on 24 November 2015 resulted in the abrupt fracture of the long-standing fragile relations between Turkey and Russia. Despite the fact that bilateral relations had...

Hasan Selim Özertem

Opportunities & Setbacks in the Cyprus Geneva NegotiationsTuesday, March 14, 2017
To begin with, the Cyprus conflict must be explained as a protracted social conflict (PSC), characterized by the prolonged and often violent conflict for security, recognition, acceptance, fair access to political institutions, and economic...