New Book: Turkey’s Neo-Ottomanist Moment – A Eurasianist Odyssey by Cengiz Çandar

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Turkey’s Neo-Ottomanist Moment, A Eurasianist Odyssey, is a comprehensive account to date of the transformation of Turkey’s foreign policy related to its regime change. Cengiz Çandar tells the story of the emergence of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s revisionist Turkey in global affairs. He also reflects how the international expertise on Turkey viewed Turkey.

CONTENTS

  • Preface
  • A Revisionist Power on the International Stage
  • The World’s Pandemic Year, Turkey’s Year of Belligerence
  • Turkey: The Country to Watch
  • Neo-Ottomanism: A Controversy
  • A Kaleidoscope of Hostility
  • Contestation
  • Nostalgia or Restoring Imperial Glory
  • Neo-Ottomanism: A Metamorphosis  (From Özal to Erdoğan via Davutoğlu)
  • Genesis of Neo-Ottomanism
  • The Contours of Özalian Neo-Ottomanism
  • Davutoğlu: Neo-Ottomanist or Not?
  • Turkey-Centred Islamism or Arab Revenge on Turkey
  • Davutoğlu versus Özal: Prelude to Erdoğan
  • From Obscure Islamist Scholar to High-Profile Strategist
  • “Shamgen” versus Schengen
  • Neo-Ottomans versus Neo-Safavids
  • Arab Spring, the Game Changer
  • From Zero Problems with Neighbours to No Neighbours without Problems
  • Sunni-Sectarian and Anti-Kurdish Impulses
  • Turkey in Syria, Eurasianism in Action
  • Erdoğanist Neo-Ottomanism in Play
  • The Eurasianist Diversion: Turkey Marches to Syria
  • Syria: The First Move on the Neo-Ottomanist Chessboard
  • Blue Homeland: Turkish Mare Nostrum (Reaching North Africa, Gunboat Diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean)
  • Expanding to Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean
  • Interconnection
  • Turkey and Greece: Dispute on Maritime Delimitation and EEZ’s
  • Greek Resentment, German “Appeasement”
  • Reasonable Propositions for Maritime Delimitation
  • Blue Homeland: Turkish Maritime Claims Larger than Sweden
  • Blue Homeland: “Eurasianism versus the Imperialist Powers of the West and Greece”
  • In Russia’s Backyard:  Turkey in the South Caucasus
  • Turkey’s Entry into Russia’s “Near Abroad”
  • Timid Turkey 1992: Assertive Turkey 2020–2021
  • Dual Corridor or the Road to Central Asia and China
  • Competitive Cooperation or Adverserial Collaboration with Russia
  • Erdoğan and Putin: Observing Realpolitik
  • First Turkish Military Presence in Caucasus in over a Century
  • Neo-Ottomanist Turkey: For How Long?
  • Wars Cost Money
  • Turkey: A “Sick Man” That Never Was
  • Overturning Conventional History
  • The Reckoning
  • Searching for New Geopolitical Axes in a Multipolar World
  • Turkey’s Hostile Dance with the West
  • Differing Views on China and Russia
  • The Old Overlord in the New Middle East
  • Great Power Rivalries of the “Second Cold War”
  • The Black Sea Dilemma
  • The Uyghur Case: Moral Bankruptcy of Turkish Nationalism and Eurasianism

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Scholar and journalist Cengiz Çandar is known to be an expert on Turkish foreign policy. He is considered to be one of the architects of the Turkish-Kurdish rapprochement as President Turgut Özal’s advisor in the 1990s. Author and contributor of several publications in Turkish and English on Turkey, the Middle East and international relations, a co-author of Turkey’s Transformation and American Policy, New York, 2000 and of The United States and Turkey – Allies in Need, New York, 2003, both are Century Foundation publications and The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, MIT Press, 2004. His Turkey’s Mission Impossible, War and Peace with the Kurds was published in the U.S. in 2020. Çandar is Visiting Scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies (SUITS) and Senior Associate Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).

CREDITS: Cover design by Nihal Yazgan

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