Turkey’s Two-Faced Foreign Policy
Turkey’s foreign policy is, once again, exhibiting the activist but Janus-like tendencies that have defined the more than two decades under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On the one hand, in just the last week, Turkey announced it would sever relations with Israel, possibly accepted Hamas leadership expelled from Qatar, blocked Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s plane from entering its airspace, and launched airstrikes in Syria resulting in over a million losing access to water and electricity. At the same time, Turkey hosted the head of the Shin Bet for discussions about a Gaza ceasefire, invited President-elect Donald Trump to Turkey, and held high-level meetings with Greek and Cypriot leaders.
Please join JINSA for a webinar discussing how to understand these developments that seem aggressively counter-productive yet simultaneously promising, as well as how the incoming U.S. administration can address the broader strategic challenge of Turkey. The webinar will feature JINSA Distinguished Scholar and former Ambassador to Turkey Amb. Eric Edelman, Policy Advisor to JINSA and Director of the Central-Asia Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Svante Cornell, and Alan Makovsky, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Member of JINSA’s Eastern Mediterranean Policy Project.
The panel will be moderated by JINSA’s Vice President for Policy Blaise Misztal.
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Monday, November 25 |
This webinar is open exclusively to JINSA’s National Leadership and program participants, congressional and administration staff, U.S. military, press, and select members of the policy community. RSVPs must be received via the button to the left at least 30 minutes prior to the start time. Once your registration is confirmed, you will receive the details to join. |
Amb. Eric Edelman Amb. Eric Edelman is a Distinguished Scholar at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense & Strategy and the Co-Chair of its Iran Policy Project and Eastern Mediterranean Policy Project. Amb. Edelman served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House where he led organizations providing analysis, strategy, policy development, security services, trade advocacy, public outreach, citizen services and congressional relations, and served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Clinton and Bush Administrations and was principal deputy assistant to the vice president for national security affairs. |
Svante E. Cornell Svante E. Cornell, expert on Turkey, Azerbaijan and the Caucasus – Svante E. Cornell is the Director of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. His main areas of expertise are security issues, state-building, and transnational crime in Southwest and Central Asia, with a specific focus on the Caucasus and Turkey. He is the Editor of CACI’s Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst and Turkey Analyst, the Center’s electronic publications, and of its Silk Road Papers series of occasional papers. |
Alan Makovsky Alan Makovsky is a senior fellow for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. From 2001 to 2013, he served as a senior professional staff member on the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he covered the Middle East, Turkey, and other related issues. At the State Department where he worked from 1983 to 1994—Makovsky variously covered southern European affairs and Middle Eastern affairs for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He also served as the political advisor to Operation Provide Comfort in 1992 and as the special advisor to the special Middle East coordinator from 1993 to 1994. |
Blaise Misztal Blaise Misztal is the Vice President for Policy at JINSA. His research interests include Iran and its nuclear program, U.S.-Turkey relations, countering extremism, and strategic competition. Misztal served as the Executive Director of the Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States, a congressionally mandated project convened by the U.S. Institute of Peace, and Director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Program. He has testified before Congress and published widely—including op-eds in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, and Roll Call. Misztal holds an M.Phil. in political science from Yale and an A.B. with honors from the University of Chicago. |