Turkey and the US in the Middle East ─ Diplomacy and Discord During the Iraq Wars

Turkey's recent foreign policy has led to fractious relations with countries in the Middle East and the US. Written by the former chief foreign policy advisor to the Turkish president and based on unprecedented access to official documents and communiqués, this book gives the inside story of Turkish–US relations from the first Gulf War, through debates on the Iraqi Kurdish question, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and into the present day. Using events in Iraq as the basis for a theoretical case study, Gürcan Balik argues that Turkey influenced US foreign policy on several key occasions, and that Turkish support was instrumental in the first intervention in Iraq. After Iraq's 1991 uprisings, however, Turkey's interests in the Middle East began to diverge from those of the US, and their relationship gradually deteriorated, evident in Turkey's refusal to open up its northern border to aid the US advance to Baghdad in 2003. Balik contends that an 'Iraq gap' then emerged, which has since had major implications for the Turkish economy and for the future of the Middle East. Turkey and the US in the Middle East contains hitherto unpublished primary source material, and is an essential addition to the scholarship of the period.

Gurcan Balik was the chief foreign policy advisor to President Abdullah Gul and has held a number of key diplomatic posts in Turkey. He recently completed a PhD in War Studies at King’s College London.