Poststructural International Relations

The relationship between Turkey and the EU existed way before to the extent that it can be traced with Turkey’s predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, though of course, the nature of the relationship has totally changed from alleged anonymity to positive engagement with the new Turkish Republic. The inclination of Turkey towards the west through the policies of westernization and secularization that Turkey followed since its inception, was materialized with the 1963 Ankara Agreement between the European Economic Community (EEC) and Turkey, to facilitate the accession membership of Turkey into the community. Fifty years has passed and the membership goal set out by the Ankara Agreement is still far from being a reality, this is still the case till today. To better understand the causes of this setback this paper attempts to analyse the relationship between Turkey and the EU since 2009 by taking the work of Eralp as a framework in its analysis, [1] in which Eralp emphasizes the importance o...

Since its establishment, the European Community (EC) later known as European Union (EU) was gradually given powers by its member states to allow it conduct international affairs on its own, given its own international legal status under international law (Wessel, 1997) this legal status was achieved through reforms done by major treaties which gave the EU more powers than any international organization would ever dream of, therefore, there has always existed two vying views, intergovernmentalism vs. supranationalism, that played crucial roles in the development of the EU. The 2007 Lisbon Treaty which came into force on 1 December 2009 is one of these crucial treaties that determined the future of the EU that gave it more supranational role (Sela, 2010) . The treaty was preceded by two major events; the rejection of the Constitutional treaty and the enlargement of the members of the EU to 27 member states. As a result, the Lisbon treaty was intended to realize some reforms in decisio...

It may seem controversial when Psychological Warfare is being discussed in relation with public diplomacy. Such controversy is a result of the misunderstood realities these two terms connote. What adds up to more controversy regarding this relationship is misunderstanding of Soft Power as simply being an idealist term. Soft power “is the use of the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies to get others to admire those ideals and then follow one’s lead”  (Pratkanis, 2009) . Public diplomacy is the means through which a country exercises its soft power to promote its own interests  (Nye, 2008) . In public diplomacy, states may employ various means to enhance their status in the international arena; they may exercise cultural diplomacy to present a better image of their countries, or they may employ broadcasting technologies as to disseminate their own narrative to gain legitimacy for their actions, such means show results in the long-run only. The ...

Geopolitics: Geopolitics from Above Flint (2006) describes Geopolitics as a component of human geography. Therefore, understanding Geopolitics requires an understanding of human geography, he then argues that human geography is concerned with two systems. The first system studies the relationship between geography and place; that is the study of what makes a place unique and the connection and interaction between other places. Which means it looks at the characteristics of a place in relation to other places. The other system studies the relationship between geography and space; that is the study of spatially organized human activity. This emphasis of space gives greater weight to functional issues such as the control of territory. The spatial organization of human activity is so embedded in the human perceptions that people act within subconscious geographical imaginations. This spatial aspect as well reflects power relationships which is at the crux of Geopolitics ( Flint...

I was intending to write this article last year but I got busy and I did not get the chance to work on it until now. Thus, it might seem outdated but the article still discusses the events of the besieged districts of various cities in late 2016, this article employs a new academic term that identifies a type of behaviour in conflict situations, yet though the term is recent the behaviour itself is not new. This article is no sense discriminatory to any group whatsoever, and does not target any group that constitute a part of the Syrian population. As I watch the situation in Syria getting worse day after day, I asked myself why the Assad regime is recently turning to evacuating the people in various cities like Hama, Hums, Daraya, and recently Aleppo. I would like to refresh your memory first with   Assad’s words in a speech he gave in front a group of “religious scholars, in 23 rd   of April 2014 to be exact, he said the following: “If we started from one truth, that w...