Turkey's New Geopolitics: From the Balkans to Western China.

• Author: Reynolds, Michael A.

The past several years have seen momentous changes throughout the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East. The processes initiated by the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War are far from being resolved, and these regions remain in an unpredictable, volatile flux. At the center of this political and geographic turmoil lies Turkey. Surrounded both by new opportunities and problems, Turkey, by virtue of its stability and strength relative to its neighbors, is destined to play an important international role throughout this enormous area. So long as the U.S. maintains interests in any of these regions, American policy makers will require knowledge and understanding about Turkey and its domestic and foreign policies.

Turkey's New Geopolitics: From the Balkans to Western China succeeds admirably, if not perfectly, in fulfilling this very necessary task of alerting American foreign-policy makers to Turkey's current foreign policy options and dilemmas. The book is flawed in its structure, and at times the analyses and policy recommendations are faulty or questionable. But it is convincing in arguing its central point: that a secular and fundamentally democratic Turkey can serve as a stabilizing influence in the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Middle East, and that the U.S. should strongly encourage Turkish integration into the West. As former U.S. Ambassador Morton Abramowitz explains in the foreword, "The United States is, and should be, most interested in seeing Turkey continue as a stable, democratic, secular, economically dynamic state in a region that will remain turbulent for a long time to come."

The book is comprised of five essays written by four area-specialists. The first observation, which even a casual reader of the book will note, is that despite the inclusion of the suggestive word "geopolitics" in the title, none of the books authors attempt a true geopolitical analysis. At best, the reader will find the term used in a few scattered instances, devoid of any relation to theories of geopolitics.(1)

This highlights a major flaw in the book's structure - a lack of theoretical unity. Scenarios are listed, possibilities are proposed and risks are weighed by each author, but not always in a coherent manner. As a result, the reader is left confused as to how the scenarios relate to one another. Issues are examined in isolation, and insufficient effort is made to link or to explore possible relationships between phenomena such as the privatization of the Turkish economy and the democratization of Turkish society. Graham Fuller's concluding chapter compensates to some degree for this lack of theoretical unity by putting the preceding four in a more unified thematic context. Tight theoretical and thematic organization from the beginning, however, would have made it easier for the reader to identify the authors' subtler insights and would have eliminated annoying overlap in the treatment of topics. This flaw, though fundamental, is not fatal to the book, and can be forgiven since it was likely dictated by the need to publish the book in a timely fashion.

A more easily rectified, and therefore less forgivable, structural shortcoming is the lack of historical...