Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Author

Sadık Ünay

İstanbul University, Turkey
Sadık Ünay
July 15: Political Economy of a Foiled Coup
July 1, 2017
Turkey has suffered from interventions and enforcements against its elected governments, on the average, in every decade. Against this background, this study presents an assessment of the political economy of the foiled coup attempt on July 15, 2016 via the main theoretical approaches developed to explain the relations between economy and military coups. In this context, the study looks at the economic background of the pre-coup attempt period, crises scenarios serviced by international institutions and the goals of the perception management orchestrated by the western world for the attempted coup. In the same breath, the study presents in detail the FETÖ’s colossal economic power amounting to billions of dollars. The main conclusion is that the July 15 coup attempt was perpetrated to prevent an interruption in flow of financial resources into a murky network of business enterprises around a messianic cult.
Reality or Mirage?: BRICS and the Making of Multipolarity in the Global Political Economy
July 1, 2013
The international system embarked on a process of transformation to a more heterogeneous configuration and debates of multipolarity acquired vibrancy in recent years. The formation of groupings such as the BRICS by emerging powers was interpreted as the harbinger of a novel global order. This study presents a nuanced account of recent global trends through a critical reading of the BRICS both as analytical category and an international actor. Thus, the heterogeneity of its members in terms of political regimes, economic strategies, geo-strategic alignments and national interest formations is emphasized. In contrast to premature ‘power shift’ arguments, a more subtle approach that underlines complex forms of interdependence between established and emerging global actors is proposed. Consequently, the BRICS is conceptualized as an ‘international regime’ operating relatively well in a specific field of international relations, nothing more.
Guest Editor's Note | Winter 2011
January 1, 2011
Turkey’s rejuvenated foreign policy activism firmly constructed on novel conceptual parameters, such as “strategic depth,” “zero problems with neighbours,” “maximum cooperation” and “balance between security and freedom”, attracted ever-increasing academic and popular attention over the course of the last decade.
Global Transformations and the MENA: A Comparative Political Economy Analysis
January 1, 2011
The regional geographical entity known as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has been at the epicenter of global power struggles over the course of the last centuries with an ever-increasing intensity. While the region has been a popular subject in the literature of political science and international relations due to the sheer volume of conflicts raging within the parameters of its borders, writings on international/comparative political economy focused on alternate regions such as East Asia characterized by a sustainable economic growth potential. This study aims to make a critical contribution to the political economy literature by conducting a theoretically and historically informed analysis on the transformation dynamics in the MENA region. To this end, the multi-faceted legacy of colonialism; the role of oil as a strategic resource; structural changes in the world economy; and divergent politico-economic reform trajectories in the wake of economic globalization will be evaluated.

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