Turkish – Saudi relations from a regional perspective, in the period from 2003 until 2013

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: AMR MOHAMED HASSAN ELLITHY

Danışman: MELİHA ALTUNIŞIK

Özet:

The thesis aims to understand how the relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia evolved in the 2000s, through applying the regional level of analysis. It looks at interaction between these two regional powers in the Middle East after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab uprisings in 2011 in a comparative way through examining the regional contexts created after these events and how the foreign policy of Turkey and Saudi Arabia reacted to these contexts. The thesis tries to figure out how the regional relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which ranges between regional cooperation and regional competition, affected the political, economic and military relations between Ankara and Riyadh through the period of study between 2003 until 2013. The thesis argues that the regional context had impacted the Turkish-Saudi relations positively after the US invasion of Iraq and negatively during the Arab uprisings and mainly in the Egyptian uprising in 2013. The thesis uses the Regional Security Complex Theory, Securitization and De-Securitization in order to understand the regional interaction between Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East.