Marianna Charountaki, Iran and Turkey: International and Regional Engagement in the Middle East, London, I. B. Tauris, 2018, 349 pp., (9781838604714).
Marianna Charountaki’s Iran and Turkey examines the foreign policies of both states, starting with Ottoman-Safavid relations all the way to contemporary policies in the wake of the Syrian civil war. Charountaki seeks to do more than simply offer readers a comparative description and analysis of Turkish and Iranian foreign policy, however. Informed by her “previous extensive work based on a critique of IR [international relations] theories,” Charountaki tells readers that:
My intention is to make a further test of the applicability of my theoretical approach by examining international politics using an alternative IR outlook which combines ‘multi-dimensional,’ ‘interactional’ and ‘interrelational’ aspects to address important areas that have hitherto been given insufficient attention in the discipline. It therefore embraces the interrelation among politics, IR and foreign policy on the one hand, and, on the other, the interaction between state and non-state actors other than structures and policies. The premise results in an informative model of ‘multi-dimensional interrelations’ that attempts to bridge the gap between agent and structure, time and space, epistemology and ontology and objectivity and subjectivity. (pp. 216–17)
Charountaki thus simultaneously claims that all previous IR theories are inadequate and that her work on Turkey and Iran begins the process of rectifying the problem by offering us a new theoretical approach. She does this without mentioning or grappling with any of the theoretical paradigms, approaches or theories – other than a passing reference to “middle powers theories” (pp. 7–8) and a quick dismissal of the concept of “omnibalancing” (p. 5) – that IR theorists have produced during the last seventy years. Instead of addressing the myriad IR paradigms, approaches and theories available to inform a comparative discussion of Turkish and Iranian foreign policies, Charountaki seems to use neo-realism (a.k.a. “structural realism”) as a stand-in for all IR theory, which is then easy enough to dismiss for not paying attention to domestic politics, non-state actors or ideas and identities. This is unfortunate, as much of her account – which can be very informative, interesting and accurate at times – could benefit from the added theoretical purchase that recent work on neo-classical realism, the English School and constructivism, or older work on omnibalancing (Steven David, 1991) and two-level games (Robert Putnam, 1988), could provide.
None of these IR approaches have a problem with integrating state and non-state actors, different levels of analysis or both “ideational issues” and “material power concerns” into a coherent analysis. The English school, the liberal paradigm and constructivism could all provide some purchase to Charountaki’s observations regarding the limits to Turkish and Iranian competition and conflict in the region, for example, which she ascribes to their shared Islamic identity and economic inter-dependence. Neo-classical realism, omnibalancing and two-level games, meanwhile, are all about how and when state leaders prioritise domestic or international imperatives and threats. These are not “either/or explanations” as Charountaki incorrectly calls them, thereby dismissing Robert Olson’s 2003 (Turkey-Iran Relations, 1979–2004) use of omni-balancing theory to examine the same subject. In all these approaches, the analysis remains sensitive to the circumstances in which a state will sacrifice foreign policy imperatives to prioritise an internal imperative or threat, such as a restive Kurdish population.
Insights from omnibalancing, neo-classical realism and two-level games could thus help explain the moment when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ceased effectively backing Syrian rebels’ insurgency against the Assad regime and instead deflected them towards fighting Syrian Kurds sympathetic to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkey could have been the patron of Syrian Kurdish groups and made peace with the PKK in 2013, in turn allowing Ankara a better chance at deposing the Assad regime and replacing Iran’s most important ally in the region with a new Turkish ally. Instead of really analysing how and why this Turkish choice happened and highlighting for the reader the occasional serious tensions between domestic political imperatives and foreign policy goals, Charountaki ends up just largely describing the change in policy (pp. 186–201). While she notes that Erdoğan “… also had his own issues to deal with as he needed to address pressing domestic concerns such as the Kurdish issue …,” this observation comes divorced from the perfectly good theories that would have explained the whole episode much more clearly – or even predicted it.
Charountaki essentially seems to mistake organised, methodical description (and at times analysis) of everything she believes is relevant to Turkish and Iranian foreign policies for a new theoretical approach to IR:
To answer the book’s main argument, a different kind of approach that reviews all the interconnected elements in order to come up with a reasoned and well-considered analysis is then required. There are increasing scholarly demands for the necessity of ‘a flexible and inclusive theoretical framework,’ that is, one that incorporates the politics of power and influence but also the role of ideas, interests and domestic restraints. No single theory or level of analysis offers a way of exploring satisfactorally the shifting dynamic of international politics or the international politics of the region … considering the behavior of Middle Eastern states in the international system which demands a more .… integrated approach as the region defies attempts at generalization and resists explanations derived from Western experience [and thus] there is still a gap in the literature. (sic, p. 30)
It is perfectly acceptable to argue that everything is important and generalisation is impossible – but one should not claim to offer a new theoretical approach in the process. Not including maps, the book’s two graphic illustrations provide a visual aid for Charountaki’s approach:
A model for multi-dimensional interactions
Pictures are not always worth a thousand words. In this case, the two illustrations appear to be worth about six words: “All the various actors interact together.” This is simply not IR theory of any sort.
Given her aversion for IR theories, Charountaki would have done much better to simply tell the readers about Turkey and Iran’s foreign policy and skip roughly 70 pages of theoretical pretension and jargon. Her actual account of both states’ foreign policies over the years stands out as the contribution of the book. Because this reviewer spent too much time getting upset about other matters, only a few of the book’s praiseworthy contributions can now be described.
First among these has to be Chapter 3 of the volume, which struck this reviewer as the strongest chapter. Charountaki convincingly shows how particularly in the case of Turkey, the foreign policies we are witnessing today are not that different from what we saw during the 1970s. For reasons related to both domestic politics and foreign policy imperatives, Turkey after the invasion of Cyprus began improving its relations with the Soviet Union and Iran at the same time as its relations with the West hit an all time low. Too often observers forget such parallels, which Charountaki demonstrates very convincingly.
Second, Charountaki cogently explains how despite their rivalry, Turkey and Iran depend on each other and have clear limits to what they will contemplate against the other. The limits stem from both identity/social bonds and economics mainly (both things that the constructivist approaches and the English School paradigm of IR, unfortunately unmentioned in this book, spend a good deal of time explaining in depth). The Turkish-Islamist synthesis that emerged in Turkey (p. 67) brings Turkish views and policies closer to Iran’s than one might otherwise realise. An interesting difference that she highlights, however, comes with the Israel-Palestine question: while post-1979 Iran uses this issue to great effect both domestically and regionally, Turkey limits itself to pro-Palestinian rhetoric while continuing to do active business with Israel (pp. 20, 90). This would be a perfect example of Putnam’s 2-level games theory, if we were to use such language – Turkey materially benefits from trade with Israel, but domestic political opinion in Turkey necessitated increasingly strident anti-Israeli rhetoric from the government in Ankara. Eventually, this also forced Ankara to abandon its de facto military alliance with Israel – contrary to what many could reasonably view as solid Turkish national interests. If she had wanted to use the language of IR constructivists, Charountaki could have described it as “identity produced rhetoric, which forced a material change in Israel-Turkish relations, which then impacted identities in Turkey further – and which could in turn eventually lead to the complete rupture of Turkish-Israeli economic relations.”
Finally, Charountaki does an admirable job of showing how Kurds are not just objects of various states’ foreign policies. They have become actors in their own right, increasingly important in the region and always central to the construction of foreign policy in Turkey and Iran especially. Throughout most of the book, she insists that one should not prioritise states over non-state actors such as the Kurds. In the conclusion, however, she seems to concede that non-state actors, “whose capacity is limited despite their ability to exert influence on the region’s foreign policies,” appear less central than states (p. 243).
In the language of IR classic Realism, one might have repeated something from Thucydides that most Kurdish readers are quite familiar with: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”