Compartmentalized Hedging in the Middle East : Turkey’s Alternative Strategy towards Iran

초록

The concepts of balancing and bandwagoning theoretically have been the known strategies that states often utilize when they are exposed to pressing external threats. Scholars debated about the absence of balancing by states in the post-Cold War era against the United States, such that concepts like soft balancing and underbalancing have been introduced as the alternatives. States’ balancing strategies become more complicated under fragmented, multi-polar system such as the Middle East. Due to power diffusion, the Middle East has many weakened states and various types of actors are trying to take advantage of it; Iran has gained the most geopolitically. The puzzle is why Turkey is not employing either a balancing or bandwagoning strategy towards Iran, even though Iran’s regional geopolitical gains are a threat. This paper argues that Turkey has adopted ‘compartmentalized hedging’ towards Iran during the outbreak of civil wars and conflicts that are internationalized. Compartmentalized hedging allows Turkey to transcend the traditional relationship boundaries of ally or foe by straddling the grey area by simultaneously combining negative balancing and economic engagement as a hybrid policy towards the regional threat.

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