Regions, powers and secondary state bandwagoning under unipolarity: The case of Turkish-American relations

Why do secondary powers cooperate with the United States in the post-Cold War unipolar international system and what factors determine their level and type of cooperation? Why did the United States have difficulties enlisting Turkey, a steadfast US ally, behind its military-political agenda in some cases, while it obtained Turkey's support successfully in others? To answer these questions, this dissertation examined the boundary conditions of when secondary powers are likely to engage in bandwagoning strategies, i.e., follow the stronger side in a militarized international dispute taking place in a regional security complex (RSC).;The central claim of this dissertation is that what determines whether a secondary power will bandwagon is not the distribution of power at the global systemic level, i.e., independent variable, but the dynamics of the regional and domestic environments within which the foreign policy executive (FPE) operates to execute its country's foreign policy, which this study treated as intervening variables, mediating systemic influences. I developed a multilevel foreign policy model that delineates the independent and intervening variables at different levels and identifies elaborate causal linkages between the systemic incentives and the dependent variable, i.e., different foreign policy outcomes in the form of secondary state bandwagoning.;This model has been tested through a closer examination of Turkey's alliance behavior in the context of two conflicts, with a particular focus on how Turkey conducted its relations with the United States: US invasion of Iraq (2003) and Russian-Georgian conflict (2008). These cases were chosen as most-likely candidates for defensive bandwagoning, a subtype of the overall bandwagoning strategy, because the primary motivation driving Turkish FPE was the perceived indirect threats from US actions.;The two case studies provide evidence that the intervening variables at the domestic and regional environments influenced state behavior, through the causal mechanisms identified in the model. I therefore conclude that although structural distribution of power exerts a major causal influence on state behavior, i.e., the systemic imperative of bandwagoning, the boundary conditions of the bandwagoning argument are set by the causal forces located at the domestic and regional environments.