Study On The Relationship Between The U.s. Alliance With Turkey

Alliance theory is one of the core theories in international relations. Meanwhile,alliance politics is a significant means for countries to gain power, balance threat andguarantee their interests. Historically, many countries in the world have attempted toseek power and interests though alliance politics. Some of them achieved solidaritythrough effective management, while others have to dismantle their alliance andnumerous challenges and crisis follow alliances. The disparity of alliance efficacyreveals the importance of alliance management, which is essential to the maintenanceof alliance solidarity and the realization of common interests.The U.S.-Turkey alliance, formed in1952, is a case in point. The bilateralrelations suffered a series of challenges and crisis continuously with the incessantchanges of the domestic and foreign surroundings. However, the bilateral alliancesurvived finally. Consequently, their alliance management is well worth beingresearched and reflected. This thesis will concentrate on three typical cases, namelyU.S.-Turkey alliance during the Cyprus Crisis, the Gulf War and the Iraq war. Itattempts to compare the different means of alliance management, test the threevariables raised in the thesis and analyze the proper alliance management model ofthe alliance.So far, the current literature on alliance management at home and abroad mainlyfocuses on Snyder’s “alliance dilemma” hypothesis, namely the security dilemmabetween “abandonment” and “entrapment” between allies, which is flawed andincomplete.Accordingly, this thesis, based on the previous study on alliance theory, putforward three hypotheses of alliance management, namely the interest divergence, thestrategic communication failure of the leaders among allies and the internationalpublic opinion ramification are three crucial factors contributing to alliancemanagement. Generally speaking, they have a negative correlation with theperformance of alliance management. In other words, if the respective nationalinterests of the allies collide with each other intensely and the common interests willbe overshadowed by differences. Meanwhile, if there are serious strategic consultationfailure among the ally leaders and if there is no consensus on the crisis in the worldpublic opinion, then alliance management will likely doom to fail in face of challenges and crisis, and vice versa.