Turkey’s Crisis Management Process in the ISIS-Turkey Hostage Crisis: The Challenge of Armed Non-state Actors in Iraq and Syria

After the rising effects of the Arab Uprising and the results of the power vacuum caused the spaces without political control and inspection in many states in the Middle East. On the one hand US withdrawal from Iraq and the crisis that have been experienced in Syria, which is, comes to the local, regional and international problem states faced liked ISIS and Al-Nusrah Front non-state actors. Those actors clashed the power struggle with the states. It seems that ISIS who has been experienced a nationalization process, has authority in some areas but has not political power. The space, which must be controlled by the nation state, is not under the authority of Syrian government. This situation has become a problem not only for the Syria but also other states in the region. Thus, the ISIS Hostage Crisis in 2014 is a different case of Turkish foreign policy crises because it emerged in a place, which the state can not control. In this crisis, ISIS militants took hostage Turkey’s Consul General to Mosul and the Consulate Staff. Even though ISIS took this action against Turkish diplomats in Mosul as a non-state actor, this enforced Turkey to initiate a crisis management process. However, the situation was not publicly presented as a ‘crisis’ in the beginning. In this case, a non-state actor is a direct interlocutor of the crisis. Therefore, the lack of official recognition and diplomatic relations brought about a big problem in terms of what means and methods to be used in the crisis resolution. In this text, 'impotent authority' or 'power without authority’ over the ISIS Hostage Crisis as a factor complicating the crisis management will be discussed.