FULL TITLE: Policy Diffusion and the Role of International Organizations in Comparative Perspective: Analyzing EU and NATO Policies in the Contemporary Security Sector Reforms of Turkey
ABSTRACT
The immediate need to respond to the transforming global security landscape in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and the recent increase of terrorism has caught Turkey in the process of ongoing extensive security sector reforms for democratization due to the accession negotiations with the European Union (EU) since Helsinki Summit in 1999. These ongoing reforms are likely to have significant repercussions for the reorganization of the security sector in Turkey, particularly in areas such as counterterrorism and civil-military relations. Evidently, these critical policy spheres are among the interests of international organizations that Turkey is an established member such as NATO, and for the ones that has been a long-time aspirant such as the EU.
Considering the importance of Turkey for these organizations, any analysis of the recent Turkish security sector reforms without taking into account the EU and NATO roles in the process would be incomplete. In order address this need for the analysis of policy diffusion via international organizations this article focuses on the comparative exploration of the EU and NATO influences, direct and indirect, on ongoing security sector reforms in Turkey.
Preliminary findings suggest that: although, both of these organizations have considerable overlapping members, and share almost identical global values in principle; their effects, and hence, the impacts of the policy diffusion on Turkish security sector reforms have been different in nature and magnitude. To entangle the reasons and repercussions of these differences the article begins with an overview of the recent security sector reforms in Turkey, and then outlines the key points where the EU and/or NATO (e.g. USA) have been influential; after that the article compares and contrasts the relative nature and weight of influences of these organizations, and finally ends with the analysis of policy implications for relations between Turkey and the EU, the USA, and the Middle Eastern countries in search of democratization.
KEY WORDS: Policy Diffusion, International Organizations: EU, NATO, Democratization, Security Sector Reforms in Turkey, Counterterrorism, Civil-Military Relations
