The nature of political interaction in Turkish domestic politics: debates on Annan plan (2004) and the presidential election (2007)

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1295899 (Table of Contents)

This thesis examines the nature of political interactions in the context of two critical policy issues within Turkish domestic politics: the 2004 negotiations over the Annan Plan in Cyprus and process of the 2007 presidential election and analyzes the impact of international environment on this process. This thesis predicts that the presence or absence of international attention impacted the nature of the domestic political interactions. The existence of international actors in the above cases made domestic conflictual political relations more moderate and cooperative. The absence of such audience led to more aggressive maneuvers and sharper polarizations. It was also found that the level of cooperation and competition of the domestic actors changed according to their level of involvement with the international community. The study is based on a comparative-case study implemented by process tracing methodology. The main objective of this research thus is to analyze the process of the policy and decision making of two politically sensitive cases through coding the domestic actors' political interaction.