Regional powers contradictory leaderships: Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the Arab spring

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1628622 (Table of Contents)

Regional powers, their roles, and places in the future configuration of the new world order have been burning debates in academia. Yet, studies on regional powers’ projections in certain regions are quite rare both empirically and theoretically. Needless to say, regional powers have been gaining increasing importance in their respective regions that are gradually becoming autonomous. This creates an environment for them to assert their regional projections. Yet, in this responding region, there might be more than one regional power whose regional projections would possibly contradict each other due to their foreign policy considerations. In this thesis, I demonstrate how two different foreign policy oriented regional powers approach crucially important unfolding regional developments, by examining Saudi Arabia and Turkey during the Arab Spring. By accepting their leadership roles at that period, their intentions and implementations are compared and analyzed in the context of regional powers.