Europe and Eurasia

It focuses on several issues: the changing nature of international power during the past century, the evolution of Moscow’s foreign relations, the domestic political and economic processes through which the Stalinist garrison state generated international power, and the system’s vulnerabilities under conditions of incipient globalization. The course also briefly examines the prospects for Russia to resume a central global role in the new century.

The first part of the course will broadly cover Turkey’s domestic dynamics. After an overview of the Ottoman legacy, the course will analyze the official ideology of the republic, Kemalism, and the role of the Turkish military as the guardian of this official ideology. The course will then focus on the Kurdish question and political Islam as Turkey’s two major “identity” problems. The rise of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in the last decade and the clash between Kemalism, the Kurdish question and political Islam will be a major theme of class discussions and presentations. The second part of the course will primarily deal with Turkish foreign policy and Turkey’s evolving strategic vision and culture under the leadership of AKP. Although the main emphasis will be on relations with the Middle East, Turkish Foreign policy towards the European Union and Russia will also be analyzed. The domestic determinants of Turkish foreign policy will be a particularly important theme to explore.

Students will gain a complete overview of current empirical developments and academic debates on the theme of security on the European continent: Multilateral security and defense organizations (especially, NATO and the EU), national defense policies, and contemporary security challenges. The course seeks to encourage students to think critically about Europe and what it means both geographically and in terms of actors (organizations and states). It addresses security threats and their construction, from human security to “hard” security issues, including military interventions and terrorism.

Originally designed as a simple economic arrangement, the evolution and expansion of the European Union represents an unprecedented attempt at supranational integration that has resulted in a body of institutions that exert profound influence in global economic and political affairs. The material covered in the class will consist of a blend of the historical context, key ideas, events, and unintended consequences that illuminate and inform various competing theoretical paradigms that try to explain Europe’s dramatic transformation.