JEOPOLİTİK STRATEJİ - Deneme Sınavı - 10

The United States is surrounded by two vast oceans to the west and east and it has relatively twoweak neighbors to the north and south. It is not located in close proximity to many conflict-riven places in the world and developments
in far distant places tend to have minor impact on core American security and economic interests. doğru cevap " C " dir.

When Turkey asked western security protection against the Soviet Union in the
second half of the 1940, the American statesmen approached Turkey from an ideological perspective and legitimized the issue of Turkey’s membership in NATO mainly on the basis of identity related concerns. It was for sure that Turkey’s contribution to NATO alliance would emanate from its geographical location and military power capability and Turkey would play a key role in containing the Soviet penetration into the wider Middle East. Doğru cevap " D " dir.

Since the early 1990s until 2008, the United States, in partnership with its European allies within NATO and the European Union, dictated international politics. This period was the heyday of the ‘liberal international order’. Not only did it gradually expand to include former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, but also the immense material power capabilities of the United States allowed her to pursue primacist strategies all around the world. Doğru cevap " E " dir.

The extreme self-confidence on the part of the American statesmen led them to argue that the United States is the indispensable nation and there is no need to help bring into existence new regional or global security organizations that would potentially replace NATO. It was in accordance with such thinking that whenever the Russian leadership offered the idea that a new panEuropean security organization should be founded replacing western-dominated ones, the Americans simply ignored them. Doğru cevap " A " dır.

The Black Sea region provides even more confusion as some analysts include all the members of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization into their analysis, thus covering Bulgaria, Greece, and Romenia, all members of the European Union, as well as Albania and Serbia in central Europe and Moldova, Ukraine, and parts of southern Russia on the Black Sea cost.

The western powers have not been immune to such currents either. The last decade has witnessed the rise of populist and illiberal political movements in key western countries. The internal criticism of liberal democratic practices has severely affected the attractiveness of a liberal world order. Doğru cevap " B " dir.

The liberal world order, which has come into being following the end of World War II under American leadership, has been going through a radical transformation in recent years mostly owing to China’s spectacular rise. In parallel to its increasing material power capability, China is also posing fundamental challenges to the normative fabric of the liberal world order. Doğru cevap " C " dir.

China is not openly questioning the established western liberal order by either forming antiwestern coalitions of states or doing its best to make sure that western-led international organizations do not operate smoothly. It is for sure that China, along with many other rising powers, wants to see that its growing ascendance in global politics be accommodated institutionally and peacefully. However, should western powers decline to accommodate China, the latter will not hesitate to help establish alternative institutional platforms under its guidance, such as the Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. China values external democratization of global politics rather than internal democratization of national politics. Doğru cevap " D " dir.

Tangible sources are those that can be quantified, measured, observed and categorized. Such sources are military capability, economic might, geographical location, population number, human development, technological prowess, environmental factors, and etc. Doğru cevap " E " dir.

Although the Caucasus in general is a mountainous region and include imposing mountain ranges, it also has flatlands in the north and south with temperate and mild weather, sometimes exhibiting microclimate characteristics.

All of the items are true.

The Central Asia and the Caucasus regions had traditionally been divided among the nomadic people with extensive conflicts between them during the most of the known history. As both regions came under Russian tutelage and later control from the 18th century onwards, most of the Central Asia did not experience modern state systems until the end of the Soviet Union, while the Caucasus witnessed a struggle for control between three traditional empires, i.e. the Czarist Russia, Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, during the 18th and 19th centuries, though the number of local kingdoms and khanates were established in the region as far back as the 10th century. The Black Sea, on the other hand, was controlled by various empires since the Roman times, though it had been made up of small settlements before than.

While the direct control of the South Caucasus by Russia came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union, finally allowing the independence of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, the North Caucasus remains part of the Russian Federation, and various territorial disputes emerged since then creating opportunities to Russia to prolong its interference in and influence over the entire region.

On the other hand, Russia which, as opposed to The Netherlands, is relatively unstable in economic terms is considered a big power because of its
military influence, and its vast geography. India
is even a more illustrative case

This tells us that geopolitics is not all about territory per se. Even though international law prescribes
territory as a major component of statehood without adding any certain elements or attributes, the nature
of the territory often determines the quality of geopolitical advantage associated with the geography. Among
other things, the natural resources, proximity or remoteness to conflict areas, the climatic characteristics,
neighborhood with prosperous or politically stable (or unstable) nations are all factors that contribute to the geopolitical inventory

As a result of the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991, eight diverse republics emerged in Central Asia and the Caucasus, in addition to two more in the Black Sea region apart from Russian Federation, facing similar problems. While national minorities rediscovered longsuppressed identities and demanded new rights throughout the region, political leaders in all the countries plunged into what could best be described as a prolonged period of nation and state building process. While the Caucasian countries had experiences of statehood before finally subjugated to the Russian/Soviet rule in the early 20th century and Moldova had a very brief independence in 1918, Central Asian countries as well as Ukraine had never in history experienced with a modern state system and did not exist in the forms that they gained their independence at the end of the 20th century. Most of the borders emerged after their independence did not have much meaning for the nomadic people of the pre-Russian Eurasia. As people of these regions started to realize their ethnic, religious, and historical roots, the emerging diversity created domestic and regional rivalries as well as international influences and pressures.

The post-Cold War period, particularly the
1990s, is marked with growing interest in the
study and understanding of geopolitics. Geography
has been made a part of political discussions and
analyses. The reason for enthusiasm and interest
is the uncertain direction of world politics after
the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the
bipolar world and the rush to identify the possible
trajectory of global developments under the new
circumstances.

For others, geopolitics is a research field that
pays particular attention to not only geography but also dynamics leading up to clashes and rivalries
between great powers. In fact, this is how particular strands of geopolitics came into life: the geopolitics
of oil (Klare, 2009), the geopolitics of religion (Dijkink, 2006), the geopolitics of water (Selby, 2005), the
geopolitics of propaganda and the geopolitics of internet (Hlihor, 2014).

This argument can be confirmed by the recent popular
uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) region where unconnected masses were
organized through social media and initiated a
process called the Arab Spring (Khondker, 2011).

On the contrary, the post-Soviet leaders in the Caucasus and northern Black Sea discarded the Soviet political tradition and the legacy of the old regime, and tried instead to replace the old system with the new power bases and institutions. Their challenges to the previous political order resulted in a number of violent clashes, uprisings and, in some cases, civil war. Even in cases where violent conflicts were avoided, number of dynamics, including ethnic differences, religious diversities, economic problems, environmental issues and external influences have caused confrontation and instability in these regions.