The US Hegemony in US-Turkish Relationship Towards Iraq.

This paper focuses on the use of different forms of power by a (leader/patron/hegemonic) state to get the other (non-leader/client) states cooperate with its policies: the use of different forms of power in obtaining cooperation from other states in exercising economic sanctions against a target state. Most of the literature on cooperation operate on the level of bargaining power where the policy changes are directly visible to or observable by the researcher. In this paper, I attempt to show how bargaining power model is not adequate in capturing the complete picture of the relationship between Turkey (a non-leader/client state) and the US (leader/patron state) in their cooperation and non-cooperation with regard to Iraq during the Gulf Crisis and the US War Against Iraq, respectively. In that regard, I attempt to show that the three levels of power (Krause 1991) is a much better and more comprehensive framework in understanding and explaining the power relationship between Turkey and the US. There are three main objectives of this study: (1) to shed more light on the cooperation process, (2) to challenge the conventional wisdom in the area of cooperation that states? cooperative or non-cooperative behaviors are best understood or explained on the bargaining level, and (3) to challenge the utility of paradigms, in this case the rational choice, in the discipline. This study attempts to show why a client state cooperates with a patron state even when this does not look as the best interest to that state, i.e., that state?s first preference is not to cooperate or that state does not have a dominant strategy to cooperate. Similarly, this study also aims at showing why a client state does not cooperate with a patron state even though cooperation seems to be the best interest to the client state. My working hypothesis is that Turkey?s cooperation (or non-cooperation) with the US with regard to the Iraq issue can not be fully understood or explained by using solely a bargaining model which focuses on directly observable (visible) results of a policy or an observable policy change that, for example, could be utilized by either empirical non-quantifiable, or empirical quantifiable data. Lisa Martin?s (1992) game theoretical model is a good framework to look at the relationship between the two states on the bargaining level. But it does not take into consideration the two other levels of power, i.e., it focuses on bargaining power, and omits structural power and hegemonic power. A comprehensive framework of different forms of power relationship between a patron state and a client state is needed to explain the cooperative/non-cooperative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]