Abstract:

This study analyzes Turkey’s foreign policy on the 1956 Suez crisis within the framework of neoclassical realist theory. In this context, in order to analyze “Turkey’s foreign policy towards the 1956 Suez crisis” as a dependent variable, “international systemic factors” are considered as an independent variable and “local factors” as an intervening variable according to the methodology of the study. In the study, the structure of the international system, which is claimed to have a determining/limiting effect on the Turkish foreign policy-making process towards the 1956 Suez crisis, is explained by associating it with bipolarity, which implies ideological opposition and nuclear competition between the superpowers. Various factors such as “the need for deterrent military capacity”, “Westernist tendency in the tradition of Turkish foreign policy”, “need for economic assistance” and “decision makers’ effort for regional leadership” are considered as local filters that interpret the determining/limiting effects of the international system. In this study, in which two different levels of analysis are used, both the “continuity” of Turkish foreign policy towards the 1956 Suez crisis which depends on systemic effects, and the “tendency to change” arising from local dynamics are introduced.

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