Abstract:

This article addresses the role of private actors in Turkish foreign policy process, and more specifically the interactions between the Gülen movement and Turkish foreign policy towards Iraqi Kurdistan from 1994 to 2014. This case study brings to light the fact that the role of transnational networks in foreign policy depends on the evolution of power struggle between competing coalitions on the domestic scene. Therefore, the development of the Gülen movement’s activities was partly linked with the army’s foreign policy at the beginning of the 1990’s. It then evolved and participated with a reformer nexus of various actors to the production of a new paradigm on the Kurdish file at the end of the 2000’s. After the file transfer from the army to the MFA and the development of the relations between Ankara and Erbil, the Gülen movement started to be marginalized, and the Turkish state even asked for the closure of the schools after the crisis between the AKP government and the movement in December 2013.

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