Leverages and Constraints for Turkish Foreign Policy in Syrian War: A Structural Balance Approach/Turk Dis Politikasinin Suriye Savasindaki Etkisi ve Sinirlari: Bir Yapisal Denge Yaklasimi.

• Author: Guner, Serdar S.
• Position: Report

Introduction

Realities of international politics reveal themselves with multiple facets. The conflict in Syria is no exception. It evolves at such a pace that changing alignments and strategic moves of involved states puzzle and baffle observers. Faced with daily observations policy analysts and international relations (IR) experts have a tough time to make meaning out of the conflict's complexity. Do Turkey, Russia, and the United States (U.S.) agree or disagree on alternative issues such as the faith of the Assad regime, the support to Syrian Kurds especially the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Free Syrian Army (FSA), or the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS)? The answers to these questions would demonstrate that the complexity of the conflict unfolds through interlocked issues at stake.

One does not need to be an IR scholar to notice the myriad of issues underlying armed clashes ravaging Syria. Everyone knows that major IR actors, terrorist groups, regional powers, international organizations in governmental or nongovernmental varieties (and any other actor or actors the readers of this article can add in) are involved in this bloody conflict. Thus, a need arises for systematic evaluations to analyze Turkish foreign policy (TFP) and other states' choices in the conflict. We argue that such appraisals become feasible and easier by the use of an analytic tool. The tool is the theory of Structural Balance (SB). (1)

Fritz Heider is the architect of the theory of SB. (2) Heider did not originally focus on IR but on interpersonal relations. The theory is first used to study envy, jealousy, and competition in social settings. (3) Its generalization to more general empirical configurations is due to Cartwright and Harary. (4) Harary later applied his generalized version of the theory to study the stability of balance in the region of Middle East. (5) The theory is not used in 1980s and during the following decades due to the change of focus in the academic discipline of IR theory. Researchers preferred to use game-theoretic tools to study balance of power among states during the heydays of the so-called Neo-Neo debate pitting Neorealism against Neoliberalism. (6) Game-theoretic analyses of balance of power did not generate a fruitful research program. Like the theory of SB, the interest in the use of Game Theory to study formation of alliances among states has declined. The research was doomed to fail as few IR theorists followed or found game-theoretical arguments of balance of power helpful. The Neo-Neo debate is later replaced in the discipline by another one centering on the divide between positivism versus post-positivism. The current discussion is about whether positivist methods are suitable to study IR further withering away from analyses of balance of power. The concept and research on the very topic of balance of power does no longer constitute a theoretic hotspot in IR.

What we understand from this brief description is that a pattern exists in the use of theories and research they spawn in the IR discipline:

The development of theories in the social sciences follows an apparently lawlike pattern: at the outset some more or less precise theoretical ideas are advanced. If these elicit the attention of other scientists, the following happens: some authors catch on to these ideas, modify them and conduct empirical investigations to test them. Further modifications and empirical investigations follow. After some years there exist a great many different versions of the initial ideas and numerous empirical investigations. Nobody knows how exactly the many variants differ, which research results confirm or falsify which variant and which variant is superior. The interest of the scientists in the respective theory declines and they turn to other questions. There exist once more a great many unsolved problems and the expectation of finding a theory nearly as successful as natural science theories is disappointed. (7) Thus, the focus in the IR discipline shifts and takes different directions over time. The theory of SB is no exception to the rule; theories come and go. The Network Theory (NT) seems to revive interest in balance of power analyses in IR recently. (8) The theory defines a network "as a set of units--nerves, computers, individual, organizations, states--and a rule that defines whether, how, in what way, and to what extent any two units are linked with each other. This is what we call a relational network ... What is network analysis? In a nutshell, network analysis is a science of interactions. It is a perspective on the physical, biological, and social world that is based on several fundamental premises." (9) Thus, the NT leans towards complexities. The analysis of war in Syria according to the theory can deal with mutually embedded interdependences between issues, people, leaders, and all involved actors. Such an analysis indeed requires data that could take several years to collect and evaluate. More important, it requires interest of other IR scholars who might vary in their preferences toward statistics and data collection. There is a precise distinction between scientists' preferences over simplification and directly dealing with complexity: "For me, the best models are as simple they have to be but not simpler. One can go wild with complexity, sometimes to the point of having to resort to computer simulations or numerical techniques to solve a model, but I prefer to go in the opposite direction and keep stripping the model of features until any further simplification would not let me the story I wish to tell." (10) Similarly, we go in the opposite direction in this paper. Our primary aim is to discipline our arguments and thoughts in simple terms; we do not deal with complexity directly.

We choose the SB as a tool to analyze conflict in Syria for several reasons. First, we prefer simplicity. The theory is simple and accessible to layman and IR theorists who avoid formalism. However, one should not deduce the conclusion that the accessibility of our analysis means that it is not rigorous. The existence of formulas, statistical charts are not sufficient to establish rigor that is rather connected with deduction. (11) The theory of SB posits principles of balance from which consequences are derived. Therefore, we present a deductive model simplifying reality: "Models are a constrained, best effort to capture what the modeler believes to be the essence of a complex empirical phenomenon or at least an important aspect of it." (12) Second, and more important, the theory has a precise definition of balance unlike balance of power theory harboring at least eight meanings of balance condition in IR. (13) This aspect is immensely precious in the discipline of IR which suffers from endless debates and arguments as theorists do not possess commonly accepted definitions of central concepts as, say, economists or psychologists. (14)

Finally, the theory of SB does not mirror reality like any other theory either in physical or social sciences. Theories are tools to explain phenomena. They do not reproduce observations. To illustrate, the theory of SB does not report the fact that Turkey and Russia actually cooperate. It explains why they do so. An inclusion of all possible variables and causal connections in a theory leads to the reflection of the complexity of the empirical world. In contrast, theories simplify reality by concentrating on few variables and connections. They explain why and how things are related. The theory of SB helps to answer questions such as: "How do involved states' alignments and strategic moves change? What are the opportunities and drawbacks TFP may possibly face? What does the Turkish-Russo rapprochement mean and what are its future consequences? Is there a possibility of Turkish-Syrian cooperation and under what circumstances? How will the U.S. help to Kurds affect the balance in the system? How and why do recent Israeli declarations regarding the Kurdish state formation affect the balance in the system?" The principles upon which the theory is based produce answers to such questions. They reveal alternative configurations demonstrating different trajectories the conflict can evolve through. We do however not claim that each theoretical implication of our analysis will be empirically substantiated since we cannot expect that each implication will be corroborated by observations. The reason is simple: one can never be certain that a future observation will not contradict the theory. (15) Theories can never be proven to be true.

Structural Balance

The theory of SB is based upon the following principles: "a friend of my friend, as well as an enemy of my enemy, is my friend; a friend of my enemy, as well as an enemy of my friend, is my enemy" in a three-actor system called a triad. (16) The violation of one of these rules implies imbalance in the triad. The simplest way to establish whether there exist balance or not is to multiply the number of positive signs of mutual friendship and negative signs of mutual enmity in a system of any size. The multiplication of positive and negative relations constitutes a cycle. If the cycle is positive, the system is balanced; otherwise not. Consequently, if in the triad of ABC all three states are friendly with each other, so that there is the multiplication of positive signs, thus the cycle of (+).(+).(+) is (+), then the system is said to be balanced. There exists no inconsistency in three states' preferences, so that there is no violation of balancing rules, when all become mutual friends: "the friend of my friend is my friend."

The other case of balance is two states' friendship targeting the common enemy, that is, when two states gang up against the third. This configuration corresponds to the cycle of (+).(-).(-) = (+). The alliance of AB targeting C in the triad of ABC implies for A that "C is my...