Oguzhan Goksel
Associate Professor of Political Economy & International Relations
Managing Editor of New Middle Eastern Studies (NMES) journal
2021 - Associate Professor (ÜAK, Inter-Universities Council of Turkey)
2015 - Ph.D. in Political Science, Durham University, UK
2011 - M.A. in International Relations (Middle East), Durham University, UK
2010 - B.A. in International Relations, Istanbul University (Faculty of Political Science), Turkey
Oguzhan Goksel is Associate Professor of Political Economy & International Relations at Marmara University, Faculty of Economics, Turkey. He is also the Managing Editor of international peer-reviewed journal "New Middle Eastern Studies" based in the UK.
Prior to joining Marmara University in March 2021, he worked at Istanbul 29 Mayis University from October 2014 to February 2021.
His Ph.D. research at Durham University focused on modernisation in non-Western societies, specifically examining the case of Turkey in light of competing theories of development and in comparison to Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. The thesis is titled "Assessing the Turkish Model: The Modernisation Trajectory of Turkey through the Lens of the Multiple Modernities Paradigm" (Supervisors: Professor Emma C. Murphy & Dr. Colin Turner).
Goksel's main areas of research are modernisation and non-Western modernities; comparative political economy; political economy of development; historical sociology; and foreign policy analysis. His works have been published in various edited volumes and international peer-reviewed journals such as Mediterranean Politics, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Turkish Studies, New Middle Eastern Studies and Insight Turkey.
Phone: +90 216 777 3000
Address: Marmara University, Department of Economics
Maltepe Campus, Faculty of Economics – Istanbul, Turkey
Managing Editor of New Middle Eastern Studies (NMES) journal
2021 - Associate Professor (ÜAK, Inter-Universities Council of Turkey)
2015 - Ph.D. in Political Science, Durham University, UK
2011 - M.A. in International Relations (Middle East), Durham University, UK
2010 - B.A. in International Relations, Istanbul University (Faculty of Political Science), Turkey
Oguzhan Goksel is Associate Professor of Political Economy & International Relations at Marmara University, Faculty of Economics, Turkey. He is also the Managing Editor of international peer-reviewed journal "New Middle Eastern Studies" based in the UK.
Prior to joining Marmara University in March 2021, he worked at Istanbul 29 Mayis University from October 2014 to February 2021.
His Ph.D. research at Durham University focused on modernisation in non-Western societies, specifically examining the case of Turkey in light of competing theories of development and in comparison to Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. The thesis is titled "Assessing the Turkish Model: The Modernisation Trajectory of Turkey through the Lens of the Multiple Modernities Paradigm" (Supervisors: Professor Emma C. Murphy & Dr. Colin Turner).
Goksel's main areas of research are modernisation and non-Western modernities; comparative political economy; political economy of development; historical sociology; and foreign policy analysis. His works have been published in various edited volumes and international peer-reviewed journals such as Mediterranean Politics, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Turkish Studies, New Middle Eastern Studies and Insight Turkey.
Phone: +90 216 777 3000
Address: Marmara University, Department of Economics
Maltepe Campus, Faculty of Economics – Istanbul, Turkey
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Books by Oguzhan Goksel
The contributors analyze Turkey’s deepening involvement in Middle Eastern regional affairs, also addressing issues such as terrorism, social and political movements and minority rights struggles. While these problems have traditionally been regarded as domestic matters, this book highlights their increasingly regional dimension and the implications for the foreign affairs of Turkey and countries in the Middle East.
Journal Articles by Oguzhan Goksel
Examining the similarities and differences between their experiences may teach researchers a lot about the origins of polarization, its adverse effects on democratic governance and potential solutions. The Republicans and the Democrats in the U.S. have grown more ideologically opposed during the past decade in particular, leading to political violence as became evident with the 6th January 2021 Capitol Riot and the 13th July 2024 assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump. A great schism has also shaped Turkish politics as the long reign of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) since 2002 has polarized secularists and Islamists as well as Kurdish and Turkish nationalists. It will be argued that while authoritarian inclinations, political institutions, and historical legacies are distinctive to each setting; identity politics, economic inequalities, and social media driven echo chambers are major commonalities. A number of insights on reducing polarization will be derived from this comparative analysis, namely the need to build coalitions of parties/social movements representing different ideologies, reducing economic inequality, encouraging inclusive government, and promoting media diversity.
Realist – Machiavellian – ways illiberal polities (e.g. China) commonly formulate foreign economic policy.
This article argues that the multi-dimensional cooperation between Turkey and Azerbaijan constitutes a “special relationship” - the likes of which can be found in cases such as the durable US-UK alliance. I argue that neo-realist, neo-liberal and purely pragmatist political economic viewpoints are insufficient to grasp the “emotional and ideational essence” of Turkey-Azerbaijan alliance which is rooted in the continuing influence of Pan-Turkism on their national identities. Hence, I propose that the English School and the Social Constructivist approach could better explain Turkey-Azerbaijan ties as both underline the importance of ideational and non-materialistic elements in foreign policy behavior.
To test our hypothesis, the article studies in detail the main contours of Turkey-Azerbaijan relations over the last century and locate the meaning of the alliance within the broader goals of Turkish and Azerbaijani foreign policies. Two specific periods are used as in-depth case studies, namely the notable issue of the “Sibling’s Aid” (1918-1922) and the recent 2020 Second Karabakh War. It will be argued that in both of these momentous periods, the peoples and governments of the two sides provided essential support to each other without necessarily expecting short-term pragmatic returns. In its penultimate section, the article also briefly covers the past and present of Turkey-Armenia relations and discuss the influence of Armenia on the making of Turkish foreign policy towards the Caucasus.
Iran is a particularly noteworthy case because anti-Westernism played a key role in the formation of the modern state in the country. The foreign policy behavior of Iran in our time and the historical trajectory that produced the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution cannot be understood without acknowledging anti-Westernism. The origins of anti-Westernism in Iran are explored in this article through interpreting the path dependent historical experience of the country, with a particular emphasis on the relations between Iran and Western countries. In contrast to works that attribute Iran’s anti-Western foreign policy to the Islamist ideology of the post-1979 era, it will be argued that hostility to the Western-dominated international political system should actually be traced to the transformation in which the Iranian national identity evolved in the early 20th century.
This article utilizes a historical sociology approach based on the Uneven and Combined Development Theory (U&CD) to locate the origins of the unexpected rise of New Turkey in our age. It is argued that complex interactions between elements of Western modernity (e.g. secularization and democratization), various social engineering programs launched since the late Ottoman era and Turkey’s own path dependent trajectory have gradually produced a socio-economic and political model that radically diverges from the Western experience.
The arguments of the work are mostly based on interviews with Gezi activists. It is argued that Gezi produced a discursive challenge to the national security-oriented understanding of the ‘Kurdish question’. Yet, even though the human security oriented Gezi discourse had brought the Kurdish political movement and the Turkish left together, it ultimately failed to permanently transform Turkish politics due to the collapse of the peace process in June 2015.
In addition to contributing to the literature on Gezi, the article also draws insights for security studies. It concludes that alternative discourses to the state-centric securitization approach to conflicts such as the Kurdish question can only have a lasting effect under conditions of ceasefire.
through interviews with policy-makers and influential actors in Tunisian society. It will be shown that the ideological division of Tunisian society into two camps, secularists and Islamists, has shaped the perceptions of the Turkish model in the country. It will be argued that despite their differences, the model can appeal to both secularists and conservatives in terms of its post-ideological nature that endorses the concept of “civil state” which is supported by both political groups.
has become a key ingredient of the discourse of democratization in the
Middle East. Despite the widespread interest, however, there is a great
sense of confusion caused by the subjective use and misinterpretation
of the model. The study will point to the weaknesses of the two
conventional understandings of the Turkish model and offer a new approach.
The study will acknowledge various socio-economic, cultural
and political differences between Turkey and Middle Eastern societies
and the fact that the full application of the model may not be possible,
however, the article will conclude that despite these differences, the
Turkish model has a lot to offer in terms of guidance in areas such as
the state-religion relations, the role of military, economic development
and democracy building.
Book Chapters by Oguzhan Goksel
While some highly critical analysts contest the idea that a Turkish economic success ever existed, others argue that the Turkish model was misunderstood and that it has actually been based on a state capitalist and clientelist framework which no longer yields positive results at a time of global economic stagnation. Yet, a crucial issue continues to remain as “the elephant in the room” within the literature: simply that the story of Turkey’s economic travails – neither during the rise of a Turkish model narrative nor after its recent fall – has not been addressed in the context of human development. Utilising a modified form of human development better suited for contemporary times than the original HDI (Human Development Index) put forward in 1990, this chapter argues that a more realistic understanding of development in Turkey can be obtained only if we scrutinise the Turkish model narrative by studying hitherto overlooked issues such as income inequality, unemployment (particularly among the highly-educated youth), the quality of education and women’s participation in the workforce.
The necessity for sustaining soft power tools with hard power reserves such as economic resources and military forces has been neglected, resulting in a defective understanding of soft power caused largely by the ambiguity of the theoretical framework provided by Joseph Nye—the founding father of the concept. This study analyses the trajectory of Turkish soft power under the AKP (Justice and Development Party) rule, ultimately reevaluating the debate in light of insights drawn from the failure of many elements of Turkey’s Middle Eastern policy in the wake of the 2011 uprisings. As such, the study argues that a “fragility of soft power” has manifested in the case of Turkey because of the currently unconsolidated and problematic state of Turkish hard power reserves such as economic capacity and democratic institutions.
This study criticizes much of the literature on the Arab uprisings, arguing that the excessive enthusiasm shown by Western mainstream media and governments toward the promotion of the Turkish model reveals the limits of their understanding of the complexities of MENA societies and polities. Modernization is actually a highly customizable path whose nature is determined mainly by the contingent socioeconomic and political characteristics of each country. Therefore, in order to develop a generalizable understanding of modernization in the MENA region and beyond, the Eurocentrism of mainstream literature needs to be replaced with more flexible frameworks such as the ones developed in recent years by proponents of postcolonialism, multiple modernities paradigm, and the uneven and combined development theory.
Yapılan medya taraması sonucunda varılan görüş, Türkiye’nin güncel imajını analiz ederken akılda tutulması gereken anahtar kavramlardan birinin “Yeni Türkiye” olmasıdır. Yeni Türkiye algısını etkileyen birçok mesele olmakla beraber, bu çalışmada Triumvira basınında yer alan haberlerin çoğunluğunun yoğunlaştığı 2013 Gezi Parkı protestoları, Başkanlık sistemi tartışmaları ve Suriyeli mülteci krizi gibi birkaç güncel konuya yer verilmektedir. Britanya medyasını temsilen The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph ve The Economist, Almanya için Deutsche Welle ve Der Spiegel, Fransa içinse Le Monde Diplomatique ve France 24 yayın organları seçilmiştir.
The contributors analyze Turkey’s deepening involvement in Middle Eastern regional affairs, also addressing issues such as terrorism, social and political movements and minority rights struggles. While these problems have traditionally been regarded as domestic matters, this book highlights their increasingly regional dimension and the implications for the foreign affairs of Turkey and countries in the Middle East.
Examining the similarities and differences between their experiences may teach researchers a lot about the origins of polarization, its adverse effects on democratic governance and potential solutions. The Republicans and the Democrats in the U.S. have grown more ideologically opposed during the past decade in particular, leading to political violence as became evident with the 6th January 2021 Capitol Riot and the 13th July 2024 assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump. A great schism has also shaped Turkish politics as the long reign of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) since 2002 has polarized secularists and Islamists as well as Kurdish and Turkish nationalists. It will be argued that while authoritarian inclinations, political institutions, and historical legacies are distinctive to each setting; identity politics, economic inequalities, and social media driven echo chambers are major commonalities. A number of insights on reducing polarization will be derived from this comparative analysis, namely the need to build coalitions of parties/social movements representing different ideologies, reducing economic inequality, encouraging inclusive government, and promoting media diversity.
Realist – Machiavellian – ways illiberal polities (e.g. China) commonly formulate foreign economic policy.
This article argues that the multi-dimensional cooperation between Turkey and Azerbaijan constitutes a “special relationship” - the likes of which can be found in cases such as the durable US-UK alliance. I argue that neo-realist, neo-liberal and purely pragmatist political economic viewpoints are insufficient to grasp the “emotional and ideational essence” of Turkey-Azerbaijan alliance which is rooted in the continuing influence of Pan-Turkism on their national identities. Hence, I propose that the English School and the Social Constructivist approach could better explain Turkey-Azerbaijan ties as both underline the importance of ideational and non-materialistic elements in foreign policy behavior.
To test our hypothesis, the article studies in detail the main contours of Turkey-Azerbaijan relations over the last century and locate the meaning of the alliance within the broader goals of Turkish and Azerbaijani foreign policies. Two specific periods are used as in-depth case studies, namely the notable issue of the “Sibling’s Aid” (1918-1922) and the recent 2020 Second Karabakh War. It will be argued that in both of these momentous periods, the peoples and governments of the two sides provided essential support to each other without necessarily expecting short-term pragmatic returns. In its penultimate section, the article also briefly covers the past and present of Turkey-Armenia relations and discuss the influence of Armenia on the making of Turkish foreign policy towards the Caucasus.
Iran is a particularly noteworthy case because anti-Westernism played a key role in the formation of the modern state in the country. The foreign policy behavior of Iran in our time and the historical trajectory that produced the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution cannot be understood without acknowledging anti-Westernism. The origins of anti-Westernism in Iran are explored in this article through interpreting the path dependent historical experience of the country, with a particular emphasis on the relations between Iran and Western countries. In contrast to works that attribute Iran’s anti-Western foreign policy to the Islamist ideology of the post-1979 era, it will be argued that hostility to the Western-dominated international political system should actually be traced to the transformation in which the Iranian national identity evolved in the early 20th century.
This article utilizes a historical sociology approach based on the Uneven and Combined Development Theory (U&CD) to locate the origins of the unexpected rise of New Turkey in our age. It is argued that complex interactions between elements of Western modernity (e.g. secularization and democratization), various social engineering programs launched since the late Ottoman era and Turkey’s own path dependent trajectory have gradually produced a socio-economic and political model that radically diverges from the Western experience.
The arguments of the work are mostly based on interviews with Gezi activists. It is argued that Gezi produced a discursive challenge to the national security-oriented understanding of the ‘Kurdish question’. Yet, even though the human security oriented Gezi discourse had brought the Kurdish political movement and the Turkish left together, it ultimately failed to permanently transform Turkish politics due to the collapse of the peace process in June 2015.
In addition to contributing to the literature on Gezi, the article also draws insights for security studies. It concludes that alternative discourses to the state-centric securitization approach to conflicts such as the Kurdish question can only have a lasting effect under conditions of ceasefire.
through interviews with policy-makers and influential actors in Tunisian society. It will be shown that the ideological division of Tunisian society into two camps, secularists and Islamists, has shaped the perceptions of the Turkish model in the country. It will be argued that despite their differences, the model can appeal to both secularists and conservatives in terms of its post-ideological nature that endorses the concept of “civil state” which is supported by both political groups.
has become a key ingredient of the discourse of democratization in the
Middle East. Despite the widespread interest, however, there is a great
sense of confusion caused by the subjective use and misinterpretation
of the model. The study will point to the weaknesses of the two
conventional understandings of the Turkish model and offer a new approach.
The study will acknowledge various socio-economic, cultural
and political differences between Turkey and Middle Eastern societies
and the fact that the full application of the model may not be possible,
however, the article will conclude that despite these differences, the
Turkish model has a lot to offer in terms of guidance in areas such as
the state-religion relations, the role of military, economic development
and democracy building.
While some highly critical analysts contest the idea that a Turkish economic success ever existed, others argue that the Turkish model was misunderstood and that it has actually been based on a state capitalist and clientelist framework which no longer yields positive results at a time of global economic stagnation. Yet, a crucial issue continues to remain as “the elephant in the room” within the literature: simply that the story of Turkey’s economic travails – neither during the rise of a Turkish model narrative nor after its recent fall – has not been addressed in the context of human development. Utilising a modified form of human development better suited for contemporary times than the original HDI (Human Development Index) put forward in 1990, this chapter argues that a more realistic understanding of development in Turkey can be obtained only if we scrutinise the Turkish model narrative by studying hitherto overlooked issues such as income inequality, unemployment (particularly among the highly-educated youth), the quality of education and women’s participation in the workforce.
The necessity for sustaining soft power tools with hard power reserves such as economic resources and military forces has been neglected, resulting in a defective understanding of soft power caused largely by the ambiguity of the theoretical framework provided by Joseph Nye—the founding father of the concept. This study analyses the trajectory of Turkish soft power under the AKP (Justice and Development Party) rule, ultimately reevaluating the debate in light of insights drawn from the failure of many elements of Turkey’s Middle Eastern policy in the wake of the 2011 uprisings. As such, the study argues that a “fragility of soft power” has manifested in the case of Turkey because of the currently unconsolidated and problematic state of Turkish hard power reserves such as economic capacity and democratic institutions.
This study criticizes much of the literature on the Arab uprisings, arguing that the excessive enthusiasm shown by Western mainstream media and governments toward the promotion of the Turkish model reveals the limits of their understanding of the complexities of MENA societies and polities. Modernization is actually a highly customizable path whose nature is determined mainly by the contingent socioeconomic and political characteristics of each country. Therefore, in order to develop a generalizable understanding of modernization in the MENA region and beyond, the Eurocentrism of mainstream literature needs to be replaced with more flexible frameworks such as the ones developed in recent years by proponents of postcolonialism, multiple modernities paradigm, and the uneven and combined development theory.
Yapılan medya taraması sonucunda varılan görüş, Türkiye’nin güncel imajını analiz ederken akılda tutulması gereken anahtar kavramlardan birinin “Yeni Türkiye” olmasıdır. Yeni Türkiye algısını etkileyen birçok mesele olmakla beraber, bu çalışmada Triumvira basınında yer alan haberlerin çoğunluğunun yoğunlaştığı 2013 Gezi Parkı protestoları, Başkanlık sistemi tartışmaları ve Suriyeli mülteci krizi gibi birkaç güncel konuya yer verilmektedir. Britanya medyasını temsilen The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph ve The Economist, Almanya için Deutsche Welle ve Der Spiegel, Fransa içinse Le Monde Diplomatique ve France 24 yayın organları seçilmiştir.
The first section discusses the domestic reasons behind the change as the transformation of Turkish foreign policy has been a complex process that can only be compherended through a multi-dimensional analysis. The second section focuses on how the new foreign policy has affected Turkish-Israeli relations. This work sheds light on how democratisation process in predominantly Muslim and conservative societies can entirely shape the international relations of such a country. The applicability of the liberal democratic peace theory (DPT) for Turkey under the AKP is a key issue that is also discussed throughout the chapter.
This chapter explains the reasons behind the shifts in the AKP's policies. It argues that the so-called Kurdish openings have been examples of top-down policy-making related to pragmatic calculations about elections rather than representing a genuine commitment to responding to the demands of the Kurdish social movement.
boyutunu inceleyen “Beyond Countering Iran: A Political Economy of Azerbaijan-Israel Relations” adlı önemli bir makale kaleme almıştır. Bu yazıda, Göksel’in makalesi özetlenecek ve makalede kullanılan bazı argümanlar tartışmaya açılacaktır.
For the review of my thesis, see the link: http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/14078
For more information on Dissertation Review website, please see: http://dissertationreviews.org/
inspired the formation of this social movement. The movement began to receive wide interest from the media particularly after its participation into the anti-government Gezi Park protests of
2013. This paper focuses on the implications of the rise of the Anti-Capitalist Muslims on the scholarly literatures on political Islam and democratisation, with research based on the review of Eliaçık’s numerous works, analysis of the Anti-Capitalist Muslims’ activities during the 2013 Gezi Park protests and interviews with Eliaçık and several activists of the movement.
In the absence of an assessment based on a clearly-defined conceptualisation of democratic regimes, the depiction of Turkey as a consolidated democracy merely reflect the subjective views of observers. Contesting the influential discourse propagated in recent years, this study will argue that contemporary Turkey does not represent a liberal democratic regime as it does not fulfil the criteria developed by influential scholars of democratisation such as Robert A. Dahl, Alfred C. Stepan, Arend Lijphart and David Held. This paper aims to produce a more realistic analysis of the protracted democratic consolidation process (or lack-thereof) in Turkey through utilising an established definition commonly used by scholars and international indexes such as the Freedom House and the Economist Intelligence Unit to measure levels of democratisation. It will be concluded that the political system of Turkey is a variant of majoritarianism rather than a consolidated democracy.