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Hegemonic Stability Theory and Secessionist Movements in the Middle East During the 1990s
Authors: Seyit Ali Avcu
Number of views: 332
Sessessionist movements had played a big role in foreign policies of countries
in the Middle East, mainly Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Russia during the
1990s. This article tries to answer the question of how Kurdish issue and terror
stemming from shaped and changed the international subsystem during the
1990s. I propose a theory to explain the succcess or the failure of the
sessessionist movements. These movements are dormant or ineffective due to
constrains provided by the international system. The change in the
international system, in this case the end of Cold War and the Gulf War,
created opportunity for ethnic groups, such as Iraqi Kurds to attempt to seccede
from central government. The states in the region responded accordingly and
this created power vacuum and escalated interestate conflict. In this power
vacuum, the support of hegemon for ethnic group was necessary condition for
the success of the ethnic secessionist movement. If the USA as a hegemon had
supported the seccesionist movements, a new international system would have
emerged. However, ideological affinity and alliance between regional power
and hegemon, as the case between Turkey and the USA, prevented hegemon to
support sessessionist movement. If ineffective state such as Iraq after the Gulf
War was unable to defeat the revolt and ethnic group was fragmented, the civil
war reigns as happened in Iraq during the 1990s.