Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Moving Away From The West Or Taking Independent Positions: A Structural Analysis For The New Turkish Foreign Policy, Suleyman Senturk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper focuses on understanding and explaining the change of Turkish foreign policy,particularly in the last decade. Many observers have expressed a suspicion that Turkey is abandoning its Western-centric alignment and gradually shifting its axis. The thesis argues that rather than a shift, Turkey is taking an independent position. It maintains that the end of the Cold War and the change in the international structure from bipolarity to unipolarity has provided incentives for countries with some degree of material capabilities to pursue independence from the U.S. policy preferences. This study analyses structural effects on the behavior of Turkey.

Later it …

Containment: A Failed American Foreign Policy And How The Truman Doctrine Led To The Rise In Islamic Extremism In The Muslim World, Christopher Jonathan Gerber

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After World War II the United States, faced with the new Soviet threat of Communism, instituted the foreign policy known as “containment” in order to mitigate the threat to Western European states of Soviet expansionism. After the fall of Communism in the USSR in 1991 that policy was deemed, at once, a success and an anachronism. The power vacuum that the subsequent abandonment of that policy created was most notable in the Islamic states that had served as proxies in the Cold War against Communism. Both the backdrop of containment as well as the withdrawal of that policy served to …

Staring Down The Mukhabarat: Rhizomatic Social Movements And The Egyptian And Syrian Arab Spring, Stephen Michael Strenges

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unable to enact change through the existing political institutions of their authoritarian regimes, and consistently repressed by state security forces (the mukhabarat), activists in Egypt and Syria relied on street activism to challenge their conditions. This study analyzes the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Syria through the conceptual lens of a rhizome. Rhizomatic movements are horizontal, grassroots, and allow for the networking of local community-specific grievances, into larger national movements. This networking allows opposition members groups to build solidarity, construct collective identities, and develop a set of shared goals, strategies, and tactics. Furthermore, it provides for the transcendence of …

The Effects Of U.S. Middle East Foreign Policy On American Muslims: A Case Study Of Muslims In Tampa Bay, Mark G. Grzegorzewski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past thirteen years the United States has used military force against three different Muslim-majority nations. These conflicts have lead to the deaths of many Muslims, including many innocent civilians. Meanwhile, American Muslims have become conflicted about their identities as Muslims and Americans. However, this does not mean that they have become a fifth column within America. What it does mean is that they have felt anguish regarding the torment of their religious brethren, while at the same time retaining their American identity. Post-9/11, Muslim American groups have acknowledged their place in the racial ordering of America. Muslim Americans …