Of East or West? Turkey’s United Nations General Assembly Voting Preferences on Arms Control, North-South Economic Issues and Human Rights

Abstract

This article examines Turkey’s United Nations General Assembly voting patterns from 2000 to 2010 across three issue areas, namely, “arms control and disarmament,” “North-South economic issues” and “human rights.” The article aims to enhance our understanding of whether Turkey’s foreign policy preferences are similar to those of eastern or western countries on these issue areas. The research also analyses if any voting differences existed between the Democratic Left Party period (2000-02) and the Justice and Development Party period (2003-10). The research reveals that, to a large extent, Turkey acted with the European Union across all issue areas in the years 2000-10. However, the findings also point to significant differences between the DLP and JDP governments in terms of Turkey’s General Assembly voting alignments on these issues.

Keywords

Turkish foreign policy identity; Exceptionalism; United Nations voting similarity; Justice and Development Party; Europeanisation

Citation

Yuvacı, Abdullah and Muhittin Kaplan, “Of East or West? Turkey’s United Nations General Assembly Voting Preferences on Arms Control, North-South Economic Issues and Human Rights”, Uluslararası İlişkiler, Volume 10, No 37 (Spring 2013), p. 69-95.

Affiliations

• Abdullah YUVACI, Assist. Prof. Dr., Melikşah University, Department of Political Science and International Relations
• Muhittin KAPLAN, Assoc. Prof., Melikşah University, Department of Economics