We are pleased to announce Centre for Policy and Research on Turkey (Research Turkey)’s public conference entitled “Turkey’s New Foreign Policy Elite: Neoliberalism and Business Associations under the AKP” in which Harriet Fildes of University of Edinburgh will give a talk. This event will take place on Wednesday, 17 December 2014 between 6:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. at Main College Buildings, Room G3, SOAS, University of London, WC1H 0XG. Dr. Thomas Marois, Senior Lecturer at SOAS will chair the event. The event is Co-sponsored by SOAS Development Studies, Neoliberalism, Globalisation and States Research Cluster.
You may find the synopsis of the talk and a short biography of Harriet Fildes below.
This event is free and open to public but it is a ticketed event that requires pre-registration. A ticket does not guarantee a seat. Please register via the link below:
rt-harriet-fildes-soas-dec14.eventbrite.co.uk
Synopsis of the Talk
Since the accession of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) (AKP) in 2002, Turkish political culture has undergone rapid and widespread transformations, which is particularly clear in the direction and implementation of foreign-policy. There is a broad consensus amongst scholars of Turkish foreign-policy that a new era has arisen under the AKPs jurisdiction, an energetic era of eastern-orientated foreign-policy activism and there is a growing interest in understanding and explaining Turkey’s “new” proactive foreign-policy. Harriet will address one of the under-examined facets of this change; the role of economic civil society actors, exploring, if, how and in what context they are operating as driving force behind Turkey’s increased activities and rapprochement with the Middle East. The emergence of Turkey’s “civil-economic” power paradigm and subsequent expansion of cultural, economic and humanitarian ties with the Middle East has altered not only state-society relations domestically, but has had an enduring and un-explored impact on Turkey’s regional neighbourhood and international politics more broadly. With recent questioning of Turkey’s active role in the region due to widespread and de-stabilizing socio-political transformations since the Arab Spring, Harriet’s research can provide a timely and retrospective analysis of how this activism occurred to begin with and the implications of Turkey’s new role in the Middle East.
Short Biography of Harriet Fildes
Harriet Fildes is a social-scientist from the University of Edinburgh, having studied International Relations for her advanced degree at SOAS. She has worked as a research assistant at Bilkent University in Turkey and for various NGOs in the UK, Turkey and India. She is currently doing her PhD in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, researching the relationship between civil-society and foreign policy formation under the AKP. Her main research areas are foreign-policy in the Middle East, the politics of collective action and the socio-political impact of local and global civil-society organisations.
