ERMAĞAN, İsmail İstanbul Medeniyet Üniversitesi - Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi - Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, Turkey , GÜMÜŞ, Burak Trakya Üniversitesi - İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Turkey

QATAR’S FOREIGN POLICY AND THE ARAB SPRING

32517

As the Middle East and the Persian Gulf is the energy centre with global impact, this region can be regarded as one of the main research topics in the international relations. This article focuses on the importance of Qatar in the Middle East policies and discusses its approach towards the Arab Spring. The country, which abandoned its traditional role as mediator and neutralist foreign policy and switched over to active interventionism, gained some importance as an influential actor, but had tore consider its attitude after the civil war in Syria and the coup d état in Egypt. The Qatari case shows that both democratic and geopolitical developments intersect and global, regional actors and sub-national actors determine this process. This study claims that if there is a probability of change of the current regional order due to the peoples demands then there is also a risk. Qatar can reach its political goals, only if it is able to manage its foreign policy, symbolically representing a zigzag course within a magic square consisting of “old order, new demands, global balance and regional power relations balance”.

300

Middle East , Arap Spring , Qatar , USA military bases , Al , Jazeera

Celal Bayar University Journal Of Social Sciences

320