Israeli-Turkish Relations at the End of the Cold War
Regular price
€102.99
A01=Eldad Ben Aharon
American Jews
Armenian Genocide
Author_Eldad Ben Aharon
Category=JPSL
Category=NHG
Category=NHTZ
Cold War History
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Geopolitics
Holocaust Memory
International Memory Politics
Israel's Foreign Policy
Israeli-Turkish Relations
NATO
Ontological Security
The War on Terror
Transnationalism
Turgut Ozal
Turkey's Foreign Policy
Product details
- ISBN 9781399507356
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Nov 2025
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This book is the first to explore Israeli Turkish relations during the 1980s, a decade often overlooked due to the absence of formal diplomatic ties. Although Turkey appeared to distance itself from Israel, this book examines how Cold War-era ontological security concerns played a key role in improving bilateral relations behind the scenes. These ontological fears included Turkey's potential departure from NATO and its increasing efforts to combat international terrorism.
Divided into three sections, the book attributes the strengthening of Ankara Jerusalem ties in the 1980s to the Israeli MFA's efforts to support the denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide in international forums. It presents case studies of four distinct episodes and examines the diplomatic manoeuvring involved.
Drawing on declassified records from Israeli and American archives, along with 30 oral interviews with Israeli, Turkish and Armenian officials, the book demonstrates that Israeli Turkish relations during the late Cold War were shaped not only by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran but also by Turkey's September 1980 military coup, Turgut Ozal's leadership, Turkey's 1987 application to the European Economic Community and other key developments in Turkish politics and foreign policy. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Eldad Ben Aharon also reveals how the 1980s marked the establishment of international norms on genocide recognition and memory, with the Holocaust emerging as the gold standard for understanding human-rights violations, while the Armenian Genocide remained contested and relegated to a weaker, secondary norm.
Eldad Ben Aharon is a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and was previously an Irish Research Council (IRC) Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security at Dublin City University. His work explores the nexus of security, identity, and memory, drawing on insights from securitisation theory, foreign policy analysis, and oral history. Ben Aharon has published widely on Israeli foreign policy and its intersections with broader regional conflict dynamics, with his research appearing in leading academic journals, including the European Journal of International Security, Intelligence and National Security, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Oral History Review, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Genocide Research and Cold War History.
