The Importance of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean: Threats, Risks, Opportunities and Turkey

The Republic of Turkey is in an incessant state of security concerns due to the unstable region of which she is a part. The purpose of this study is to take the post-Cold War threat and risk assessments conducted by various platforms for the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean into consideration in their entirety and reveal their impact on Turkey’s security. The importance of the topic is rooted in the idea that the continuation of the Republic of Turkey and the path for her to be a regional actor depends on evaluating the developments in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean accurately. The theoretical framework of this study consists of “the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative” and of constructivism which argues that the world is socially built and which is based on the argument that initiates the process of physical, political, cultural, religious, and ethnic transformations of the world map. The study concludes that the ethnic and religious terrorism, international migration, anti-democratic forms of government, the great powers’ struggle for controlling the energy resources and corridors, Arab-Israeli conflict regarding Palestine and similar problems in the region will persist and that the risks and threats arising in the region will continue to affect the security of the countries in the region including Turkey