Talk:Burak Akcapar

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Relocate unreferenced material from article page pending proper referencing.--Bob Burton 22:17, 25 January 2009 (EST)

--- He served as Head of Policy Planning Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey. He was a defense planner at NATO International Staff where he received in 2002 the NATO Secretary General's Award for Excellence for his lasting contributions to the North Atlantic alliance. During his tenure at NATO, as Facilitator of the Southeast Europe Security Assistance Group (SEEGROUP), he led the efforts to promote regional cooperation among Balkan countries. The Southeast Europe Common Assessment Paper on Regional Security Challenges and Opportunities (SEECAP) adopted by Ministers in Budapest on 29 May 2001. Other previous positions included Deputy Chief of Mission of Turkish Embassy in Doha, Qatar and Vice-Consul in Hamburg, Germany.

Educated at the Bogazici (Bosphorus) and Hamburg Universities, Dr. Akcapar taught a course on problems in international security at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara and lectured in several leading U.S. colleges including Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Portland and Middlebury. In 2001 he was a keynote speaker at the prestigious Wilton Park in the UK where he laid out his views on the challenges of security sector reform in Southeast Europe.

Burak Akcapar latest book in the US was published in 2006 by the Rowman and Littlefield. The book which is entitled "Turkey's New European Era" is a comprehensive survey of Turkey's foreign policy, national security culture, Europeanization and membership to the European Union. The Choice magazine described the book as highly recommended stating: "This is a thought-provoking study by a Turkish diplomat with well-marshaled arguments. Akçapar provides the best and most up-to-date study of the benefits that Turkey offers European Union countries for gaining full membership in the EU. . . . Well written and argued, this book makes clear the growing importance of Turkey as a political player on the global stage, especially in the Middle East. Highly recommended." Ronald D. Asmus, Director of the Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund of the United States has stated that the book is a "must-reading for anyone interested in Turkey and Europe. Akcapar's is the fresh and powerful voice of a younger generation of strategic thinkers in a country whose importance is destined to grow in the years ahead. His views on Turkey's quest to join the European Union highlight how much is at stake and how much better we need to understand these critical issues." Another endorsement came from Mark Leonard of the Centre for European Reform (currently the Executive Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations) and author of "Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century" commented on the book writing: "Turkey's bid for membership in the European Union could be one of the most important geopolitical events of the next few decades, with profound consequences for Europe's identity, the security and politics of Eurasia and the Middle East, and the debate about democracy in Muslim countries. Burak Akçapar, as one of the sharpest and most astute members of a new generation of Turkish diplomats, has a unique ringside seat on this unfolding drama. His book is worth reading for anyone with an interest in Europe's future." Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote that Dr. Akcapar's book is a "must-read for anyone who is for or against Turkey's EU membership." One of the original premises of the book was its forecast that those EU members which are against Turkey's EU membership will attempt to bewilder Turkey and have Turkey itself to forgo its membership bid. The book also recommended that the negotiation process between the EU and Turkey be insulated from political whims of the individual EU member nations and that statesmanship will be needed of EU leaders to educate their publics about the benefits of Turkey's membership to the EU. However, the book goes well beyond Turkey's EU membership and offers insights on regional politics, international security including the future of NATO, ESDP and the transatlantic relations as well as democratization of the Middle East.

Burak Akcapar's previous book was published a decade earlier in Germany under the title of "The International Law of Conventional Arms Control in Europe" (Baden Baden: Nomos, 1996). In this book he investigated the role of -and interactions with- the institutions and mechanisms of general international law in the negotiation, operation, verification and enforcement of arms control agreements. He argued that being part of and subject to general international law, arms control agreements cannot provide a technical guarantee against the occurrence of wars. This is because the weakness of general international law itself is not due to technical reasons: International law is a function of the political community of nations, the defects of which are due to the embryonic character of the community in which it functions, not due to its technical shortcomings. International law after more than four centuries of systematized experience cannot claim to have found an effective and consistently reliable anti-dote against determined aggressors or violators ultimately outside that of self-help. However, he argued that arms control is not a futile exercise because arms control negotiations and agreements mitigate the insecurity in which the States in world arena find themselves as a result of the ultimately individual responsibility to self-preservation. If armaments are about deterrence, arms control is about reassurance, he stated, before he went on to an exhaustive study of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and the Vienna Document on Confidence and Security Building Measures in Europe. The book is considered to be a significant contribution to the New Haven approach to international law founded by Myres McDougal and Harold Lasswell at Yale Law School. The New Haven approach rejects formalist assessments and has been associated with norm scepticism. It has exerted significant influence since World War II. The ICJ President Higgins is known to belong to the New Haven school.

Burak Akcapar also intervened in the public debate through various articles and a book chapter which include among others "The Debate on Democratization in the Broader Middle East and North Africa" (2004, Tesev) which he co-authored with three other Turkish scholars. This study, whose co-authors include Mensur Akgun and Meliha Altunisik disagreed with the Bush administration's methods on democracy promotion in the Middle East, foremost by objecting to use of force and coercion in the name of democracy building, but also by suggesting that elections and civil society alone cannot be sufficient for democracy to succeed in the Middle East. The study argued that "in order for such waves prompted by civil societal organizations to lead to a democratic disclosure, there has to be a functioning political realm. A functioning political realm refers to a strong parliament with effective political parties. What is significant in the Middle East is not necessarily the establishment of more civil society organizations but rather the strengthening of the channels of communication between civil society and the parliament. Consequently, democratization initiatives in the region should strengthen the parliament while lending credence to civil society." Against this background Akcapar and the co-authors maintained that the key to democratization in the region is to ensure that it is not imposed. It can nevertheless be “encouraged” from outside. Democratization needs of every country in the region are different. Therefore, the goal of a democratization project should not be imposed from above, but should opt for opening up the channels that would allow people to tailor the projects that are congenial in their particular contexts.

Akcapar's "PfP as an Agent of Continuity and Change in the Euro-Atlantic Region" (in Gustav Schmidt ed. A History of Nato, 2001, Palgrave)was one of the most comprehensive studies on NATO's successful Partnership for Peace program. Its particular contribution was in charting the PfP role in the convergence of security and defence establishments and cultures across the Euro-Atlantic region in the post Cold War era.

Other recent article "Turkey's EU Accession" published in 2006 by Yale Journal of International Relations is a concise overview of Turkey's EU membership process presented in an interview form for easy reading.