With the beginning of the 21st century, style and substance of Turkish foreign policy changed to a large extent. The most important one was the fact that Ankara started to follow “security building” rather than “desecuritization” policies towards her neighbors. In this context, the mottos adopted by the Özal Administration such as “less geopolitics, more economics” or “trade but not aid” depicted Turkey’s such policies very well. Turkey’s relations with the GCC states improved against this background. Th is article, after giving a short historical past of the bilateral relations, will focus on the reasons for improving relations between both sides with beginning of the 2000s. Second aim of the article is to analyze whether Turkey’s improving relations with Iran had a negative impact on Turkey GCC States especially after the outburst of the Arab spring. Lastly, the evaluation of the impact of Turkey’s policies towards the revolts in Egypt, Libya and Syria on Turkey-GCC states relations will be another concern of the study.
The six oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries adopted interventionist labor policies in the early 1990s to increase employment of nationals and control expatriate labor mobility. In the second half of the 2000s the GCC countries switched to market-oriented, flexible labor policies, intended to equate the cost of national and expatriate labor and enhance expatriate labor mobility. After the 2011 Arab Spring, the GCC labor policy responses had differed.
In this paper we empirically examine the impact of market-oriented labor policies on FDI flows to the GCC countries for the period 2007-2015. Using panel data model and accounting for unobservable country effects, results show that cooperative labor employer relations, flexible hiring and firing practices, linking pay to productivity, and reliance on professional management encourage FDI flows to the GCC countries. Robustness checks show a positive influence of at least one dimension of labor market flexibility on FDI flows. This evidence lends support to the influence that flexible labor market policies have on FDI flows. The latter is perceived as key to income diversification in the GCC countries.
This paper investigates the role played by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in mediating disputes since its creation in 1981 to 2011, the year of the outbreak of the ‘Arab Spring’. It analyzes the contributions of the GCC as a conflict mediator by crosschecking this sub-regional group’s institutional structure and policy approach, and presents two major findings. Firstly, the GCC was hardly designed as a conflict mediator, given that the Gulf Arab states created it as a vehicle to respond to intra-Gulf and external security threats and challenges. Secondly, in order to promote its foreign policy independence and boost its regional and global diplomatic profile to ensure its security and survival in the dangerous environment of the Gulf region, it is Qatar that has extensively attempted to mediate conflicts in Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan, with varying degrees of success, under the banners of the GCC and the Arab League. Finally, the paper presents a series of policy recommendations, based on critical insights from Qatari mediation experiences, to enable the GCC to be a proactive dispute mediator.
Between 2002 and 2010, foreign direct investment (“FDI”) exploded in the Gulf Cooperation Council (“GCC”). Between 2002 and 2008 alone, FDI in the GCC increased over 3800%, outpacing both the developed and developing world by a significant margin. Although recent data suggests that FDI has declined in the GCC since 2010, scholars have yet to proffer nuanced analyses of the upsurge in FDI between 2002 and 2010. In general, the literature has not adequately examined the relatively dramatic increase in FDI in the GCC insofar as it has focused on pre-2002 data, failed to distinguish between FDI trends in the GCC and those in the wider Middle East and North Africa (“MENA”) region, ascribed the increased levels of FDI in the GCC solely to the rise in the price of crude oil, or examined post-2002 increases and decreases in FDI within unrepresentative contexts. More importantly, scholars have yet to examine whether the increase in FDI has facilitated economic growth in the GCC since 2002.
Relying on information from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Bank, and, where available, GCC countries themselves, this Article introduces statistical evidence into the scholarly debate on FDI in the GCC and the broader MENA region, revealing the dramatic upsurge in FDI in the GCC between 2002 and 2010 in comparison to global and regional trends. This Article also examines the general legal frameworks governing FDI regimes in the GCC, demonstrating the unique manner in which GCC states have implemented liberal macroeconomic policies while simultaneously maintaining regulatory control over strategic elements of their FDI regimes. Finally, this Article contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate surrounding the relationship between FDI and economic growth by examining the impact that the increased levels of FDI have had on economic growth in GCC economies. Based on the available data, the statistical correlation between the dramatic increases in FDI and short-term economic growth in the GCC is minimal. The data suggests a stronger link between FDI and long-term economic growth in the GCC, although a definitive assessment requires a more nuanced statistical analysis. Thus, even if FDI levels had not declined after 2010, the data suggests that GCC states — and, by implication, other MENA states — ought to exercise restraint in assuming that increased levels of FDI translate into increased economic growth, at least in the short term. The findings herein are timely for other resource-rich, non-GCC states in the MENA region, particularly post-Arab spring democracies, as they reconsider traditional approaches to FDI in their efforts to foster economic development without surrendering regulatory control over strategic elements of state sovereignty.