Bölgesel Güvenlik Kompleksi Teorisi ışığında Güney Kafkasya'da güvenlik dinamikleri: Çözümlenmemiş Dağlık-Karabağ çatışması

The South Caucasus is one of the most conflict-ridden regions in the world. This thesis aims to analyze regional conflicts and security dynamics in the South Caucasus and possible peace settlement processes. Particularly, it focuses on the unsettled conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, in light of the Regional Security Complex Theory. The RSCT has been developed by Buzan and Waever, and had been applied to all the regions in the world. The South Caucasus has been identified as a regional sub-complex in the post-Soviet arena. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is considered one of the bloodiest conflicts that happened in the post-Soviet zone after the end of the Cold-War. The South Caucasus region has caught the attention of foreign scholars from various aspects: regional security, conflict resolution and peacebuilding, energy politics, diplomacy, and so on. Conducting an articulate analysis of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the thesis intends to arrange a theoretical correlation with RSCT. Since the beginning of the conflict until today, the volatile character of the conflict had an overwhelming impact on shaping the regional security dynamics in the South Caucasus. The structure of the research has articulately displayed the entitled conflict in the three main columns, as warfare; no war and no peace situation; the involvement of the external actors in the resolution process. In addition, the research elaborates on how interstate conflict shapes the policies of Azerbaijan and Armenia. The effectiveness of the unresolved conflict doesn't limit itself to making drastic changes in regional security, but it has also become an incentive for potential terror attacks in the region. As a result, the thesis makes a conclusion in two parameters: whether Nagorno-Karabakh as a regional conflict in the South Caucasus matchup with the characteristics of the Regional Security Complexes; in regards to security implication, the role of the external actors to fulfill the expectations of Azerbaijan and Armenia on the basis of peaceful resolution. Keywords: South Caucasus, Regional Security Complex, Azerbaijan's foreign policy, Armenia's foreign policy, Nagorno-Karabakh