The Palestinian issue in the Turkish and Egyptian foregin policies in the post Arab Spring era: A comparative study

This thesis aims to present a comparative analysis for the roles Egypt and Türkiye pursued towards the Palestinian issue in the post Arab Spring era in order to give a more detailed picture about these two prominent powers' stances towards the issue in terms of both rhetoric and application especially that the post Arab Spring era witnessed several dynamic transformations. These transformations took place in the Arab Spring countries and impacted the other countries in the region. The Palestinian issue was not an exception. The relations between the main Palestinian factions have undergone several changes the Palestinian people embarked on their own uprisings, Jerusalem became the center of several developments and Israel has waged four wars against Gaza and increased the settlements' construction. Moreover, external developments impacted the Palestinian issue including the US policies especially in Trump era in addition to the normalization process between Israel and the Gulf countries. Meanwhile, Egypt and Türkiye had new preoccupations and priorities. However, the Palestinan issue was still significant for both of them. This significance was translated in a set of roles they adopted towards the Palestinian cause including the mediator, developer and defender roles. The core of this thesis revolves around explaining these two states' role conceptions, these roles' performance mechanisms and their material and ideational sources as variables to compare between the two states' attitudes towards the dynamics of the Palestinian issue. The thesis finds out that the two countries had performed almost the same roles with different degrees and various instruments. It also shows that they were neither extremely different nor completely identical in conducting these roles. They had both similar and different aspects of their performance towards the Palestinian issue and the Palestinians in times of war and peace. Moreover, each of them possessed different comparative advantages which made them master some roles. English Keywords: role conception, performance mechanism, mediator, defender, developer