The rise of GCC and Turkey: Convergent and divergent agendas

Over the past two decades, both the GCC states and Turkey have experienced unprecedented economic growth and played effective regional roles. In tandem, the relations between the two parties have gradually grown from economic cooperation to strategic partnerships. This has been evident through the development of their common interests to include cooperation in all fields. As a result, Turkey was considered for a while a 'strategic partner' by the GCC. The new region's disorders, such as the potential Iraq's disintegration, the Syrian crisis, the Yemeni war, the emerging threats of sub-state actors and the expansion of Tehran's influence have given new momentum to Turkish-GCC relations. However, this positive progress has turned into clashing agendas in the region. Two competing camps have appeared. These are Turkey and Qatar on one hand, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain on the other. Their differences are based on new dynamics of the Arab Spring and were clearest over Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and Libya. In addition, the Gulf crisis since June 2017 has been escalating the divergence. The differences among Turkey and the GCC states also raised a question of whether they still need an alliance to counterbalance Iran's influence or not. This research seeks to comprehend these complicated relations, which are a mixture of cooperation and conflict, through appropriate theories of international relations: functionalism, the balance of power and the balance of threat. It has used different methods such as interviews, archive documents, books, articles, official speeches and statistics. Its scope starts in 2002 and extends to 2017. It concluded that despite their divergent agendas, their cooperation is important if they look to increase their influences in the regional balance of power equation and to counter common threats. Keywords: GCC, Turkey, convergence, divergent agendas, balance of threat, alliances