The instrumentality of responsibility to protect in Tony Blair's term uk foreign policy

In the new world order that emerged with the end of the Cold War, gross human rights violations have become an international problem by moving away being perceived as a domestic policy issue and the view that states have a responsibility to protect their citizens from ethnic cleansing, genocide and other crimes against humanity has become increasingly accepted. For the states that do not or cannot fulfill their responsibilities, the idea that state sovereignty will not provide more protection and that the international community by getting the responsibility can take all necessary measures including a military intervention in order to put an end to the humanitarian crises in the countries has adopted in particular by liberal Western states. With this view, since the early 1990s, while many military interventions have been carried out with humanitarian grounds, no intervention has fully been justified and the supporters of the intervention have often been subjected to violent criticism on the grounds that they were after their own national interests. The Tony Blair government, which came to power in the UK, at a time when the debate on responsibility to protect was concentrated, has played a central role in these debates and has contributed its development both through ideas it put forward and humanitarian interventions it actively participates in, as a strong supporter of the understanding of responsibility to protect. However, its attempt to present the Afghanistan and Iraq interventions that it participated in the post-9/11 period in this context and the fact that these interventions were much more controversial in terms of responsibility to protect compared to other interventions occurred until that time has led to further questioning of the UK's intention in this respect. In this thesis, the aim is to make this questioning and to demonstrate whether the UK acted with the consciousness of responsibility to protect and whether it used the responsibility to protect as a foreign policy tool to realize its national interests. Key Words: 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Britain, Humanitarian Intervention, Responsibility to Protect.