The fluctuation in Turkey’s stance towards the Palestinian cause has major implications for the country's diplomacy with Arab publics. This paper analyses the relationship between Turkey’s changing position on Palestine and its ‘soft power’ potential in the Arab region. The analysis has two components: the first component follows the scholarly literature on Turkish soft power, and the second component follows the role of public diplomacy in Turkish soft power. Focusing on the post-2002 period in which Turkey’s position on Palestine became more influential, the literature on Turkish soft power in this context pays special attention to Ankara’s role as a ‘mediator’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Within this role, Turkey adopted an approach that relied heavily on the concept of ‘structural prevention’ through the Turkish Chambers and Commodity Exchange’s Industry for Peace Initiative (TOBB-BIS). Another element of Ankara’s approach in the early 2000s was humanitarian aid, which is part of nation branding by institutions like the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA). However, the risk associated with Turkey’s mediator status started to increase as its relations with Hamas strengthened. At the same time, a larger portion of Ankara’s official development aid to Palestine was allocated to projects in Gaza. Some scholars argue that this evolution of Turkish foreign policy was a result of the Europeanisation process in early 2010s. But there was already a desecuritisation of Ankara’s Middle Easy policy in the late 2000s, which involved several initiatives for ‘peace talks’ with states that Turkey had long considered enemies. My paper explores changes in the official Turkish position over the past decade, including the most recent turn in 2022, and how they reflect on the state's soft power resources. By establishing the relationship between these two factors, the aim of this study is to demonstrate how the state would need to adapt its policies on Palestine to attract the support of wider segments in Arab societies.

The Abraham Accords were initially sold by their architects as a step forward for regional tolerance and prosperity. Three years on, it has become apparent that the agreements have not served this purpose. Instead, they have enabled Washington to bring the normalising Gulf states into closer strategic alignment with Israel, and elevate both sides as joint executors of its regional interests, as it looks to divert its attention to what it considered more pressing issues outside the region. The Gulf states and Israel have benefitted from the new bilateral economic and military ties, leaving the Palestinians increasingly isolated and diplomatically weakened. What of the Accords in the wake of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war? The Biden administration has continued to sell Saudi normalisation as the key to unlocking a broader peace process. The aim of this paper is to reflect on the limits of normalisation in delivering a sustainable regional peace. It will reflect on how the expansion of normalisation has effectively replaced the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the hierarchy of the United States Middle East policy, the centering of the Gulf stats as intermediaries in this process, and the implications of this shift for prospects of a lasting settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

The ongoing crisis in Gaza has significantly affected the security and regional position of all Gulf states with various domestic and foreign policy considerations. The six countries’ behaviour is characterised by both managing possible and actual security threats connected to the ongoing crisis and utilizing the ongoing developments for their own interests. Consequently, in spite of the tendency among observers to put them in the same category or differentiate between them based on the nature of their relationship with Israel (i.e., participants of the Abraham Accords vs. the rest), their strategy is markedly different. In addition, given their development and humanitarian policies and political calculations regarding their relations with Israel and Palestine, they are expected to play an outsized role even after the war ends in Gaza. The paper aims to compare the role of the six Gulf countries in the different stages of the ongoing crisis in Gaza and the calculations behind their strategy. The research will utilize two theoretical perspectives – the omnibalancing framework, suggesting that the six governments formed their strategy on the basis of balancing between both domestic and international threats, and the notion of virtual enlargement, a strategy associated with small states that try to enlarge their importance in the international system using various soft power means. These two concepts help us interpret the differences and similarities between their strategy and their position. Besides the primary aim of the research to identify the nuances of Gulf states’ strategy towards Gaza and the crisis, the paper seeks to decide if we can expect an intensification of competition between the six countries in shaping the future of Palestinian politics.

The United States and Middle East autocracies do not make for the most natural of allies. One of the most common rhetorical tactics used to defend these alliances is to portray the ruler in question as a reformer who is steering his country into alignment with American political norms. Performing a historical-critical rhetorical analysis, we argue that this tactic provides a uniquely meaningful lens through which to analyze the rhetorical evolution of the public image of Mohammad bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. First, we situate the popularity of the “reformer tactic” as an outgrowth of realist assessments of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) deployed this tactic successfully during the Trump presidency, but the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi brought an abrupt end to these efforts. In response to the outrage over Khashoggi’s murder, the Trump administration ignored criticism of its close relationship with MbS and defended the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia on loosely realist grounds. During the 2020 campaign soon-to-be President Biden labeled MbS a pariah, exposing Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia as an electoral liability. This outcome, we argue, highlights how increased information access across international boundaries makes it more difficult for U.S.-allied autocrats to maintain the public image of a reformer and signals the need for such leaders to develop new rhetorical strategies to legitimize American alliances with Middle Eastern autocracies if they wish to maintain a positive public image with western audiences. Second, we argue that MbS’s response to the Israel-Hamas War demonstrates the adaptation of a new tactic to legitimize the U.S.-Saudi alliance by framing the prince as a peacemaker, thus responding to the decay of the “reformer tactic” as an effective rhetorical strategy for Saudi Arabia. Among its other implications, the war has furnished an opportune moment for MbS to rhetorically reinvent himself. To do so, MbS has begun casting himself as an agent with the requisite authority and willingness to engineer a peace agreement to end the war in Gaza, thus demonstrating his utility as a U.S. ally. While this tactic is not as replicable as the reformer image, it represents an opportunistic, innovative shift by MbS to adapt to the balance of realism and idealism in U.S. foreign policy discourse.