The Political Economy of the Kurds of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, by Veli Yadirgi, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017, $79.99 (hardcover), ISBN 9781107181236, $27.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781316632499

Abstract

theoretically informed explanation. This is not a problem as such, but one is left wondering why Toal introduces the above-mentioned concepts in the first place. Third, Toal's analysis fails to engage with the extant stock of constructivist-inspired analyses of Russian foreign policy in the field of international relations. In recent years, scholars such Andrei Tsygankov, Iver Neumann, Ted Hopf, Anne Clunan, and Tuomas Forsberg have provided an array of insightful studies that examine how Russia's national identity discourses and hunt for status have shaped its foreign policy behavior. In fact, several constructivist-inspired studies explicitly address Russia's interventions in Georgia and Ukraine. Given the overlap between critical geopolitics and constructivism, it would have been interesting to see how the conclusions reached by Toal differ from or relate to the findings of those existing works. These weaknesses notwithstanding, Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus is undoubtedly worth reading. Toal's analysis of the interplay between intrastate conflicts and great power politics, the detailed empirical accounts of the wars in Ukraine and Georgia, and the new survey data from eastern Ukraine and Crimea make the book a necessary resource for anyone interested in the international politics of the post-Soviet space. For a theoretically informed explanation of these dynamics and patterns, however, we have to wait for Toal's next book.