Comparing International Dimensions of Revolutionary Situations: The cases of Egypt 2011 and Turkey 2013

This paper will look at the lessons we can draw from recent uprisings in the Middle East with regard to the theories of revolutions. Within the wider theoretical debate of the causes, processes and outcomes of revolutions the paper will focus on the international political dimensions of the revolutionary situations as distinct from the revolutionary outcomes. The article will disentangle and conceptualize the international politics surrounding these revolutionary situations. The paper will propose a framework of analysis of international politics in revolutionary situations by drawing not only on the Egyptian Uprising but also on the Gezi Uprising in Turkey in the same region. We argue that the role of the international should be neither downplayed nor exaggerated at the expense of domestic agency, and we need to combine structural and agential elements as we build a conjunctional understanding of international factors in revolutionary situations. In studying a region where the involvement of international factors during periods of domestic political change is complex, we need the same complexity in our frameworks of analysis and such frameworks will contribute to comparative studies of revolutionary situations.