This Course is designed to introduce students of IR the political thought by following the footsteps of the outstanding thinkers from Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas to Marx, Gramsci, Althusser, and Badiou through an analysis of the political thought of selected scholars along with their contributions to political philosophy. In examining the ideas of those theorists the method to be adopted is both textual and contextual, attempting to give due regard to the thoughts expressed by the authors and the social environments in which they have been expressed.

As a sub-field of International Relations discipline, the scope of International Security Studies gradually broadens. Therefore, this course examines major traditional and new theoretical approaches to International Security Studies as well as the different aspects of the contemporary international security issues, events, structures and processes. The course also aims to develop analytical and critical skills of the graduate students to comprehend and discuss the specific cases in the changing conceptual/theoretical framework of International Security by referring to different sectors of security such as military, economy, society, politics, energy and environment.

This course intends to examine the developments in Europe and U.S. since the 19th century until today. The World War I and the new political structure after 1918 will be considered from the point of global developments. World War II and the involvement of the U.S. in European affairs, Cold War Sovietization of Eastern Europe and the emancipation of the Third World countries are also to be discussed. The relations among the industrial and non-industrial and non-industrial countries in political, economic and military fields are explained with some comments on future prospects for global developments.

This course attempts to analyze major issues of European Integration within a theoretical framework. The course begins with an analysis of the major theories of European Integration such as functionalism, neo-functionalism and federalism. On the basis of this theoretical framework, the course will focus on the two main issues of European Integration, which are named ‘supranationalism versus intergovernmentalism’ and ‘widening versus depending’. In the context of this course, the impacts of decisions on the integration processes taken in summits such as Maastricht and Cophenagen will also be ecamined and discussed.