Uluslararası İlişkiler Kuramında Silahlı Grupları Kavramlarla Açıklama

980’lerden bu yana, devlet dışıaktörler kategorisinde yer alan silahlıgrupların, gerek sayılarında gerekse çeşitlerinde hızlıbir artışyaşanmıştır. Teröristler, savaşkrallarıve isyancılardan oluşan silahlıgruplar, uluslararasıilişkilerde çok önemli aktörler konumuna gelmiştir. Soğuk Savaşboyunca yerel olarak hareket eden silahlıgruplar, Soğuk Savaş’ın sona ermesinden sonra “uluslararasılaşmaya” başlamıştır. Son yirmi yılda yaşanan gelişmeler silahlıgrupların ulus-ötesi kapasite geliştirmelerine yardımcıolmuştur. Bu çalışmada, silahlıgrupların doğasıve genel özellikleri ortaya konduktan sonra, silahlıgruplar ve devlet arasındaki ilişkiye yer verilmiş; silahlıgrupların egemenliği tartışılmış; silahlıgrupların anarşik ortamdaki yeri ve amaçlarıortaya konmuş; savaşlarda silahlıgrupların yeri incelenmiş, ve silahlıgrupların tıpkıdevletler gibi uluslararasıilişkilerde önemli bir aktör kabul edilmesi gerektiği gösterilmeye çalışılmıştır.

Armed groups, as a category of non-state actors, have grown rapidly in number since the 1980s. Armed groups, including terrorists, warlords and insurgencies, are becoming increasingly significant actors in international relations. For most of the Cold War period armed groups acted locally or if they acted internationally, they usually did so via another state. However by the end of the Cold War, armed groups started having international lives of their own in which they interacted on a political, economic or military level across national borders at their own will. Today there are hundreds of armed groups all over the world. They have also become more diverse in terms of their different subtypes, each of which can vary considerably with respect to vision, mission, and the means and methods employed. Nevertheless, armed groups do share some common characteristics. In this context, the general characteristics of armed groups has been tried to be presented in the second part of the study. These include the following: all armed groups challenge the authority, power, and legitimacy of states, seeking to undermine or co-opt them; some may have above-ground operations that seek legitimacy and public support, locally and internationally, and command significant territory; the leaders and followers of armed groups believe in force and violence to achieve political, religious, economic and personal aims; armed groups do not recognize international norms, the rule of law, or the idea of human rights, and they are willing to kill those who oppose them; armed groups use a range of protracted irregular paramilitary tactics, and they are also skilled in the use of the media, propaganda, and the Internet to advance their narrative; armed groups may operate within and across national boundaries, across geographical regions and, sometimes globally like Al Qaeda. The fact that armed groups began to be analyzed in the discipline of International Relations has been created curiosity, interest and uneasiness at the same time by other international actors. What are the developments that provided armed groups since the end of the Cold War with the capabilities to pose such serious threats to such major states? Over the last two decades changes in the international system have made available new enablers-power enhancers- that improved the capabilities and power projection capacity of armed groups. These enablers included: globalization; information technology; network-based organizations; and the blurring of lines between the modes of force and military power. When these power enhancers are coupled with the fact that armed groups maintain clandestine organizations often comprised of complex operational and support units, the security challenges they pose today for states have magnified considerably. Their clandestine components provide armed groups with a broad assortment of means, both violent and non-violent, to acquire the support of or control over the population and to gain ascendancy over state and other armed group rivals. The best way to be adopted while examining the armed groups will be comparing them with the states considered as the unique actors of international relations. Therefore, in the third part of the study state phenomena is examined firstly. Then, armed groups and state phenomena are tried to be compared within the scopes of territoriality, centrality, sovereignty, nationality, and politics. While armed groups and state phenomena are being compared, it is given more emphasis on the concept of “sovereignty”, it is examined under a separate title. In this section sovereignty is divided into two groups as "legal sovereignty" and "de facto sovereignty". Empirical sovereignty is one piece, which described an actor as being de facto the highest authority over territory or a population. Juridical sovereignty referred to the admission by the international community that an actor is sovereign as well as the granting of the rights and responsibilities that go along such an admission. This section showed that although armed groups are not considered to have the juridical form of sovereignty, they do have the empirical form, and it is this form that it is central to the balance of power. Also in this section issues such as management, self sustaining, economy, continuity and motivation of armed groups are examined. The main thesis of this section is: “Armed groups should, like states, be considered decisive units in the international system. Their organization is cohesive enough to be directed, in particular, to direct military might. Although possibly lacking in an integral territory, armed groups have a closed political community that is separate from other political communities. Moreover, they can maintain their organization and its autonomy indefinitely through enacting an economic and motivational system. This unit can defend itself and thereby maintain autonomy and empirical sovereignty. They are also motivated by the pursuit of power and survival. Armed groups occupy an odd position within the world of international actors. They are not states, but neither are they normal non-state actors. Although lacking formal recognition as sovereign actors, they are able to insist on an autonomy and independence that amounts to a de facto sovereignty that other non-state actors do not have.” In the section having the title of “Armed Groups Challenge States”, it is focused on the fact that an armed group has two goals in an anarchic system. The first is having independent and different state on the particular piece of land emerging in ethnonationalist nature. This situation can be regarded as “secessionism”. The second is trying to change or take the charge of the regime of a specific state emerging in ideological nature. This is an ideological case. This two situations show that in the international area, each armed group seeks to become a state in the degree that it gains control. On the other hand, of course, each state seeks to prevent this situation. In the international anarchic environment, the purpose of the armed groups is to maximize their benefits. The meaning of maximizing benefits is “the desire for being state” according to armed groups. From this point of view, the goal of the armed groups ultimately is “to have a nation state”. Thus, if a movement which begins as terror achieves success, the result is the fact that the new actor who can prove its power become a legal member of anarchy. War which is witnessed in international system generally, occurs between sovereign states and is examined as armed conflicts took on different dimensions in consequence of Hague Convention dated 1907 and Rome Status dated 1998. The obligation that the parties must be states disappeared, the conflict between two armed groups gained war status too. Within this scope, the place of armed groups is tried to be examined in the fourth section where international war theory of Carl Von Clausewitz is examined firstly. Then, report of Heilderberg Institute for International Conflict Research which was published on 2009 was included. The wars happening on 2009 are explained in this report. In this report, legal place of armed groups in wars and anarchic system was tried to be proved. Consequently, when organizational structures, economies, self sustaining, populations, de facto sovereignty of armed groups and their roles in the wars are considered, it is seen that they have very important place in international relations. When all of these aspects are considered, it is not wrong to state that “they are illegal states of international anarchy”. In brief, in this paper “armed groups” are examined in the scope of the concepts of “state, sovereignty, anarchy, war” which are used in international relations discipline, and it is claimed that armed groups are self governing actors in anarchical system of international relations