ABSTRACT
Every policy process is embedded in a certain conceptual framework. This section aims to explain empirically how epistemic communities contributed to the evolving Turkish-Israeli-Azerbaijani entente. As Antoniades argues, the foreign policy making process is based on a particular understanding of reality. The foreign policy epistemic community circumscribes the broad outlines of this reality.1 Antoniades states, “As long as ‘reality’ is mainly knowledge about this ‘reality,’ those players who possess and control knowledge have a dominant role in the game.”2 Thus, a raison d’etre of epistemic communities is their ability to impose discourse on decision makers and the general public.3 Epistemic communities are in engaged in what a senior Israeli diplomat calls “political image-making.” He argues that: “The stuff of political image-making is political ‘news.’ Ultimately, this news is about power-the institutions in which power reposes, and the people who control them. It is the real or perceived link with ‘power’ that makes a ‘source’ interesting in the press.”4
