“The current volume titled Geopolitics Academic Dissertations is a collection of Ioannis Th. Mazis’s academic publications, published till 2016. Ioannis Mazis is Professor of Economic Geography and Geopolitics at the Faculty of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, (School of Economic and Political Sciences), of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Mazis is the creator of Modern Systemic Geopolitical Analysis in international bibliography. The academic publications included in this volume examine various aspects of International Relations: International Relations Theory, Islamism, Turkish and Greek geopolitics and relations, power equilibrium in the Eastern Mediterranean, rivalries between state actors in the historical long run –with an emphasis on the region of Eastern Mediterranean, an area which constitutes the historical space of the Greek state.

From an epistemological point of view, Mazis’s Scientific Research Programme is part of the general neo-positivist hermeneutic framework, which in turn derives from the behavioral model. Mazis’s Scientific Research Programme is connected with the version of sophisticated behaviorism, i.e. an updated, more positivist-oriented version of the initial behavioral model.

Being a geographer, Mazis bases his analysis on spatial data which are examined in both their geophysical and geopolitical dimension, i.e. in their interaction with the distribution of economic, political, cultural and defensive power of the various state actors in the international system of state relations.

Mazis proceeds to formulate a hermeneutic model, which, fruitfully, is free from idealistic connotations and is characterized by neo-positivist clarity. Positive heuristic includes predictions made by Ioannis Mazis concerning various aspects of international politics. These predictions include the hegemony of the German state in European economic and geopolitical space, inter-state tension in the Middle East caused by the scarcity of drinkable water, neo-Ottoman external and internal politics of the Turkish state, the creation of a Kurdish polity and the realigning of geopolitical equilibrium of the Middle East, a Greek-Israeli approach, and a new geopolitical balance in the Middle East as a reaction to the over-expansion of the Turkish state.

The negative heuristic of Mazis’s Scientific Research Programme comprises the critical evaluation and rejection of Critical Geopolitics and Neo-liberal Geopolitics. Both the positive and the negative heuristic, which surround the hard core of Mazis’s Scientific Research Programme, contribute to the successful preservations of the hard core.”