131 CHAPTER 5 Emergence of the Turkish/Qatari Alliance in the Middle East: Making of the Moderate Resistance Bloc Nuri Yeşilyurt and Mustafa Yetim INTRODUCTION Since the formation of the modern state system in the broader Middle East, a regional polarization has continued to exist between the sta- tus quo powers and revisionist powers. Although leaders and members of both blocs have changed through decades, this bipolar structure has been a recurrent pattern in the history of the Gulf Region and the broader Middle East. During the 2000s, and particularly after the inva- sion of Iraq in 2003, this regional polarization mainly crystallized around © The Author(s) 2020 P. O. Amour (ed.), The Regional Order in the Gulf Region and the Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45465-4_5 N. Yeşilyurt (*) Faculty of Political Science, Department of International Relations, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey e-mail: nyesilyurt@ankara.edu.tr M. Yetim Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences, Department of International Relations, Eskişehir Osmangazi University, Eskişehir, Turkey