The Reflection of the Geopolitical Cognition on the Territorialization of States

Attention to causal, contextual and historical factors in the analysis of State`s behavior and actions has increased in recent years, and the literature of the Cognitive approach has expanded to understand the logic of developments and government policies. In the Cognitive approach, it is assumed that the Geopolitical actor operates in a field of strategic necessities - which that has inherited as an institutional legacy - and always has his own limitations and identity conditions. But in the field of Geopolitics, a comprehensive theory that can reflect the causes and perceptual factors and their influential role in action and policies is absent. Therefore, the current study is a preliminary design of a new theory called Geopolitical Cognition, which can qualitatively evaluate the reflection of these effects on the behavior of actors. There is always a cycle of influential factors in societies that influence the behavior of countries. Some of the collective experiences (such as war, military occupation, disintegration, massacres, important treaties) shape the collective memory and the mechanism of intergenerational transmission, they are preserved and gradually become meaningful in relation to the territory of the land and are part of the survival requirements or they are assumed to be a national Order. In the next stage, "States" in connection with these elements reach the stage of Geopolitical identification and in connection with the homeland, minorities, the international system and other nations, they form "I and the other"....In the final stage of its development, this path leads to the formation of a perceptual container or geopolitical cognition. Through their geopolitical cognition, societies and countries give meaning to external phenomena in relation to their political geography, which is the product of place (geography) and time (history). Therefore, through the discovery of the formation process of this cognition, at least part of the actions can be understood. Especially, with the return of nationalism to the field of international relations and the prolongation of the geopolitical transition from bipolarity to the new order, the middle powers in the region are trying to contribute more to the future order by increasing their territorial influence and deepening their strategic depth. Another benefit of such an approach is predicting the future actions of the countries. This fundamental research with a descriptive-analytical approach addresses this issue through the qualitative content analysis of experimental data and is the method of collecting documentary and library data