Turkish foreign policy in an age of uncertainty (original) (raw)

Special Issue on Turkish Foreign Policy

New Perspectives on Turkey, 2009

CONTENTS - NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY, VOLUME 40 Editors’ Intro.: Special issue on Turkish Foreign Policy by Mustafa Aydın & Kemal Kirişci Globalization, modernity and democracy: In search of a viable domestic polity for a sustainable Turkish foreign policy - E. Fuat Keyman The transformation of Turkish foreign policy: The rise of the trading state - Kemal Kirişçi Public choice and foreign affairs: Democracy and international relations in Turkey - Ersin Kalaycıoğlu Facing its Waterloo in diplomacy: Turkey's military in the foreign policy-making process - Gencer Özcan Securing Turkey through western-oriented foreign policy - Pınar Bilgin Reconstructing Turkish-American relations: Divergences versus convergences - Mustafa Aydın The role of temporality and interaction in the Turkey-EU relationship - Atila Eralp Worldviews and Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East - Meliha Benli Altunışık Turkey and Eurasia: Frontiers of a new geographic imagination - Bülent Aras and Hakan Fidan Multiplying vectors: A framework for maximizing Turkey's freedom in formulating and implementing foreign policy - İlter Turan Turkish foreign policy: Limits of engagement - Ahmet O. Evin

TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY IN THE FACE OF REGIONAL AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES

This article essentially posits that Türkiye took advantage of the deepening competition between global powers under the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to part ways with its traditional foreign policy tradition and pursue a more independent approach. That the country expanded its economic and military capacity significantly during the relevant period to support a balanced policy between the West, Russia, and China is another major argument. To put those claims to the test, this article primarily analyzes the expansion of Türkiye's economic and military capacity and proceeds to focus on its policy toward the deepening rivalry between the West and Russia (due to the Ukraine war) and how it responded to the "rise of Asia. " Last but not least, this piece analyzes Türkiye's pursuit of a more independent foreign policy, how the country clashed with the U.S., the European Union, and Russia as well as their allies on the ground, and how Ankara used its policy of balance to keep a lid on those tensions.

Turkish foreign policy at the nexus of changing international and regional dynamics

After examining the causes of Turkey’s failure to help secure a benign environment in its neighborhood during and after the so-called Arab Spring, this article tries to answer how foreign policy dynamics played a role between the two parliamentary elections in Turkey held in June and November 2015 respectively. Another question is whether foreign policy developments taking place in Turkey’s neighborhood, particularly in the wider Middle Eastern region, will drive Turkey closer to its Western partners in the post-election era. Whether Turkey’s rediscovery of the Western international community will be long-term or conjectural development, given its growing security challenges, warrants a closer attention.

Turkish Society and Foreign Policy in Troubled Times

2001

: In 1999, at the previous RAND-GCSP workshop in Geneva, participants took up the topic of NATO and Middle Eastern security. With changes in Europe, the Gulf and the Middle East peace process, Turkey's pivotal role in relation to both European and Middle Eastern security emerged as a consistent theme. The workshop organizers came away from that meeting convinced of the need to consider Turkey's regional role in more detail. The April 2001 workshop on Turkey was the result. In the months before the meeting, the importance of Turkey's future was underscored by a series of financial crises, posing formidable economic and political challenges for Turks, and for Turkey's partners in the West. There is a strong sense among observers in Turkey, in Europe and in the United States, that Turkey has reached a critical crossroads, and that decisions taken in the next months will shape the country's future for decades to come.

FOREIGN POLICY IN THE TURKEY OF THE FUTURE

FOREIGN POLICY IN THE TURKEY OF THE FUTURE, 2020

The “Foreign Policy in the Turkey of the Future,” beyond providing a foreign policy vision for the future, intends to lay out a comprehensive, coherent, and practical framework of analysis for Turkish foreign policy (TFP). Firstly, report touches upon the critical junctures of basic foreign policy in the last century and evaluates Turkey’s position in the world while providing a general outlook on TFP. Secondly, it analyzes TFP’s relations with global and regional actors during the AK Party era. Thirdly, report is devoted to examining the principal parameters that will influence foreign policy in Turkey’s future. The final section of the report, has been prepared with the aims of determining the weaknesses in Turkish foreign policy and bringing principle-advocating suggestions regarding visions for both institutions and foreign policy as a result of the topics addressed in previous parts.

Turkish Foreign Policy; Old Problems, New Parameters

2010

Turkish foreign policy has undergone an overarching change in recent years. The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a transformation of Turkey into a cooperative and conciliatory neighbor and wiling international partner. The activism of the former president Turgut Ozal during the early 1990s, focusing on economic cooperation was followed, in late 1990s, by the then foreign minister, Ismail Cem, who focused on Turkey’s immediate neighborhood to create a ring of friendly countries around Turkey. Yet the current transformation is culminated with the rise of AKP government and especially its current foreign minister, Ahmet Davudoglu, into power. This book assesses that transformation and presents its background as well as its current form.

CRITICAL READINGS OF TURKEY'S FOREIGN POLICY

CRITICAL READINGS OF TURKEY'S FOREIGN POLICY, 2022

This manuscript titled Critical Readings of Turkey’s Foreign Policy brings a group of renowned Turkish scholars together to investigate, analyse and assess Turkey’s Foreign Policy. Authors in this manuscript utilise tools, methods and assumptions offered by several critical International Relations approaches such as post/decolonial, post-structuralist, feminist, structuralist and critical constructivist approaches. Furthermore, some authors are engaged in multi-disciplinary or cross-disciplinary research which makes use of ethnographic or sociological approaches. In the manuscript, authors extensively cover historical and contemporary issues, ruptures, (trans)formations, discourses and processes that (re)produce, (dis)locate or (de)construct Turkey’s identities and relationships. Furthermore, they also discuss the promises of critical approaches in the Foreign Policy Analysis. In this way, this manuscript helps students, researchers and practitioners of the Foreign Policy to make sense of policy choices, discourses and behaviours of a country. This manuscript starts with three chapters under the section called “Turkey in the Modern International”. Chapters in this section discuss Turkey’s positionality in the colonial and modern world order(s). Their genealogical, structural, postcolonial and historical analyses locate Turkey in a wider world system, while looking inside. These chapters analyse the role of power hierarchies, structural impacts and identity (de)formations in the creation and consolidation of the state. Following three chapters under the section called “Turkey’s Imagined Communities and Geography” explore how Turkey sees itself, its “natural” borders, its identity, its geography, its region and its heritage, especially with respect to Global South and Balkans. Subsequent chapters move to contemporary issues and periods without losing their grasp of historical developments and identity constructions. Next section is titled “Articulating New and Old Friends”. Here authors discuss how Turkey’s belonging to regions and alliances; its friendships and its enemies are shaped and reshaped through discourses and performances. In this section, Turkey’s relations with the European Union, China and Russia are scrutinised among other issues and actors. Finally, in the last section titled “Limbo of (In)Security”, authors investigate (in)security related speeches, articulations and inclusionary and exclusionary practices. In this section, relations with Greece and unilateral and international interventions that Turkey was involved are examined. With this volume, we hope to reflect upon the diversity, richness and possibilities within the fields of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis and Turkey’s academia. Furthermore, integrating the critical trajectory of the last generation’s IR theories and relevant disciplines into discussions on the foreign policy issues of “peripheral” actors will reveal the virtues, limits and blind spots of Western-origin approaches in exploring “global” ontologies. Rather than passively adopting the conceptual and methodological tools of critical theoretical IR approaches, this volume also considers the epistemological limits of the conventional literature. This contribution will assess the (re)making of foreign policy in relation to the identities of local, regional, and global lineages. This exciting compilation of high-quality and noteworthy academic work is also expected to serve as a small token of contribution to vibrant and active academic communities all around the world.

Turkey's Foreign Policy: Opportunities and Constraints in a New Era

Social Research: An International Quarterly, 88(2), 539-560., 2021

Union and the reshuffling of regional and global alliances, Malik Mufti took note of how Turkish political elites confronted this new world. He wrote, "those responsible for determining its foreign policy-motivated by considerations of fear, honor and profit-are casting their eyes back in time in search of clues on how best to proceed" (1998, 32). According to Mufti, what shaped the elites' response to the changing circumstances was a combination of external threats and opportunities coupled with domestic constraints. Focusing on strategic culture, he identified two competing lines among the foreign policy elites: daring and caution. Until the 1990s, Turkey's foreign policy establishment continued to err on the side of caution based on lessons learned from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. According to this view, the Ottoman Empire collapsed mainly as a result of Ottoman elites' adventurous foreign policy and their expansionist and greedy outlook. More importantly, during the Cold War, the hallmark of Turkish foreign policy was an approach that prioritized a stable national interest defined by the sanctity of Turkey's borders and a predominantly Western orientation (Aydın 2000). This high degree of continuity and uniformity was not just limited to Turkey, as the foreign policies of small and middle-sized countries mostly reflected the bipolar nature of the international system that left little room for developing an independent