Charting the New Turkish Foreign Policy

Abstract

Turkey's foreign policy activism on a range of regional and global issues has sparked enormous interest in academic and policy circles in recent years. Turkey occupied a central place in discussions on the Iranian nuclear program when it formulated, with Brazil, a plan to transfer part of Iran's nuclear stockpile to Turkey in apparent opposition to the US policy of spearheading a new round of sanctions in the summer of 2010. Turkey's attempts to interject itself as a mediator into regional crises - be it between Israel and the Arabs; Afghanistan and Pakistan; Bosnia- Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia; various Iraqi groups; various Lebanese groups; or Russia and Georgia - has been another area of activism for Turkish diplomacy. At the same time, Turkey has initiated dialogue with such neighbours as Armenia, Greece, and Iraq to resolve decades-old disputes and normalize bilateral relations. Turkey's efforts to capitalize on its geographic location to turn the country into a major hub for the transportation and marketing of Eurasian and Middle Eastern energy resources to global markets has provided yet another dimension of Turkey's growing visibility in international affairs.In a rather ambitious development, Turkey has undertaken steps towards closer social, economic, and political exchanges with its neighbours. In the Middle East, Turkey has moved towards economic integration through the creation of a prospective free trade zone, accompanied by the removal of visa requirements. Turkey also has established high-level strategic cooperation councils with several Middle Eastern neighbours as a way of bolstering dialogue and resolving political disputes. These initiatives have been in no way confined to the Middle East and they have been replicated in one form or another with countries in other regions surrounding Turkey.The wave of popular uprisings that has swept through North Africa and the Middle East has also imbued Turkish foreign policy with a new dose of activism. Ankara was initially caught by surprise but gradually moved to embrace the popular movements, coming to champion democratic legitimacy and respect for fundamental human rights as the cornerstones of the new regional order in the Middle East. At the risk of breaking ties with leaders with whom it had forged collegial ties, Turkey has been an indispensable actor in the international coalitions that have sought to topple the authoritarian leaders in Libya and Syria. In the new era marked by the onset of the Arab Spring, interestingly, security concerns have become more pronounced in the making of Turkish foreign policy. While Turkey had previously been pursuing cooperative initiatives, in the last year or so it has also become embroiled in an increasing number of disputes or confrontations with its neighbours, sometimes bordering on brinkmanship on its part. Its decision to host an early warning radar as part of NATO's missile shield project, which is being developed to intercept missiles from the Middle East, its row with Israel over the latter's killing of Turkish citizens who were seeking to protest the naval blockade on Gaza, or its confrontational rhetoric against the Greek Cypriot administration are only a few examples of a recent proactive period in Turkish foreign policy.While Turkey's policies in those specific issue areas have received close scholarly interest, what has been overlooked has been the conceptual framework that under girds this new foreign policy vision. Many attribute the drastic transformation to the ideas of Ahmet Davutoglu, who is considered the architect of the Justice and Development party s foreign policy, first as the chief advisor to the prime minister and then as foreign minister. Davutoglu's thinking, which was formulated while he was an academic studying international affairs and the role of civilizations in world history, reflects the influence of geopolitics and ideational factors. Granted, Turkish foreign policy has been blended, at times in an eclectic manner, with elements from different international relations theories. …