The Domestic Context of New Activism in Turkish Foreign Policy

Abstract

The novelty of Turkish foreign is currently on everybody's lips. With catchwords such as power, activism, or the assumption of a new eastern orientation, media pundits and scholars alike discuss the transformation of Ankara's neighbourhood for which the minister of foreign affairs, Ahmet Davutoglu, has coined the slogan of zero-problem policy with Turkey's neighbours. There is no doubt that in comparison with the rather hands-off approach toward the Middle East that was a core element of the foreign policies of Turkey's Kemalist political elite, under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan the country has made its immediate and more distant neighbourhood a field of foreign activism. To a certain extent, Davutoglu's slogan has turned the Kemalist perception of encirclement upside-down: for some time the ring of enemies was replaced by a circle of friends. That this approach to the Middle East is equally onesided, however, has been shown by the deteriorating relationship with Israel, the tension with Iran over the installation of NATO's early warning radar system, and the difficulties in dealing with the often puzzling realities of the Arab spring. Apparently it is impossible to avoid problems with neighbours who have severe conflicts among themselves as well as with their own populations.In describing the transformation of Turkey's foreign policy, the scholarly debate refers to such diverse processes as the Europeanization, the Middle Easternization, or even the Arabization of Turkish politics.1 The cultural references of these labels suggest that we cannot understand foreign policies through the prisms of the realist tradition alone. To be sure, states, their power relations in the international system, and their respective national interests matter, but so do worldviews and ideas. To paraphrase Max Weber's famous statement, foreign policies are the expression of state interests, but ideas often play the switchman with regard to the way those interests are pursued.2 In this way, national interests, geopolitics, and ideas mesh in the making of foreign policy. Moreover, the ideas and interests of foreign policymakers are closely linked to factors of domestic politics. Foreign is not insulated from society but inseparably knitted into the often erratic relationship between state institutions, political elites, and people.3 Seen from that perspective, for instance, Erdogan's foreign policies have been closely linked to his parly's home constituencies and the political struggle against Turkey's Kemalist establishment, and in particular the powerful role that the armed forces have played in Turkish politics. Advocating soft power and zero problems in foreign relations, therefore, could also be interpreted as a strategy to reduce the military's influence on Turkish politics in both the domestic and international realms. International and domestic politics are essentially interdependent factors in the process of foreign policymaking, demanding a varied and multileveled approach for the analysis of foreign behaviour.Taking these theoretical insights as its point of departure, this article investigates the domestic context of Turkish foreign from a particular angle. In light of the suspicions of numerous observers that the Freedom and Justice party (AKP) government ultimately is driven by a religious agenda, I ask to what extent religion influences Turkey's new foreign behaviour. Should we understand the shifts in contemporary Turkish foreign as manifestations of Islamist ideology? Do religious ideas play the crucial switchman in the foreign policymaking of the AKP? I will argue that the foreign policies of the AKP to date have not really deviated from historical patterns of political decision-making in the Turkish republic. Various governments have used Islam as a symbolic resource and the AKP government's approach, similarly, is in line with this instrumental use of religion. …