Turkish Foreign Policy towards the Arab Revolutions

Hasan Korkut,Mehmet Ozkan

doi:10.21533/epiphany.v6i1.59

Abstract

Turkey's foreign policy has been drawing considerable attention particularly because of the momentous transformations in the Middle East. The visits of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuoglu to Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia in September 2011 and their subsequent visits to the region underscored the rise of Turkey's involvement in the region. The Arab Spring came at a time when Turkey's relations with the United States, Israel and the European Union were going through significant turbulence. 2010 proved to be a particularly difficult year for Turkey's place in the transatlantic community. The Gaza flotilla crisis in June 2010 - ending with Israeli forces killing eight Turkish citizens - and Turkey's "no" vote to a new round of sanctions against Iran at the United Nations (UN) Security Council that same month triggered a heated debate on Turkey's relations with the West, which led popular American columnists such as Tom Friedman to go as far as arguing that Ankara was now joining the "Hamas- Hezbollah-Iran resistance front against Israel." While this was a clear exaggeration, it indicated the scope of debate on the eve of the Arab Spring. Since the Arab Spring, the Western discourse about Turkey has dramatically changed. Instead of asking "who lost Turkey" or complaining about the Islamization of Turkish foreign policy, analysts began discussing whether the new regimes in the Arab world would follow the "Turkish model." This article aims to analyze the Turkish approach to the Middle East and the Arab revolutions, the main determinants of Turkish foreign policy and diplomacy in the Middle East and the debate on "Turkish Model. What has changed, or has not, during and after the Arab Spring?

Highlights

Turkey‘s foreign policy has been drawing considerable attention because of the momentous transformations in the Middle East
In order to locate Turkey‘s diplomacy to the Middle East, one has to understand the overall change in Turkish foreign policy since 1990‘s (Ozkan, 2006, 157-185)
An important shift occurred in Turkish foreign policy towards the Middle East in this period

Summary

Introduction

Turkey‘s foreign policy has been drawing considerable attention because of the momentous transformations in the Middle East. Speaking, one can argue that, Turkey‘s relations with the Middle East since 1990s have been wedged between security and coherence These elements account for relations in general; and there have been three waves of activism in Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East before the Arab spring started. Pro-Western Wave: 1991 Gulf War and Turgut Ozal Turkey‘s active involvement in the Gulf War represented a fundamental alteration of Turkey‘s traditional ―balanced‖ foreign policy towards the Middle East, a change that continued in the aftermath of the war (Sayari, 1992, 13). The traditional low-key and cautious approaches were replaced by a new confident and high profile style This policy as mentioned above was mainly promoted and championed by the Prime Minister (1983-1989) and later President (1989-1993) of Turkey, Turgut Ozal. The degree of activism and boldness that Ozal introduced to the Turkish foreign policy was strong (Ataman, 2002, 120-153)

Objectives

Conclusion