The domestic context of Turkey’s changing foreign policy towards the Middle East and the Caspian Region

Abstract

"Turkey's foreign policy has been in transition since the early 1990s. This change is reflected in the country's departure from a firmly security-focused, coercive and unilateral foreign policy towards a policy keyed more to reaching diplomatic, multilateral solutions for foreign-policy problems. Significant examples might be seen in Turkey's political and economic rapprochement with Syria, Iran, and Russia, but also in a pragmatic approach to dealing with foreign-policy disputes, as illustrated by the process of change in Turkey's Armenia policy. Looked at in terms of the overall picture, it can be said that the country is increasingly intent on abandoning its self-enforced role as an 'intimate stranger' and honing its political and economic profile in its neighbourhood in order to strengthen its position as a regional power. The present paper seeks to identify some of the domestic factors responsible for the change in Turkey's regional foreign policy. It argues that the change in Turkey's regional foreign policy must be seen as part of a fundamental domestic reorientation. The domestic reorientation could be interpreted as a rearrangement of the overall domestic and social context in Turkey, which appears to have led both to a diversification of the country's centres of political power and changes in the country's institutional power relations." (author's abstract)