Between East and West : Turkey's foreign policy in a multi-polar world

Författare

Valeriia Amitina

Summary, in English

The AKP ’s proactive foreign policy and the decline of EU-Turkey and US-Turkey relations, along with Turkey’s strengthening ties with its Eastern neighbors, has sparked a heated scholarly and media debate about the axis shift of Turkish foreign policy—from the West to the East. The purpose of the present thesis is to analyze if the arguments of the axis shift supporters are grounded enough to prove Turkey’s Eastern turn in light of recent developments in the Middle East.
Multi-faceted research was carried out in order to answer this question. Firstly, the Turkish system of values was studied through content and critical discourse analyses within a constructivism framework. Thus, public speeches by Turkish officials were analyzed to trace the presence of nine core European principles, singled out by Ian Manners, in the Turkish system of values. Secondly, in order to analyze if today’s Turkish foreign policy aligns with Western policies, Turkey’s voting behavior in the United Nations General Assembly was compared to that of the EU and USA. The research was based on the analysis of the selected United Nations General Assembly resolutions on the Middle East. Research results proved that the idea of Turkey’s abrupt and unequivocal shift to the East are exaggerated, and instead claimed that Turkish foreign policy-making was strengthening its independent voice rather than adopting an Eastern stance.

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