Testing the Axis-Shift Claim: An Empirical Analysis of Turkey's Voting Alignment on Important Resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly during the Years 2000–10

Abstract

This article aims to make a contribution to the axis-shift debate by quantitatively analyzing whether Turkey's United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) votes displayed any shifting patterns from the West to the East during the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government era. Examining data on the UNGA's most important resolutions from 2000 to 2010, the article finds no evidence supporting the axis-shift claim. However, there is some empirical evidence indicating that Turkey, at least in the UNGA, became a more independent actor on regional issues but at the same time adopted a more pro-European Union attitude on global issues during the AKP era.

Notes

See Barromi and Feldman, “Latin American Voting,” 142–65.

See Datta, “The Decline,” 265–84.

See Jacobson, “An International Actor Under Pressure,” 531–54.

See Chai, “Chinese Policy,” 391–403.

See Wills, “New Zealand in the United Nations General Assembly.”

See Weiner, "Postcommunist Moldovan,” 1–35.

See Graham, “South Africa's UN General Assembly,” 409–32.

See Aral, “Fifty Years On,” 137–60.

Graham, “South Africa's UN General Assembly,” 410.

Wang, “U.S. Foreign Aid and UN Voting,” 200.

Hagan, “Domestic Political Regime Changes,” 505–41.

See Kim and Russett, “The New Politics,” 629–52.

Yuvacı and Kaplan, “International crisis.”

Aral, “Fifty Years On,” 137.

Ibid.

See, for example, Foreign Affairs, October 26, 2009 and Foreign Affairs, November 15, 2010.

For example, see Gözen, “Türk Dış Politikasında Değişim Var mı?,” 20–35.

See, for example, Larrabee, “The ‘New Turkey’,” 1–9 and Yenigün, “Türk Dış Politikasında Üçüncü Dalga,” 63–87.

See Hagan, “Domestic Political Regime Changes.”

Wang, “U.S. Foreign Aid and UN Voting.”

Wills, “New Zealand in the United Nations General Assembly,” 3.

Datta, “The Decline,” 271.

Öniş and Yilmaz, “Between Europeanization and Euro-Asianism,” 20.

EU countries included in this study are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

Arab countries included in this study are: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

The reference group countries are: Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

See Voeten, “Resisting the Lonely Superpower,” 729–54 and Chai, “Chinese Policy.”

See Voeten, “Clashes in the Assembly,” 185–215 and Marin-Bosch, Votes in the UN General Assembly.

See, Sanberk, “Türk Dış Politikasının Bölgeselleşmesi.”

It should be noted that in a dummy variable least square model the constant term represents the size and sign of the cross-sectional time series units that are not included as an independent dummy variable in the model. Thus, in Table 1, the constant is Turkey's voting coincidence rates with the reference group countries for the period 2000–02. Then, Turkey's voting agreement with the country/group in question in the period 2003–10 is calculated by adding that country's/group's AKP interaction coefficient to the AKP dummy coefficient. For example, AKP * USA + AKP = (−0.335 + 0.089) = −0.246, which may be interpreted as Turkey's average voting similarity with the USA was 25 percent lower than its average voting similarity with the reference group in the period 2003–10.

Turkey's voting coincide rate with the baseline group during the AKP period is 0.691, which obtained by adding the coefficient value of the AKP dummy to the constant coefficient value: (0.089 + 0.602 = 0.691).

Soo Kim and Russett, “The New Politics,” 629–52.

Wang, “U.S. Foreign Aid and UN Voting.”

Aral, “Fifty Years On,” 156–7.

See Voeten, “Resisting the Lonely Superpower.”