Turkey: A Regional Power Facing a Changing International System

Abstract

Turkey's foreign policy activism in recent decades, characterized by an ambitious regional agenda and visibility in global affairs, has generated a lively debate. This paper attempts to position Turkey in modern-day international relations, in order to develop an analytical framework capable of theorizing its regional and global-level activism coherently. It thus proposes to conceptualize Turkey as a regional power and argues that such actors' behavior can be analyzed with reference to three interrelated variables: the nature of regional order, their behavioral attitudes, and the interactions at the regional-global nexus.

Notes on contributor

Şaban Kardaş is an Associate Professor of international relations in the Department of International Relations at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, and an advisor at Diplomacy Academy. He has published scholarly articles and book chapters on Turkish domestic and foreign policies, human rights, energy policies, and international security and has been an occasional contributor to Turkish and international media. He is assistant editor to the quarterly journal Perceptions and writes analyses for the German Marshal Fund's On Turkey series. He has taught classes at Diplomacy Academy, Turkish Military Academy and other institutions. He received his doctoral degree in political science from the University of Utah. Dr Kardas also holds a master's degree in international relations from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and a second master's degree in European Studies from the Center for European Integration Studies in Bonn, Germany.

Notes

1. See the special issue of Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs 17, no. 3 (2012); Kösebalaban, Turkish Foreign Policy; Balcı, Türkiye Dış Politikası.

2. Mufti, Daring and Caution; Öniş and Yılmaz. “Between Europeanization and Euro-Asianism”; and Kutlay, “Economy as the ‘Practical Hand’.”

3. Oğuzlu, “Soft Power”; Kirişci, “Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy”; Aras, “Turkey's Rise.” See also the special issue of International Journal 67, no. 1 (2011–2).

4. Imai, Possibility and Limits.

5. Ikenberry, America Unrivalled; Paul, Wirtz, and Fortmann, Balance of Power.

6. Wohlforth, “Stability of a Unipolar World,” 5–41.

7. Zakaria, Post-American World.

8. Cox, “Power Shifts,” 369–88.

9. Acharya, “Emerging Regional Architecture,” 629–52 and Lake and Morgan, “Building Security,” 348.

10. For extensive reviews of the study of regions and regional subsystems, and the reasons behind the failure of earlier studies to develop a robust research agenda, see Lemke, Regions of War and Peace, 57–60.

11. Fawcett and Hurrell, Regionalism in World Politics.

12. Mansfield and Milner, “New Wave of Regionalism,” 589–627.

13. Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers.

14. Miller, States, Nations, and the Great Powers, 41–2.

15. Acharya, “Emerging Regional Architecture,” 634 and Ayoob, “From Regional System,” 247–60.

16. For an effort in that regards, see Nolte, “How to Compare Regional Powers.”

17. Ibid., 892.

18. Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers, 49–50.

19. Ibid., 62.

20. Morgan, “Regional Security Complexes,” 20–42.

21. Frazier and Stewart-Ingersoll, “Regional Powers and Security,” 731–53.

22. Pedersen, “Cooperative Hegemony,” 677–96 and Prys, “Variability of Regional Powers.”

23. Nel, “Redistribution and Recognition,” 951–74.

24. Frazier and Stewart-Ingersoll, “Regional Powers and Security,” 744–46.

25. Destradi, “Regional Powers and Their Strategies,” 903–30.

26. Nolte, “How to Compare Regional Powers,” 896.

27. Destradi, “Regional Powers and Their Strategies,” 903–30.

28. See Murat Yeşiltaş, “The transformation of the geopolitical.”

29. It is partly because of this particular mechanism that many scholars object attempts to apply hypotheses derived from systems theories to regional systems and instead call for regional-level theories.

30. Prys, “Variability of Regional Powers.”

31. Nolte, “How to Compare Regional Powers,” 889.

32. Prys, “Variability of Regional Powers.”

33. Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers, 46, 49.

34. Frazier and Stewart-Ingersoll identify four distinct patterns for the effect of extra-regional powers in regions: Frazier and Stewart-Ingersoll, “Regional Powers and Security,” 734.

35. Ibid.

36. Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers, 41.

37. Ibid., 258.

38. Ibid., 395.

39. Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik; Davutoğlu, “Turkey's Foreign Policy Vision,” 77–96.

40. Sayarı, “Turkish Foreign Policy,” 169–82 and Rubin and Kirisçi, Turkey in World Politics.

41. See Monocle's Soft Power Survey of 2012: http://monocle.com/film/affairs/soft-power-survey-2012/.

42. Kalın, “Soft Power.”

43. The author's interviews with UAE officials. January 2011.

44. Kardaş, “Turkey: Redrawing the Middle East Map,” 124–5.

45. The 2012 survey is available at: http://www.tesev.org.tr/tr/yayin/ortadoguda-turkiye-algisi-2012.

46. Genç Altinoğlu, and Bagdonas, Orta Doğu.

47. Hurell, “Playgrounds of Regional Powers,” 10.

48. Stephen, “Rising Regional Powers,” 289–309.

49. Layne, “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing” and Fuller and Arquilla, “Intractable Problem of Regional Powers.”

50. Davutoğlu, “Three Major Earthquakes” and Erdoğan, Alliance of Civilizations and World Peace.

51. Chase, Hill, and Kennedy, Pivotal States and Kliman and Fontaine, “Global Swing States.”

52. This section draws on: Kardaş, “Global Swing States and International Order.”

53. Kutlay and Dinçer, “Türkiye'nin Ortadoğu'daki.”