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ABSTRACT
This paper offers a contribution to the literature on Turkish foreign policy (TFP) change through quantitative analysis of Turkey’s foreign policy chronology under the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) between January 2009 and October 2016. It utilizes an original dataset on foreign policy meetings which is then utilized to ascertain the alterations in their volume, direction and purpose. Through this analytical framework, the paper depicts the course of TFP orientations towards different countries and regions, as well as potential explanations of their dynamics. Among its many findings, the paper suggests that bilateral diplomatic activism in the late AKP period can be explained by motivating factors such as trade, geographical proximity and shared identity. Moreover, fluctuations in regional orientations of TFP can be associated with sudden and less calculated reactions to international or domestic political crisis situations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Eda Kuşku Sönmez is an Assistant Professor at the Political Science and Public Administration Department of Avrasya University. Her research interests are European Union, Turkey-European Union Relations, Comparative Politics, and Turkish Foreign Policy. She previously published articles in Caucasian Review of International Affairs (2008 and 2010), and Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (2014).
Notes
1. Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Dış Politika Kronolojisi.”
2. Başer, “Shift-of-axis”; McLean, “Understanding Divergence”; and Aydın-Düzgit, “De-Europeanisation through Discourse.”
3. These indicators include for instance changes in visa policies towards different regions, signing of international agreements with countries from different regions, or trade patterns or voting patterns in the United Nations. For empirical studies on TFP change, see Aydın-Çakır and Arıkan-Akdağ, “An Empirical Analysis”; Tezcür and Grigorescu, “Activism in Turkish”; and Aygül, “Locating Change.”
4. See Cop and Zihnioğlu, “Turkish Foreign.”
5. See, for instance, Hermann, “Changing Course”; Carlsnaes, “On Analyzing the Dynamics”; Gustavsson, “How Should”; and Welch, Painful Choices.
6. See Cop and Zihnioğlu, “Turkish Foreign.”
7. See Yalvaç, “Approaches to Turkish.”
8. Cop and Zihnioğlu, “Turkish Foreign.”
9. Aygül, “Locating Change.”
10. Tezcür and Grigorescu, “Activism in Turkish.”
11. Aydın-Çakır and Arıkan-Akdağ, “An Empirical Analysis.”
12. Hatipoğlu and Palmer, “Contextualizing Change.” For a similar argument on the impact of economic and political capabilities on foreign policy role performance, see also Dal and Erşen, “Reassessing.”
13. Öniş and Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization,” and Oğuzlu, “Middle Easternization.”
14. Aydın-Düzgit, “De-Europeanisation through Discourse.”
15. Başer, “Shift of Axis,” 305.
16. Hatipoğlu and Palmer, “Contextualizing Change.”
17. Kardaş, “Turkey: A Regional.”
18. Öniş and Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization.”
19. Müftüler-Bac, “Turkish Foreign Policy.”
20. See, for instance, Uzgel, Ulusal Çıkar ve Dıs Politika. See also, Müftüler-Baç, “Turkish Foreign Policy.”
21. Kirişçi, “Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy.”
22. See McLean, “Understanding Divergence.”
23. The data provides a chronology of high level bilateral visits to/from foreign countries and information on Turkey’s multilateral meetings, as well as, contacts with representatives of regional and international organizations. The data on high level visits during November and December 2009 was unavailable, hence could not be included in the analysis.
24. Countries such as Russian Federation and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus were included within the region of Eastern Europe.
25. These are heads of states, presidents, prime ministers, ministers of foreign affairs, heads of parliaments, ministers responsible for different policy areas, chiefs of defense, undersecretaries, ambassadors, and a full range of other government officials such as advisors and deputies of all these representatives. Some countries have their special posts. For instance, some Islamic countries have their idiosyncratic institutions such as Islamic Advisory Councils with supreme authority sometimes above presidents and prime ministers. Political party leaders, parliamentarians, representatives of international and regional organizations also engage in such high level visits, and thus all these representatives were coded into the dataset.
26. The dataset involves a special cluster for whether the visit was conducted with the company of a delegation of some junior representatives, as well as, businessmen, and yet others. This additional information can be utilized as a further indicator of the salience of a visit.
27. Özkan, “What Drives,” 533.
28. Visits in August and September 2009, as well as, October and December 2016 were missing in the raw data. For this reason, the data for 2009 and 2016 only reflect the total volume of high level meetings for 10 months. This limitation should partially account for the meagerness in the volume of meetings in those years.
The category of ‘meetings in third countries’ is largely composed of bilateral meetings with foreign country officials under the margins of multilateral platforms. In the raw data, some of such contacts were only mentioned numerically and the Ministry did not openly state the contacted country. In some cases, the number of such contacts is substantially high. For instance, during the 65th General Assembly Meeting of the UN in 2010, the Minister of Foreign Affairs engaged in 48 of such bilateral meetings which alone constitute the half of all such visits in 2010. To avoid bias, the numerically stated contacts were also added to the values concerning ‘meetings in third countries.’
29. The values in do not involve meetings in third countries.
30. Davutoğlu, “Turkey’s Zero-Problems Foreign Policy”; and Kardaş, “Davutoğlu Outlines.”
31. Values in are based on official bilateral visits by those representatives who leads the visiting delegation.
32. With these countries, Turkey carried its relations to strategic partnership level through signature of Joint Declarations on a Strategic Partnership. Such partnership agreements not only help keep the momentum of bilateral contact, but also promote cooperation on several fronts. The difference of ‘High-level Strategic Cooperation Councils’ is that they provide for more structured and regularized cooperation.
33. According to TFP chronology data, Turkey had 65 of such Joint Economic Committee Protocols which therefore appears to be a frequently utilized mechanism for developing economic cooperation with totalitarian and less developed countries. These Committees had begun to lose significance and became inactive as more and more of these countries turn into market economies. See Güçlü, “Türkiye’nin Dış Ekonomik İlişkileri.”
34. Turkey established JETCO structures with Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland and Italy.
35. For a similar argument, see Aygül, “Locating Change.” Aygül suggests that after 2009 Turkey’s visa exemption policies had been in clear contrast with those of the EU and resulted in inward mobility from regions other than Europe, especially Middle East, North Africa and other Islamic countries.
36. There had been quite a few visits by energy ministers of both countries, as well as, nuclear chief negotiators who also partake in delegations of visits by higher ranking officials, which also point to preponderance of energy issues in relations with Iran.
37. Turkish Exporters Assembly, “Economy and Foreign Trade Report,” 89.
38. Ibid.
39. Özpek and Demirağ, “Turkish Foreign.”
40. Alden and Aran, Foreign Policy, 125.
41. See Saraçoğlu and Demirkol, “Nationalism and Foreign.”