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Turkey's Strategic Vision and Syria

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  • Turkey's Strategic Vision and Syria

    The Washington Quarterly

    Article | Summer 2012
    Turkey's Strategic Vision and Syria

    Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Summer 2012 issue of The
    Washington Quarterly
    .

    INTRODUCTION

    For most of the 20th century, Turkey chose not to get involved in Middle
    Eastern affairs. During the past decade, however, in a remarkable departure
    from this Kemalist tradition (based on the ideology of the republic's
    founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk), Ankara has become a very active and
    important player in the region. Under the Justice and Development Party
    (AKP) government since 2002, Turkey has established closer ties with Syria,
    Iran, and Iraq, assumed a leadership position in the Organization of the
    Islamic Conference (OIC), attended Arab League conferences, and contributed
    to UN forces in Lebanon. It has also mediated in the Syrian - Israeli
    conflict as well as the nuclear standoff with Iran. Ankara's diplomatic
    engagements with Iran and Hamas have led to differences with the United
    States and Israel, leaving many wondering if Turkey has been turning away
    from its Western orientation or if it was just a long overdue shift east to
    complete Turkey's full circle of relations.

    Fundamentally, analysts make a major mistake in analyzing Turkish foreign
    policy when they speak of a ``pro-Western'' versus ``Islamic'' divide in
    Ankara's strategic choices. This is an understandable fallacy. Turkey's
    population is almost fully Muslim, and the AKP, a political party with
    Islamic roots, has won consecutive election victories. Many policymakers,
    analysts, and scholars thus equate the notion of Turkish divergence from
    the West or the fear of ``losing Turkey'' with the idea of an Islamic
    revival. Moreover, this is exactly how some members within Turkey's
    Kemalist establishment the military, the Republican People's Party (CHP)
    founded by Atatuürk, and the judiciary describe some AKP policies in the
    Middle East. While the growing importance of religion in Turkey should not
    be dismissed, such an analysis gives superficial credibility to the fallacy
    of an ``Islamist'' foreign policy in Turkey.

    But how then should Turkey's current foreign policy be characterized and
    understood? To answer this question, one has to look first at the three
    grand strategic visions that have driven Turkish foreign policy:
    Neo-Ottomanism, Kemalism, and more recently, Turkish Gaullism. The common
    denominator of these strategic visions is that they transcend the erroneous
    narrative prevalent in Western media focusing almost exclusively on the
    dichotomy between Turkey's Islamic and secular factions. In particular, the
    way in which Turkey has handled the continuing implications of the 2011
    Arab awakening helps to clarify Turkish grand strategy, or its continuing
    balancing act among these three strategic visions, as Ankara has faced a
    more challenging strategic environment, most specifically in its estranged
    relations with Bashar Assad's Syria.

    Download » (PDF)

    http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/08/turkey-taspinar

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