Kemal Kirişci

The transformation of Turkish foreign policy: The rise of the trading state

Recently, Turkish foreign policy, compared to the 1990s, has manifested a number of puzzlements. They range from the rapprochement with Greece, the turnabout over Cyprus, mediation efforts involving a series of regional conflicts to a policy seeking an improvement in relations with Armenia and Kurds of Northern Iraq. These puzzlements have increasingly transformed Turkey from being cited as a “post-Cold War warrior” or a “regional coercive power” to a “benign” if not “soft” power. Academic literature has tried to account for these puzzlements and the accompanying transformation in Turkish foreign policy from a wide range of theoretical perspectives. This literature has undoubtedly enriched our understanding of what drives Turkish foreign policy. At the same time, this literature has not paid adequate attention to the role of economic factors shaping Turkish foreign policy as we approach the end of the first decade of the new century. This article aims to highlight this gap and at the same time offer a preliminary conceptual framework based on Richard Rosecrances notion of the “trading state” and Robert Putnams idea of “two-level diplomatic games” to explore the impact of economic considerations on Turkish foreign policy.

The Kurdish Issue in Turkey: Limits of European Union Reform

The first half of the 2000s was characterised by unprecedented political reform in Turkey encouraged by the prospects of EU membership. These reforms helped to improve the quality of democracy as well as the cultural rights of the Kurdish minority in the country. Yet, the Kurdish problem remains far from being resolved. The paper argues that it is, at least partly, the European Union that bears responsibility for the failure of the governments Kurdish ‘opening’, which, when launched in the summer of 2009, had aspired to solve the Kurdish problem in Turkey.

The Politics of Trade and Turkish Foreign Policy

Turkey is becoming a ‘trading state’ and increasingly this is having an important impact on Turkey’s domestic politics as well as foreign policy. In 1975 foreign trade constituted 13 per cent of Turkish GDP. In 2008 this figure had increased to 45 per cent. In current US dollars, Turkish foreign trade increased from around

Turkey's Engagement with Its Neighborhood: A “Synthetic” and Multidimensional Look at Turkey's Foreign Policy Transformation

19 billion in 1985 to around

Religion as an Argument in the Debate on Turkish EU Membership

334 billion in 2008 in spite of the world recession. Furthermore, the value of Turkish exports and their diversity have increased too. In 1980 while the exports of manufactured goods constituted only 27 per cent of merchandise exports, this figure has increased to 81 per cent in 2008. Lastly, the relative significance of the European Union (EU) in Turkey’s foreign trade, though still very high, has been falling from a peak of around 56 per cent of overall trade in 1999 to around 41 per cent in 2008. Neighbouring countries have been acquiring growing importance, especially Russia. In 2008, Russia became Turkey’s largest bilateral trading partner, surpassing Germany for the first time with a trade volume of

Turkey and the Mediterranean

38 billion. Furthermore, in recent years Turkey has been aggressively liberalizing its visa policy towards both the Middle East as well as Africa in a clear effort to increase trade with these two regions. These developments have become particularly marked in the last couple of years and coincide with the presence of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in power. At a time when there is a growing debate about an AKP-led Turkey being lost or switching directions away from the ‘West’ towards the north and east, a better understanding of the place of trade and foreign markets in Turkish foreign policy becomes particularly important. What has been the nature of the transformation of Turkey’s foreign trade especially since the end of the Cold War? How is Turkish foreign policy being affected by this transformation? What is the political economy and domestic politics of this transformation? Is this transformation a function of policies particular to the AKP or are there other more enduring structural factors? What does this transformation mean in terms of Turkey’s traditional relations with the ‘West’ and especially the European Union? This article aims to address these questions and is divided into three sections. The first part of the article offers an analysis of the expansion and transformation of Turkish foreign trade during the course of the last three decades. The second part examines the causes behind this development and tries to assess the role of AKP in these developments. This section also studies the manner in which the growth of foreign trade and the need for new markets have impacted on and shaped Turkish Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 47, No. 5, 705–724, September 2011

Is the Turkish Model Relevant for the Middle East

This article argues that a synthetic look at different dimensions of Turkeys engagement of its neighborhood, be it movement of people, civil society interactions and economic exchanges, offers a better understanding of both the broader context within which Turkeys foreign policy is changing and the precise modalities through which this transformation is taking place. This engagement offers a range of opportunities from assisting neighboring countries, including the Arab world, to reform and modernize economically as well as politically to nudging the neighborhood to seek greater interdependence, dialog and cooperation. This would be promising in terms of “win-win” outcomes for Turkey, the European Union (EU) and the region. Such an interdependent and integrated neighborhood around Turkey could unleash economic, social and political processes that may eventually lead to a “democratic peace” in the region even if it might be in the very distant future. However, a number of tough challenges from reinvigorating democratization in Turkey and revitalizing EU–Turkish relations to stubborn regional conflicts would have to be addressed. Governments as well as civil society, academia and the think-tank world ought to start to think about what to do with these challenges.

The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of a Trans-state Ethnic Conflict

European Union (EU)-Turkish relations have come along way since 1959, when Turkey first expressed its interest in developing relations with the then European Economic Community (EEC). Since October 2005 Turkey has actually started its accession negotiations even if eight chapters have been suspended over the problem of Cyprus and considerable resistance is frequently encountered in the opening of other chapters. The more Turkey’s membership prospects become real the higher the tone of resistance to Turkish membership in the EU seems to become. This resistance is often framed on the argument that Turkey is simply “too big, too poor and culturally too different” (Kirisci 2008). As the Turkish economy grows, it is interesting to note that one hears less and less about Turkey being “poor.” The “culturally too different” criticism bantered about in many circles in Europe has become a polite code word for opposing Turkish membership on the grounds that Turkey is not Christian and hence is not European and cannot actually become European. It has come to constitute the major axis of resistance against Turkish membership.

Disaggregating Turkish citizenship and immigration practices

During the Cold War, Turkey’s foreign policy was mostly a function of its geographical location as a neighbour of the Soviet Union. Soviet territorial demands over Turkey in 1945 and the fear of Communism were critical in compelling Turkey to seek the support of the West for its defence. Once it joined NATO and other western inter-governmental organisations Turkey’s foreign policy became basically dominated by its relations with Western Europe and the United States. The Mediterranean would have never attracted the attention of Turkish foreign policy-makers other than in the context of NATO’s military strategies. Conflicts with Greece and the Cyprus problem since the early 1960s were additional issues that were important to Turkish foreign policy. However, it would be difficult to argue that these issues increased the relevance of the Mediterranean as a region to Turkish foreign policy. Instead these were basically seen as bilateral issues.

Turkey's "Demonstrative Effect" and the Transformation of the Middle East

Republican Turks have long liked being talked about as a model for eform in other countries. At school pupils are taught how Ataturk’s Turkey constituted an example for liberation and transformation of the colonized world into independent states. The Economist in December 1991 had announced Turkey as the “Star of Islam” and model for the newly emerging Muslim ex-Soviet republics.1 Turkey unhesitatingly offered itself as an agabey (big brother) for these republics with little success. At the end of the decade, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ismail Cem, envisaged Turkey as a model “combining Islamic traditions with democratic institutions, human rights, secular law and gender equality” for its neighborhood.2