CIAO DATE: 07/2013
June 2011
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Over the course of the last decade, Turkey has emerged as a major actor in the Middle East. It has embarked on a variety of mediating missions and has been vocal on issues such as the Arab - Israeli conflict and the Iranian nuclear program. The popularity of its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, surpasses that of all other regional leaders. This new presence in the Middle East has been variously characterized as neo-Ottoman or an abandonment of the West in favor of the East. Others have interpreted it as the resulting from disillusionment with a stalled European Union accession process or a desire to strike an “independent” foreign policy from the United States. In fact, Turkey’s new activism in the Middle East and the world i n general is driven by two important factors. The first is the deep structural change that has transformed the Turkish economy from an inward looking to a robust export - driven one that is engaged in a continuous search for new markets. Today it is the worl d’s 16 th largest economy. The second is Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, leadership’s ambitions to transform Turkey into a global actor. Other developments, ranging from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the declining influence of the military, have helped the AKP to successfully pivot Turkish foreign policy away from its previous obsessions with the Kurdish question and Islam.
Resource link: Turkish Foreign Policy and the Middle East [PDF]