The Turkish perception on the Black Sea Region: A Historical Analysis
The Turkish perception on the Black Sea Region: A Historical Analysis

Summary/Abstract: Turkey has been playing her “strategic location” card starting with the Cold War years after the Second World War. Over 50 years of time, Turkey has emphasized the importance of her role as a buffer zone between the Communist world and the “free” world. However, the end of the Cold War forced the country to change her policies towards the neighbors and the regional developments due to not only the enlargement policies of NATO but also the European Union. Here in this paper, the aim is to analyze the process that the Turkish foreign policy has gone through starting from the end of the Second World War up to the 21st century. The first part of the paper concentrates on the years after the Second World War up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, then the paper is dealing with the developments after the 1990 including the establishment of the BSEC and other international organizations, process that took place between 1990 and 2000. After the attacks on September 11, 2001 the attention given to the region has increased dramatically due to the increased rhetoric on the new security threats and the realization of the interconnectedness between the global security and regional security. Therefore the paper is focusing on the period after the 2000 up to the year 2007 in a separate section with a special emphasis on the EU enlargement and the accession of Turkey. Besides, both the bilateral and the multilateral agreements in the region had the aim of integrating the regional countries to the “European” and “western” systems, either be they the EU or the NATO. Turkey has not been an exception in this equation, meaning that Turkey’s policies towards the regional countries aimed at approximating and integrating, in the long run, the region to the EU mainly and in return played the strategic location card again as she did in the Cold War years. Therefore, the paper will conclude with a section focusing on the intertwined relations between Turkey’s adventure to become an EU member state and her policies towards the Black Sea Region.

• Details
• Contents