Strategic Shallows: The End of AKP Power and the Fragmentation of Turkey's Foreign Policy
Strategic Shallows: The End of AKP Power and the Fragmentation of Turkey's Foreign Policy

Summary/Abstract: The paper reflects Turkey's foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) from 2002 to 2015, a period bracketed by the rise and fall of AKP power. Four phases mark the evolution of this policy stretching from a promising start with constructive modes of global engagement in the early 2000s to overreach, isolation and the fragmentation of foreign policy today. Following the "liberal pragmatism" of the first seven years from 2002 to 2009, there is a shift to the ideologically inspired foreign policy of Islamist academic, foreign policy advisor and finally Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. His more than a half-decade in shaping Turkey's relations with the world and particularly in the Middle East is further distinguished into a 'pan-Islamist' phase of relative success and a 'sectarian' phase of demise. They both end with Turkey's loss of reputation in the world, relative isolation in its region and the failure of its pan-Islamist policy in the Maghreb and the Levant. This relative isolation, together with the fragmentation of foreign policy into its constituent components is not sustainable in the medium term, but it may create conditions for a reconsideration of Turkey's place in the world. The emergence of a humbler foreign policy may therefore become a possibility. Before such a return to realism, however, fragmentation, short-sightedness and incapability may lead to catastrophic convulsions in Turkey's relations with its eastern neighbours.

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