THE TRANSFORMATION OF TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS THE MIDDLE EAST SINCE 2002

Turkish foreign policy has experienced a significant transformation since the AK Party came to power in 2002. The pro-status quo, passive and reactive foreign policy with a limited regional perspective transformed into an active foreign policy that aims to change international relations in the region as a whole. This change was analyzed in many different studies in recent years, and scholars from different fields of political science have tried to make sense of this major shift and understand its causes and outcomes. In this study, this foreign policy change will be explained as a gradual development that came as a result of the transformation of Turkey’s state identity. The process of change was started with the Neighboring Countries of Iraq Conference in 2003. The Conference was the first of such an attempt to engage the countries of the region in order to resolve problems in a neighboring nation. This study attempts to challenge this dominant discourse by providing a new narrative of Turkish politics and evolving foreign policy of Turkey. The study argues that the change in Turkish foreign policy was gradual and based on different dynamics that took place in the country over the last ten years. Although it is difficult to explain this change to the academic world, this challenge is due in part to the failure of classical theories of international relations, such as realism and liberalism, to explain the reasons for shifts in nations’ foreign policy. The structural explanation sometimes fails to explain transformations that took place in a more complicated mixed impact of domestic and external dynamics. However, another major approach in international relations, 2 constructivism, provides solutions for both of these challenges. It has an important strength in explaining foreign policy changes in countries, especially in Turkish foreign policy, which has important ramifications in regards to the impact of the shift on the state’s identity. The three cases under study demonstrate the changing identity of Turkish foreign policy, from a pro-Western, status quo-oriented and passive foreign policy towards a more independent, pro-active foreign policy