Turkiye effectively leveraged its NATO membership to secure benefits aligned with its defence, counter-terrorism and foreign policy priorities, vis-à-vis Sweden’s accession bid.
Shared security interests and Turkiye’s growing indigenous capabilities will likely ensure that the Pakistan–Turkiye defence cooperation continues on its upward trajectory.
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, besides the structural factors namely geography, history, politics, international system and the world order, five conjunctural factors dominated Turkish foreign policy behaviour and conduct. These include the Strategic Depth (Stratejik Derinlik) doctrine with ‘zero-problem’ with neighbours embedded in it followed by the Blue Homeland (Mavi Vatan) doctrine focused on enhancing Türkiye’s maritime presence in its immediate neighbourhood and the periphery. Thirdly, and arguably the most important, is the personality of Recep Tayyip Erdogan who as a dominating figure in contemporary Turkish politics has shaped not only the political discourse but foreign policy praxis. Erdogan’s personalised style of interventions has undoubtedly had a profound impact on Ankara’s interactions and engagements with the wider world. Finally, pan-Islamism and neo-Ottomanism are two important drivers in Turkish foreign policy and were visible notably in the Middle East and North Africa region and came into prominence in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings. In this context, it is pertinent to ask what are Turkish foreign policy ambitions and how do these impact India? Given that Ankara has expanded its presence, or at least is striving to expand it, in the geographically contiguous Southwest Asia region that connects India to the Middle East, the question how Indian foreign policy should view Türkiye becomes even more important. The bilateral challenges between India and Türkiye make it even more pertinent for Indian scholars and policymakers to take a deep and hard look at Türkiye’s foreign policy doctrines and praxis. This book is an attempt in that direction. It systematically analyses the structural and conjunctural factors in Turkish foreign policy and notes that Türkiye’s foreign policy is embedded in a glorified identification of the past, both Ottoman and Kemalist, and in its geographical location as a multi-regional actor. However, the foreign policy ambitions are limited by Türkiye’s economic performance and political sliding. From an Indian viewpoint, the book identifies Pakistan as a limiting factor so far as the bilateral relations are concerned and recommends that New Delhi should use economic leverage and diplomacy to de-hyphenate the Pakistan factor.
The nearly two decades of Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP; Justice and Development Party) rule has raised a number of questions on the advancement or reversal of democratisation in Turkey. Besides the partisan debate on increasing authoritarian behaviour of Erdogan, there have been limited attempts to comprehensively examine the way AKP has shaped the Turkish politics in the context of the democratisation debate.
