The Five Phases of Turkey's Foreign Policy under the AKP

INTRODUCTION

Once described as stable and predictable, Turkey's foreign policy has turned increasingly inconsistent and unpredictable under successive Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) governments. Since the first AKP single-party government took office in late 2002, Turkey's relationship with each of the following has veered from exceptional cooperation to historic crises verging on (if not actually plunging into) hostility, often in quick succession: the United States, the European Union, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Egypt, and Greece. Scholars studying Turkey's foreign policy under the AKP have referred to "paradigm shifts" (Sözen 2010), multiple "shifts of axis" (Cornell 2012), frequent "twists and turns" (Cop and Zihnioğlu 2017), and "dramatic fluctuations" (Işıksal and Göksel 2018).

How are we to make sense of these frequent and seemingly contradictory transformations? Are they products of specific actors' choices at critical junctures, or the inevitable outcome of being a "medium power" (Oran 2005) sitting on multiple fault lines and undergoing major structural shifts? Have Turkey's responses to the changes in the international system been primarily driven by the Islamist ideology of its decision makers or pragmatic calculations of interest maximization (Kirişçi 2009)? Any attempt to answer these questions by pointing to a single causal factor will inevitably fall short of a satisfactory explanation. The role of human agency and structural factors, domestic and international dynamics, ideology, and pragmatism all partially contribute to our understanding of the puzzle. This calls for a comprehensive framework that can integrate multiple determinants playing out on different levels and explain divergent, even contradictory, outputs across an extended time period.

Hudson (2005) defines foreign policy analysis (FPA) as a "necessarily inter/multidisciplinary" and "radically integrative" subfield of international relations (IR), which views foreign policy decisionmaking as a "multi-factoral" process that should be examined on "multiple levels of analysis." A key strength of FPA, which distinguishes it from other IR theories, is its willingness to explore the intersections of domestic and international politics, i.e. the "two-level game" (Putnam 1988), material and ideational determinants of state behavior, as well as structure and agency. In this spirit, I examine Turkey's foreign policy behavior as the outcome of a dynamic and interactive process between multiple layers of analysis that move from micro (agent-based/domestic) to macro (structure-based/international) in focus. These are, namely, the party, the coalition, the state, and the international environment.

The party refers to the internal makeup of the ruling party, changes in leadership cadres, and the ideas, worldviews, and political agendas promoted by key government figures. The coalition entails the socioeconomic and political alliances, formal and informal coalitions that the ruling party forms with external actors and interest groups, both at home and abroad. The state refers to the institutional architecture and role divisions that shape foreign policy within the state apparatus. Finally, the international environment focuses on key regional and/or global socioeconomic, geopolitical, and ideational events, trends, and dynamics that characterize a certain era. Turkey's foreign policy behavior in a given period can be understood by examining (a) who is in charge of the ruling party, (b) the interests and composition of the governing coalition, (c) the balance of powers within key state institutions, and (d) prevalent international dynamics. Significant changes in one or more of these levels, in turn, help explain the twists and turns in Turkey's foreign policy.

TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY MAKING BEFORE THE AKP

Turkey's foreign policy during much of the twentieth century has been variably described as "consistent," "predictable," "passive," "balanced," "traditionalist," or "non-adventurous" (Davutoğlu 1997; Oran 2005; Öniş and Yılmaz 2009; Özdal et al. 2011; Hale 2013). This characterization was largely a result of two stabilizing factors at the levels of the international environment and the state. First, throughout the Cold War, Turkey's position as a NATO member on the East/West divide predicated its foreign policy on the structural confinements of the bipolar world and limited the space for independent action to its decision makers...