This project studies Turkey’s foreign policy transformation under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule between 2011 and 2022. From the mid-2000s onwards, once the AKP consolidated its dominance in Turkish politics, it initiated a process to transform Turkey’s established foreign policy orientation shaped by more than 80 years of secular republican nationalism. The AKP developed the ‘Zero Problems with Neighbours’ foreign policy in 2007, guided by the logic of increasing Turkey’s effectiveness, strength and activism in its neighbourhood and beyond and characterised by political dialogue, economic interdependence and cultural coexistence. However, the fast-paced developments in the Middle East, particularly connected to the conflicts unleashed by the Arab Spring protests, and the growing domestic opposition to the AKP’s conservatism and neoliberal economic policies have meant that the ‘zero problems with neighbours’ foreign policy was increasingly perceived as unrealistic and unachievable. The AKP responded by incorporating elements from Islamist discourse, particularly in its foreign policy towards Syria and Egypt. This move, however, did not generate the expected outcome that the AKP decision-makers hoped for, with the party losing its parliamentary majority at the general election on 7 June 2015. As a response, the AKP set in motion the process of reconstituting its political bloc around Turkish nationalism by forming alliances and incorporating the political demands associated with Turkish nationalists. Since 2015, the AKP has been constructing a foreign policy guided by the objective of transforming Turkey into a central power in the international system characterized by power politics and multipolarity, which has led to closer political and military cooperation between Turkey and Russia, increased Turkey’s military presence abroad, intensified the exploration of oil and gas in the Eastern Mediterranean outside Turkey’s territorial waters, has been portraying Turkey as the leader of the Muslim World, championing Palestinian rights, and calling for the reform of the international order.
The project’s main objective is to explain why and how the AKP governments succeeded at changing Turkey’s foreign policy reorientation in this period. It critically evaluates foreign policy's role in the AKP governments’ efforts to reinscribe a specific domestic order to extend its hegemony over Turkish politics. It studies the emergence and dominance of the AKP’s ‘National Foreign Policy in the “Century of Türkiye” since 2015, its re-articulation of Turkish identity, the AKP government’s instrumentalization of foreign policy in domestic politics and why the government’s foreign policy practice appeals to its religious-nationalist voter base.
