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This paper's main objective is to explain the concept of transactionalist foreign policy in detail and to demonstrate how it applies to a real-world case in Turkish foreign policy towards the EU under the AKP rule. We define transactionalism as a foreign policy approach that favours bilateral to multilateral relations, focuses on short-term wins rather than longer-term strategic foresight, adheres to a zero-sum worldview where all gains are relative and reciprocity is absent, rejects value-based policymaking, and does not follow a grand strategy. This paper also provides a new layer to the existing periodisation of AKP's EU policy through framing the EU as 'a foreign policy actor' in Turkey-EU relations. Scholars divide Turkey's EU policy under the AKP government into three broad periods: Europeanisation, selective Europeanisation and De-Europeanisation. We complement this literature by adding another layer of analysis that focuses on Turkey's foreign relations in its broader region, including the EU, and argue that Turkey's relations with the EU were characterised by the zero-problems doctrine during the selective Europeanisation period, and by civilisational competition with the EU during the de-Europeanisation period, and by transactionalism since 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to understand the properties, potentials and limits of middle-power activism in a changing global order. Extensive debate on the rise of emerging powers notwithstanding, the potential contributions of emerging middle powers in regional and global governance, and the imminent challenges they face in their struggle for an upgraded status in the hierarchy of world politics, is an understudied issue. This study aims to fill this gap by offering a broad conceptual framework for middle-power activism and testing it with reference to the Turkish case. In this context, the authors aim to address the following questions: What kind of roles can emerging middle powers play in a post-hegemonic international system? What are the dynamics, properties and limitations of emerging middle-power activism in regional and global governance? Based on an extensive study of the Turkish case, the authors’ central thesis is that emerging middle powers can make important contributions to regional and global governance. Their ultimate impact, however, is not inevitable, but depends on a complementary set of conditions, which are outlined in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]