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The main argument of this paper is that Turkey had close relations with Middle Eastern states during the Atatürk period, which is contrary to the literature that claims the opposite because of Turkey's Western-oriented ideology. The article asks why Turkey as a Western-oriented state sought to have close relations with Middle Eastern states. To answer this question, the article uses discourse analysis focusing on Middle Eastern leaders' visits as represented in Turkish public discourse. Accordingly, it proposes two main answers. Firstly, the paper argues that the new state's relations with Middle Eastern countries played an important role in legitimation of its Westernization projects in the eyes of its citizens. Secondly, the Turkish state marginalized rival political discourses, mainly Islamism, by proving that even Muslim majority countries wanted to imitate modern Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's economic ties with neighboring Arab countries have flourished in the past few years. A recently stated pledge to create a regional trade alliance with Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan is likely to trigger a further expansion of economic integration. This paper starts by reviewing trends in Turkey's bilateral trade relations with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan since 2000. Next, it estimates a formal gravity model aiming to project Turkey's trade potential with its neighbors and compare them with the actual flows in 2000–10. It is demonstrated that while Turkey fully realized its bilateral trade potential vis-à-vis Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, actual bilateral trade of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan with Turkey is significantly below the estimated potential. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on the Turkish Middle Eastern foreign policy from the perspective of European Union (EU)–Turkey relations, this paper argues that Turkey's recent activism and attractiveness in the region is attributable to its dual reform and accession process both of which are tied to the EU's anchoring role and leverage over the country. Turkey has self-consciously taken the advantage of its domestic transformation by emulating the EU in its own neighborhood policy. However, to the current stagnation of the accession process and the deepening of Turkey's domestic crisis is now added the new context of the Arab revolutionary movements. The central thesis of this paper, however, is that Turkish foreign policy and rising actorness in the Middle East should not be, solely driven by an interest-driven pragmatism. It should also seek a normative reconciliation with the EU and its process of enlargement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study, the extent to which Turkey has been pursuing a normative foreign policy (NFP) toward the Arab revolts will be analyzed on the basis of Nathalie Tocci's description of a NFP actor, built on the following three conceptual tools: normative goals, normative means and normative results or impact. With a special emphasis on the conditioning factors that impacted Turkey's pursuit of an NFP, this paper also investigates the limitations and effectiveness of Turkey as an NFP actor in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in order to understand if Turkey's role in the changing MENA region has gone beyond rhetoric to become empirically justified. It concludes that despite increasing normative representations and rhetoric in its foreign policy, Turkey does not currently possess a cohesive and ambitious NFP agenda and, thus, is still far from being a normative power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Turkey's foreign policy activism in recent decades, characterized by an ambitious regional agenda and visibility in global affairs, has generated a lively debate. This paper attempts to position Turkey in modern-day international relations, in order to develop an analytical framework capable of theorizing its regional and global-level activism coherently. It thus proposes to conceptualize Turkey as a regional power and argues that such actors' behavior can be analyzed with reference to three interrelated variables: the nature of regional order, their behavioral attitudes, and the interactions at the regional-global nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Amidst multiple foreign policy flip-flops of the Turkish government, the Middle East is where observers agree most about the explanatory priority of ideational factors over realpolitik calculations. The assertive foreign policy activism to extend the country's role in the region has largely been linked to the Islamist leanings of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). This study revisits Turkey's Middle East policy with a particular focus on the AKP's relations with the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al Muslimin), which marked Turkish foreign policy formulation and implementation in multiple theatres from Yemen to Egypt to Libya. Using a neoclassical realist approach, it argues that the AKP's ideological ties to the Ikhwan are significant for the availability of new resources but Turkish foreign policy behavior in the Middle East, including relations with the Ikhwan, reflects a grand strategy to respond to systemic and sub-systemic stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to understand the transformation of Turkish civil-military relations in a comparative perspective. The analysis is based on two criteria: institutional/legal mechanisms and political oversight of the military's autonomy. Comparison of European and Middle Eastern civil-military relations models to the Turkish paradigm unveils grave differences between Turkish and Middle Eastern civil-military relations. The Turkish model in transformation for at least a decade is closer to the European model in both legal and political aspects. Nevertheless, the article underscores that Turkish civil-military relations are still in transformation and although the EU accession process has gradually democratized the legal system of the country, democratic consolidation requires further advances in the political domain. Consequently, consolidation in Turkey depends not only on retreating of the military from the political realm but also on the proper civilianization of the regime in theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the 1950s, the Democrat Party government in Turkey adopted a more active policy in the Middle East. This strategy had three dimensions: (1) to implement policies in the region in accordance with the USA in order to maintain American political, economic, and military support; (2) to play a bridge role between the West and the Middle East to gain the support of smaller states in the Baghdad Pact; and (3) to develop economic relations with states in the region especially during crises in the late 1950s. This article argues that Turkish decision-makers tried to act strategically, despite their misreading of developments and dynamics in the Middle East, and that they pursued pro-American policies as long as they served Turkish interests. Accordingly, they did not hesitate to establish economic relations with the Soviet Union and Egypt, with which Turkey had problematic political relations, when US support declined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In light of recent developments in the Middle East, in particular, the Arab revolts in the first few months of 2011 and the AKP's June 2011 election victory, this article aims to define the changing parameters of Turkey's new “Middle Eastern policy” under the AKP government, which is based on a new civilizational discourse and a differentiated geopolitical approach. It also discusses the basic dynamics and ideological and doctrinal background of Turkey's new Middle Eastern policy in order to understand the opportunities and constraints of its potential “facilitator and conciliator” role in the changing political circumstances of the region following the recent Arab uprisings. Despite the limits of Ankara's new civilizational and geopolitical orientation in both discourse and policy, which have at times undermined Turkey's neutrality on intra-Arab or Iranian–Arab axes and its facilitation role between Israel and its regional adversaries, Turkey's new regional posture for the Middle East represents an awakening rather than an illusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims at analyzing Turkey's economic relations with the Middle East during the 2000s. It argues that intensification of Turkey's economic relations with the region is due to the changes in the Turkish economy and the coming to power of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP). It looks at the relationship between the AKP and the business communities and foreign trade in general and elaborates on the trade figures and relations with individual countries. It looks at the economic cooperation projects and the vision presented by the Turkish policy-makers. The article also looks at the drawbacks and possible future developments in the economic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During its final two centuries, the Ottoman Empire failed to introduce an “exit strategy” from the Middle East. On account of this uneasy disengagement, Republican Turkey turned back and followed an anti-revisionist policy toward the region. In the 1920s, the revolutionary leadership of the Turkish Republic focused on internal reformation and modernization programs, which made a structural transformation in domestic politics and systemic change that further forced Turkish governments not to pursue an active policy in the region. During the Cold War, Turkey's Middle East policy was not viewed as friendly toward the Middle East while there was a strong security ties with Iran, especially in Central Treaty Organization. However, Turkey followed a more aggressive and coercive entrance strategy toward the region by the end of the Cold War. The Justice and Development Party has made a shift and attempted to exercise soft power policies to normalize its relations with Arab nations and Iran by improving societal and economic interdependence relations. In order to understand the new activism in Turkish–Iranian relations, it is necessary to provide a historical context of the changing dynamic of regional politics by analyzing threat perceptions and security alignments from the perspective of developing Turkish–Iran relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines Turkey's energy relations with the Middle East from a perspective of opportunities and limitations brought about by the structure of Turkey's general energy relations. As Turkish foreign policy and energy strategy become increasingly integrated, Turkish-Middle East energy relations offer a solid test case on the soundness and applicability of not only Turkey's energy strategy, but also for the success of Turkey's foreign policy during the last decade. Analyzing Middle East energy and the structure of Turkey's energy (im)balances, this article goes on to explore Turkey's energy relations with individual Middle East countries and questions the results achieved. While doing so, it also puts and evaluates Turkey's energy strategy within the context of Turkish foreign policy. It argues that as the result of diverse effects and influences of policies observed by Turkish officials, as well as an array of structural factors, the gains of Turkey's energy strategy and its future success remains questionable, while the case of energy strategy provides a telling case on the success of Turkish foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article situates Turkey's approach to the Middle East in a broader historical context, demonstrating that there is more continuity in Ankara's approach to the region than observers tend to believe. It also argues that specific domestic political, economic, and global patterns of politics are likely to produce a divergence between the USA and Turkey on critical Middle Eastern issues, notably the Israeli–Palestinian problem and Iran's drive for regional influence. In an unintended way, however, the Arab awakening may drive a greater confluence of interests between Washington and Ankara. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Even though Turkey has the longest parliamentary history in the Middle East, there are no signs that her distance from the Western political model has lessened. In fact, during the post-Ozal decade, the military succeeded in augmenting its political and financial power vis-a-vis ambitious domestic pressure groups and rising economic interests to such a level that civilian supremacy became an even harder task for Erdoğan's administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that Turkey's foreign policy has been Middle Easternized. This has mainly been informed by the growing negative impact of political developments in the Middle East - particularly Iraq - on Turkey's feeling of security at home and abroad. Rather than culminating in a breakup with the West, this Middle Easternization process has resulted in the adoption of a more pragmatic/rational than an emotional/romantic approach towards the European Union and the United States. That objections to Turkey's accession to the EU have recently increased despite the start of the accession talks appears to have led Turkish policymakers to adopt a more pragmatic approach towards EU membership. Though the accession talks with the EU have formally started, the end result of Turkey's Europeanization process continues to remain more ambiguous than ever. Though the negative legacy of the March 2003 crisis in US-Turkey relations has been partially repaired, it seems that Turkey and the United States will likely experience growing disagreements over Iraq, the Kurds, Syria, democratization in the Middle East, and Iran in the years to come. The nature of Turkey's future relations with the West will increasingly be determined by what transpires to Turkey's south and east rather than west. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tackles the potential weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile proliferation threat to Turkey form the Middle East, Beginning with an overview of Turkish security and defense policy towards the Middle East, the article then provides details about the WMD and missile capabilities of Turkey's neighbors. The piece continues he discussion beginning with the policy decisions that Turkey has already made in response to WMD and missile proliferation in the Middle East, and aims to analyze the current state of affairs on this basis. The study concludes with prospects and recommendations. The argument is that Turkey will continue deepening its strategic partnerships with Israel and the United States, while pursuing its broader politico-strategic goals in the over middle East region where most of its new security interests lie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]