Turkey’s Foreign Policy: Shifting Back to the West after a Drift to the East?

Turkey Policy Brief Series (IPLI – TEPAV) 8th edition, 2013, 9 p.            Français

Jean Marcou  *

In this brief, the author discusses how the AKP’s rise to power in Turkey brought about a significant shift in foreign policy, but this shift has most likely been wrongly appraised.  Now, as Ankara wrestles with the Syrian crisis, sets greater store by its NATO membership and finds itself generally aligned with its Western allies, the question of whether Turkey has not returned to the Western fold is being assessed.  However, time and the « Arab Spring » have not blotted out the fundamental changes in Turkish foreign policy; they have merely demonstrated that these changes were not what they were initially taken for.

* Jean Marcou is a Professor at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques Grenoble (IEPG), France, and a Research Associate at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies (IFEA) in Istanbul, Turkey.

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