Turkey’s Foreign Policy Challenges

BILGESAM Analysis, n° 1119, 3 March 2014
Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies (BILGESAM)

by Tarık Oğuzlu *

As the dynamics of international and regional politics have been changing dramatically over the last couple of years, Turkish foreign policy will face important challenges in the years to come. These challenges concern not only Turkey’s relations with key western actors, such as the EU and the United States, but also the geopolitical heavyweights of the non-western world, such as Russia and China. The coming years will demonstrate Turkey’s growing difficulty in striking a right balance between its efforts to remain as a western country on the one hand and the need to develop functional cooperation with the  non-western world on the other. This is whilst global competition between the established powers of the West and the rising powers of the East intensifies.

* Tarık Oğuzlu is professor of international relations at Antalya International University.

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