CHATHAM HOUSE - Research paper - Competing visions of international order 09 Turkey seeks a vision fit for a multipolar world Professor Senem Aydın-Düzgit Professor of International Relations, Sabancı University Professor Ayşe Zarakol Professor of International Relations, University of Cambridge

 

CHATHAM HOUSE - Research paper - Competing visions of international order 

09 Turkey seeks a vision fit for a multipolar world

Professor Senem Aydın-Düzgit

Professor of International Relations, Sabancı University

Professor Ayşe Zarakol

Professor of International Relations, University of Cambridge

For many years, Turkey has viewed foreign policy through a domestic lens. Will its ambitions for strategic autonomy in a multipolar world force its leaders to articulate a broader vision?

For Turkey’s ruling elite, multipolarity is already defining the future shape of international order. To some degree, this view is spurring Turkey’s policymakers to reappraise its partnerships to strengthen self-reliance and national security for the country. Yet it is far from clear whether this approach is part of an articulated vision of international order from Turkey’s leadership.

The same political elite has governed the country for more than two decades. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power since 2002, including in a power-sharing arrangement with a minority partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), since 2016. The AKP leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, became prime minister in 2003, president in 2014, and executive president in 2018. He claimed nearly limitless executive powers during the state of emergency after a failed coup attempt in 2016, and the following year the constitution was changed to make those powers permanent. Although Erdoğan and the AKP faced some constitutional constraints on their vision for Turkey before then, much of that was related to domestic matters. Ever since coming to power, they have faced relatively weak pressure from former state elites or the opposition on foreign policy. In other words, nothing has prevented Erdoğan and the AKP from articulating a clear and consistent vision of international order from a Turkish perspective – yet they have not produced anything that could be considered an alternative to existing arrangements.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, setting aside core issues such as the Kurds, Turkey’s foreign policy for the past 10 years has been relatively opportunistic and focused on power consolidation. Foreign policy is used to generate material incentives that can help to steady an ailing economy, and as an ideational domestic instrument to push Turkish society’s worldview towards a high dose of anti-Westernism within which populist authoritarian rule can take hold. The relative decline of Western/US hegemony and the transition to multipolarity – which Turkey assumes to be inevitable – suits such a foreign policy well because it increases Erdoğan’s room for manoeuvre. This foreign policy approach has been formalized under the label of ‘strategic autonomy’.

Second, Turkey does not have a well-established intellectual tradition of thinking about grand strategy. Most entrenched foreign policy concerns (even before Erdoğan) have been about specific issues and places in the country’s immediate periphery; for example, Cyprus, the Aegean, Syria and Azerbaijan. Despite the ambition to be a regional power, domestic debates and foreign policy news coverage within Turkey tend to be parochial. It is thus not easy for policymakers to make the jump from caring only about Turkey-specific issues to articulating an alternative vision of world order and selling it to domestic or foreign audiences.

Despite the ambition to be a regional power, domestic debates and foreign policy news coverage within Turkey tend to be parochial. It is thus not easy for policymakers to make the jump from caring only about Turkey-specific issues to articulating an alternative vision of world order.

This does not mean that Turkey will not attempt to articulate a new vision of world order, especially when countries in similar situations increasingly claim to have one. During his long tenure, Erdoğan has at times flirted with the notion that his task was to change the world order which in its existing form is seen as an unfair arrangement for Turkey and for the parts of the world that Turkey claims to represent. Ambitious politicians – such as Ahmet Davutoğlu, who served as foreign minister (2009–14) and prime minister (2014–16) – have at times used openings provided by Erdoğan to float trial balloons for strategic visions influenced by notions such as neo-Ottomanism, Eurasianism or post-colonialism.

In recent years, however, Erdoğan has settled on the slogan ‘Dünya Beşten Büyüktür’ (The world is bigger than five). Under this banner, Turkey has poured generous funds into events such as the Antalya Diplomacy Forum (to rival similar meetings such as the Munich Security Forum or the Shangri-La Dialogue), pushing the slogan and the vision associated with it. As reimagined by the current foreign minister, Hakan Fidan (formerly the head of the Turkish Intelligence Agency), the agenda pushed by such events emphasizes, at least rhetorically, a more equitable world order not dominated by any hegemon, with Turkey a key power broker connecting previously disconnected regions. Some of the country’s recent overtures in Africa and South America also flow from this vision. Whether this is a sustainable or consistent message, or how genuinely committed Turkey is to it, remains to be seen. However, this is more a call for formalizing trends already under way than an ambitious plan to aggressively reorder the world. In other words, even when it appears critical, Ankara’s message is relatively status quo-oriented.

This chapter is divided into three parts. First, it sets out the general contours of the foreign policy vision of Erdoğan and his regime based on their current reading of the world order. Second, it reviews the opposition’s approach to foreign policy. This is because, although most Western observers think dimly of Turkey’s democratic prospects, the odds of Erdoğan and the AKP being ousted democratically and replaced by an opposition government are not negligible. The presidential election of 2023 was very close, and the main opposition party won the 2024 municipal elections in a near-landslide, despite an environment that fully favours the government in terms of, for example, spending, press coverage, voter suppression and legal decisions. Third, the chapter briefly discusses Turkey’s various attempts to articulate an alternative world vision.

The government’s understanding of the world order

Following the 2008 global financial crisis and the foreign policy shocks of the 2010s, Turkish policymakers came to believe that the international order was moving towards multipolarity, with the gradual but permanent replacement of the US-led liberal international order, which in Turkey is called the ‘West-centred’ order. In the words of Fidan, ‘After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the discussions of the world order from unipolarity to bipolarity, and finally to multipolarity, are the symptoms of a problem in the current global governance mechanisms.’204 For Turkey’s current governing elite, therefore, the liberal international order and Western hegemony are already over, the power of the United States is in decline and states are now operating in a post-Western and multipolar world.

For Turkish policymakers, this requires their country to establish selective partnerships based on pursuing its national interests so as to strengthen its self-reliance and national security. They use the concept of strategic autonomy to underline the idea that Turkey should increasingly work with non-Western great powers such as China and Russia and, by doing so, counterbalance the US-led order. Turkey should pursue its interests, assume autonomy from the West in making and implementing its decisions, and act as an independent state with regional and global engagements and aspirations. This vision is reflected strongly in Turkey’s economic relations. Its total trade volume with the EU increased from $40.6 billion in 2002 to $182 billion in 2022. However, during the same period, trade with Asia (comprising the Near and Middle East and ‘other Asia’ including China and Russia) increased from $19 billion to $220 billion.205 Turkey now trades more with the non-Western world than the Western one. The most striking change regards China and Russia: trade with the two combined rose from $6.7 billion in 2002 to $106.8 billion in 2022.206 Furthermore, Turkey applied to join the BRICS group207 in October 2024, though the outcome is still uncertain.

Turkish policymakers also use the concept of national foreign policy (milli dış politika) in this new era. They believe that the rift between Turkey and its transatlantic allies is the West’s fault. Turkey’s intelligence chief, İbrahim Kalın, has expressed this view:

I believe the West alienates itself from the rest of the world, losing control of most problems. The war in Ukraine, relations with China, the fight against terrorism, and the shifting economic centre of the world from the West to the East. I believe there is a lack of strategic thinking in most Western circles.208

Like their peers in other regional and middle powers, Turkish policymakers consider the changing international order an opportunity to make the country’s voice heard more in regional and global governance. They also see assuming a more active role in key regional conflicts like those in Libya, the Caucasus and Syria209 as a geopolitical imperative because of the US hesitation to be fully involved there. As a result, Turkish foreign policy has become more assertive, with Ankara not shying away from flexing its military muscles and clashing with traditional Western allies and other actors in the region. Foreign Minister Fidan highlighted this point as follows: ‘We will strive relentlessly to strengthen Turkey’s position as an active and effective, fully independent actor that sets or disrupts the game when required.’210

This does not mean that Turkish policymakers are pushing for all relations with the West to be severed. They believe that Turkey should remain in Western-led institutions such as NATO ‘despite certain differing points of view’211 – but with a weak anchorage that allows flexible alliances and closer ties with the non-Western world and, if necessary, not hesitating to use military force. They argue that through strategic autonomy Ankara can at the same time be a balancer, broker or mediator in geopolitical conflicts and their possible resolution, as in the case of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and prioritize hard power to secure Turkish national security and sovereignty, as in Iraq, Libya and Syria. They claim that, in doing so, Turkey can initiate flexible alliances with countries like China, Iran and Russia without compromising its place in Western institutions and the transatlantic alliance.

Yet, it is difficult to refer to this policy – seeking strategic autonomy in a multipolar post-Western world – as a long-term ‘vision’, as it is already hampered by two important constraints. One relates to domestic politics. The discourse on the need to attain strategic autonomy in a post-Western world has been used not just to define the direction of foreign policy but also to discipline and marginalize dissenting voices in the opposition. The narrative of an autonomous Turkey that is no longer dependent on the West and that resorts to coercive means where necessary has served as a domestic legitimating discourse through which the government’s supporters are mobilized and the opposition is discredited, particularly during times of domestic crisis. Since the 2013 Gezi protests,212 internal challenges and dissent, such as the 2016 failed coup attempt, have been portrayed as always and necessarily a product of Western interference and manipulation in collaboration with the opposition, thus instilling a sense of victimhood and mobilizing public support behind Erdoğan’s controversial, divisive and anti-Western policy choices.213 In the run-up to the 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections, the government’s campaign focused heavily on Turkey’s advances in security and defence. These were presented as a symbol of how the government, in particular Erdoğan, had elevated the country’s international status against its Western enemies and their domestic collaborators (meaning the opposition) by enhancing its sovereignty and attaining autonomy from Western imperialists. This discourse was accompanied by displays of Bayraktar drones, Turkey’s first drone-aircraft carrier and even the first domestically produced electric car. Erdoğan repeatedly highlighted in campaign speeches how the US victimized Turkey and refused to provide it with drones, and that it was thanks to his efforts that the country had become self-sufficient in producing its own drones and other military equipment. There is some evidence that the government’s narrative on autonomy, tied mainly to the advances in security and defence, won it the support of voters who had voted for the AKP/MHP coalition in previous elections but who were not considered partisans, and who were thus most likely to switch to the opposition due to the ongoing economic crisis.214

The discourse on strategic autonomy is not only a domestic instrument for political power; it also conditions foreign policy choices. The main pillars of the AKP’s rule – nationalism, state capitalism and domestic legitimacy – are central to its foreign policy, which often puts Turkey at odds with its traditional Western allies.215 For instance, when Turkey increased tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean by dispatching drilling ships and research vessels into Cypriot waters in 2020, this was presented at the highest level in the country as the expression of sovereignty, of an assertive and independent foreign policy, of protection of borders and of a just fight against the West.216 Ankara’s initially balanced tone in response to the events of 7 October 2023 and the Gaza–Israel war soon gave way to a more radical discourse in which Erdoğan referred to Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’.217 This was a clear break with its NATO allies and the European Union, and was driven largely by attacks from the fringe parties of the Islamist far right. Soon after, during the week of the centenary of the instauration of the republic, Erdoğan held rallies in support of Palestine attended by millions of people, to rally his base, to present himself as the global leader of Muslims and to boost his legitimacy.

The constraints of domestic politics result in a situation whereby Turkey pursues short-term political calculations to serve domestic political interests, at the expense of a longer-term vision of strategic autonomy defined through the lens of collective national interest. The outcome is an inconsistent foreign policy that hampers Turkey’s long-term credibility at the global level. While serving at times the interests of the governing elite, such a policy comes at a high cost to the country in terms of deepening its economic, political and foreign policy problems. Nowhere has this result been more visible than in Turkey’s relations with the EU, where Turkey has positioned itself as the gatekeeper of migration at the EU’s borders thanks to the EU–Turkey migration deal. This arrangement has primarily benefited Turkey’s ruling elite by removing democratic conditionality in its relations with the EU. Meanwhile it has also benefited the EU by reducing the number of refugees transiting through Turkey. Yet, the mass migration of almost 4 million Syrian refugees after the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, which made Turkey the largest refugee-hosting country in the world, ushered in a host of novel problems regarding the economic and societal integration of those refugees. After Bashar al-Assad’s downfall in December 2024, the current expectation in Turkey is that most of these refugees will go back home. The transactional arrangement with the EU also failed to foster cooperation in other areas between the two sides. The opposite has in fact happened. As the US withdraws from the Middle East, it also remains to be seen whether Turkey and the US will be able to overcome long-standing mutual distrust to cooperate on security and defence-related issues.

The constraints of domestic politics result in a situation whereby Turkey pursues short-term political calculations to serve domestic political interests, at the expense of a longer-term vision of strategic autonomy defined through the lens of collective national interest.

Another major constraint relates to the lack of political economy fundamentals to sustain a policy of strategic autonomy.218 Developing closer trade and investment ties with the non-Western world without abandoning Turkey’s long-standing political-economic relations with the Western world has been stated as a key principle of the government’s foreign policy strategy. Yet Turkey’s diversification away from the West towards the non-Western markets in its trade ties leads to certain challenges with carving out a more autonomous space in its foreign relations. This is because increasing trade relations with the large non-Western countries, especially Russia and China, is likely to create new dependencies. Turkey’s foreign trade with the EU is much more balanced, which is not the case for trade with Russia and China. The export/import ratio for Turkey with China is less than 10 per cent, and is just 13 per cent with Russia. As long as the composition of Turkish foreign trade remains the same, the trade deficit with those countries is likely to grow, which will put additional pressure on Turkey’s current account deficits. Furthermore, Turkey does not have strategic sectors such as energy or high-tech that would give it competitive leverage. The country heavily relies on Western capital in the financial, investment and technology domains.

At the root of the problem lies the structure of the Turkish economy. Turkey’s ‘deficit-led’ economic growth model generates simultaneous external dependencies on different major powers due to its high reliance on low- and medium-end exports.219 Turkey’s dependence on the import of intermediary goods and advanced technologies from other countries causes balance-of-payments problems and exacerbates the financial fragility of the country. Hence, Turkey needs a more coherent economic security framework to support its autonomy-seeking policies in a multipolar world.

The opposition’s understanding of the world order

The main opposition force, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has generally been far from presenting a coherent view on the international order and Turkey’s 

place in it.

Under its former leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the CHP was usually supportive of the government’s search for strategic autonomy, as this concept is strongly rooted in a nationalist understanding of foreign policy that is widely supported across society. Yet, Kılıçdaroğlu’s actions were not consistent. While he opposed some military operations, such as that in Libya, he was in favour of others in northern Iraq. He also approved of the contestation of the EU and some of its member states in the Eastern Mediterranean. The major difference between the government and the CHP was in the way the latter approached Turkey’s relations with the West. Instead of a purely transactional relationship, the CHP preferred more values-based cooperation, premised on the return to democracy and the rule of law, particularly in relations with the EU. Before the 2023 elections, the CHP also pledged to revitalize Turkey’s EU accession process, to strike a more balanced relationship with Russia (criticizing the current approach as being too pro-Moscow), to regain access for Turkey to the US F-35 fighter jet programme and to restore the country’s credibility within NATO.

Since the change of opposition leadership in November 2023, the new cadres seem to share the previous line-up’s concern that Turkey should improve relations with its Western allies, make its relations with the EU less transactional and seek relations with Russia that are more balanced, transparent and less personalistic. The CHP is also less keen to contest the West on some key foreign policy matters. For instance, on the question of Israel and Palestine, İlhan Uzgel, who is the new vice-chair responsible for foreign policy, has declared that the party condemns Israeli atrocities but also believes that Hamas ‘harms the Palestinian cause’.220 He has also outlined the CHP’s view that the international order is becoming a multipolar system characterized by the rise of China and the Global South, and in which even smaller powers than Turkey now have more room for manoeuvre. His criticism of the government centred not on the attempt to seek strategic autonomy, but on the argument that the government bases this goal on what is needed for the security of the regime rather than that of the country.221

One important impediment that the main opposition has not been able to overcome so far relates to its entrapment in the government’s broader foreign policy rhetoric. The strongly nationalist nature of foreign policy has made it more difficult for the opposition to object to foreign policy moves and the rhetoric of the government, given that Turkey is a context where nationalist sentiment reigns across the political spectrum and among the public at large. It is also questionable how well the opposition is informed about the sometimes rapid changes in the shifting geopolitical landscape. This was best demonstrated in the case of Syria, where the CHP leader called on the government to work with Assad just days before his fall from power.

Can Turkey articulate its own alternative vision?

Turkey’s dominant foreign policy vision, from the establishment of the modern republic to the AKP’s rise, has been Westernization. Since that mission has lost force with the ascent of the AKP and the changes in the international order, there have been a couple of alternative visions for where Turkey should place itself in the international order. Some of these have found new life with the rise of multipolarity in the international system.

One such vision is Eurasianism, which stipulates that Turkey should withdraw from NATO and forge closer ties with China and Russia. Although this view is still present among some secular nationalists and was briefly taken up by the government during the crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean, it lacks a broad societal base, which means it struggles to have any considerable political heft. However, the view has adherents among members of the ultranationalist parties, some members of the state apparatus and former military officers, so at times arguments associated with a Eurasianist worldview appear more forcefully than expected in policy discussions.

Another vision is neo-Ottomanism, which was very popular during the Arab Spring of 2011. Associated closely with the former premier Davutoğlu, this vision rests on the belief that Turkey could use its historical and religious ties with the Middle East and North Africa to expand its presence and influence there. The major reason why the government pushed neo-Ottomanism during the Arab Spring stemmed from its firm belief that democratization in the Muslim world would bring into power the Muslim Brotherhood, which shared close historical and ideological ties with Turkish Islamists. During that time neo-Ottoman arguments also found favour in the West, especially in Washington, because they lent credence to the belief that Turkey could help the US to manage a democratizing Middle East. The failure of the Arab Spring, and the region’s sharp return to authoritarianism, significantly weakened the appeal of this vision, although neo-Ottoman-flavoured arguments resurfaced to some extent in the domestic pro-government discourse after the fall of Assad in Syria. Turkey also uses a kinship discourse to increase its influence in sub-Saharan Africa.

In sum, Turkey does not currently articulate a coherent alternative vision of the international order, except for Erdoğan’s slogan of ‘The world is bigger than five’, which takes aim at what he considers to be the unjust composition of the UN Security Council that no longer corresponds to the global distribution of power. Erdoğan has even published a book in which he lists his arguments for the reform of the Security Council and proposals for how to do so.222 Yet there are no signs that this will constitute part of a broader vision of international order. Rather, it seems to be an endorsement of that order’s current transitional phase.