Turkey’s Foreign Policy: Strategic Depth
By Elif Aydin
26 Sep 2008
Kemal Ataturk – the founder of modern Turkey – used a maxim: ‘peace at home, peace in the world’. The concept has now found an unlikely bedfellow in the current Turkish government’s foreign policy principle of ‘strategic depth’. Though the AKP government is hardly Kemalist, through appealing to widely different camps in Turkey, the search for a new foreign policy epitomises Turkey’s desire to find a place in the world. This once imperial, now republican state looks for ways to bring its historical and geographical assets to bear in the shaping of its international relations. Post 9/11 and with the continuing War on Terror, the ruling AKP’s foreign policy of ‘strategic depth’ invites the possibility of restructuring relations between the East and the West on a footing that recognises that Turkey’s traditional role as anchor in the West while not blighting its opportunities and strengths in the East.
26 Sep 2008
Kemal Ataturk – the founder of modern Turkey – used a maxim: ‘peace at home, peace in the world’. The concept has now found an unlikely bedfellow in the current Turkish government’s foreign policy principle of ‘strategic depth’. Though the AKP government is hardly Kemalist, through appealing to widely different camps in Turkey, the search for a new foreign policy epitomises Turkey’s desire to find a place in the world. This once imperial, now republican state looks for ways to bring its historical and geographical assets to bear in the shaping of its international relations. Post 9/11 and with the continuing War on Terror, the ruling AKP’s foreign policy of ‘strategic depth’ invites the possibility of restructuring relations between the East and the West on a footing that recognises that Turkey’s traditional role as anchor in the West while not blighting its opportunities and strengths in the East.
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