Turkey’s foreign policy ambition is on the rise

Following its founding as a republic in 1923, Turkey forged close economic and military ties with the West as part of its vision of becoming a modern, secular nation. But in the two decades since the rise of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has sought to rebrand Turkey as a free agent and a world power in its own right.

In recent years, Turkey has drawn the ire of its neighbors and allies due to Erdogan’s willingness to launch military interventions in Libya and Syria, press territorial claims in the Mediterranean, and court China and Russia. Such moves have isolated Turkey and cast uncertainty on its future in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its prospects for joining the European Union (EU). With Ankara now struggling to weather a financial crisis, Erdogan is trying to repair broken relationships, including by seeking rapprochement with major regional powers.

Why does Turkey matter?

Turkey emerged from the collapsing Ottoman Empire, which endured for six hundred years, spanned three continents, and ruled the Islamic world as well as swaths of Europe. Its lands have witnessed millennia of conflict and comingling between powerful forces—East and West, Christianity and Islam, modernity and tradition. Today’s Turkey reflects these influences but also seeks to portray itself as an independent power with a unique national identity. The country has built a close partnership with the West through its membership in NATO and deepening trade relations with the EU. However, it has increasingly butted heads with them over its democratic backsliding, relations with Russia, and other issues.

Given its position straddling Asia and Europe, Turkey can heavily influence the Caucasus, Central Asia, the EU, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, Ankara controls passage through the long-contested Turkish Straits (the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles), vital waterways that connect the Black and Aegean Seas and through which hundreds of millions of tons of cargo pass each year. It hosts U.S. and NATO military forces at several of its bases, with U.S. nuclear weapons housed at Incirlik Air Force Base, and it has played a role in many of the post–Cold War conflicts in the Middle East. As a result, it’s also been a major transit point during the migration crises that have stricken the region. President Erdogan now aims to project Turkey’s power further, especially in the Middle East, where a receding U.S. presence has left a vacuum Ankara hopes to fill.

How has Turkey’s foreign policy evolved?

Modern Turkey’s boundaries were formed after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I. The victorious Allies, especially Britain and France, occupied the region and sought to divide much of the empire among Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds. Turkish nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, rejected the proposal and waged a war of independence that culminated in the establishment of Turkey as an independent republic in 1923. As the founding president, Ataturk instituted sweeping reforms to secularize the public sphere and advance his vision of modernization based on the Western model. His “peace at home, peace in the world” foreign policy focused on defending Turkey’s sovereignty while building ties [PDF] with its former occupiers.

For most of World War II, Turkey remained neutral but sympathetic to the Allies, and after the war, it further strengthened ties with the West. It joined NATO in 1952 and began receiving U.S. aid in line with Washington’s anti-communist Truman Doctrine. This helped produce an empowered military that saw its duty as safeguarding the Kemalist consensus, a governing ideology based on secularism, nationalism, and a strong government role in directing the economy.

However, after years of violence between far-left and far-right groups, the Turkish military intervened to repair the country’s political division. In 1980, the military launched Turkey’s third coup since its independence, and with it came efforts to re-Islamize society and restore traditional values, including by instituting mandatory religious education and opening state-controlled mosques.

What role has Erdogan played?

Erdogan and his AKP, a conservative party with Islamist roots, came to power in 2002, following a decade marked by political instability and a financial crisis. The AKP advanced economic and political reforms to bring Turkey closer in line with EU standards, and the country’s economy grew by 7.5 percent on average annually between 2001 and 2011. On foreign policy, the AKP’s motto was “zero problems with neighbors,” and Ankara aimed to expand Turkey’s influence by building trade ties, encouraging democracy, and emphasizing its Islamic identity.

But by the late 2000s, the AKP had become more authoritarian. It consolidated control over media organizations, purged the military of perceived dissidents, prosecuted and jailed critics, and quashed protests. In 2016, Erdogan seized on an attempted military coup to crack down further on his perceived opponents, who he alleges are led by Fethullah Gulen, a cleric living in exile in the United States who was once Erdogan’s ally. Through a referendum the following year, Erdogan replaced the country’s parliamentary system with a presidential one; abolished the office of prime minister, among other major changes; and effectively rendered himself Turkey’s sole power holder.

Erdogan has engineered an assertive shift in foreign policy that focuses on expanding Turkey’s military and diplomatic footprint. To this end, Turkey has launched military interventions in countries including Azerbaijan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria; supplied partners such as Ethiopia and Ukraine with drones; and built Islamic schools abroad.

Kurdish groups developed?

The Kurds, a primarily Muslim ethnic group spread across not only Turkey but also Iran, Iraq, and Syria, are Ankara’s “dominating security concern,” says CFR’s Henri J. Barkey. Making up one-fifth of Turkey’s population, the Kurds have long raised fears in Ankara over their demands for more autonomy or, in some cases, independence. Turkey has waged war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant group that aims to establish a Kurdish state, since the 1980s—a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. Still, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds fled to Turkey during the first Gulf War, and Ankara has maintained amicable relations with the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq even while opposing its quest for independence.