Analyzing the Role of Justice and Development's Leaders in Turkey's Strategic Actions in Internal and Foreign politics

With the rise of the Justice and Development’s party to power in 2002, Turkey has followed different and seldom paradoxical decisions and actions in internal and external affairs. This article aims at studying these altitudes based upon the leaders of Justice and Development’s party. Hence, the article decides to clarify mainly from which sources the strategic attitudes of Turkey have been inspired and how these sources determined today’s Turkish decisions. The hypothesis is based upon the fact that the Party follows to keep power and obtain its interests with an identitary flavor in internal and external policies. Hence, from the perspective of this article despite the effectiveness of different variables in producing such decisions, the role of the Party leaders grows more important with their enjoyment of interest-identity attitudes insofar as they endeavor to keep and enhance political power. Therefore, such attitudes have left fundamental impact on Turkish decisions in realms such as secularism, liberal economy and Neo-Ottomanism. In addition, they have proven to determine today’s Turkish politics specifically the developments occurring in the process of Islamic awakening and current crisis governing the region. This article enjoys the documentary analysis.