The Impact of Europeanization and De-Europeanization on Turkey’s Foreign Policy

Since its formation in 1923, the quality of interaction with the Europe has been one of the crucial issues in Turkey’s Foreign Policy. The outlook and perspective of the Turkey’s leaders have influenced this interaction, tremendously. For starters Ataturk, as the founding father of the Modern Republic of Turkey, believed that Turkey’s new establishment should search its role model among the European and Western nations where modern thinking and rationality has brought about wealth to the society. Hence, the impact of the interaction on Turkey’s foreign policy intensified since the “Ankara agreement” between Turkey and European Economic Community in 1963. Since then, the nature of this interaction and its probable impact on Turkey’s foreign policy have been discussed in different occasions and by different observers. Some commentators believe that we should not overstate the impact of the process of Europeanization on Ankara’s foreign policy. It enjoys a historical legacy of the Ottoman Empire, a historical depth, strategic location and a distinct ideology which yields huge impact on its leaders’ worldview and behavior. So, the impact of the Europeanization should not be exaggerated. On the other hand, there are many other wonks which believe that the process yields tangible impacts on Ankara’s foreign policy and, it is crystal clear to discern. The present paper favors the second group and argues that the process of joining to the EU has impacted Turkey’s foreign policy. Having said that, it claims that during the process, three distinct phases can be distinguished. Each of these phases has different impacts on the Foreign Policy of the Turkey. The three phases are: a) Europeanization (1999-2005); b) Weakening of the Europeanization (2005-2011); and c) De-Europeanization. Thus, the paper seeks to find out what are the impacts of these phases on Turkey’s foreign policy. It endeavors to scrutinize these phases and provide a sound answer to the question. Analyzing these different periods and examining their distinct impact on Turkey’s foreign policy would be the main contribution of the paper.     

In this paper, descriptive-analytic research method is used to answer the research question. Data gathering procedure is also based on library methods and the use of online resources.

The findings of the paper show that the most important impacts of the Europeanization process on Turkey’s foreign policy were: Ankara’s inclination to use soft power, expanding and relying on economic cooperation, collective decision-making in foreign policy apparatus and adopting a win-win approach towards regional relations. On the other hand, the process of De-Europeanization has led to inclination to use hard (military) power, substituting and increasing security cooperation instead of economic ones, intensifying individualistic decision-making process (Erdoganism) and adopting a win-lose approach in relations with other countries. 

The present paper argued that Turkey’s relations with the EU has significant impact on the Ankara’s foreign policy. To scrutinize the impact, the authors divided their relations into three distinct phases: a) Europeanization (1999-2005); b) Weakening of the Europeanization (2005-2011); and c) De-Europeanization. The main question of the research was how these distinct phases impacted the country’s foreign policy. To answer the question, the conceptual framework of Europeanization was explained and its consequences and repercussions were discussed. Using descriptive-analytic methodology, the authors strove to carefully analyze the different impacts of these distinct phases on the foreign policy making of the Turkey. The Findings demonstrate that contrary to the arguments of the deniers of any meaningful impact of the Europeanization process on Turkey’s foreign policy, it has concrete, meaningful, distinct and discernible impacts. Europeanization led to positive impacts and De-Europeanization reversed that path. The main contribution of the paper was to show these clear-cut impacts during different phases.