Ankara’s Middle East Policy / Post Arab Spring / by Soner Cagaptay

POLICY NOTE 16  – NOVEMBER 2013

When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) entered office in 2002, it launched an ambitious plan to become a regional power. Aided by phenomenal economic growth, Turkey ultimately became the Middle East’s largest economy with a foreign policy based on wielding soft power to gain influence. To this end, the new elites in Ankara pursued deep economic and political ties with the region’s governments, including Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria.

Nevertheless, the events of the Arab Spring and the subsequent emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood as a hardline political force in the region have shifted the trajectory of Turkey’s rise to regional preeminence. Turkey realized that its soft power is not readily transferable to hard power, a realization that has prompted a pivot in Ankara’s foreign policy over the past two years.

In this new Washington Institute Policy Note, Soner Cagaptay outlines these various factors, examining the evolution and effect of the shifting regional alliances on Turkey’s ambitions.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/pubs/PolicyNote16_Cagaptay2.pdf