The (un)making of the Pax Turca in the Middle East: understanding the social-historical roots of foreign policy
Author
Hoffmann, C.
Cemgil, C.
Date
2016-01-06Source Title
Cambridge Review of International Affairs
Print ISSN
0955-7571
Electronic ISSN
1474-449X
Publisher
Routledge
Volume
29
Issue
4
Pages
1279 - 1302
Language
English
Type
ArticleItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Turkey’s foreign policy activism has received mixed reviews. Some feel threatened by the alleged increasing Islamization of the country’s foreign policy, sometimes called ‘neo-Ottomanism’, which is seen as a significant revision of Turkey’s traditional
transatlanticism. Others see Turkey as a stable democratic role model in a troubled region.
This debate on Turkish foreign policy (TFP) remains dominated by a sense of confusion
about what appear to be stark contradictions that are difficult to make sense of. Intervening
in this debate, this article will develop an alternative perspective to existing accounts of
Turkey’s new foreign policy. Offering a historical sociological approach to foreign policy
analysis, it locates recent transformations in Turkey’s broader strategies of social
reproduction. It subsequently argues that, contrary to claims about Turkey’s ‘axis shift‘,
its changing foreign policies have in fact never been pro-Western or pro-American.
All foreign policy ‘shifts’ and ‘inconsistencies’, we argue, are explicable in terms of historically
changing strategies of social reproduction of the Ottoman and Turkish states responding
to changing domestic and international conditions.