Soft power in Turkish foreign policy under the AKP governments : 2002-2009

The concept of soft power has turned out to be one of the agenda-setting terms in the field of international relations upon its inception in the early 1990s. Despite its widespread usage, the inherent nature of the concept could not been grasped to a great extent. The increasing references to soft power in many of the analyses about Turkish foreign policy during the ruling Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP, (Justice and Development Party, JDP) era has created a need to present the notion of soft power as a proper theoretical concept and to discuss the foreign policy of the Turkish state conducted by the AKP governments in the light of such a theoretical background. Therefore, this thesis intends to present a refined theory of soft power embracing all the relevant points of the existing literature on soft power theory in order to make it utilizable for all cases and to implement this proposed theory to the case of Turkish foreign policy in a comparative manner by examining pre-AKP period and the period during the AKP has been in rule. Out of these explanations, the research question of this thesis emerges as such: “To what extent has soft power increased its influence in Turkish foreign policy under the AKP governments?” The main argument of the thesis can be put forward in the following manner: “The soft power of Turkish state has increased during the AKP term, although there has been some degree of soft power culture in the history of Turkish Republic.”