Turkey and the Arab Spring: Between Ethics and Self-Interest
Insight Turkey, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2012, pp. 45-63
19 Pages Posted: 8 Mar 2012 Last revised: 13 Aug 2012
Date Written: August 12, 2012
Abstract
Turkey has redefined its geographical security environment over the last decade by deepening its engagement with neighboring regions, especially with the Middle East. The Arab spring, however, challenged not only the authoritarian regimes in the region but also Turkish foreign policy strategy, which was based on cooperation with the existing regimes without prioritizing the democracy promotion dimension of the issue. The upheavals in the Arab world therefore created a dilemma between ethics and self-interest in Turkish foreign policy. Amid the flux of geopolitical shifts in one of the unstable regions of the world, Turkish foreign policy-making elites try to rectify their strategies to overcome this inherent dilemma in question. The central argument of the present paper is that Turkey could make a bigger and more constructive impact in the region by trying to take a more detached stand and through controlled activism which will act in coalitions and in close alignments with the United States and the European countries rather than a self-attributed unilateral over-pro-activism.
Keywords: Arab Spring, Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East, unilateral pro-activism
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