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Turkey’s own “pivot to Asia”: a neoclassical realist analysis

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Abstract

Over the past decade, Turkey has executed its own turn to Asia, which has materialized in the form of greater high-level dialogue between countries, strategic partnerships, and improved economic and commercial relations. The aim of this study is to bring an understanding to the factors that determined this turn. For this purpose, using a neoclassical realist perspective, along with international and regional systemic factors such as the global shift of power from West to East, relocation of the center of the international economy, the pivot to Asia trend, and changing regional dynamics in the Middle East, domestic determinants—the AKP’s pragmatic foreign policy and the role of the Turkish business community—will be employed to explain the Turkish foreign policy orientation toward East Asia.

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Notes

  1. In this article, the term Asia is used to denote East, Southeast, and South Asian countries unless stated otherwise.

  2. Turkey’s search for closer relations with the non-Western world since the last half of the second term of the AKP has triggered a debate, principally in the Western media, on “the shift of axis” in Turkish foreign policy, in other words, whether Turkey is shifting its axis by turning away from the West and heading towards the Middle East and Asia.

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Correspondence to Emine Akcadag Alagoz.

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Alagoz, E.A. Turkey’s own “pivot to Asia”: a neoclassical realist analysis. Asia Eur J 19, 291–307 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-021-00603-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-021-00603-9

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