Turkey’s Foreign Policy of the Justice and Development Party Governments (2002–2011)

Since the establishment, due to its geopolitical and geostrategic position, Turkish Republic has occupied a high level agenda for international politics. After the landslide victory of Justice and Development Party, a party the majority of charter members composed of former Islamists, in 2002, along with three terms of successive rule in the office, Turkey and its position in regional politics have turned out to be a more prominent theme than ever. The dissertation aims to analyze main directions of Turkish foreign policy throughout Justice and Development Party government periods from 2002 to 2011. It intends to present political, economic, diplomatic and military aspects of relation prospects between Turkey and its surrounding both in close and far meaning as well as along with the international actors not excluding newly emerged global powers, so as to implement a proposed understanding of Turkish foreign policy at this period in a comparative manner by examining pre-AKP period to the period during in which AKP was in rule. Out of similar explanations, the research question of the dissertation emerges as such “to what extent changed Turkish foreign policy during Justice and Development Party government periods between 2002 - 2011 and whether Turkish foreign policy experienced an “axis shift” at this period”. The main hypothesis of the dissertation may be put forward like “Contrary to mainstream literature blaming AKP to shift Turkey’s traditional Western oriented foreign policy, although Turkey experienced prominent changes in terms of external policy in comparison to past, a similar quantity change may not be interpreted as an axis shift that caused a radical change of traditional Turkish foreign policy orientation”.