The Transformation of The Geopolitical Vision in Turkish Foreign Policy

Turkish Studies
ISSN: 1468-3849 (Print) 1743-9663 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftur20
The Transformation of the Geopolitical Vision in

Turkish Foreign Policy
Murat Yeşiltaş
To cite this article: Murat Yeşiltaş (2013) The Transformation of the Geopolitical Vision in
Turkish Foreign Policy, Turkish Studies, 14:4, 661-687, DOI: 10.1080/14683849.2013.862927
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2013.862927
Published online: 20 Dec 2013.
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Turkish Studies, 2013
Vol. 14, No. 4, 661 –687, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2013.862927
The Transformation of the Geopolitical

Vision in Turkish Foreign Policy
MURAT YEŞİLTAŞ
Department of International Relations, Sakarya University, Sakarya, Turkey
A BSTRACT By problematizing the relationship between geopolitics and foreign policy, this
paper investigates the discursive assumptions of two different geopolitical visions of Turkish
foreign policy. It seeks to explain how different political actors spatialize Turkey’s geography
and represent it as having a “different,” “exceptional,” and “unique” geopolitical position in
the international system in order to justify foreign policy. By investigating how geopolitical
representations produced in each of the different geopolitical vision serve to enable, restrict,
and rationalize a different set of role choices for Turkey in the international system, the article
is aiming to provide a critical geopolitical perspective in order to understand the discursive
transformation of the geopolitical vision in the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve
Kalkınma Partisi) period.
Introduction
From a historical perspective, how Turkey is geopolitically situated in the inter-
national system is a matter of extreme importance for policy-makers. Over the
years two geopolitical metaphors have dominated the orthodox discourse on the geo-
political vision of Turkish foreign policy (TFP) and Turkey’s position in the inter-
national system: protectionism and exceptionalism. While the former discourse
helped establish defensive foreign policy practices, the latter ended up bolstering
“geopolitical exceptionalism”—a political discourse particularly shaped by
Turkey’s territorial and civilizational anxiety in the regional and global geopolitical
order. The combination of these two discourses paved the way to a defensive geopo-
litical vision within Turkish geopolitical culture.
Even though the geopolitical discourse, which heavily draws on the classical geo-
political narratives of Ahmet Davutoğlu, still plays a central role in shaping TFP, the
new geopolitical discourse of Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma
Partisi (AKP)) is distinct in many ways, including its perspective vis-à-vis the
nation-state, the identity/civilizational nexus, and Turkey’s role in the international
order. The defensive geopolitics in TFP emerged as “the result of domesticating
Correspondence Address: Murat Yeşiltaş, Department of International Relations, Sakarya University,

Esentepe Kampüsü, İİBF A, No. 317 Sakarya, Turkey. Email: yesiltas@sakarya.edu.tr
# 2013 Taylor & Francis

662 M. Yeşiltaş
the nation-state territories, which created a sense of well-defined homeland in strict

territorial terms.”1 Therefore, the nation-state was one of the most important reference
points within the geopolitical culture of Turkey. In the new geopolitical discourse,
however, there is a shift in scale, from a territorial and nationally defined location
that is spatially fixed by its national boundaries to the wider cultural regions such
as the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and North Africa. In this new geopo-
litical discourse, the relationship between “bordering and othering” has lost its
meaning since the strains of domestic threat perceptions have been removed from
the official discourse, particularly in Turkey’s regional policies.2 Unlike defensive
geopolitics, which tended to adhere to a heavy territorial conceptualization of geopo-
litics, the new geopolitical discourse emerged with a distinctive vision of how the
non-territorial concepts such as “order” and “civilization” shape the borders of
TFP. Therefore, the new geopolitical vision, as a dissident discourse against defen-
sive geopolitics, offers a dramatically different vision of Turkey’s international pos-
ition and marks a remarkable break from the previous geopolitical discourse in terms
of redefining Turkey’s place in the world and its attachment to the Western political
order. However, for each geopolitical vision, geopolitics and geography serve as deus
ex machine explanation3 for the political and strategic preferences of Turkey, particu-
larly in terms of its relations with surrounding regions and the West.
By problematizing the centrality of the geopolitical discourse in TFP, this paper
first discusses the reasons and the historical context behind the rise and fall of the
defensive geopolitical vision, and second analyses the new geopolitical discourse
in the AKP period in terms of the transformation of the geopolitical identity of
Turkey with regards to the concept of international order, civilization, and “central
country.” By doing so, this paper aims to provide a critical geopolitical perspective
in order to understand the discursive transformation in Turkish geopolitical culture
in the AKP period. The paper is mainly structured around the geopolitical discourse
of Ahmet Davutoğlu, who is the leading figure shaping geopolitical discourse of the
new TFP.4 To help better grasp the transformation from the defensive geopolitics to
new geopolitics, this paper has broken it down into three sets of analytical arguments
that are inspired by critical geopolitics. Each of these arguments is characterized by a
criticism of a defensive conception of the geopolitical discourse in TFP and aims to
move beyond this conception to a richer and more sophisticated set of understanding
of the new geopolitical discourse in the AKP period. The paper argues that the new
geopolitical vision and imagination decentralized the concept of the nation-state, dis-
placed the Kemalist discourse on state identity, and transformed the regional and
international roles of Turkey. This paper examines the aforementioned transform-
ation and rupture by first looking at the ways in which the discursive position
addresses how political-bureaucratic elites have thought about how geopolitics/
geography works in Turkey’s (inter)national politics; second what these elites have
defined as geopolitics in the foreign policy strategy; and third the structure of
power that has promoted certain geopolitical discourses (bridge, central, world
state, global actor) over others within the hegemonic struggle to define Turkey’s geo-
graphical position in the international system. In the following section, the paper will
Transformation of the Geopolitical Vision in TFP 663
describe the rise and fall of the defensive geopolitical vision in TFP. Then the new
geopolitical vision with reference to the three geopolitical constructions of Turkey
will be examined. Finally, the paper will give a critical account of the new geopoli-
tical vision.
The Defensive Geopolitical Vision in TFP: The Historical Context

It should be noted that defensive geopolitics as a discursive and practical strategy in
framing Turkey’s position in the international system is much more than a branch of
foreign policy and international relations; it is part and parcel of the making of a
national social and political order and the ways in which Turkey is positioned with
reference to nationalism, secularism, and statism.5 Therefore, defensive geopolitics
is as much a project of the making of a national society as of a national territory
and a foreign policy practice that helps to consolidate national society “at home”
and simultaneously prepares the ideological and practical ground for defensive
action. At the foreign policy level, this understanding of neutrality and refusal to
be involved with regional affairs came out of a defensive reaction to perceived
threats from outside. It is at the same time a survival strategy that utilizes policy
actions in both the domestic and external domains, and is shaped by Turkey’s
long-standing modernization project. In the following, it will be discussed how defen-
sive geopolitical culture produces particular “geopolitical anxieties” in which TFP
has been accordingly formulized over the years.
The Geopolitical Conception of the Nation-State and Turkey’s Geopolitical

Identity
The first and most important feature of defensive geopolitical vision in TFP is the
articulation of the nation-state as an integral part of Turkey’s geopolitical unity.
From a historical perspective, defensive geopolitics has a long history and has
been constructed as part of the realpolitik tradition in TFP since the foundation of
the Turkish Republic in 1923.6 This tradition, as discussed elsewhere, strongly advo-
cates protecting Turkey’s national unity, territorial integrity, and the secular political
regime, all of which have become central to the republican security culture in TFP
and its geographical imagination after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Yet,
it is not only an imagination that is tied to a set of lenses and images of foreign
policy-makers vis-à-vis Turkey’s geopolitical position, but also discursive accounts
of the reorganization of the national and international space and it promotes particular
ways of seeing how territorial powers are formed and experienced geographically in
accordance with the nation-state-based modernization project. Therefore, defensive
geopolitics was strongly shaped by a geographical discourse, which emerged as
the result of domesticating the territories of the nation-state, and which at the same
time created a sense of a well-defined homeland in strict territorial terms.7 At the
core of this discourse, the nation-state is one of the important reference objects in
Turkey’s geopolitics and has been constructed as a part of the secularist nationalist
664 M. Yeşiltaş
discourse of Turkishness—the nationalist ideology shaped particularly by Kemalist

political and intellectual elites and which has determined Turkey’s foreign policy
since the early republican era. Kemalist nationalism in that sense sought to
combine national heterogeneity with a common sense of homeland and territory.
In geopolitical terms, protecting national unity and national identity—combining ter-
ritory, culture and history—are seen as an integral part of a foreign policy strategy.8
As Aslan points out, this foreign policy discourse sought to introduce and reproduce
the “Westphalian polity” on the basis of a secularist nationalist identity. This sig-
nifies, according to Aslan, “i) production of secular-nationalist nation, ii) a regional
order based on the Westphalian polity, and iii) integration of the Turkish state into the
modern (Western) world.”9
Articulated as such, defensive geopolitical discourse claims that Turkey’s borders
mark its territorial limits and the discourse has a vision of an exclusive national iden-
tity that is heavily loaded with a strong metaphorical dimension about state identity.
In this geopolitical discourse, territoriality is directly linked to sovereignty to mold
TFP into a fundamentality state-centric social process. This process is generally
shaped by the discourse of the “territorial anxieties” of states and societies against
external and internal threats. Therefore, a significant component of defensive geopo-
litics was a post-imperial fear of abandonment, and a fear of territorial loss10 loomed
large in the Turkish style of defensive geopolitical discourse. This is very important in
order to understand the continuity of the never-executed Sevres Treaty as the socio-
political starting point in Turkey’s foreign policy paradigm and geopolitical vision
during the Cold War and following. Over time, the “territorial anxieties” from the
Sevres Treaty have been turned into the “geopolitical anxiety” that surrounded the
question of national identity and territorial integrity. In the early republican era,
this was simply based on a nation-state paradigm that drew a strict line between
the inside and the outside and stressed Turkey’s difference from its surrounding
regions and cultures. In this formulation, the boundaries of the state defined
society in a way that the latter is “contained” by the former.11 Particularly after the
Cold War, the military and Kemalist bureaucratic elites seemed to strongly
embrace such an increased sense of territorial insecurity.12 This stemmed from per-
ceiving the geography of Turkey as exceptional in the sense that its south and east
was seen as doomed with instability, turmoil, and secessionist and fundamentalist
ideologies. As a result, a fear of abandonment and loss of territory loomed large in
the defensive geopolitical discourse and directly shaped Turkey’s foreign policy pre-
ference, particularly toward the Middle Eastern countries.
In addition to the centrality of the nation-state conception of geopolitics as a pri-
vileged state interest over others in TFP, the defensive geopolitical discourse has
an equally interesting feature that concerns a contestation of the images about
where Turkey is perceived to be located in the global and regional order. The
debates focus on two different conceptualizations: a “central country” that dominated
the Cold War period geopolitical discourse and a “bridge country,” which began to
shape the geopolitical code after the 1980 military coup.13 The central country dis-
course during the Cold War was contextualized around the three geopolitical
constructions. The first one was the geopolitical construction of the Soviet Union as
the “Other” and an expansionist state. The second one was the civilizational represen-
tation of the West as the national mission in the context of Turkey’s Western identity.
The third one was the geographical centrality of Anatolia in the geopolitical vision of
the political elites as the territorial core of Turkey as something that needed to be pro-
tected for the survival of the republic. Therefore, the formulation of TFP regarding the
regional and global order in the Cold War era was seen through the prism of three
geopolitical constructions that were shaped by the Western geopolitical gaze of
world politics.
During the Cold War, and within the boundaries of the defensive geopolitical dis-
course of foreign policy-makers on the Soviet threat, the operational geopolitical
codes were theorized and mobilized for political use by welding them together
with arguments about geography (closed state), ideology (communism), and Soviet
history (expansionist) to portray the Soviet Union as a dangerous “Other.” Turkey
saw that Soviet geopolitics was not simply one set of ideas among many competing
sets that help to illuminate the structure of the policy problem. Rather, it was a meta or
a master framework that suggests, without predetermining policy choice, long-term
factors and trends in the security objectives of the Soviet Union.
The West on the other hand was constructed as a model and a reference point
against which social progress in Turkey was measured as a whole. For foreign
policy-makers, the West was a state of soul and a process of development more
than a geographical location. In terms of the geopolitical representation, from the
very start the world was divided into two different civilizations in the defensive geo-
political imagination and Turkey was portrayed within the civilized, developed, and
superior modern Western imagination against its Eastern antithesis. Within this
context, the only way to become a modern and civilized state was to be part of
Europe, not only in geographical terms but also in political, economic, and civiliza-
tional terms.14 In this geopolitical representation, Turkey considered the Euro-
Atlantic community of nations as its “potential allies and friends” based on the
socially constructed notion of “the western self.”15 During the Cold War, the ideo-
logical stance of anti-communism and NATO membership served as a marker of
Turkey’s Western identity.16 In this geographical imagination, the West constituted
the main axis of TFP. In this context, while defensive geopolitical discourse provided
a justification for the existing global geopolitical order on the one hand, on the other
hand it served to maintain the Western-led international order in Turkey’s region by
seeing the world through the lens of the Western bloc it belonged to. NATO was the
center of this operational geopolitical code of TFP and “represented not merely as a
defensive alliance but also as a cultural alliance, a community that manifested the
common values shared by its members”17 NATO membership signified Turkey’s
place in Western civilization.18 Therefore, it could be argued that Turkey’s insti-
tutional connections with the “West” reiterated the universality of Western civiliza-
tion within the foreign policy discourse.
When it came to the geopolitical construction of Anatolia as the geographical core
of Turkey, the defensive geopolitical discourse became more central in both the Cold
666 M. Yeşiltaş
War and its aftermath. First, Anatolia was considered an integral part of Turkey’s
central geopolitical position in the international system. This centrality discourse por-
trayed Anatolia as the lynchpin of the whole world’s geopolitical balance, and if it
were endangered, then the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa would collapse.19
Therefore, the geographical imagination regarding Anatolia portrayed Turkey’s
geography as something that needed to be protected due to its unique strategic pos-
ition. Second, due to the geographical centrality of Anatolia within the world geopo-
litical map, Turkey was described as a country that required a strong political regime
and institutional structure that would be appropriate for Turkey’s geopolitical pos-
ition. In defensive geopolitics, such a geography in which Turkey sits requires that
the Turkish military in particular, as the privileged actor, should assume an active
role in shaping the (inter)national politics of Turkey.20 These three geopolitical rep-
resentations of Turkey dramatically changed after the Cold War and Turkey’s “terri-
torial anxiety” transformed into the new geopolitical sensibility.
The Return of a Geopolitical Anxiety

Major changes in the geopolitical context after the Cold War brought the reformulation
of the defensive geopolitical vision and the direction of foreign policy, a rearticulating
of geographical representations, namely whether it was a bridge, frontier, or world
state, and foreign policy changes in Turkey. One of the main defining characters of
this changing geopolitical discourse was the “new geopolitical anxieties” idea,
which was shaped by two different uncertainties, namely the identity and territorial
integrity of Turkey. Therefore, the 1990s turned out to be a period of geopolitical
anxiety for Turkish policy-makers who questioned Turkey’s identity, security, and
geopolitical position in the new world order. However, it should be noted that there
were competing geopolitical discourses regarding the location of Turkey and its role
in the new international system. While economics-based liberal geopolitical discourse
was shaped and advocated by Turgut Özal in the early stage of post-Cold War, the mili-
tary-centered defensive geopolitical discourse was determined by the military and
bureaucratic elites.21 The common feature of these two geopolitical representations,
however, was the new geopolitical anxieties. While President Özal had anxiety over
Turkey’s ambiguous role in the new world order, the proponents of defensive geopo-
litics had anxiety over the territorial and national integrity of the republic simply
because of new internal and regional challenges, such as the Kurdistan Workers’
Party, Islamism, and northern Iraq. In each geopolitical vision, geography and geopo-
litics served as the main reference point in defining Turkey’s role in the new inter-
national order.22 These can be illustrated by the practical geopolitical reasoning
used to make TFP on the Kurdish issue and the Middle East in the 1990s.
The first sign of the geopolitical anxiety regarding Turkey’s identity came in 1989
when the EU rejected Turkey’s application for full membership. Since the foreign
policy-makers perceived the EU’s decision as a problematization of Turkey’s
Western identity and its position within Western civilization, including Turkey’s stra-
tegic importance within the structure of NATO, the search for an alternative
geopolitical vision intensified and previous geopolitical representations began to

change. This geopolitical anxiety was structured by the fear—real or imaginary—
of exclusion from Western values/identity that claimed that Turkey did not belong
to Europe and the security structure, and highlighted that Turkey lost its strategic sig-
nificance for the West because of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Regarding
Turkey’s identity, for example, Turgut Özal, who was a proponent of liberal geopo-
litics, argued that Turkey was an integral part of European civilization: “Turkey is not
alien to Europe, as the popular belief suggests, but is her alter ego, her ‘complimen-
tary identity.’”23 Foreign policy-makers and proponents of defensive geopolitics fre-
quently also emphasized Turkey’s potential role as a bridge and tried to convince
European leaders that it could serve as a strategic link between Europe and Asia.
They repeatedly underlined Turkey’s significance as a bridge between the East and
the West and as the guarantor of Western values in the region in order to secure
full admission into the EU.24
During the late 1990s, however, the aim of the defensive geopolitical discourse was to
create a new “Turkish geopolitical zone” to escape from EU democratization demands
and security risks from neighboring crisis-prone regions,25 and in so doing sought to
establish a new connection with Russia and other Eurasian powers to counter the
USA and the EU. Even though seeking an alternative strategic axis was never a real oper-
ational geopolitical code for TFP itself, the discursive influence on the Turkish audience
was important. It should also be noted that the search for an alternative axis was based on
pragmatism rather than ideology. But the important result of this discourse was to change
old geopolitical imaginary from a Western-centered one to a Eurasian-centered one.
While the West was still seen as the core identity of Turkey, the geographical core of
the geopolitical discourse changed. As a result, the Eurasian geopolitical discourse
emerged as a solution to Turkey’s geopolitical sensibility and was constructed as an inte-
gral part of defensive geopolitics.26 More importantly, the Eurasianist geopolitical dis-
course was viewed as more of a strategy aimed at bridging the Turkish–European
divide than any quest to actually institutionalize a Turkic World.27 In this regards,
Turkey was portrayed as the heart of Eurasia. Within the context of new political geogra-
phy of the wider regions surrounding Turkey, the Eurasianist alternative of TFP por-
trayed Turkey as an island or a bastion of stability in the midst of a troubled region. In
this formulation, Turkey’s geography led to Turkey’s responsibility to create a peace
belt using political and economic cooperation as a tool.28 As a result, even though the
end of the Cold War created a new opportunity for new geopolitical discourses in
TFP, the champions of the defensive geopolitical discourse, particularly within Kemalist
circles and the bureaucratic elites, dominated and a military-centered strong state men-
tality continued to be used in defining Turkey’s geopolitical position.29 Interestingly,
during the late 1990s TFP did not use a unique geopolitical discourse. For example,
while Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit’s discourse was heavily based on “Turkish excep-
tionalism,” which sought to show Turkey’s geopolitical position was different so that
it required a different regime for democracy, Foreign Minister İsmail Cem from the
same party advocated more “assertive geopolitics,” which sought to relocate Turkey
in the European state system (Table 1).30
668
M. Yeşiltaş
Table 1. Defensive Geopolitical Visions in Turkish Geopolitical Culture
Geopolitical Geographical Geopolitical Geopolitical

culture centre Model Mission code imagination Why power Civilization
Defensive Anatolia West Westernization Code-1 Alliance: Central and To protect West
geopolitics West bridge national unity
(Cold War) Code-2 Other: and territorial
Soviet Union integrity
Defensive Anatolia The West- Westernization: Code-1 Alliance: Front and To protect West
geopolitics sceptic The Turkish way West (NATO) bridge national unity
(post-Cold War) Code-2 Other: country and territorial
Middle East, integrity
Islamism
The Geopolitical Discourse in Transition

Against the defensive geopolitical discourse, Cem’s geopolitical discourse was com-
pletely different from that of his predecessor’s in the sense that culture and historical
legacy became the central part of TFP. The foreign minister of the coalition govern-
ment between 1999 and 2002, Cem favored a multidimensional and pro-active
foreign policy, yet with a firm “western axis.”31 First, Cem proposed a different con-
ceptualization of foreign policy approaches. According to Cem, “a nation whose
foreign policy is alienated from its own cultural roots and historical past (as
Turkey’s has long been) cannot be a serious player on the world scene.”32 He
argued that as minister of foreign affairs he tried to overcome a traditional foreign
policy that disregarded geography and especially history, and which “overlooked
centuries of accumulation of civilizational factors, relations and living experience.”33
He argued that if Turkey increased its influence over a wider geographical area, and if
it has pursued the interest of its own people more vigorously, the principal reason
must be the introduction of a historical dimension to its foreign policy.
Second, Cem tried to conceptualize geopolitical discourse with reference to
Turkey’s cultural and civilizational identity. In order to achieve foreign policy
goals of Turkey, “all of the civilizations that have been a part of our [Turkish]
history and our geography need to be reconciled with one another and with
modern Turkey.”34 One of the most important geopolitical concepts that Cem
applied to TFP was the “world state,” which means a state positioned among the
major centers of the world and representing a unique blend of civilizational assets,
historical experience, and strategic attributes.35 Cem also suggested that understand-
ing Turkey’s role in Eurasia needed a much deeper analysis. He predicted the emer-
gence of a Eurasian Order in which Turkey would become the center due to its “two-
dimensional identity originated from the privilege of being both Asian and Euro-
pean.”36 Cem’s vision of Turkey as a “world state” in the center of the international
system does not accept the presumption that Turkey needs to make a choice between
the West and the East or between Europe and Asia.37 Therefore, the strategic and cul-
tural connection between the West and the East was crucial for assuring Turkey’s
place within the West and for fostering regional development and Western geopoli-
tical interests. Within this general discourse, Cem argued that Turkey had to move
beyond the bridge metaphor as it was inadequate for a twenty-first century in
which Turkey is moving to become a “destination” country.38 This geopolitical dis-
course was adopted by the AKP governments to construct a more assertive and trans-
national geopolitical discourse as a way to reconstruct Turkey’s foreign policy and its
location in the international system with reference to transnational interactions,
including liberal economy, religion, and civilization.
The New Geopolitical Vision in the AKP Period: Turkey as a “Global Actor”
The concept of geopolitics has been a core analytical tool in the post-2002 framing of
Turkey’s foreign policy. At first glance, it is virtually impossible to discuss the
670 M. Yeşiltaş
centrality of the geopolitical discourse in TFP since 2002 without a reference to

Ahmet Davutoğlu.39 In many texts and speeches, he has examined TFP and
Turkey’s role in the international system with reference to such geopolitical concepts
as “central country,” “geographical continuity,” “order,” “civilizational geography,”
“strategic depth,” and “historical depth.”40 With a second look, however, it can be
seen that Davutoğlu has not been the only actor to shape the new geopolitical imagin-
ation of TFP. The AKP itself has also used geopolitical-laden language to define
Turkey’s role in the regional and global order.41 The party defines its foreign
policy understanding in the formal “2023 Political Vision” document, which refer-
ences the “new conception of geography” by using the concept of “strategic
depth,”42 a geopolitical doctrine developed by Davutoğlu. More importantly,
Prime Minister Erdoğan uses the same discourse when he defines Turkey’s location
as “multidimensional geopolitical position.”43
The role of Davutoğlu as a producer of a new geopolitical discourse is crucial;
nevertheless, it is not possible to understand how this new discourse emerged and dif-
ferentiated itself from defensive geopolitics by only focusing on the intellectual cen-
trality of one person. There have been three important interconnected events that were
important for the emergence of the new geopolitical discourse in TFP. First, the
defensive geopolitical discourse that had been particularly shaped by the Kemalist
world view over the years gradually lost its hegemonic status in shaping foreign
policy mentality after the AKP came to power. This shows that the military establish-
ment as a main producer of dominant geopolitical culture in TFP began to lose its
influence over the framing of the geopolitical discourse. Indeed, there are many
reasons for the fall of this discourse, but it should be highlighted that due to the
growing weight of liberal-democratic values in defining Turkey’s engagement with
the West, the Turkish secular-nationalist identity promoted by military-bureaucratic
elites failed to live up to the requirements of a Western identity.44 This signifies
that the defensive geopolitical discourse in which military-centered state security
was at the center was no longer able to reflect Turkey’s domestic and international
transformation under the increasing pressure of universal political values and the
changing structure of the international system. For example, the EU, as the demo-
cratic transformative agent in Turkey’s path toward liberalization, played an impor-
tant role in abandoning defensive reactions in both domestic and external affairs.45
The democratic reform process, especially in the civil– military relations, the decon-
struction national security discourse and economic liberalization, has significant
implications for the fall of the defensive geopolitical paradigm and contributed to
the emergence of a new geopolitical vision that had Turkey’s multidimensional
engagement with regional issues and affairs at its core.
Second, the change in the domestic power structure resulted in an ideological shift
in domestic affairs as well as in TFP. Using conservative democracy as the ideologi-
cal form and the new Islamist politics in Turkey as the starting point against the pre-
vious discourse of state identity, the AKP dramatically moved the old geopolitical
discourse away from the sweeping discourse of a nation-state-based understanding
to the particular ways of how to reinvent geopolitics in the context of inter-societal
and civilizational interactions by highlighting Turkey’s civilizational differences

within the world order. It should be stressed here that the geopolitical discourse
cannot be insulated from society but is inseparably linked in the often-erratic relation-
ship between state institutions, political elites, and the people. The geopolitical dis-
course (read foreign policy) of AKP leaders has therefore been closely linked to
the political struggle against Turkey’s Kemalist establishment and the powerful
role that the military has played in Turkish politics. Therefore, advocating conserva-
tive geopolitical discourse and applying it to the foreign policy could also be inter-
preted as a strategy to reduce the military’s influence in the domestic and
international realms.46 Articulated as such, the shift from the bureaucratic-authoritar-
ian tradition to a civilian and societal decision-making process in foreign policy has
also played important role in constructing a new discourse.47
To be sure, the nation-state is at the core of the AKP’s revisionist geopolitical dis-
course. Seeking to create a new form of conservative modernity out of Turkey’s long
experience of top-down modernization, the AKP leaders have promoted a synthesis
of the nation-state with universal values without giving up on traditional and conser-
vative values of Turkish-Islamic culture.48 However, when compared with the old
geopolitical imagination, there is also strong “exceptionality narrative” of the
AKP’s geopolitical discourse. This is very clear in the Erdoğan’s framing of
Turkey’s role:
There are few countries that can play such a critical role. Turkey constitutes a
new synthesis because of its ability to link such diverse qualities and back-
grounds. Turkey is thus capable of overcoming the dichotomies of East-West,
Europe-Middle East, and North-South.49
The synthesis narrative was not only used as an integral part of foreign policy dis-
course but also became the dominant representation for Turkey’s geographical iden-
tity in the AKP period. For example, Turkey was defined for the first time in its
history as a “synthesis country” rather than as a homogeneous nation-state in geogra-
phy textbooks. There was also remarkable change in the definition of geopolitics in
these school textbooks, including National Security Knowledge, which was written
by the military, from a state-centric conceptualization to more liberal economic-
based understanding. This strongly signifies that the change in domestic power struc-
ture helped to consolidate AKP’s own discourse in the domestic and foreign policy
realms and to establish a wider geopolitical vision that includes Turkey’s economic
power, civilizational identity, and the multiregional character of geography.
Third, in addition to the changes in the domestic power structure, regional and
international transformations have also provided an important opportunity for the
ruling party to reshape Turkey’s old defensive geopolitical discourse. The new geo-
political realities that began to emerge in the beginning of the 2000s, such as 9/11 and
Afghanistan and the Iraq War, have transformed the global political structure, the
world economy, and the socio-cultural regional and global order and affected
Turkey’s geopolitical position. While the multipolar character of the global political
672 M. Yeşiltaş
structure was a suitable environment for foreign policy of Turkey, the change in the
axis of the world economy helped to establish a new economic zone for Turkey, par-
ticularly in its neighboring geographies. Consequently, thanks to Turkey’s rising
economic power, the new geopolitical discourse has gained more flexibility to effec-
tively implement policy. And the major transformations of the socio-cultural order,
such as the revival of other civilizations across the world and global debates on the
“clash of civilizations,” has provided a new discursive space for Turkey to reiterate
its own civilizational identity within Western institutions. Retrospectively,
Turkey’s new geopolitical discourse met nearly all three of these conditions in the
post-2002 environment. In a nutshell, the new geopolitical discourse has emerged
as the result of a hegemonic struggle over Turkey’s state identity, position, and
role in the international system, reshaped by the new power structure and redefined
by the regional and global politico-economic developments.
The Global Geopolitical Settings and the Problem of International Order

The new geopolitical discourse in the AKP period has been formulized through an
analysis of long-term trends and an understanding of where Turkey is situated in
the greater trajectory of world history.50 From the long-term perspective, Turkey’s
international position in the international order is a twofold geopolitical matter in
which classical geopolitics (its position in terms of location) and critical geopolitics
(its position in terms of role) are both operationalized. Both dimensions help to
explain how Turkey acts and where it belongs and the kinds of roles it plays in the
international order. In both representations, Davutoğlu makes an explicit geographi-
cal generalization to examine Turkey’s geopolitical position and to justify foreign
policy changes. This generalization problem is particularly visible in his view regard-
ing long-term trends and the historical transformation of world politics.
From the classical geopolitical perspective, Davutoğlu sees the transformation of
world politics in accordance with the big geopolitical changes that have taken
place historically. And he suggests that Turkey, with its Ottoman past, has been
always at the center of these geopolitical changes with its geography and history.
In terms of his conceptualization of world history, his perceptions can be defined
as geopolitically reductionist and geographically determinist in many ways. This is
quite clear when he is analyzing different phases of world history with reference to
the geopolitical situation. In that context, he defines four geopolitical stages and
tries to situate Turkey in them while considering the wider geopolitical context. In
the first phase of traditional world order and geopolitics there was geographical con-
tinuity and economic centrality. The second phase was the “colonial order” which
resulted in geographical discontinuity. The third phase was the geopolitics of the
Cold War that divided the world into two geopolitical discourses. The last phase is
the “new geopolitics” which emerged after the Cold War.51 For Davutoğlu, in
every geopolitical stage, Turkey (or the Ottoman Empire) repositioned itself in the
international system in accordance with the new requirements of order. In that
context, the AKP period is in the fourth phase.52
To make sense of this revisionism in TFP, Davutoğlu’s explanation is strongly

based on geopolitical reasoning. According to him, whereas there have always
been regulatory agreements among the powerful states at the end of the each geopo-
litical phase, there was, however, no real agreement between states on what the new
order will be like after the Cold War. This provides an important opportunity for
Turkey, in terms of both its possible role in the making of a future order and its cri-
tique against the structure of any order. The “new geopolitics” and the post-Cold War
international order are problematic in the sense that they lack efficient governance
structures, global economic institutions, and all-inclusive cultural narratives.53 Davu-
toğlu explains this inefficiency with reference to the rapid geopolitical, economic, and
political evolution of the international system under the changing dynamics of inter-
connectedness among the states, economies, and cultures. More importantly, he
makes another geopolitical generalization to make sense of Turkey’s role in the
post-Cold War international order. According to Davutoğlu the world has witnessed
“three major earthquakes, all of which had enormous regional and global ramifica-
tions” in the post-Cold War era.54 The first one was the end of the Cold War in
1991, which he described as a “geopolitical earthquake.” During this period, the
map of Eurasia was redrawn, Cold War geopolitics came to an end, and new states
emerged out of new geo-identities and geo-economic parameters. Davutoğlu associ-
ates this transformation with the rise of freedom and democracy. The second earth-
quake was the 9/11 attacks in 2001 whereby the conceptual framework shifted
from freedom and democracy to security, and resulted in a quasi-global martial
law.55 A third major earthquake that has been more deeply felt was the economic
crisis that affected the whole international system, and which was followed by the
global financial crisis and then the Arab Spring in the Middle East, all of which
have led to an enormous political-economic upheaval.56 From Davutoğlu’s point
of view, Turkey came out strong following the first two earthquakes and is a key
actor that is deeply involved in the recent political-economic earthquake. The
three-earthquake analogy illustrates that Turkey, like other international actors, is
in the midst of framing a “new” global order.57 In fact, all three analytical frameworks
show that geopolitical transformation is one of the main determinant factors in
shaping world politics. This geopolitical narrative is also clear when Erdoğan
defines Turkey’s role in the international order with reference to Turkey’s exceptional
and unique geopolitical position. Without any doubt, for the Prime Minister, Turkey
is an “indispensable nation” in making possible a new world order.58 This signifies
that Turkey’s geopolitical position provides invaluable opportunities. To be sure,
in terms of Davutoğlu’s classification of world history, the geopolitical order in
which Turkey is a central country also has the potential to transform the world
order in a more inclusive and representative way.
Apart from its geographical position, Turkey’s role in global geopolitics and the
problem of making international order is another important issue. It should be men-
tioned here that there is a discursive unity among AKP leaders against the structure of
the current order and Turkey’s role in the organization of international order and the
role of institutions in world politics. They argue that this ongoing process provides
674 M. Yeşiltaş
Turkey with an opportunity to be a more active agent, giving it greater room for man-
euver in its neighboring regions and the world, all of which they expect will contrib-
ute to the establishment of a global order. In the realization of this new order, for
example, Davutoğlu believes that Turkey is capable of playing a key role by combin-
ing the necessary elements of power and using its comparative advantages in the form
of its “geostrategic location, booming economy, ability to understand different social
and cultural dynamics in a vast geography, and commitment to advance democracy
domestically and internationally.”59 In this geopolitical formulation of global geopo-
litical structure and its evolution toward a more plural system, Turkey is defined
ambitiously as an “order-building actor”; the concept underlines Turkey’s active
involvement in organizations such as the UN, NATO, EU, G-20, OIC, and Arab
League.60
AKP leaders primarily underline three interrelated sets of problems in world poli-
tics: those concerning the political order, those concerning the economic order, and,
most importantly, those concerning the cultural order. President Gül, for example,
calls the “current international system at the state of a three dimensional ‘imperfect
equilibrium.’” According to Gül, due to the absence of an international order in
the post-Cold War era, there has been a deficit in the political, economic, and
socio-humanitarian domains in the international system.61 Davutoğlu and Erdoğan
have voiced the same problem. Articulated as such, the first set of problems concerns
the future of global governance structured around the UN system. The main issue that
AKP leaders have is the reform of the UN.62 For Turkey, the UN-based international
order is problematic in terms of its representativeness, accountability, and effective-
ness. First, as a result of the tremendous geopolitical changes with respect to the dis-
tribution of military and economic power in the last two decades, the issue of
representativeness at the UN Security Council (UNSC) has become one of the
most crucial challenges for the system and its legitimacy in world politics. Turkey
sees the international system as increasingly characterized by a diffusion of power
to regional and emerging powers, and a diffusion of perspectives with many more
global voices demanding to be heard.63 However, the structure of UNSC in terms
of its geographic distribution is not representative of the world population. For
Erdoğan, the UN system is unable to either accommodate the current political con-
ditions or address the growing number of global challenges. As a result, not only
the political but also the economic interests of rising states are not equally represented
in the UNSC.
Second, apart from the important question of its “representativeness” and the
continuation of the unequal veto system, there is also a lack of transparency and
accountability in the UNSC decision-making process. For Turkey, the UNSC’s
decision-making procedures are not transparent, inclusive, or based on egalitarian
principles, and the morality of its “non-actions” is widely debated. In other words,
for Turkey the UNSC lacks robust channels of consent and accountability, resulting
in an increasing “global democratic deficit” in the international order. This is what is
dubbed “the mission to serve as an order-instituting player.”64 Davutoğlu has pre-
sented Turkey’s aims as follows:
Turkey wants to play a much bigger role in the United Nations. We, after fifty
years, first time became member of the UN Security Council in 2009 – 10. Now
we again applied for 2015 – 16. Why? Because if you take the agenda of the
United Nations, if you have ten agenda of United Nations Security Council
at least eight or nine of them are directly related to Turkey and Turkey can con-
tribute this way or the other way. This was not the image ten years ago.65
To put simply, the UN is one of the most important arenas for increasing Turkey’s
role in the new international order. Turkish leaders advocate a more inclusive and
representative world governance that is based on a multicultural, multidimensional,
and heterogeneous but harmonized order.66 Davutoğlu notes that the new global pol-
itical governance should be based on a new concept of security and freedom “for all
humanity not just for some people, for some countries, for some continents, for some
nations. And there should be an inclusive political structure.”67 In Davutoğlu’s terms,
the new global order should
(a) be legitimate, transparent, and democratic;

(b) be representative and fully open to participation;
(c) try to resolve dormant or active disputes to increase stability;
(d) be result-oriented in terms of eliminating disparities;
(e) be based on the precept of security and reform for all.68
The Geopolitics of the Civilizational Axis and Cultural Order: Turkey as “Central
Country”
As was mentioned in the previous section, the international order as articulated by
Davutoğlu is based on the idea of three sub-orders that constitute the broader web
of global order, namely, politics, economy, and culture. Culture here is directly
linked with the concept of civilization, which represents one of the most important
dimensions of Turkey’s new geopolitical vision in the post-2002 framing of
foreign policy.69 To be sure, Davutoğlu is one of the most important producers
and proponents of the civilizational discourse in the new geopolitical vision of
TFP, but Erdoğan himself is also tightly coupled with the concept of civilization.
For example, in his lengthy address at the 2012 party congress he used the concept
of civilization 14 times, while the term “conservative democracy,” which is the foun-
dational ideology of the AKP, was used only twice.70 The EU membership process as
a main geopolitical ambition of Turkey is also framed as the “alliance of civilizations”
and comes from the civilizational discourse within the AKP’s foreign policy dis-
course. Erdoğan strongly emphasizes in every meeting regarding the EU that “If
Turkey becomes a full member of the EU, the alliance of civilizations will be
achieved. If that does not happen, clashes between civilizations will continue and
also the EU will turn into a Christian club.”71 Undoubtedly, such a discourse
repeats the “clash” dichotomy among civilizations by explicitly reducing Turkey’s
676 M. Yeşiltaş
EU membership process to a civilizational encounter. The concept of alliance itself

helps to reiterate this dichotomy.72 Civilizational confrontation is also main determi-
nant factor for Davutoğlu in his Strategic Depth doctrine. He prefers to frame
Turkey’s EU project as a problem of “world history” in terms of the confrontation
of two different civilizations, rather than as a democratic or economic integration
project. Therefore, from the point of AKP leaders’ view, including President Gül,
Turkey’s Western involvement in many realms and issue areas may be termed as
“critical integration”73 and “Turkey-centric westernism.”74
This reveals one of the important ruptures within Turkey’s geopolitical culture in
terms of its civilizational orientation. Therefore, the post-2002 framing of foreign
policy is generally defined as civilizational geopolitics, in which culture, religion,
and civilization in a wider sense are the main determinants of world politics.75 Inter-
estingly, while the civilizational discourse was central in TFP in the early 1990s,
when overcoming Turkey’s identity crisis against Europe, by underlining Turkey’s
belonging to Europe not only geographically but also culturally, the same discursive
space was constructed as the solution for Turkey’s identity crisis by underlying
Turkey’s civilizational difference in the AKP period. However, contrary to the old
geopolitical imagination, this signifies that Turkey’s is not a bridge between the
West and Islam or a “frontier region” of the West, nor a torn country between differ-
ent modernization projects. Rather Turkey’s centrality in terms representation of
Islamic civilization is underlined.
This civilizational centrality takes civilization as one of the main units of analysis
in the international system in order to understand the long-term transformation of
world politics. Within this context, Turkey’s international position and the role that
Turkey plays in restructuring the global order are structured around two important
constructions. The first concerns inter-civilizational interaction as a way to construct
a more stable order against the one-dimensional Western-led cultural order. The
second one concerns intra-civilizational solidarity as the way to construct an intra-
civilizational “alternative paradigm.” In both geopolitical constructions, while the
party and Davutoğlu focus on the alliance with the West (NATO and EU), they
have simultaneously posed a critique against the Western-centered international
order.
First, there is a clear normative resistance against the idea of a unipolar world
order, often accompanied by the conviction that the international system is gradually,
but ineluctably, moving toward multipolarity in terms of the revival of new civiliza-
tional dynamics. Just like in Turkey’s proposal of multipolarity as an alternative pol-
itical order to overcome the crisis of global order, the new inter-civilizational
interaction or dynamism and revival of other civilizations, including Islam, India,
and China, within the transformation of the world cultural order are also taken into
account for the re-articulation of cultural order.76 For AKP leaders, in addition to
the institutional ineffectiveness, there is also the problem of cultural order within
the international system. This became visible in Davutoğlu’s criticism of the Euro-
centric cultural world order. He articulates this problem with reference to the
concept of the “civilizational axis” in his early writings and takes it as the starting
point in criticizing the static structure of the Western-centric cultural order. As he

says, “a civilizational axis begins to lose its central role whenever it becomes a
static environment which can no longer challenge against a new emerging axis.”77
Articulated as such, the cultural concept of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries,
which was based on Euro-centric civilizational approaches, cannot shape the future of
humanity. Any reflection on a principled world order based on inter-civilizational
interaction must acknowledge something like a fundamental, ethical, and political
crisis linked to Western civilization and its expansion, and recognize that interaction
and dialog among civilizations seem to enshrine the promise of an answer. From the
perspective of Turkey, to effectively face the new challenge at its roots, there is a need
to find an exit from the strict grid of choices imposed by the contemporary Western-
centric global order and move toward the construction of a multicultural and peaceful
world order.78
In this discourse, there is a strong emphasis on the multicultural nature of the cul-
tural order. The global culture is plural in which the complex bundle of norms, under-
standings, and practices that emanate from one context is transmitted to others,
transforming and being transformed in the process. This phenomenon is very much
evident in the cultural and civilizational revival of India, China, the Muslim world,
Africa and Latin America. According to Davutoğlu,
They are all core parts of human history and human culture. It is time to reject
Huntingtonian theories of inevitable civilizational conflict. This worldwide
civilizational revival should be seen as opening many doors to new forms of
interaction and communication for humankind.79
To be sure, the discourse of civilizational revival is used for the base of critique and
justifies the engagements of TFP in different regions and issue areas.
This brings a second dimension to the civilizational discourse in the AKP’s
framing of foreign policy and represents a practical rupture from the old geopolitical
imagination. The discourse of a civilizational axis is structured around the new geo-
political imagination in the Islamic world by bringing the idea of “intra-civilizational
solidarity”80 into the foreign policy strategies of Turkey in order for the country to
become an alternative center. However, while the civilizational discourse opposes
the centrality and exceptionality of Western civilization in the world order, at the
same time it claims that Islam as the unique and exceptional civilizational core has
the potential to form an alternative for the new world order. Therefore, the civiliza-
tional discourse emanating from the Islamic world view vis-à-vis the world order
makes the normative values of Islam the transformative instrument within the
current international order. Davutoğlu points out that Islam
constitutes a systematic and coherent ideology, just like liberalism and com-
munism, with its own code of morality and doctrine of political and social
justice. The appeal of Islam is potentially universal, reaching out to all men
as men, and not just to members of a particular ethnic or national group.81
678 M. Yeşiltaş
By taking into account intra-civilizational solidarity and the common conceptual

awareness of the Islamic world view against the Euro-centric civilizational world
order,82 Turkey’s international position is articulated with reference to the geographi-
cal imagination of the Islamic world. The main aim of this spatial imagination is to
create a civilizational balance against the unilateral tendencies of the world order.
Before publishing Strategic Depth, Davutoğlu writes in his 1994 book Civilizational
Transformation and the Muslim World that the new world order in the post-Cold war
era and the new agendas of the order will “encourage Muslims to revitalize traditional
concepts such as the Ummah universal brotherhood, Dar al-Islam as a world order
and the Caliphates as the political institutionalization of this world order.”83
Saying that, however, does not express a desire to restructure these institutions in
accordance with traditional forms. In this transnational form regarding the articula-
tion of the world order, TFP should be arranged in accordance with the new realities
that indicate the necessity of rethinking the meaning of the nation-state paradigm in
foreign policy formulation. In that context, the civilizational concept represents a
source of national and spiritual values, a symbol of belonging to the Middle East
and the Islamic world and a keyword of common humanitarian values.84 More impor-
tantly in the practical geopolitical level, the discourse of the intra-civilizational para-
digm as a new geopolitical ambition of Turkey indicates that the concept of the
nation-state in Turkish geopolitical culture has been transformed from a strong terri-
torial and fixed meaning to one that has a transnational meaning. Thus, the idea of the
deterritorialization of the nation-state is at the center of the civilizational discourse
and foreign policy, and the geopolitics of Turkey has been reconstructed within the
wider imagined geography. In this formulation, the ethno-secular nation-state
model is transcended and the cosmopolitan, just, and virtuous societal model that
is based on the idea of public is developing in the new geopolitical imagination.85
Articulated as such, the civilizational representation first redefines Turkey’s
national role for the domestic audience and displacing Kemalist state identity dis-
course in the domestic and international levels. Second this geopolitical represen-
tation restructures Turkey’s relationship with the Islamic world and most
importantly relocates Turkey as the spokesperson of the Islamic world in the inter-
national system86 by underlining the universal values of the Islamic discourse and
Turkey’s ambitions to promote these discourses in the West. This is particularly
visible when Turkey is defined as the “central country” in the international system
not only geographically but also as the leader of its “own civilization basin.” Accord-
ing to Davutoğlu, Turkey as a central country is not only a geographical fact; it is also
a cultural fact that cannot be separated from the historical accommodation of Turkey.
Like Russia, Germany, Iran, and Egypt, Turkey cannot be explained geographi-
cally or culturally by associating it with one single region. Turkey’s diverse
regional composition lends it the capability of maneuvering in several
regions simultaneously; in this sense, it controls an area of influence in its
immediate environs.87
Table 2. The New Geopolitical Vision in the AKP Period
Turkish
geopolitical Geographical Geopolitical
Culture center Model Mission Geopolitical code imagination Why power Civilization
The geopolitical Turkey as Afro- Ottoman past- Global Alliance: West and Central country To become Islam
vision of the Eurasian core post-nation- actor Muslim world regional leader
AKP state and global
Transformation of the Geopolitical Vision in TFP

player
Table 3. Two Geopolitical Visions in Turkey’s Geopolitical Culture
Dominant
expression Political imperative Leading proponents Conception of Turkey Methods
Defensive geopolitics Protectionism and Protecting Turkey’s The Kemalist political and Bridge, front, and nation- Securitization
exceptionalism security against bureaucratic elites and states-based conception
internal and external mainly CHP and other of geopolitical position
threats leftist parties of Turkey
Conservative and Assertive and Enlarged Turkey’s Erdoğan, Davutoğlu and Central, Great Turkey, Flexibility
Islamist exceptional influence by using its AKP leaders, conservative global actor and post-
geopolitics in the civilizational soft and Islamist political and nation-state articulation
AKP era power intellectual elites of geopolitics
679
680 M. Yeşiltaş
Given this, the central country discourse takes as its starting point a global and struc-
tural rearrangement, in other words “an absence of system,” in the post-Cold War
international system. In geopolitical, geo-cultural, and geo-economic terms, it sees
Turkey not as “an object of transmission” but as a country that can establish, con-
struct, and build a system with its ability to maneuver multilaterally.
As a result, just like in the global geopolitical structure that gives a civilizational
responsibility to restructuring the world order, the combination of Turkey’s history
and geography with its multiregional geo-identity brings with it a geopolitical respon-
sibility for creating regional order. Turkey in the new geopolitical formulation holds a
special position as its geography gives it a specific central country status that differs
from the other central countries in the international system.88 This is in a way depict-
ing Turkey as the geographic pivot of a vast geopolitical super-complex from the
Greater Middle East to the Balkans, from the Caucasus to the Eastern Mediterranean
and from the Black Sea to Central Asia. According to Davutoğlu, Turkey is located at
the center of this geopolitical super-complex encompassing cultural, religion, civili-
zational, and geographical entities. All in all, newly imagined visions of Turkey, ter-
ritory, and community are projected in an effort to stabilize and reterritorialize
identity and the international role of Turkey. This is a remarkably clear and
concise description of the new geopolitical vision that immediately links it with
the defensive-Kemalist geopolitical abandonment of nation-state goals and the
moves toward multifunctional mechanism of geopolitical representation of Turkey
in the wider geographical context (Table 2).
Conclusion
A geopolitical culture, as Tuathail defined, is what governmental elites and the cul-
tural intelligentsias of a polity generate to make sense of their geographical situation,
historical inheritance, and state aspiration within a world of states.89 This article has
tried to reveal how geopolitical representations produced in each geopolitical phase
have served to enable, restrict, and rationalize a different set of role choices for
Turkey in the international system. Additionally, the dominant discourse in each geo-
political representation was examined to understand how the position, the role, and
the mission ascribed to the geopolitical representations of Turkey with regard to
the nation-state, identity/civilization, and international order. Contrary to the defen-
sive geopolitical vision, the new geopolitical vision in the AKP period has a strong
sense of geopolitical continuity within the immediate region of Turkey. This continu-
ity indicates that, given historical, social, cultural, and geo-economic intersections,
the territory of Turkey is considered inseparable from its surrounding geographies.
This geopolitical reasoning, which gives a unique place to Turkey, negates the coun-
try’s defensive geopolitical legacy and republican diplomatic tradition and particu-
larly displaced the Kemalist geopolitical vision in TFP.
To be sure, there are many important critiques of Turkey’s new geopolitical vision.
The first critique points out that the new geopolitical vision, particularly the practical
and formal geopolitical discourse of Davutoğlu, represents an important continuity
with the previous geopolitical discourse on the issue of new geographical imagination
and the new civilizational awareness particularly put forward by İsmal Cem. This
critical literature has also a strong critique regarding the centrality of the geopolitical
view in traditional TFP, and points out that the AKP and Davutoğlu have the same
geopolitical mentality in terms of using geopolitical-laden language in shaping
foreign policy. For example, Bilgin defines this centrality as “geopolitics dogma”:
“a structure of well-established assumptions as to what geography tells one to do
and why this makes sense.”90 Articulated as such, AKP leaders, including Davutoğlu
himself, offer a best example of “geopolitical dogma,” which tends to use a heavy
geopolitical conceptualization of foreign policy. However, while some scholars
argue that Davutoğlu’s geopolitical discourse is hierarchical in the sense that
Turkey is seeking hegemony over countries in its immediate region, others claim
that the new discourse has a state-centric ontology that does not include societal
relations in foreign policy.91
Davutoğlu’s “central country” conceptualization is first and foremost heavily
shaped by an orthodox (classical) geopolitical problematique regarding the articula-
tion of geography as a potential material power in foreign policy preferences and as
the engine of history in international relations.92 Therefore, what Davutoğlu under-
stands about geopolitics is of extreme importance in order to examine the basic con-
cepts and world view in the new geopolitical vision. For example, he writes in 1998
that, “geopolitics had a dual role in international relations as a fundamental cause for
international crises and wars and as a decisive factor in the re-adjustment of the
international system.”93 He has the same idea about the centrality of the geopolitical
view in his book when he says that, “strategies should be rooted in geopolitical, geo-
cultural and geo-economic realities.”94 It can be said that he treats geopolitics as a
basic factor and as an indication of a power shift in TFP and global politics.
However, his examination of geography is not limited to the physical mapping of
a location but as a constant in Turkey’s position. In addition to the centrality of
geography as a material power, he focuses on the role of culture, religion,
history, and civilization as the source of non-material powers shaping Turkey’s geo-
political position.95 Therefore, just as in geography, history too makes a country a
central country. Both dimensions are important for Davutoğlu in rearticulating
Turkey’s geopolitical discourse, criticizing previous geographical imaginations
and relating Turkey to the international order through the central country position
as a geopolitical leverage. This is also valid for AKP leaders when they use geopo-
litics to frame TFP.
As this article has showed, the AKP’s post-2002 framing of foreign policy was
heavily influenced by geopolitical discourse particularly vis-à-vis Turkey’s perspec-
tive of international order, civilization, and its regional and international position.
Therefore, the new foreign policy in the AKP era is geopolitically deterministic
and reductionist regarding many issues. However, the new geopolitical vision is
different in terms of the reformulation of geography, state identity, nation-state,
and Turkey’s civilizational belonging. The new geopolitic is more assertive and rep-
resents an important rupture from the old geopolitical imagination. In other words, the
682 M. Yeşiltaş
AKP has a liberal-oriented geopolitical practice in shaping Turkey’s regional policy,

but at the same time it has a conservative and Islamist geopolitical vision in terms of
connecting history and culture to foreign policy. This can be understood by shedding
light on the concept of power and its articulation in each geopolitical vision. While
power (read, a strong state) is defined in terms of protecting the national and the ter-
ritorial integrity of Turkey, the new geopolitical vision of AKP leaders uses power to
become a regional leader and a global player. In other words, while protectionism is
the dominant political expression and the practical foreign policy strategy in the
defensive geopolitical vision, within the new geopolitical vision “Turkey as global
actor” appears as the dominant expression (Table 3). More importantly, securitization
was the main methodology through which Turkey’s geography as a source of inse-
curity in the defensive geopolitics phase was framed. Flexibility is now the main
methodology in the new geopolitical discourse of the AKP. The new geopolitical dis-
course is also different in the sense that it defines Turkey’s position in accordance
with the global geopolitical context and takes civilization as the main axis of
Turkey’s geopolitical position. While the global geopolitical context represents the
liberal aspect of the new geopolitical vision, the civilizational dimension offers a
more conservative strategic alternative for TFP.
Additionally, in the new geopolitical imagination, geopolitics is seen as an impor-
tant facilitating factor in becoming a global player that shows Turkey’s assertive and
ambitious foreign policy in the international order. This can be illustrated by looking
at the new definition of diplomacy in Turkey. Davutoğlu defines diplomacy as
follows: “There is no frontline for diplomacy but rather an arena comprising the
whole world.”96 According to this definition, the borders of Turkey’s geographical
imagination are not limited to one region or one country. Rather, they are ambitiously
constructed within the entire world. This is a remarkable transformation from a pro-
tectionist diplomatic tradition to one that perceives opportunities, friends, and poten-
tial allies all across the world. Last but not least, the new geopolitical vision has a
strong sense of geo-economic awareness for Turkey’s rising economic power and
neo-liberal economic order. However, the new geopolitical vision does not propose
any specific alternative economic model against the liberal economic order. To put
the matter bluntly, Turkey’s economic policies during the last decade have been
built in accordance with the neo-liberal economic policies and order. Therefore,
while Turkey discursively is very critical against the liberal international order and
demands structural change within this global economic system, it has economically
internalized and justifies itself in the different dimensions of neo-liberal order. To
be sure, this is a structural and systemic problem for all the rising powers in the inter-
national system.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank an anonymous reviewer, Ebru Thwaites, Tarık
Oğuzlu, and Emel Parlar Dal for their invaluable feedback on the manuscript.
Notes
1. Aras, Dağcı, and Çaman, “Turkey’s New Activism in Asia,” 27.
2. Aras and Karakaya Polat, “Turkey and the Middle East,” 477.
3. Tuathail, “(Dis)placing Geopolitics.”
4. Balcı, Türkiye’nin Dış Politikası, 285– 307.
5. Yesiltas, “Writing Turkey’s Geopolitics.”
6. Karaosmanoğlu, “The Evolution of the National Security Culture and the Military in Turkey,” 199–216.
7. Aras, Dağcı and Çaman, “Turkey’s New Activism in Asia,” 27.
8. Bozdağlıoğlu, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Identity.
9. Aslan, “Problematizing Modernity in Turkish Foreign Policy,” 41.
10. Criss and Karaosmanoglu cited in Bilgin, “Turkey’s Changing Security Discourses,” 183.
11. Ó Tuathail, “Postmodern Geopolitics? The Modern Geopolitical Imagination and Beyond,” 16–38.
12. Elekdağ, “2 1/2 War Strategy.”
13. Döşemeci, “How Turkey Became a Bridge Between ‘East,’ and ‘West’.”
14. Kubicek, “Turkey’s Place in the ‘New Europe’,” 48.
15. Bozdağlıoğlu, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Identity.
16. Yılmaz and Bilgin, “Constructing Turkey’s ‘Western’ Identity During the Cold War,” 39– 58.
17. İnan, “Turkey and NATO,” 72 cited ibid., 52.
18. Soysal, “The Influence of the Concept of Western Civilization on Turkish Foreign Policy,” 3–5.
19. Acar, “Anadolu’nun Jeopolitik Önemi ve Türkiye’ye Yönelik Tehditler,” 100.
20. Yeşiltaş, “Writing Turkey’s Geopolitics.”
21. Ataman, “Leadership Change.”
22. Bir, “Turkey’s Role in the New World Order.”
23. Özal, Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey, 304.
24. Bozdağlıoğlu, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Idenity, 103.
25. Harp Akademileri Komutanlığı, 1997.
26. Aktürk, “Counter Hegemonic Visions and Reconciliation Trough the Past,” 208; Erşen, “The Evol-
ution of ‘Eurasia’ as a Geopolitical Concept in Post-Cold War Turkey.”
27. Evered, “Regionalism in the Middle East and the Case of Turkey,” 469.
28. Yanık, “The Metamorphosis of Metaphors of Vision,” 538.
29. Bir, “Turkey’s Role in the New World Order,” 3.
30. Bilgin, “Only Strong State Can Survive in Turkey’s Geography”; Yanık, “Constructing Turkish
‘Exceptionalism’.”
31. Öniş, “Multiple Faces of the ‘New’ Turkish Foreign Policy,” 49.
32. Cem, Turkey in the New Century, 1.
33. Cem, Türkiye Avrupa Avrasya, 11–13.
35. Ibid., 21.
36. Cited in Erşen, “The Evolution of ‘Eurasia’ as a Geopolitical Concept in Post-Cold War Turkey,” 31.
38. Altunışık, “Worldviews and Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” 183.
39. Warning and Kardaş, “The Impact of Changing Islamic Identity on Turkey’s New Foreign Policy,”
125.
40. Yeşiltaş and Balcı, “A Dictionary of Turkish Foreign Policy in the AK Party Era.”
41. AK Party’s Party Programme. http://www.akparti.org.tr/english/akparti/parti-programme#bolum6.
42. “2023 Political Vision.” http://www.akparti.org.tr/english/akparti/2023-political-vision#bolum_.
43. Erdoğan, “Turkey.”
44. Aslan “Problematizing Modernity in Turkish Foreign Policy,” 44.
45. Kubicek, “The European Union, European Identity, and Political Cleavages in Turkey”; Duran, “JDP
and Foreign Policy as an Agent of Transformation.”
46. Jung, “The Domestic Context of New Activism in Turkish Foreign Policy,” 25.
684 M. Yeşiltaş
47. Aras and Polat, “Turkey and the Middle East,” 472.
48. Kalın, “Turkish Foreign Policy,” 11– 12.
50. Davutoğlu, “Principles of Turkish Foreign Policy and Regional Political Structure,” 3.
51. Davutoğlu, “Turkish Vision of Regional and Global Order,” 40.
52. Davutoğlu, Teoriden Pratiğe.
53. Davutoğlu, “Turkish Vision of Regional and Global Order,” 36–50.
54. Davutoğlu, Speech Delivered at the Informal High Level UN General Assembly Meeting on “The Role
of Member States in Mediation.”
55. Davutoğlu, “2012′ de Türk Dış Politikası ve Gelecek Ufku.”
56. Davutoğlu, “The Three Major Earthquakes in the International System and Turkey,” 2.
57. Davutoğlu, “Vision 2023.”
59. Davutoğlu, Interview.
60. Davutoğlu, “Turkish Foreign Policy and the EU in 2010,” 11– 17.
61. Gül, “International System, Europe and Turkey in the First Quarter of the 21st Century.”
62. Davutoğlu, “Global Governance,” 8.
63. Kalın, “Turkish Foreign Policy.”
64. Yeşiltaş and Balci, “A Dictionary of Turkish Foreign Policy in the AK Party Era.”
65. Davutoğlu, “Vision 2023.”
66. Gül, “International System, Europe and Turkey in the First Quarter of the 21st Century.”
67. Davutoğlu, “Turkish Vision of Regional and Global Order,” 40.
68. Davutoğlu, Interview.
69. Bilgin and Bilgiç, “Turkey’s “New” Foreign Policy Towards Eurasia”; Parlar Dal, “The Transform-
ation of Turkey’s Relations with the Middle East.”
70. Duran, “Understanding AK Party’s Identity Politics,” 93; Yeşiltaş, “Problematizing Civilizational and
Geopolitical Discourse of the Strategic Depth.”
71. Cited in Aslan, “Problematizing Modernity in Turkish Foreign Policy,” 46.
72. See for critique of Alliance of Civilizations Project Balcı, “The Alliance of Civilizations.”
73. Duran, “Understanding AK Party’s Identity Politics,” 95.
74. Oğuzlu, “Turkey and the West.”
75. Bilgin and Bilgic, “Turkey’s “New” Foreign Policy Towards Eurasia,” 181.
76. Davutoğlu, “Global Governance.”
77. Davutoğlu, Civilizational Transformation and the Muslim World, 36.
78. Davutoglu, “Turkish Vision of Regional and Global Order.”
79. Davutoğlu, “Global Governance,” 13.
80. Duran, “Understanding AK Party’s Identity Politics,” 91– 109.
81. Davutoğlu, “The Clash of Interests,” 8.
82. Özkan, “Religion, Historical Legacy and Weltanschauungs.”
83. Davutoğlu, Civilizational Transformation and the Muslim World, 113.
84. Duran, “Understanding AK Party’s Identity Politics,” 93.
85. Kalin, “Türkiye’nin Çoğulculuk Meselesi.”
86. Balcı and Miş, “Turkey’s Role in the ‘Alliance of Civilizations’.”
87. Davutoğlu, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision,” 78.
88. Ibid.
89. Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics.
90. Bilgin, “Turkey’s Geopolitics Dogma,” 152.
91. Yalvac, Strategic Depth or Hegemonic Depth? A Critical Realist Analysis of Turkey’s Position in the
World System.
92. Davutoğlu, “The Clash of Interest.”
93. Ibid., 3.
94. Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik, 58.
95. Ibid.
96. Radikal, “Davutoğlu.”
Notes on Contributor
Murat Yeşiltaş completed his PhD with his thesis entitled “Locating Turkey: Geopolitical Mentality and
The Military in Turkey” in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Marmara Uni-
versity in 2012. He worked as a visiting researcher at Lancaster University, UK, between 2008 and 2009
and a visiting scholar at the Virginia Tech State University, Graduate School of Government and Inter-
national Affairs, USA, between 2010 and 2011. He currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Depart-
ment of International Relations at Sakarya University, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate
courses on critical geopolitics, political geography, and comparative foreign policy analysis. He is assistant
editor to the quarterly journal Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs. He is currently working on the
following book projects: Locating Turkey: Geopolitical Mentality and Turkish Military (2013), Where Is
Turkey Located? Imagined Geographies, Competing Narratives (Edit) (2013), and Dissident Geopolitics:
Kurdish Geopolitical Imagination in Turkey (2014).
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