Exploring the Traits of a Grand Strategy for Turkey: Resilience, Protean Power, and Connectography.

• Author: Yukselen, Hasan
• Position: ARTICLE

Introduction

In recent years, Turkey has faced a series of challenges and threats that have emerged out of shifts in the international system and the resultant growing instabilities and risks that are flourishing in its neighborhood. This new cycle of challenges has compelled Turkey to seek a new outlook on these developments and events, which ought to be comprehensive, novel, and innovative in character. In parallel, debates have emerged that suggest Turkey is pressed to articulate a new grand strategy capable of coping with these challenges and risks, based on a subjective reading from its own uniquely situated perspective. The basic question that the debate revolves around consists of the following questions: Does Turkey need a grand strategy? What should Turkey's grand strategy be? While the former question arose out of skepticism toward the idea of middle powers possessing a grand strategy in the first place, the latter emerged from the perspective of proponents who think that Turkey should (and does) articulate and execute a grand strategy both to resolve the contradictions it faces and to increase its international standing. Irrespective of the question of whether Turkey needs a grand strategy, essentially, the growing debate provides invaluable contributions to the efforts of intellectual explorations on this topic.

This article suggests that Turkey has already long pursued a grand strategy, at least in the sense of a vision and an ultimate goal, from the onset of the Republican period, a grand strategy that aims to ensure and enhance the agency of the country 'to attain the level of civilized nations and outpace that level.' In this context, this article is not designed to address Turkey's need for a grand strategy or to suggest a clear-cut grand strategy that should be executed without any improvisation. Rather, it explores the possible traits and attributes that should be incorporated into a grand strategy for Turkey, given that the international system is undergoing a significant change and that Turkey's region is facing a transformation that is inherently prone to producing a new cycle of challenges and risks.

The first part of the study critically discusses the main features that stand out among the mainstream theorizing on strategy. The second part explores the impulses of change that negate this mainstream theorizing and provides an alternative approach to theorizing founded upon critical realism, which explores how unobservable social structures can implicate agents to recast their strategies. The third part narrows the discussion down into grand strategy for Turkey based on its contextuality and praxeology. The following section is dedicated to exploring the traits of grand strategy, which are identified as resilience, protean power, and connectography; and argues that Turkey can enhance its strategizing in an uncertain environment by incorporating those concepts. This section attempts to provide a snapshot of the practical applications of these concepts and how, in some instances, Turkey is already utilizing them.

Identifying the Features of Mainstream Theory on Strategy

The existing literature has widely focused on the grand strategies of the great powers. Indeed, as Murray argues, "grand strategy is a matter involving grand states and great states alone...no small states...possess the possibility of crafting a grand strategy." (1) This erstwhile normative position essentially states that only the great powers have the capability and capacity to conceive and execute a grand strategy. However, with the transformation of the unipolar international system into a multi-polarity, a growing literature has begun to emerge that argues that middle powers, as well as small states, may also devise a grand strategy, (2) irrespective of their constraints and the limited resources available to them to allocate in realizing their intended objectives.

To further elucidate the transformation of this outlook, this article will outline the features that stand out in the existing literature and highlight the lacking and misleading aspects of mainstream theorizing in order to facilitate endeavors to explore and ultimately pick the most salient traits that should be incorporated in strategizing.

The mainstream approaches to grand strategy share a number of features. First and foremost is the underlying philosophy of science that leads and frames, if not, narrows and dominates the studies on the concept. Positivist understanding, because of its focus on observables, inevitably reduces the study of the concept to the available means that can be employed to the objectives of the ends. (3) Beyond reductionism, this approach inherently introduces the reification of ends. This preoccupation with the means that inadvertently reifies and hence, neglects the ends of strategy from a wider perspective, leaves realism as the most viable theoretical approach and introduces neighboring concepts such as geopolitics and power to enhance the viability and credibility of the studies.

As stated above, the conception and study of the material aspect of strategy inevitably brings about the reification of ends in favor of means. In such a situation, when faced with a reductionist approach, what remains at hand to be studied meaningfully, or as claimed by the positivists, scientifically, is the available means at disposal that can be mobilized for the realization of the strategic ends. However, as the world lastly observed in Afghanistan where the Taliban defined its strategy through the adage, 'you have the watches but we have the time,' thus countering the material with the ideational approach, proved the effectiveness of the latter in actualizing strategic ends.

Another contradiction emerges out of this theoretical stance, which can be summarized as the study of grand strategy predicated on realist-oriented assumptions, even though the actors, hereafter the agents, practice their grand strategies within an international order that is characterized by liberalism. In other words, the contradiction emerges out of the power-oriented study of the concept in a choice-oriented international order. Put differently, agents presume that they act ultimately to reach a liberal order with realist means. Irrespective of the continuing and irreconcilable debate, geopolitics still play a determining and predominant role in strategizing.

Although the concept of strategy is a realist-leaning term, geopolitics constitutes the unspoken, driving mindset behind the strategic moves of agents. Geopolitics was blamed for having produced two world wars and, as a remedy, the concept of strategy was introduced to mitigate the negative connotations ascribed to the concept of geopolitics. Therefore, strategy as a concept was devised and began to be studied as a reaction to two world wars. However, mostly due to its positivist orientation, the concept could not make a significant breakthrough with the traditional approaches until recent developments in international relations occurred that compelled practitioners and academics to adopt a revised approach.

The third feature that stands out is the great-power-oriented study of the concept of strategy. This feature can be seen as an outcome of the positivist and means-oriented approach to the study, as the concept carried a sense that only the great powers have the necessary and available means to define and execute a grand strategy. However, the concept was founded upon a post-world wars rationale that left a number of powers capable of exercising such strategy. Put differently, bipolar and unipolar theorization inevitably fell behind in acknowledging and thus addressing the realities of the multipolar world. As Aron points out, "political ends are diverse, but cannot be reduced to the will for power." (4)

Exploring the Changes that Negate the Mainstream Analysis

While the abovementioned features retained an enduring persistence in the studies, the phenomenon they claimed to address and its study experienced profound changes. One of the most visible changes is the emergence of the multipolar world. This systemic shift has introduced new dynamics to the study of the concept, which have rendered the traditional ways of study ill-equipped to acknowledge and correspond to these changes. The situation resembles the analogy of the victor's curse, which suggests that the solutions of the past may be irrelevant or lag behind in terms of what may be necessary to resolve the new challenges as the challenger modifies its understanding. In other words, while new actors introduce novel solutions, the victors presume the old solutions will be as effective as they were in the past. However, outdated solutions cannot resolve contemporary and future problems. This inevitable discrepancy between challenges and solutions is inadvertently prone to producing a different world order that requires novel responses to novel problems.

One of the most significant outcomes of this systemic shift is the proliferation of state and non-state actors, each of whom has its own distinctive ends and means available to resolve the challenges they face. In the international system, the proliferation of actors makes the system more susceptible to producing asymmetric, unprecedented, and diverse challenges that cannot be detected beforehand or tackled well responsively. The proliferation of actors exponentially increases the number of ends, which are extremely difficult to reconcile and commensurate, which indeed is the essential driver of the emerging challenges.

The means allocated to attain the ends have proliferated as well, which has led to the addition of new terms and...