Turkey and the Middle East and North Africa under the AKP: A Three Level Analysis of Foreign Policy Change.

• Author: Altunisik, Meliha Benli

Introduction: A Model of Explaining Foreign Policy Change

The Justice and Development Party (Adalet and Kalkinma Partisi, AKP), has led Turkey since late 2002. Over the two decades that followed the AKP has made significant foreign policy changes. We argue that most changes go beyond mere foreign policy adjustments or tooling. Rather, they involve important transformations in goals and orientation. (1) The literature on foreign policy change (FPC) argues that wholesale change in a state's foreign policy is rare (2) and even rarer in states ruled by the same party. (3) Hence, the frequency and the extent of the AKP's foreign policy changes is quite remarkable.

The study of FPC has proliferated since the end of the Cold War, yet without the emergence of a general theoretical framework. (4) Nonetheless, there is a growing consensus in the field that the study of FPC requires attention to three levels of analysis: the international level, the domestic level and the level of individual decision makers. Hermann's pioneering studies on FPC essentially used this framework by mainly focusing on the domestic and individual levels but also referring to external environment as a stimulus for FPC. (5) Gustavsson (6) then designed a model for explaining FPC that focused on fundamental structural conditions, strategies of political leaders and the presence of a crisis. Problematically there are evident shifts in foreign policy occurring without a crisis. A recent study by Haar and Pierce utilized the Advocacy Coalition Framework to explain FPC. (7) Their framework goes beyond a state's leadership and includes institutional actors such as bureaucracies at the domestic level. There is less discussion of the international level variables. Scholars mainly identify systemic conditions as well as specific policies of external powers as affecting FPC by leading states to reconceptualize security threats (8) or systemically allowing more policy flexibility. (9) In short, the international environment presents challenges and opportunities that may lead to FPC.

This article will apply the three levels of analysis to explain the changes in AKP foreign policy towards the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in four periods from 2002 through 2022. In doing so, it identifies the plausible drivers of change in each phase. (10) As to the international level we consider both systemic and actor-based transformations at the global and regional level. Inspired by Haar and Pierce's framework, the study identifies three variables at the domestic level to explain the AKP's foreign policy changes: institutions, domestic coalitions, and leadership and ideology.

This approach contributes to the FPC literature in two ways. First, it demonstrates the importance of global systemic changes and equally if not more important regional systemic changes in explaining FPC especially for a middle power such as Turkey. (11) Secondly, this model shows that there is no a priori hierarchy between the three levels of analysis. In other words, it does not give priority to the international systemic level as does Neoclassical Realism. Nor does it give priority to domestic level variables that determine policy outcomes as does traditional Foreign Policy Analysis. Rather this model stresses the importance of the mutual interaction of the level of analysis variables in bringing about FPC. The interaction between the level of analysis involves a two-way effect, rather than a one-way causal effect. The action that initiates the FPC may occur at the leadership, state, regional or the global level. The important point is that none of these level of analysis variables by themselves necessarily results in foreign policy change. More importantly, their interaction affects the nature of the change.

Furthermore, this framework argues for analytical eclecticism. It calls for bridging material and ideational factors in explaining FPC. In the AKP case, material factors such as the structure of the international/regional system as well as Turkey's military and economic capabilities play a role in its foreign policy changes. Just as importantly, identity politics and ideology have affected the perceptions of the AKP leadership of the developments in Turkey's external environment as well as how they approach the linkages between foreign and domestic politics. The interactions between the three levels of analysis as well as the interrelations of material and ideational factors will be explored in each of the four AKP periods of FPC in Turkey. In each period we identify continuities of policies adopted in the prior period as well as the wellsprings of changes that occur in the following period. The demarcations of the start and end times of each period should be viewed as heuristic rather than definitive.

Period I: Activism in the East and West (2002-2010)

The AKP was established in August 2001 by the younger generation of the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi), the party of Turkey's Islamist movement, the National Outlook (Milli Gorus). The AKP came to power in November 2002 in the first election in which it participated, branding itself as a "conservative democrat" party representing the center right. It also presented itself as an "outsider anti-system party." As such, the AKP government emphasized the "newness" of its policies, placing its foreign policies on par with its novel economic and social policies. For the AKP its foreign policy became more than Turkey's engagement with the outside, but also part of its domestic politics and its quest for restructuring Turkey's politics and identity. (12)

Despite the claim of newness, some of the AKP's foreign policies continued Turkey's traditional practices, such as engaging in the European Union (EU) process and emphasizing Turkey's relations with NATO allies. In this first period, the AKP government's main foreign policy goal was "Europeanisation." (13) The previous coalition government had already introduced some political and legislative reforms necessary for EU membership. These included abolishing the death penalty, reducing police powers for detention, and implementing a new civil code particularly aimed at improving freedom of association and assembly. As a result, at the Helsinki Summit in 1999 the EU started the accession process with Turkey. The AKP government then quickly passed the necessary laws including limiting the strength of the military in the National Security Council and introducing political and social reforms such as increasing Kurdish language rights. Turkey's accession negotiations with the EU began in 2005.

The AKP also sought to repair ties with the United States (US) that had been damaged by Turkey's refusal to support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The party chose to blame "the old Turkey", mainly the military for this demarche, even though some influential AKP members and parliamentarians had been responsible for the parliament's failure to approve the bill supporting the invasion. The AKP government succeeded in becoming an active participant in the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies by sending non-combat troops to Afghanistan and declaring support for the US policy of "forward strategy of freedom" in the Middle East that aimed at encouraging democratization as a path towards peace in the region. (14) Distinguishing itself from the "old Turkey" allowed the AKP to proclaim an apparent "change" in its foreign policy and liberation from the "tutelage of the establishment." (15) It, thereby, presented itself as "new" to internal and external audiences.

However, towards the end of this period in some areas AKP foreign policy did begin to diverge from previous Turkish foreign policy. Especially after 2007, that is starting from its second government, the AKP began to focus more on its relations with the MENA region and its attempts to harmonize its regional activism with its relations with the West ended. In the MENA region there were two major changes. The first was a general shift towards the region, and the second was a shift in Turkey's policy towards the newly-established Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The former shift became evident with the AKP's adoption of a "new" policy of "zero problems with neighbors." In conformity with this policy, the AKP exerted great efforts to convert Turkey's relations with Syria from hostility over water, territorial disagreements and the harboring of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) into one of increased trade, visa free travel, military cooperation, and friendship. As a result, Turkey's relations with Syria went beyond normalization and reached a level of "strategic partnership." (16) This was underscored by Bashar al-Assad's first Syrian Presidential visit to Turkey in January 2004, followed up by the formation of a "High Level Strategic Cooperation Council." (17) By 2009 there were meetings of their most important cabinet ministers. Turkish-Syrian trade increased from $1 billion in 2007 to over $4 billion in 2009. (18) Syria also cooperated in returning PKK terrorists to Turkey, (19) and amazingly the two leaders and their wives vacationed together. Assad referred to Turkey as Syria's best friend and Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Syrians his brothers. (20)

Similar shifts in the AKP's new MENA policies were evident in Saudi King Abdullah's first royal visit to Turkey in 40 years and referred to it as "a turning point in improving relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia." (21) Two years later Turkey signed a Memorandum of Understanding making it the first Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) strategic partner outside the Gulf. (22) Turkey also took on a role as mediator for peace between Syria and Israel, (23) between Hamas and Fatah, (24) and between Iran and the international community. (25) In August 2010 Turkey announced the formation of a "Quadripartite High Level Cooperation Council" with Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. The Council which sought to...