Turkey Facing East: Islam, Modernity and Foreign Policy.

• Author: Sengupta, Anita
• Position: Book review

Turkey Facing East

Islam, Modernity and Foreign Policy

By Ayla Gol

Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013, 272 pages, ISBN 9780719090752.

The relationship between Islam and foreign policy has become the subject of a number of volumes in recent years as scholars seek to understand the role that political Islam plays in determining foreign policy.

This is more often than not accompanied by the assumption that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with modernity. Turkey, with its complex history of modernity and the transition from its Ottoman past, remains an interesting case for the study of the causal relationship between the construction of a modern nation state, secular identity and nationalized foreign policy. The rediscovery of Turkey's regional interests and affinities from the 'Balkans to Western China' --areas that had been largely absent from Turkish foreign policy debates since the foundation of the Republic--have emphasized the significance of the state's internal evolution in determining its external policy. In her book, Turkey Facing East: Islam, Modernity and Foreign Policy, Ayla Gol critically analyzes Turkey's engagement with modernity in the course of its transformation from the Ottoman structure into a modern nation state in order to understand Turkey's foreign policy towards its eastern neighbours between 1918 and 1921. This is a clear and important departure from studies that tend to examine this transition period in terms of Turkey's engagement with the West.

The author argues that 1918 to 1921 is significant not just in terms of the transition of the imperial state to a modern nation, but also due to the rapprochement between Ankara and Moscow, which altered the animosity between the Ottoman and Russian empires and their rivalry over the South Caucasus. In the first three theoretical chapters, an interdisciplinary approach is used to a better understand the relationship between the state's transformation and foreign policy making in the course of Turkey's engagement with European modernity. Rather than focus on domestic politics or leadership, the chapters identify five important dimensions of foreign policy, including elements of continuity and change, the impact of structures on decisionmaking, the interrelation between domestic politics and foreign policy, the role of a charismatic leader and the impact of foreign policy on the construction of national identity. The causal link between...