Turkey's Strategic Conduct under the Changing International System.

• Author: Yesiltas, Murat
• Position: ARTICLE

Introduction

"We will not repeat the mistakes made after the Second World War and the Cold War-this time we will seize the opportunity that knocks on our country's door." (1)

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The global system has undergone a significant transformation that is pushing Turkey to relocate its international position. It is required to have a comprehensive strategic vision to reposition Turkey in an emerging global order that is still undergoing significant change, strengthen the means to implement this vision, and produce an extensive roadmap concerning how this vision will be accomplished. In this article, we focus on how this strategic vision should take shape in the realm of foreign policy. The emerging multipolar international order both poses risks and presents opportunities, which we describe in the latter parts of this article. Turkey needs to have a grand strategy to eliminate those risks and seize the opportunities.

To build a comprehensive grand strategy, Turkey primarily needs to have a holistic view vis-a-vis the changing dynamics of the current international system. Even though global politics is multipartite, the international order of the future should be tackled with an integral approach. Turkey's grand strategy should be designed on national, regional, and global levels. If Turkey creates a grand strategy that only focuses on national matters, the challenges it faces could deepen. An approach that focuses only on regional issues and ignores global ones is not valid either. What needs to be done, from the perspective of decision-makers, is to evaluate what Turkey's strategic orientation should be, who its potential allies and rivals, or adversaries are; where and how challenges may arise and how Turkey can cope with those challenges. Developing a grand strategy is the best way to strategically relocate Turkey under the changing international system. This strategy should take into consideration the distinctive features of the transitional period but should also facilitate adjusting to the structure of the global order that will emerge after the transitional period; it also should be comprehensive enough to actively implement foreign and security policies in 'strategic regions' around Turkey to ensure that the country can reach its goals. We propose to create a new period of preparation by understanding the changes that the global system is going through in all its actuality and to protect Turkey's long-term interests and achieve a solid position for the country in the new system by adapting to the new system in a strong, stable, and active manner. This strong position should be militarily deterrent and effective, and it should be of a scale that can hinder potential threats against Turkey from materializing by mounting a guard against developments in its near abroad.

In the first part of this paper, we explore the distinctive features of the current, dynamic period of fundamental change taking place in the international system. In the second part, the changes and transformations in Turkey's strategic environment are discussed with a focus on national, regional, and global levels. In the third part, we propose a framework for Turkey's grand strategy. In the last part, we analyze Turkey's foreign policy by particularly taking into consideration the 'strategic belt/regions' where Turkey operationalizes its strategic priorities following our proposed framework of grand strategy.

The International System: A New Interregnum?

The debates concerning the conceptualization of the structure of the current international system are diverse. While some of the arguments underline the bipolar nature of the international order, taking into consideration the power competition between the U.S. and China, (2) others highlight the multipolar character of the international system by focusing on the emerging powers' impact on regional and international politics. Most of the arguments lay out the changing dynamics of the distribution of power among states while ignoring the complex nature of the global system that has been taking place since the end of the Cold War.

The world has become more tense in ways that reflect not just structural transformation but the emergence of a more competitive attitude. It is a fact that the unipolar system that emerged after the Cold War is over and has given way to an international system characterized by multilayered and diversified polarity. Multilayered polarity, or what we call 'multilayered multipolarity,' is a type of international structure that is politically diverse but institutionally interlinked. This situation signals that the American-centric liberal international system is facing a radical challenge. Nonetheless, the end of the unipolar system has not yet brought about another easily identifiable system, the lack of which has caused the emergence of new global and regional issues that make the current international arena more complex than ever before. It is extremely important to understand the nature of the current complexities at the global level that reflects on a new interregnum.

Lack of Global Leadership

Lack of global leadership is among the characteristic features of the complex nature of the current, inchoate international system. The global leadership problem arises on three different levels, the first being the level of heads of state and government. The prominent differences that have emerged between the positions and priorities of political leaders, including leaders of superpowers, over issues such as the economy, security, climate change, international terrorism, discrimination, and individual armament, push leaders away from multilateralism and toward introversion. These differences are deepening regional clashes and delaying solutions to crises.

At the second level, the lack of global leadership problem persists in global governance and international organizations. The United Nations (UN), which is a central fixture regarding global governance, has become a weak organization when it comes to actively taking a role, as a whole, in international crises. (3) Instead of taking the initiative in managing crises, the UN has become dysfunctional or acts as a tool of geopolitical competition between great powers. Nor is this governance issue limited to the UN; other global and regional organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) fail to play a proactive role in the management of crises in their fields.

The third dimension of the global leadership problem is the lack of leadership on the axis of states. The U.S., far from actively solving global problems, has turned into an actor that causes problems and has lost its previously assumed position of 'neutrality' in many international issues. The problem that the global leadership faces at the state level is not limited to the U.S. A similar criticism applies to the European Union (EU), China, Russia, and other great powers. (4) The EU has turned into a group of countries that take decisions on a national scale instead of deciding and acting as a union on many issues. China, an actor with global leadership potential, at least in terms of its vast population and healthy economic indicators, has extensive problems in global leadership, the first being that it appears to have no strong will or purpose in this direction. (5) With that said, it cannot be claimed that China has an effective capacity for global leadership.

Multilayered Multipolarity

The second distinguishing feature of the nascent international system is its multilayered polarity. One of the first elements of this fragmented and relatively fragile multipolar structure is the new form of power distribution, which differs in some respects from previous power distribution models. (6) The classical multi-polar structure that prevailed in the 19th century served to maintain a perfect balance among the five players in the system. (7) Likewise, bipolarity, which was the dominant model during the Cold War, had divisive features to reflect the balance of power between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. (8) While the parties of the multipolar balance were positioned near the actors that would ensure the balance, alliance relations had an extremely loose appearance. In the bipolar system, as a necessity, multiple actors lined up on the side of the balancing actors. (9) In such a system, alliance relations were more rigid, and transitivity was extremely rare. In the unipolar structure of the post-Cold War period, while the system had a hierarchical appearance in terms of relative power distribution, the actors were generally able to gain a foothold in the context of their direct or indirect relationship with the superpower. (10)

The unipolar system, in which counterbalancing was costly, did not last long, and this process, which shaped the largely U.S.-led post-Cold War world order, began to erode with the 21st century. However, the security and power rivalries between the poles, which have taken on separate power forms along the global economic and military power axes of the newly shaped 21st century, present an even more fragmented appearance. Despite the elements of inequality between the parties, the absolute and relative power capacities of many actors cause the new era to appear as a hybrid and multilayered polarity. Therefore, the deadlocks and crises in the current order are being reshaped under a new form in the emerging multilayered, multipolar international system. (11)

From this point of view, the emerging polarity differs in some respects from the multipolarity that preceded it. First, the previous multi-polarity was a world of empires and the colonies that fed them, in which the main actors were the great powers. Second, unlike the 19th century, the economy has become one of the distinguishing features of the present international order and is much more global in scope and interconnected in content. Global trade and finance, the...