Physically bridging Europe and Asia, Turkey is a secular country that has pursued a Western-oriented foreign policy.[2] To this end, Turkey uses its global diplomatic network—the fourth most extensive—of 246 diplomatic and consular missions.[3][4]
Historically, the Foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire and later Turkey balanced regional and global powers off against one another, forming alliances that best protected the interests of the incumbent regime.[12] The Soviet Union played a major role in supplying weapons to and financing Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's faction during the Turkish War of Independence but Turkey's followed a course of relative international isolation during the period of Atatürk's Reforms in 1920s and 1930s. International conferences gave Turkey full control of the strategic straits linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, through the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and the Montreux Convention of 1936.[13]
In the late 1930s Nazi Germany made a major effort to promote anti-Soviet propaganda in Turkey and exerted economic pressure. Britain and France, eager to outmaneuver Germany, negotiated a tripartite treaty in 1939. They gave Turkey a line of credit to purchase war materials from the West and a loan to facilitate the purchase of commodities.[14] Afraid of threats from Germany and Russia, Turkey maintained neutrality.[15] It sold chrome—an important war material—to both sides. It was clear by 1944 that Germany would be defeated and the chrome sales to Germany stopped.[16][17][18]
The independence of the Turkic states of the Soviet Union in 1991, with which Turkey shares a common cultural, historic and linguistic heritage, allowed Turkey to extend its economic and political relations deep into Central Asia.[19] The International Organization of Turkic Culture (TURKSOY) was established in 1993, and the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) was established in 2009. The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, a multi-billion-dollar oil and natural gas pipeline that extends from Baku in Azerbaijan to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey, forms part of Turkey's foreign policy strategy to become an energy conduit from the Caspian Sea basin to Europe. Turkey sealed its land border with Armenia in a gesture of support to Azerbaijan (a Turkic state in the Caucasus region) during the First (1993) and Second (2020) Nagorno-Karabakh Wars, and it remains closed.[20] Armenia and Turkey started diplomatic talks in order to normalize the relationship between the two countries. The discussions include opening the closed borders and starting trade. Turkey and Armenia have also restarted commercial flights between the two countries.[21]
Under the AKP government (2003–), Turkey's economy has grown rapidly and the country's influence has grown in the Middle East based on a strategic depth doctrine, also called Neo-Ottomanism.[22][23] Debate on Turkey's foreign relations is controversial both within Turkey itself and outside the country. In the West, there is a divide between those who are worried about Turkey's perceived movement away from the West toward a less democratic, more Islamic or more pro-Russian and pro-Chinese[24] orientation and those who do not see Turkey's changing political structure, growing regional power and relations with Russia as a threat.[25]
Bilateral relations
Despite being one of the first countries to recognize Armenia's independence, Turkey has never established formal diplomatic relations with Armenia. Turkey formerly had diplomatic relations with Cyprus, Syria and Taiwan.
In November 2023, Turkey has blocked the local assets of twenty organizations and sixty-two individuals based in Australia, Japan, and numerous European countries because of suspected ties to the Kurdish militant group PKK.[26]
There has been a revival in Turkey's relation with Africa after 1998 and civil society is the leading factor in this process.[27] Initially this revival came as a passive attempt, but after 2005 it became an offensive interest in developing relations with the continent. The recent Turkey–Africa Cooperation Summit in 2008 marks the latest stage in Turkey's keen interest in developing relations with Africa, and should be seen as a turning point.[28] Turkey since its involvement in Somalia in 2011, is eager to be considered as a political actor in the continent.[29][30]
Since 2008, Turkey has prioritized friendly relations with Africa partly to build friendly and conflict–free relations, which was not available in the hostile atmosphere in its neighborhood.[54] Capitalizing on a strong sentiment of fellowship among Turkish people towards Africans, economic and diplomatic relations with Africa flourished: Foreign trade between sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey increased from US$581 million[55] in 1998 to US$5.08[56] billion in 2015.
Dating back to 1800, Turkey's relations with sub-Saharan Africa flourished from the 1860s—when the Ottoman Empire started sending trained imams to the region—until 1885 when other European colonial powers blocked Ottoman influence.[57] Relations were restored in the 1950s,[58] and gained momentum when Emperor Haile Selassie visited Turkey in March 1967 and December 1969.[59]
Turkey has also dramatically increased financial aid to the region,[55] providing a total of US$6.38 billion to the region just between 2006 and 2011[61] including the 2011 donation of US$200 million to fight the famine in East Africa.[60]
Following its NATO membership in 1952 and subsequent hosting of the United States Air Force in Incirlik Air Base, Turkey became the bulwark of NATO's southeastern flank, the directly bordering Warsaw Pact countries. Turkey participated with the United States during the Korean War of the early 1950s and the Gulf War of 1990.
Azerbaijan-Turkey relations have been described as "one nation with two states" due to a common culture and the mutual intelligibility of Turkish and Azerbaijani.
Turkey became the first state to recognize the Republic of Azerbaijan in November 1991.[222]
Trade volume between the two countries was 6.53 billion USD in 2018 (Turkish exports/imports: 0.88/5.64 billion USD).[299]
212,970 South Korean tourists visited Turkey in 2019.[299]
Free Trade Agreement between the two countries entered into force on 1 May 2013 and was updated on 1 August 2018 to include an Investment Agreement.[299]
Turkey ranks third in number of martyrs among the 16 countries that participated in the Korean War. United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan honors 462 of the 966 Turkish soldiers who died during the war.
Both countries established diplomatic relations on 16 January 1928 when has been accredited the first Iraqi ambassador to Turkey Salih Nishat. The first Turkish ambassador, Lütfi Tokay, also presented his letters of credence in Baghdad on 21 December 1929.[319]
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Republic of Turkey again served as a safe haven for the European Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust.[322] A Turkish diplomat, Selahattin Ulkumen, is honoured as one of the Righteous Among The Nations for his work in rescuing Jews from Nazi officials on the island of Rhodes, by issuing them Turkish visas and later arranging for their transport to Turkish territory. Another diplomat, Necdet Kent, also rescued Jews from Nazi authorities, for which he was awarded a special medal by the government of the State of Israel.
Turkey was the first country with a Muslim majority to formally recognize the State of Israel.
Trade volume between the two countries was 35.9 billion USD in 2018 (Turkish exports/imports: 16.6/19.3 billion USD).[401]
3 million people of Turkish origin reside in Germany.[387]
5,027,472 German tourists visited Turkey in 2019.[401]
Relations with Turkey significantly deteriorated after the 2016–17 Turkish purges and Turkey's turn to authoritarianism including the arrest of journalists such as Die Welt's Deniz Yücel.
Turkey and Greece have clashed for decades over the status of Aegean islands and over the extent of territorial waters and airspace. In February 1999, the discovery that Greek authorities had been aiding and abetting Abdullah Öcalan, Turkey's most wanted criminal, caused a diplomatic crisis. When Abdullah Öcalan was captured by Turkish authorities, he was found holding Greek and Cypriot passports and he later revealed that he had been hiding in the Greek Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Relations have since improved, particularly following the earthquakes that struck both countries in 1999.
Bilateral relations between Turkey and Iceland are being coordinated by the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Oslo and the Embassy of Iceland in Copenhagen.[415]
Turkey entered NATO in 1952 and serves as the organization's vital eastern anchor, controlling the Turkish Straits which lead from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and sharing a border with Syria, Iraq, and Iran. A NATO headquarters is located in İzmir, and the United States has maintained air forces at the Incirlik Air Base in the province of Adana.[citation needed]
Turkey is also a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1995. It has signed free trade agreements with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), Israel, and many other countries. In 1992, Turkey and 10 other regional nations formed the BSEC to expand regional trade and economic cooperation. In 2017, ASEAN-Turkey Sectoral Dialogue Partnership[498] was recognized by the 50th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Manila, Philippines.[499]
^ abRobins, Philip. Turkey and the Middle East. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs and New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1991.
^Migdalovitz, Carol. "Turkey: Ally in a Troubled Region." Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, 93-835F. Washington: 14 September 1993.
^Karasapan, Omer. "Turkey and US Strategy in the Age of Glasnost," Middle East Report, No. 160, September–October 1989, pp. 4–10, 22.
^Aybet, Gülnur. Turkey's Foreign Policy and Its Implications for the West: A Turkish Perspective. London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, 1994.
^Fuller, Graham E., Ian O. Lesser, Paul B. Henze, and J.F. Brown. Turkey's New Geopolitics: From the Balkans to Western China. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993.
^United States. Department of Defense. Terrorist Group Profiles. Washington: GPO, 1988.
^United States. Department of State. Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1992. Washington: 1993.
^United States. Department of State. Patterns of Global Terrorism 1993. Washington: 1994.
^William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy Since 1774 (Routledge, 2012).
^J.M. Hakov, "The Great States, Turkey and Issue Concerning the New Regime of the Straits during the First Years of World War Two." Archiv Orientální 54 (1986): 47–60.
^Yücel Güçlü, "Turco-British relations on the eve of the Second World War." Middle Eastern Studies 39.4 (2003): 159–205.
^Onur Isci, "The Massigli Affair and its Context: Turkish Foreign Policy after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact." Journal of Contemporary History (2019): DOI: 10.1177/0022009419833443. onlineArchived 6 February 2022 at the Wayback Machine
^Gül İnanç, "The politics of 'active neutrality' on the eve of a new world order: The case of Turkish chrome sales during the Second World War." Middle Eastern Studies 42.6 (2006): 907–915.
^S. Deringil, Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An 'Active' Neutrality (Cambridge 1989).
^N. Tamkin, Britain, Turkey and the Soviet Union, 1940–1945 (London 2009).
^Murinson, Alexander (2009). Turkey's Entente with Israel and Azerbaijan: State Identity and Security in the Middle East and Caucasus (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics). Routledge. p. 119. ISBN978-0-415-77892-3.
^Kubilay Yado Arin: The AKP's Foreign Policy, Turkey's Reorientation from the West to the East? Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, Berlin 2013. ISBN 9 783865 737199.
^Akgün, B. "Turkey's opening to Africa." The Journal of Modern African Studies, 48, pp. 525–546. 2010.
^ abÖzkan, M. "Turkey's 'New' engagements in Africa and Asia: Scope, content and implications." Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs, XVI(3), pp. 115–137. 2011.
^"Afrika'ya Yatırım Atağı." Ekonomist, 26(152273), pp. 17–21. 2016.
^Kavas, A. Osmanlı-Afrika İlişkileri. İstanbul: Tasam Yayınları. 2006.
^Aydın, M. "Determinants of Turkish foreign policy: Changing patterns and conjectures during the Cold War." Middle Eastern Studies, 36(1), pp. 105–121. 2000.
^Ataman, M. "Leadership change: Özal leadership and restructuring in Turkish foreign policy." Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, 1(1), pp. 132–151. 2002.
^ abİpek, V. "Turkey's foreign policy implementation in Africa: A post international approach." New Perspectives on Turkey, 49(Fall), pp. 121–156. 2013.
^Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Turkey's development cooperation. Retrieved 12 February 2016, from http://www.mfa.gov.tr/ turkiyenin-kalkinma-isbirligi.tr.mfa. 2016.
^"Economic Development and Social Changes in Bhutan." pp. 82–99 in Urmila Phadnis, S.D. Muni, and Kalim Bahadur (eds.), Domestic Conflicts in South Asia. New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1986.
^"Danish Business Delegation to Turkey"(PDF). Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original(PDF) on 1 June 2011. Retrieved 11 December 2010. Trade between our two countries can be dated centuries back. In 1756 Denmark and The Ottoman Empire signed a treaty on commerce and friendship, which paved the way for closer ties—both human and commercial—between our two people...
^"Greece Liberated: Ottoman Empire". Hellenic Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs Service of Diplomatic & Historical Archives. Retrieved 6 November 2023.
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