Economy as the 'practical hand' of 'new Turkish foreign policy': a political economy explanation

Abstract

Turkish foreign policy activism during the last decade has attracted widespread international attention. As a result, scholarly literature on the issue has expanded noticeably. If one makes a general categorization, the literature on the new Turkish foreign policy has mainly concentrated on "security-based" and "identity-based" explanations. The role of the changing economic dynamics in Turkey and the transformation of Turkish financial and industrial capital, however, are not adequately addressed in the existing literature. This study aims to contribute to the recent debates from a political economy perspective with reference to the functionalist and interdependence approaches. It is argued in this paper that the bifurcation within the financial capital in Turkey in the post-2001 period and the internationalization of the 'Anatolian tigers' have turned out to be the 'practical hand' of Turkish foreign policy. In addition, this study argues that there are certain limits and constraints of employing political economy factors as a driving force in the Turkish foreign policy activism.