Contemporary Turkey’s Foreign Policy: Regional Power in Neoimperial Perspective

Abstract

The article examines the conceptual foundations of Turkey's contemporary foreign policy. Based on comparing a range of empirical data with a list of theo- retical indicators compiled by D. Nolte the author classifies Turkey as a regional power and at the same time highlights the concept’s insufficient explanatory capacity for analyzing the country’s contemporary foreign policy. The author forms a hypothesis consistent with H. Spruyt's theory of institutional competition between political forms and of their selection. The hypothesis states that the current political dynamics lead to the emergence of novel political entities – neoempires. To test it, the autor defines ‘neoempireness’ as a feature of foreign policy and undertakes a comparative analysis of ‘empireness’, ‘post-empireness’ and ‘neoempireness’. It is noted that the term ‘post-empireness’ reflects spontaneous, unintended influence of the imperial past on the subsequent development of the former empire's core and peripheries as independent national states, whereas ‘neoempireness’ implies deliberate adaptation of the imperial experience to the contemporary realities for the purpose of engaging in the global competition more efficiently. The analysis of a range of significant political decisions and actions recently taken by the Turkish government allows to make the conclusion that its foreign policy has assumed a neoimperial nature.