Turkey’s foreign policy in 2014

The year 2014 could be summarized as the year of elections for Turkey that resulted in the overall change in the political system with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan becoming the first president elected through popular vote, while Ahmet Davutoğlu took over the chairmanship of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Prime Ministry. The massive corruption and graft probe concerning four former ministers; the government’s unending fight against the Fethullah Gülen community; the ups and downs of the Kurdish peace process were other top issues that occupied the country’s vicious domestic political circle.

The foreign policy was, too, affected of the change in the top positions with Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu becoming the new foreign minister and Volkan Bozkır replacing him as the new EU minister. Known as the architect of Turkey’s much-discussed foreign policy, Davutoğlu’s taking the helm as prime minister was believed to have a direct effect on foreign policy choices. But Davutoğlu has not found much time to deal with foreign policy since he sat on his prime ministerial seat due to his time-consuming work in his new capacity.   

As expected, Erdoğan has used his new position for a more active foreign policy agenda, as he has made nearly a dozen trips abroad in the last five months. However, his influence on foreign policy was much more visible in his frequent and long statements as his well-known critiques against the global order designed by the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members, in particular the Western bloc, contained strong worded paragraphs.

His not so realistic rhetoric that has often bashed the United States, European Union, European countries, Israel, Egypt, China and etc. either deteriorated Turkey’s ties...