Description
This article aims to explain the Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments’ reorientation of Turkey’s foreign policy during the 2010s from prioritising Turkey’s European Union (EU) membership and seeking to increase Turkey’s influence through soft power instruments during its first decade in power to seeking to increase Turkey’s autonomy, portraying Turkey as the leader of the Muslim world, championing the Palestinian cause, building an international coalition to combat Islamophobia, and calling for the reform of the international order. Using insights from poststructuralist foreign policy analysis, this paper situates the transformation in Turkey’s foreign policy within the domestic and regional political developments and seeks to understand (a) why a reorientation was perceived as necessary and possible by the Turkish decision-makers and (b) the role it has been playing in the AKP governments’ efforts to change the domestic order in its attempt to extend its religious-nationalist hegemony over Turkish politics. It analyses the representation of foreign policy practice to the domestic audience to unpack foreign policy’s domestic impacts and understand why the foreign policy discourse has been resonating with the Turkish public.
