The Politics of Intra-Alliance Opposition: Turkey, the United States, and NATO

• In Event: Interviews in the Field: New Perspectives and Applications

Abstract

Scarcely a day passes without a report or a headline on the front page of leading newspapers questioning Turkey’s reliability as a Western ally. Turkish government has been using a belligerent language towards the US, and adopting an increasingly confrontational posture and actions against the US in the Middle East. Against the background of heightened urgency for better transatlantic security dialogue, Turkey’s increased self-confidence in its foreign policy, and its turbulent relations with the EU, NATO, and the US, the need for scholarly analyses of Turkish foreign policy and its implications for transatlantic security relations has become more evident.

This paper examines how Turkish foreign policy has changed vis-à-vis the US and NATO in the Middle East. It investigates whether the increasingly popular foreign policy analysis literature on soft balancing can help us explain Turkey’s relationship with the US and NATO in the Middle East. The recent developments in Turkish domestic politics since the failed coup as well as the recent developments in Turkish foreign policy in Syria and Iraq, and Turkey’s recent rapprochement with Russia in security and defense matters will be explored, in order to investigate whether Turkey soft balances against the US in the Middle East. The paper further tests whether Turkey utilizes soft balancing tools such as territorial denial, compellent threats, and cooperative balancing with Russia. It is one of the first studies that employs in-depth elite interviews in the soft balancing literature, as the analysis is the result of over 200 in-depth elite interviews conducted with policymakers, academics, NGO/IGO officials, and journalists, in Turkey, Cyprus, the United Kingdom, Germany, Bosnia, and Serbia.

Author

• Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, Elizabethtown College