The system of international relations is changing by moving to a post-Western world order. This has created a new environment for many countries in terms of their foreign policy, especially for the ones across the Eurasian continent. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Turkey was an integral part of the Western institutional framework. However, it made a conceptual U-turn in the mid-2010s when Ankara de facto rejected the paradigm which consisted of relying on the West as the reference point in its efforts to promote social and economic transformation and modernise its economy. Nevertheless, this did not affect Turkey’s institutional ties with the West, including its membership in NATO and the Turkey-EU Customs Union. This placed the country in a unique position: while operating within the Western framework from an institutional standpoint it is increasingly seeking to have a freer hand in its foreign policy choices.
This transition coincided with a major push to revise Turkey’s foreign policy tenets, which led it to assert the concept of achieving strategic autonomy as its primary goal. Presented in the late 2010s, it came as a response to the increasingly complex international environment and its transition from a unipolar to a multipolar set-up. China’s economic rise and its Belt and Road Initiative compelled Turkey to devise its own strategy for stepping up its cooperation with other Asian powers. This concept was formalised in 2019 with the development of the Asia Anew Initiative (Yeniden Asya Açılımı). Meanwhile, the Eurasian track has become much more pronounced in the Turkish political and expert discourse, giving rise to the emergence of several schools of thought.
As for Russia’s rift with the West, it placed Turkey in a unique position by offering it new political and economic opportunities, not without creating new foreign policy challenges, however.
