City Research Online

Abstract

moves toward multipolarity. Turkey has also attempted to carve out a more autonomous space from its traditional Western allies by building new ties in the non-Western world, ranging from the Russia–China axis to the Middle East and beyond. This paper explores the idea and practice of strategic autonomy in Turkish foreign policy. We argue that strategic autonomy is not predetermined or mechanically driven by ‘hedging’ behavior. We conceptualize strategic autonomy with reference to its three fundamental dimensions: structural orientation, political motive, and economic infrastructure. In this context, we highlight two soft spots in Turkish foreign policy since 2011. First, geopolitical imperatives and domestic political priorities often contradict each other, which prevents the country from effectively implementing autonomy-seeking policies. Second, strategic autonomy is mainly associated with ‘high politics’ without paying proper attention to its geo-economic dimension in the form of solid political economy fundamentals and economic infrastructure.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Publisher Keywords:	strategic autonomy, multipolarity, Turkish foreign policy, geopolitics, economic security
Subjects:	J Political Science J Political Science > JQ Political institutions Asia J Political Science > JX International law
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > International Politics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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