Domestic and foreign policy dimensions of the challenges facing Turkey

Kerem Oktem

On May 28 and 31, we had the pleasure of hosting a longstanding friend of SEESOX, Ziya Öniş, Professor of International Political Economy at Koç University Istanbul, for two well-attended seminars.

In the first, Prof. Öniş examined the challenges to Turkey's economic growth and the democratic reform process during the three terms in government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). He registered that the country’s economy had developed impressively in the last decade thanks to a policy of ‘regulatory neo-liberalism’ and a significant restructuring of the budget away from military spending towards health and education expenditures. He also reminded the audience that important liberalising reforms had been enacted particularly during the first AKP government, and that the influence on politics of the military has been massively curtailed. Yet, Turkey now seems to have become caught in a double trap: The middle-income trap suggests that Turkey has reached a threshold which it can only surpass by shifting its industrial base and export output from low and medium technology to high-tech. Such a leap, however, requires significant and concerted investment into education, research and development, and the current level thereof seems unlikely to be sufficient to help Turkey out of its middle-income position. The second is the procedural democracy trap. While the country has reached a certain maturity in terms of multi-party elections, it still has relatively weak political institutions, and remains mostly illiberal and majoritarian in spirit. Again, to move from the current majoritarian system to a liberal democracy, with the rule of law and extensive human rights, looks like a major challenge. ‘Conservative Globalism’, which Prof. Öniş likens to Asian style developmentalism, may be the AKP’s best bet at the moment, but it will not enable to take Turkey beyond either threshold.


In his second seminar, Prof. Öniş discussed Turkey’s foreign policy after the Arab revolutions. Despite a strong pragmatic and trade-oriented aspect, he argued that the AKP government has responded to the Arab Spring through repeated adjustments in its foreign policy outlook from ‘cautious unilaterialism’ vis-à-vis Israel, Iran and Syria, to reluctant participation in the western intervention in Libya to ‘unilateral proactivism’ again in Syria. The government’s current line seems to be more akin to a reluctant return to multilateralism under US leadership. Yet, overall, the period since 2009 and the appointment of Ahmet Davutoğlu as Foreign Minister has been characterised by over-engagement and a discernable shift towards a religiously inspired foreign policy identity. Syria became a test case for Turkey’s soft power capabilities and its role as a country of inspiration, and so far it appears that the result is more a reminder of the limits of Turkey’s power in the Middle East rather than its role as a model.

Both seminars enabled insightful discussions on the constraints of Turkish power in its neighbourhood and the precariousness of the Turkish economic development model and its democratic credentials. These findings were further emphasized by the unprecedented series of protests in Turkey, which unfolded during Ziya Öniş’ visit to Oxford, and reached a first climax as he delivered his second lecture on May 31st.