Turkey's New World
Subtitle: Changing Dynamics in Turkish Foreign Policy
Contributors: Alan Makovsky (Editor); Sabri Sayari (Editor)
Publisher: Washington Inst for Near
Published: August 2000
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 234
ISBN-13: 9780944029435
Subjects: International relations; Politics/International Relations; Foreign relations; Political Science; Turkey; 1980-; Foreign economic relations; International Relations - General
First sentence: During 1997 and 1998, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy organized a series of seminars in Washington, D.C., to examine changing dynamics and trends in Turkish foreign policy.
Description: During the long Cold War era, Turkish foreign policy was restricted to just a few basic, if difficult and crucial, questions: how to ward off the Soviet threat, how to protect Turkish interests vis-à-vis Greece and Cyprus, and how to maintain and strengthen ties with the United States and NATO. Slightly less pressing but still important were questions of how to further Turkeyʹs integration with Western Europe and, during the latter part of the Cold War, how to defend against terrorism supported by neighbors like Syria, Iraq, and Iran. These issues were problematic, rendered more complicated in combination. As the U.S. arms embargo of Turkey in the mid-1970s bears witness, managing relations with Cyprus and Aegean rival Greece while building bilateral ties with Washington were goals not always easily reconciled. Turkeyʹs foreign policy challenges during the Cold War were high-risk, posing existentially threatening dangers, even in addition to the threat of nuclear annihilation shared by all NATO allies. Thousands of Turks died in political violence and terrorism in the late 1970s, with Turkey apparently targeted for destabilization by the Soviets.