Toni Alaranta

India, Turkey, Brazil and South Africa are striving for a more multipolar, post-Western world order in which they would not be seen merely as auxiliary powers to the bigger players, but as independent great powers.

For them, a key foreign policy goal is to transform global governance institutions. They all call for a permanent seat for their country on the UN Security Council. To achieve that, the states need backing from more than the Western states – and this logically strengthens the multi-aligned logic of their foreign policies.

India, Turkey, Brazil and South Africa see Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and the Western countermeasures from their own perspective. They describe Russia’s invasion as a violation of international law, but see the war primarily as a Western concern, not theirs.

Although these states are critical towards the West, they are not anti-Western and they all value multilateral institutions; their foreign policy goals and features offer opportunities for the EU to engage with them, but that needs to happen on a more equal footing than what has traditionally been the case.

The global rivalry between the US and China, as well as geopolitical competition and instability in the EU’s southern neighbourhood, are perceived by France as urgent matters requiring stronger EU foreign policy, conceptualized as European sovereignty.

The French foreign policy elite are still largely committed to the idea of France’s exceptional role in the world, and to the extent that the EU as a whole fails to live up to the tasks presumed by France, continue their attempts at forging coalitions of the willing.

France has in recent years built a web of strategic partnerships, for example with Greece, the Republic of Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, through which it aims to govern the instability in the EU’s southern neighbourhood. The aim is also to deter regional adversaries such as Turkey, a strategy that needs to be re-evaluated due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

France often equates its national interests with those of the EU. While this can be seen to enhance European sovereignty, it also risks increasing the perception that the EU would be a participant in various Middle Eastern conflicts. This undermines the EU’s ability to function as an objective broker and anchor of norms.

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After 17 years of the Islamic-conservative AKP’s electoral hegemony, the secular-nationalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) achieved significant success in the recent municipal elections on March 2019, and is now increasingly challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The secular-nationalist political discourse has traditionally advanced the idea of making Turkey a modern nation-state closely attached to the West, yet the West is also seen as a potential threat. The CHP identifies itself as a social-democratic party, and is now trying to build a wide pro-democratic platform based on a social market economy and fundamental rights.
The party’s strong secularist and Turkish nationalist core has made it difficult for the CHP to gain support among the Kurds and religious conservatives, and this remains challenging. Strong nationalism and suspicion about the West are deeply ingrained in Turkey’s political culture. On the other hand, in order to be inherently coherent, the secular-nationalist vision requires an ideological attachment to the Western world. Stemming from these premises, under the CHP’s government, Turkey’s foreign policy would likely prioritize good relations with the West, and re-invigorate the country’s EU prospect.

A VIOLENT PRELUDE TO MAKING A MAJOR DEAL TO END THE SYRIAN WAR The increasing violence and new balance of relative power between key players may in fact signal a prelude to a major deal, ending the conflict that quickly escalated to the regional level.

No substantial " Eurasian turn " of Turkish foreign policy is likely – or at any rate likely to be lasting. However, the deterioration of the Turkish-Western relations has nonetheless helped bring about an unholy alliance of various " anti-Westernists, " secularist-nationalists and Islamists, which is anything but insignificant in terms of domestic politics. The regime has been bolstered, as it can now count on being supported by at least some secularist nationalists in the name of " anti-imperialism. " BACKGROUND: Increasingly, the foreign policy of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) seems to be tilting from the West to Eurasia, toward a closer relation with in particular Russia. Indeed, the cadres of the AKP now exhibit a reading of Turkey's role in the post-Cold War international system that is similar to the neo-nationalist and Kemalist constituencies that the Islamists had sought to neutralize in an earlier phase of their rule.

After fifteen years of Islamic-conservative state transformation, it is increasingly difficult to unmake the ideological-material powerbase that keeps the AKP in power. The state transformation project in Turkey has not only changed the circumstances within which any opposition group needs to operate, it has also, to a large extent, started to change the very language that can be used while addressing the most essential socio-political issues. One of the most explicit indications of the AKP's ability to redefine the sociopolitical horizons is the worrisome lack of Western-inclined forces in Turkey. The Kemalist circles are arguably excessively nationalist. However, they, unlike the liberals, at least have a relatively coherent constituency and ideology for mass mobilization. And the liberals cannot hope to succeed in building a democratic society without a direct backing from some type of nationalist-inclined mass movement.

It has become a commonplace to argue that Kemalism was a Turkish variant of right-wing nationalism with strong corporatist leanings and even fascist aspects. This is often compounded with the assertion that the Kemalist secularist state elite only sought to secure its own power and status in society, and that it only paid lip-service to Enlightenment ideals. It is pertinent to ask why the Kemalists would have embarked on a hugely unpopular project of culture revolution that threatened their hold on power by provoking a popular reaction, if they only sought to establish a right-wing dictatorship. The right-wing authoritarianism from which Turkey has suffered during most of its history has other sources.

The debate on political Islam under the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) needs to fully acknowledge the crucial importance of nationalism as the enduring element of any relevant form of mass politics in Turkey. In the Turkish case, it makes no sense to speak about political Islam distinct from nationalism as an overriding ideological component of modern politics. Just as much as the AKP's political Islam utilizes religious texts, symbols and traditions, it also utilizes the familiar discourse of nationalism. This process was underway before the failed coup, but it has become more pronounced in its wake. Background: At first glance, one might conclude that in its emphasis on the universal Islamic ummah (community), political Islam would be inclined to reject nationalism. But the form of Islamism as it has been advocated by the AKP in Turkey during the last decade in fact represents a powerful synthesis of two highly influential discourses observable in the Islamic Middle East and the Ottoman Empire since the beginning of the nineteenth century, namely Islamic-conservatism and nationalism. Today's political Islam in Turkey is a combination of these two ideological traditions, compounded with the deeply internalized necessity to adapt to a global free market regime. Just as much as the AKP's political Islam utilizes religious texts, symbols and traditions, it also utilizes the familiar discourse of nationalism.

- Accepting Turkey’s EU candidacy in 1999, with strong emphasis on the ‘open- ended’ nature regarding the result, was an uneasy compromise reached between those opposing and those supporting full membership among the EU members.
- Through its conditionality towards Turkey, the EU has expected structural reform and democratization without wholly committing to full membership for the country.
- The AKP government, which was supposed to push through the EU reforms, has used the reforms instrumentally and represents the anti-Western political Islamist movement with no European vocation.
- Both parties are guilty of the ‘politics of pretending’ in the EU negotiations, resulting in a dysfunctional relationship, now crucially exposed in the context of the refugee deal and Turkey’s failed coup attempt.
- The time has come for the difficult task of re-evaluating the strained Turkey-EU relationship, with three main options at hand, each having their own shortcomings: ending the negotiations altogether; continuing with the current dysfunctional model; or seriously pushing for a ‘special partnership’ in one form or another.

During the last decade, Russia and Turkey developed a formal strategic alliance based on strong economic ties, joint energy projects, and mutually shared anti-Westernism. In addition, presidents Putin and Erdoğan developed a personal relationship, always downplaying political disagreements. After Turkey downed a Russian fighter jet in Syria, Russo-Turkish relations are in tatters for the time being. Even though economic interdependence would point to the normalization of relations, this is nowhere in sight due to completely opposing long-term strategic goals in Syria and perceptions of betrayal and humiliation among the Russian leadership. To put it frankly, Turkey and Russia now seem to be on the brink of war.

After the re-run of the parliamentary election on 1 November 2015, it is certain that Turkey will again be ruled by the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) one-party government. Based on this premise, this study provides a future-oriented analysis in the form of three scenarios: 1) an authoritarian Islamist state; 2) a consolidated liberal democracy; and 3) the dissolution of the Turkish state. The study also identifies three major drivers: a) the AKP and the Islamic-conservative state project; b) regional instability; and c) the Kurdish question.

Regarding scenario one, there are factors and processes present that decidedly increase the possibility of an authoritarian Islamist state in Turkey. On the other hand, the republican tradition of parliamentary democracy has at the same time proved to be remarkably resilient, suggesting that the course of events depicted in the positive scenario two still have a significant chance in the long run. Scenario three, the dissolution of the Turkish state, would create enormous instability in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood and exponentially increase unpredictable tendencies and conflicts. The internal and external forces that could produce such a dramatic outcome are still rather weak, but they do exist in an embryonic form.

Thus, the republican modernization project attaching Turkey to the Western legacy of secular humanism should not be underestimated and may well prevail in the end. For the time being, however, it seems to be on the losing side as the political process is consolidating the Islamic-conservative version of Turkish nationalism. At the present moment this current is pointing to a concentration of power and a non-pluralist authoritarian regime whereby national identity is increasingly constructed in a form that conceptualizes political liberalism as an existential threat.

Since the 1974 division of Cyprus, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), internationally recognized only by the Republic of Turkey, has been heavily dependent on Turkey, both economically and politically. This is a feature that became even more pronounced after the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU in 2004.

During the Islamic-conservative AKP regime in Turkey, the Turkey-TRNC relationship has witnessed two contradictory tendencies: first, from 2002 to 2004, encouragement for reunification, and subsequently, from 2005 onwards, a traditional nationalist stance accompanied by the AKP’s imposed Islamic-conservative social engineering project within the Turkish Cypriot community.

The election of Mustafa Akıncı, esteemed and trusted also by the Greeks, as the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community is a golden opportunity for the reunification of Cyprus. At a time of crucial reunification talks, the Turkish Cypriot community must re-evaluate its relationship not only with the Greek Cypriots but also with "motherland” Turkey.

Turkey is currently witnessing a significant internal power struggle and unpredictability regarding the future, making it very difficult to evaluate how it would react in the event of a permanent agreement between the two Cypriot communities.

The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923 as a modern nation‐state. The years preceding this, 1919 to 1922, are seen by the Turks as the years of their struggle for independence (millî mücadele), led by Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), later known as Atatürk and the first president of the republic. On October 15–20, 1927, Kemal presented his famous six‐day speech