Özet:

After World War I, Turkey has kept away from the Middle East for internal and external reasons. The main factor of this situation was the challenge, that the new Government of Turkey had to handle domestic political struggle and external geopolitical limitations, which came with the end of the Ottoman Empire. In the course from the Second World War today, the need for a foreign policy has got more and more important with an increasing momentum. In particular, Turkey’s status quo based on traditional peace-oriented external policy has been forced to undergo transformation after the disintegration of the USSR. Global, regional and local scale change and transformation has affected the foreign policy making process in parallel with the acceleration of history. With the Gulf War and the US invasion of Iraq, Turkey has had to experience radical changes. In this process, many issues that are within the scope of the National Pact but were put into the refrigerator due to the specific characteristics of the establishment process have become openly debatable. In the early 1990s, even if Özal’s diplomatic initiatives came to the forefront in the Middle East, they remained mostly on an economic scale. The information revolution - on communication - was carried to a global scale in the 2000s, and almost every state began to experience serious turbulence and uppside-down on the tripartite pillars of security, freedom and prosperity. The approach which was re-started in the Middle East with the AK Party government after November 2002 was tried to be pursued with a multi-faceted active perspective on the energy and economic-political axis. In this process, the policies as strategic depth, proactive foreign policy and zero problem that are put forward have entered the wobble process by hiting the real political wall with Arab Spring even if they are tempting in discourse. But despite everything, in this period, Turkey has come at the most serious capacity as a political actor and play maker in the Middle East, since the Democratic Party period. With the problems experienced in this process, it can be said that President Erdoğan has become a playmaker in foreign policy as well as in domestic politics. Especially after the adoption of the Presidential Government System by referendum, this situation gained a legal character. In recent years, Turkey has been standing in as a voice and representative for the oppressed world. However, emerging critical problems in Syria, Egypt and Iraq, lead to a decreased realization of ideals, which brought new concerns and requests on every level with it. The main drawback here is that the fine adjustment between the forces of change and continuity is not fully achieved. It's a requirement that Turkey has to set out a well-grounded 'interactive holistic vision production' at the level of leadership and institutionalization. Public diplomacy practices have also vital importance in order to national security goals. 'History, geography and culture' has to be taken into consideration with a wide scale as, from trade to energy, from security to democracy, from religion and belief to scientific and technological fields with a humanitarian and ethical view. Turkey will not give up on the seeking expansion of its own world on trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian aspects by pursue the common good, not to the harm of others with a peaceful orientation. In fact Turkey has enough experience to evaluate the history and geography with all its dimension in conjunction with energy and security issues that it’s needed on geo-political axis in the Middle East.

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