The Global Financial Crisis and the De-Europeanisation of Turkish Foreign Policy

Abstract

The 2008 global financial crisis, which Turkey has managed to sail through with atonable damages, has equipped Ankara with a sense of overconfidence which led to faulty decisions and misjudgments to the extent that de-Europeanization has recently become a more prominent phenomenon in the foreign policy domain. Notwithstanding the role of individual and state-level factors, it is argued in this article that the crisis, as a systemic factor, has triggered Turkey’s drift away from Europe. In this regard, this article is divided into three sections. In the first section Europeanization as an output will be examined under three subheadings including the changes in the institutional and bureaucratic structure of foreign policy, the changes in Turkey’s approach in handling foreign policy agenda issues, and the changes in the politics of foreign policy. In the second section, the causal relationship between the 2008 global financial crisis and Turkey’s drift away from Europeanisation will be evaluated. In the third section, de-Europeanisation as an output in Turkish foreign policy will be discussed through relevant case studies.