The Characteristics And Evolutionary Logic Of Turkey's Neighborhood Diplomacy

At the Conference on Diplomatic Work with Neighboring Countries in 2013 President Xi underscored the strategic significance of neighborhood and pointed that three-dimensional and plural perspective that spans time and place is needed in reflecting neighborhood issues and developing neighborhood diplomacy.This speech not only plays an important guiding role to China's diplomatic work with neighboring countries but also is very enlightening for relevant studies.Neighboring areas are different with other areas not only in geographical location but also in elements like history,culture and thinking patterns,etc.Therefore,a three-dimensional and plural perspective that spans time and space is an indispensable part in neighborhood diplomacy study.Based on this perspective,this paper mainly focuses on the concept and approach of “Analytic Eclecticism”,spans and integrates the two sets of theoretical paradigms of historicism and structuralism and analyses the neighborhood diplomacy of Turkey in one hundred years diachronically and synchronically.The comprehensive analysis reveals the general characteristics and logic of modern neighborhood diplomacy,then provides some reflections that blessed with methodological significance for neighborhood diplomacy studies.Analytic eclecticism is a kind of research method that attempts to discriminate,transform,and selectively use the concepts,logic,mechanisms,and interpretations of different theories and narratives.This kind of substantive-issues-oriented research method constructs a middle-level theoretical framework to explain specific empirical phenomena through discovering the complicated association and interaction between multiple theories and the logic of reality.The middle-level theory has two major characteristics: first,it is a theory that spans paradigms;it absorbs relevant analytical mechanisms and elements in different theoretical paradigms to study the substantive issues from the organic combination rather than mechanical superposition of multi-dimensional paths.Second,it neither seeks to construct a general pattern that is universally applicable to interpreting other problems,nor is it a single special narrative.This research method tries to find a causal mechanism that exists in a limited but similar situation.These two characteristics are precisely in line with the analysis of the characteristics and evolutionary logic of Turkey's neighborhood diplomacy.On the one hand,the neighborhood diplomacy problems of Turkey are too complex in connotations and encompass too many elements to be analyzed by a single paradigm.On the other hand,the neighborhood diplomacy of Turkey has distinguishing features,and a explanatory framework that built according to a series of its empirical phenomena could not become a pervasive analytic theory.However,considering that Turkey is a “successor of empire”,“a countries that located in the junction of different civilizations” and “a multi-region countries”,the research framework that set for Turkey's neighborhood diplomacy to a great extent can also used to interpret the characteristics and evolutionary logic of similar countries like Russia and Iran.The characteristics and internal logic of neighborhood diplomacy in a country is closely related to the fundamental features of its neighborhood system.Historically most neighboring countries of Turkey were mainly formed during the “Ottoman Empire” period,and nowadays many neighboring countries of Turkey are once a part of that empire.Therefore,many tangible heritages(land,ethnic groups,resources,etc)and intangible heritages(imperial consciousness,governance experience,diplomatic traditions,etc)of Ottoman empire are critically influential to the neighborhood diplomacy of Turkey.Geographically Turkey is located in the junction of different civilizations.It not only has a relatively complex national identity but also is easily disturbed by external forces.Therefore,many elements at international(foreign countries),regional and national level are also significant factors that affect the neighborhood diplomacy of Turkey.From the above reasons it is evident that in order to make a comprehensive and profound research of the neighborhood diplomacy of Turkey a synchronic and diachronic research method that spans and integrates the paradigms of historicism and structuralism is necessarily required.Under the two-dimensional perspective of time(history)and space(neighboring structure),this paper explores the neighborhood diplomacy of Turkey from three historical periods of "the decline of the Ottoman Empire","the establishment of the Republic of Turkey to the end of the Cold War" and "the post-Cold War era" and preliminarily concludes three characteristics of the neighborhood diplomacy of Turkey.First,The imperial past of Turkey always exerts strong or weak influence in the process of neighborhood diplomacy.It can behaves like a roll booster or a stumbling block.Second,The strength of “imperial consciousness”(or “the consciousness of great powers”)that demonstrated by Turkey in its neighborhood diplomacy process is closely related to its neighboring structure in a certain period.Third,the neighborhood diplomacy of Turkey has a relatively strong “subject consciousness”,which is manifested in its independent,flexible and plural neighborhood diplomacy style.Finally,this paper also makes a comparative analysis of the neighborhood diplomacy among Turkey,Russia and Iran from the two-dimensional perspective of time(history)and space(neighboring structure),discovering that although they are different in specific acts,they share some similarities in neighborhood diplomacy characteristics since they share similar historical background and geographical conditions,especially the three characteristics of Turkey concluded above.This paper has two conclusions.First,analytic eclecticism,which takes the research path of crossing paradigms and constructing middle-level theoretical framework,is a scientific,reasonable and convincing method to explore the characteristics and evolutionary logic of the neighborhood diplomacy of a country.Second,countries like Turkey that owns imperial past and located in the junction of different civilizations always witness an alternative state of conflict and coordination between relatively strong subject consciousness and intricate neighboring structure,featuring in the coexistence of aggressiveness and flexibility,independence and pluralism.