Turkish foreign policy after the Cold War

This dissertation seeks to understand how the easing of the East-West tensions, the end of the cold war and the disintegration of the Soviet Union affected Turkey's foreign policy. During the cold war period, Ankara's role as a front-line state in containing. Soviet expansionism had greatly influenced its foreign policy orientation as well as its foreign policy behavior. As such, changes in the structure of the international system were bound to alter the ways in which Turkey interacted with other states in the period after the end of the cold war, from 1989 to 1997.;Using an international political economy perspective, three hypotheses were formulated and tested in this dissertation. The first conjectured that the end of the cold war would lead to a significant reduction in the external threats to Turkey's national security and territorial integrity. Secondly, in the absence of overwhelming security concerns, Ankara would be able and willing to emphasize economic objectives and economic instruments of foreign policy. And finally, the removal of the Soviet threat from the international arena would lead to Turkey's marginalization from its traditional allies, the United States and Western Europe. This would compel Turkish policymakers to search for alternative foreign policy partners and shift the direction of Ankara's foreign policy from a western-oriented one to one that emphasized regional relations.;The research yielded results that both supported and contradicted these expectations. Despite an improved security environment, political and military considerations continued to drive Ankara's behavior in the post-cold war period. Although there were some shifts in foreign policy behavior (i.e. closer relations with the former Soviet republics, active involvement in the Persian Gulf War and military alliance with Israel) there were no major shifts in foreign policy orientation. Turkey remained staunchly pro-western and the United States continued to be its most important ally. In fact, notwithstanding the significant changes that took place in the international area in the post-cold war period, Turkish foreign policy maintained the high degree of continuity and stability that characterized it during the cold war.