After The Cold War Between Turkey And The United States, The Eu's Interactive Relationship Between

As a country bridging the European and Asian land mass, Turkey has maintained close coalition with the West with its special geographical location to strategy and historical and cultural legacy. The Turkey-U.S. and Turkey-EU relations rank at the top of all foreign relations of Turkey. After the Cold War, though the tripartite relations are always in flux under the influence of changes home and abroad, there are still two stable characteristics within the tripartite relations: First, Turkey becomes one of the most important alliances of the U.S. on the Eurasian continental bridge and plays a key role in realizing vital interests of the U.S. in Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus, which precipitate the favorable relations between the U.S. and Turkey on the whole and render the U.S. to give enormous support to the domestic and foreign issues of Turkey. Second, though Turkey has never been distracted from its EU membership objective, it proceeds much slowly in the march. Whereas Turkey applied for the EU membership much earlier than the Eastern European countries, it still stays outside the threshold of the EU hitherto.This article states and analyzes the interaction on the issues of European security construction and Central Asia etc. among Turkey, the US and EU in three eras, namely, the initial period after the cold war, pre-Iraq War era and post-Iraq War era, on the ground of which the main constraint and stimulus was disclosed. Shortly after the cold war, the tripartite relations have begun to take on the post-cold war characteristics and the general structure of the interaction has been formed. It is in the pre-Iraq War era that the tripartite relations are in full swing and the interaction structure has been consolidated gradually. Ever since the Iraq War, the tripartite interactions have begun to take on new characteristics because of the blows dealt by the Iraq War. However, because the core interests of the tripartite relations endure, the relations are apt to shift to its original structure with the new characteristics mixed.Based on the analysis of the historical facts, the article summarizes the tripartite interactions as follows: the Turkey-US and Turkey-EU relations represent the current state and the future of Turkey's foreign policy respectively; The U.S.-Turkey relation is the most important force propelling the evolution of the tripartite interaction, which correlates Turkey to the interaction between the U.S. and EU and makes the transatlantic relation an indispensable context for the development of the internal and external issues of Turkey; As for Turkey's EU membership, though EU does not want to accept Turkey, it still tries to hold Turkey on its side; The reasons for the tripartite relations to take on the above characteristics are addressed, as well as the constraints and frangibility of the relations between Turkey, the US and EU.