Turkey’s ‘New’ Engagements in Africa and Asia: Scope, Content and Implications

Abstract

Since the AK Party assumed power in 2002, Turkish foreign policy has gone through a tremendous change both in its content and scope. The most striking and ‘new’ aspect of Turkey’s foreign policy has been toward Africa and Asia. This article examines and offers a holistic view of these developments. African opening represents a perfect convergence of civil society and state cooperation and bear fruit in political, economic and social terms in a very short time. However, the most important implication is that it aims to conceptualize a ‘new’ Africa in Turkey by overcoming the image of two separate Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. Ankara’s Asia policy has been shaped with an intention of placing the existing relations “in a certain systematic” with the Turkic republics in Central Asia; to reach “a policy of normalization” with countries like China and India; and to follow certain political and economic policies to translate relations “from normal to deep cooperation” with countries like South Korea and Japan