ANKARA (Realist English). Since the 2010s, Turkey has moved away from rational foundations in its foreign policy and cannot look at the events around it from the point of view of national interests or objective norms. This was stated by the Director General of the International Institute for the Development of Scientific Cooperation Arif Asalyoglu in an interview with Iravunk.
“Turkey has completely lost its feature as a country that establishes balanced relations with its environment in its foreign policy, advocates peace and reconciliation in regional conflicts and, most importantly, maintains neutrality. The use of ethnic and religious motives as tools in foreign policy has not yielded and is not yielding good results. We have seen the latest example of this in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Turkey approaches the conflict unilaterally. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the new system of government in Turkey are using the military initiative in the region. Turkey, which considers itself a natural ally of Azerbaijan, approaches the Armenian-Azerbaijani tension with historical Turkish-Armenian baggage.” the expert noted.
“Turkey has completely lost its characteristic as a country that establishes balanced relations with its environment in its foreign policy, advocates peace and reconciliation in regional conflicts and, most importantly, maintains neutrality. The use of ethnic and religious motives as tools in foreign policy has not given and does not give good results. We have seen the latest example of this in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Turkey approaches the conflict unilaterally. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the new system of government in Turkey are using the military initiative in the region. Turkey, which considers itself a natural ally of Azerbaijan, approaches the Armenian-Azerbaijani tension with historical Turkish-Armenian baggage.” the expert noted.
Arif Asalyoglu stresses that Turkey conducts its policy with historical, religious, ethnic or racial references:
“With the Central Asian states, where Turkic societies live intensively. Spiritual – with Arab countries, near or far away. It bases its foreign policy on considerations such as the common history of the Ottoman Empire with the countries in the Balkans. These are important data on the map of Turkish foreign policy actions. Of course, such an approach will negatively affect Ankara-Yerevan relations.”
