| Summary/Abstract |
This article analyzes the multidimensional nature of Turkey’s foreign
policy and its relations with Russia in the 2010s and the early 2020s
through the prism of strategic hedging concept. Previously, many scholars
pointed to mostly different elements of balancing in Ankara’s foreign
policy behavior. However, since the late 2010s, Turkey has systematically
positioned itself as a power aspiring for significant strategic autonomy
in international affairs, for which reason researchers had to look for new
analytical approaches to describe its behavior in the international arena and relations with its neighbors. The concept of strategic hedging allows
analyzing more accurately Turkey’s multidirectional foreign policy, which
does not correspond with the classical models of behavior typical of middle
powers, especially those engaged in military-political alliances with the
United States. The article argues that due to a complex of international
and domestic reasons Turkey has been trying to combine different types of
balancing and, more importantly, hedging. This strategy enables Turkey not
only to retain but also to enhance its strategic autonomy in international
relations. In this strategy Russia has become an important source of Turkey’s
strategic autonomy while the crisis in Ukraine, with all its negative impact
on Turkey, has opened up new opportunities.
|