Abstract
Soon to be a century old, the Republic of Turkey has faced several major crises in its regional environment; however, none of them has affected it to the same extent as the Syrian conflict, which still continues to be the major concern for the current political power. Indeed, as a country close and similar to Turkey in many respects, Syria, via its crisis, has had a transformative effect on Turkey, that changes its identity, its ethnic and religious composition and, of course, its foreign policy, and even its place in the international order. The main objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that it is through the Syrian crisis that Turkey is marking a real break with its traditional geopolitical family, i.e., the Western camp, to move closer to a Russia that is historically anything but Turkey’s friend.
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Notes
- 1.
Interview with Lakdhar Brahimi, in Paris, July 2014.
- 2.
The Friends of Syria Group is an international diplomatic collective of countries and bodies meeting periodically outside the UN Security Council to discuss the Syrian question. The collective was set up in response to the vetoes and blockages made by Russia and China who refused to condemn Syria. At the instigation of President Nicolas Sarkozy, the group tried to find a solution to the Syrian crisis after the Russian and Chinese vote on February 4, 2012. The group met at least four times in different capitals and then broke up following the worsening situation and the diverging opinions which appeared among members from 2013 onwards. See Lund, Aron. “Riyadh, Rumeilan, and Damascus: All You Need to Know About Syria’s Opposition Conferences.” Carnegie, December 9, 2015. https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/62239?lang=en.
- 3.
This initiative was not totally free from underlying political thoughts for Erdoğan's aim was also, if not above all, to discredit the main opposition party, the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), heir to the party founded by Atatürk which had been in power at the time of the Alevi massacres.
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Balci, B. (2021). The Syrian Crisis and Its Contribution to Authoritarian Transformation of Turkish Domestic and Foreign Policy Identities. In: Balci, B., Monceau, N. (eds) Turkey, Russia and Iran in the Middle East. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80291-2_3
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