When Russian president Vladimir Putin, along with 10 cabinet ministers, recently paid an official visit to the Turkish capital, BBC was quick to identify his meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as "a meeting of valuable isolation." Drawing on the similarities between the two leaders, the story pointed out that both countries experienced certain troubles in their relations with the West. Another popular conversation relates to questions about Turkey's credibility as a NATO ally and a member of the Western alliance in light of Ankara's agreement with Moscow, which is currently being targeted by EU sanctions, to build a new pipeline. Over the past five years, we have grown more and more accustomed to the international media's sharp criticism of Turkish foreign policy, which the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government has pledged to reform and revise.
Domestic advocates of the axis shift/authoritarianism campaign, too, are quick to mobilize around a range of issues from the anti-ISIS struggle to the papal visit and the new presidential palace. Such fierce criticism, it goes without saying, is part and parcel of competitive democracies. After all, certain groups find the AK Party's seemingly endless run increasingly unbearable. Reducing the foreign policy debate to ideological differences, however, inevitably numbs one's powers of observation. At the end of the day, accounting for Turkey's position on ISIS and the Syrian civil war, among other issues, requires a more complex approach than the absolute duality between pro-Westernism and anti-Westernism. There is certainly nothing that warrants the identification of Turkey and Russia, vocal critics of the international order, as one and the same. Drawing parallels between Erdoğan and Putin, in particular, does more to blur the facts than to explain political phenomena.
It is important to point out the following: It has been a long time since Turkey stopped considering its partnership with the West a static relationship - which, for the record, had nothing to do with the EU's reluctance to extend an offer for full membership. Over the past years, Ankara has developed its cooperation with various countries on particular issues whilst seeking to further its goal of "critical integration" into the Western-centric international system. As such, the country's foreign policy decisions have been informed by the nation's economic and commercial interests - which accounts for Turkey's close relations with countries like Russia, Iran and Israel. It is these economic networks that facilitated the stability of Turkey's domestic politics and foreign policy.
Surely enough, the Arab Spring-induced chaos in the region has added a new item to Turkey's long list of foreign policy priorities: To side with the people of other countries. In Syria and Egypt, our commitment to this principle has proven costly. Yet this principled position reflects long-term strategy as opposed to sheer idealism. In other words, Turkey's position, which government officials prefer to explain with value-based references, cannot be analyzed with no reference to real-life calculations. The rapprochement between Baghdad and Ankara, for instance, represents a great example of such considerations. Likewise, Turkey's relations with its neighbors remain open to change in light of the potential intensification or end of regional turmoil.
Notwithstanding the above assessments, one thing is clear: As long as the AK Party remains in charge of Turkish foreign policy, the national conversation pertaining to these issues will remain ideologically charged. That strategic priorities, not ideology, guides the country's new foreign policy will continue to be irrelevant for many observers. At the end of the day, the international community remains reluctant to come to terms with two key components of Turkish foreign policy: The commitment to putting national interests first and to critical integration into the West. At a time when great powers and regional players are ostensibly keen on
