Over the course of the last decade, Turkey has emerged as a major actor in the Middle East. It has embarked on a variety of mediating missions and has been vocal on issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Iranian nuclear program. The popularity of its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, surpasses that of all other regional leaders. This new presence in the Middle East has been variously characterized as neo-Ottoman or an abandonment of the West in favor of the East. Others have interpreted it as the resulting from disillusionment with a stalled European Union accession process or a desire to strike an “independent” foreign policy from the United States.

In fact, Turkey’s new activism in the Middle East and the world in general is driven by two important factors. The first is the deep structural change that has transformed the Turkish economy from an inward looking to a robust export-driven one that is engaged in a continuous search for new markets. Today it is the world’s 16th largest economy. The second is Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, leadership’s ambitions to transform Turkey into a global actor. Other developments, ranging from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the declining influence of the military, have helped the AKP to successfully pivot Turkish foreign policy away from its previous obsessions with the Kurdish question and Islam.

Some of the changes in foreign policy were in the making before the 2002 rise of the AKP. Nevertheless, it is the AKP who provided Turkish foreign policy with a semblance of coherence and a sense of self-confidence. In the ensuing years, the AKP articulated what came to be known a “zero-problems with the neighbors” policy which heralded a opening up of relations with countries that had hitherto been seen as rivals if not outright hostile to Turkey. Relations improved with Syria, Iran and a slew of other Middle Eastern countries. In Iraq, by 2008, the Turkish government executed a 180-degree change in policy to establish relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG. It engaged in mediation efforts between Israelis and Syrians as well as among Palestinian factions.

Paradoxically, Turkey emerged from its foreign policy transformation as a status quo power, deeply entrenched in the structure of the Middle East. This is despite the difficulties it experienced with Israel. The Arab Spring has, however, served as a reminder that the complexity of the Middle East can sometimes overwhelm the agenda of its primary actors. The costs of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have been limited primarily because of the relatively small size of mutual economic relations. By contrast, the Libyan and Syrian uprisings have shocked the Turkish establishment; Libya was a critical economic partner while Syria was the new foreign policy’s much touted “success” case. Both of these demonstrated, not surprisingly perhaps, the extent to which the new Turkish policy was vested in the authoritarian regimes of the region; in fact, this really was noting more than “a zero problems with the neighboring regimes” policy.

This article will explore the causes for the change in Turkish foreign policy towards the Middle East, its accomplishments and shortcomings and conclude with an analysis of its future directions.