"Turkey develops a unique model for adapting to new geopolitical landscape in Eurasia

This is stated in the Valdai International Discussion Club’s paper “Turkey in the Context of Transforming International Relations and the New Eurasian Geopolitics”.

“While preserving its institutional links with the West, Ankara has been consistent in pursuing its strategic autonomy by diversifying its foreign policy and external economic ties within Eurasia,” writes the paper’s author, Pavel Shlykov, Head of the Oriental Studies Programme at MGIMO.

He notes that the key factors driving this transformation include:

• deepening differences with the United States and the EU on a wide range of issues, including the Syrian crisis, the Kurdish issue and the East Mediterranean;

• global economic and political momentum shifting to Asia;

• Turkish businesses pursuing their pragmatic interests and focusing on new markets;

• ideological pluralism offering alternative foreign policy models

“For Turkey, the Asia Anew Initiative and the effort to develop the Eurasian foreign policy vector not only helped offset its tension with the West, but also to find a place of its own in the emerging multipolar world. While staying within the formal Western institutions, Turkey de facto has an independent multi-pronged policy and seeks to benefit from the competition between old and new centers of power.

We are unlikely to witness a radical rift between Turkey, on the one hand, and NATO or other Western structures, on the other hand. However, Turkey will keep playing a special role within the so-called collective West by combining integration and strategic autonomy. Turkey’s unwavering commitment to this agenda is expected to enable Ankara to fully benefit from its foreign policy opportunities in an increasingly turbulent international environment,” the paper reads.