Turkey's foreign policy in turbulent times

Today, Turkey is caught between two sets of challenges. The first set includes the typical conventional challenges that relate to national security, territorial integrity and political stability. The second set of challenges has to do with maintaining the pace of political reform, gaining access to markets, ensuring economic stability and growth in the region, as well as securing energy supplies. Above all, but closely related to these challenges, is of course the ultimate challenge for Turkey: EU membership. How will Turkey respond to these challenges? What are Turkey's immediate foreign policy concerns and options? What are the new patterns of Turkish foreign policy making and behaviour? Can Turkey indeed play the role of a model for the region's transformation towards democratisation and engineer an 'intercivilisational dialogue'? This Chaillot Paper deals with these questions and presents a number of options for Turkey's foreign policy in turbulent times.