Turkish power projection: The Eastern Mediterranean as a center of gravity
Type de matériel :
14
Since the end of the Cold War, Turkey has gradually returned to power politics, seeking to project its influence beyond its traditional areas of action (Balkans, Black Sea, Anatolian Peninsula, Levant, Horn of Africa). The new Turkish interventionism took advantage of the new opportunities provided by the Arab Spring as well as the return of Russia to the Mediterranean. Over the past decade, Ankara has been particularly active, pursuing a policy of all-out rapprochement and seeking to mediate the many conflicts in the region. If the assertiveness of Turkish regional ambitions in the Mediterranean, notably through “maritime nationalism”, constitutes a response to the multiple crises affecting the Basin and its periphery, it also reflects an attempt to open-up. Cramped in the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey is now seeking to project its influence, and in some cases its forces, towards more distant theatres: Caucasus, Persian Gulf, Africa. The increasingly frequent resort to military interventions and the political tensions that have plagued relations between Turkey and its Western allies in recent years, however, reveal the contradictions and limits of a power policy, constrained by the realities of a conflicted neighbourhood.
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