In a public appearance in late July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that Turkey might be forced to intervene to stop Israel’s war in Gaza. “Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them,” he added.
The comments seem to mark the return of Erdogan’s “noisy diplomacy,” after a period of relative moderation since his reelection to the presidency last year. More than anything, however, they underscore the enigma that Erdogan’s foreign policy inclinations have long represented to outside observers.
Over the years, in fact, a cottage industry has arisen dedicated to making sense of Turkish foreign policy under Erdogan, and whether it is shaped primarily by ideological factors, such as his Islamism and his desire for Turkey to emerge as a world power; or by pragmatic factors, such as Turkey’s need for foreign exchange, considerations of domestic politics and transactional calculations. The problem that analysts have had is two-fold: All of these factors have played a role in shaping Erdogan’s foreign policy to greater or lesser degrees at least some of the time; and over his more than two decades in power, Turkish foreign policy has taken some remarkably sharp turns.