Turkey’s foreign policy activism in its subsequent years from the 1987 European Union membership application indicates an interesting pattern of behavior. Although the active foreign policy of Turkey seems not to be very active in various years, there are seasons of suspiciously intensified efforts for multilateral cooperation in other periods. The explanation for this phenomenon will be presented through the insights given by the realist tradition. A congruence analysis shows that the “balance of threat” arguments do not demonstrate a great deal of correlation between the foreign policy activism of Turkey with times of strained relations between the USSR/Russia. On the contrary, the deliberated “balance of influence” arguments present an interesting parallel with these efforts throughout the intervals of significant deadlocks in Turkey-EU relations.
