Cuspness in Türkiye’s Regional Policies

This research comes up with novel ideas for the ways of study on regions in the International Relations discipline and the case of Türkiye. Türkiye is in a complicated geographic location between Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and sub-regions like the Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Caucasus. Its interregional location affects its foreign policy and regional policy directions. Türkiye occasionally gives signs to be a member of the European Union, but in fact, it has been wait-listed for candidacy since the 1960s. Occasionally, Türkiye gives signs of involvement in the Middle East, but the Arab League does not extend observer status to non-Arab states. It also attempted to integrate with Greater Central Asia and took active parts for Turkic Council’s establishment, but despite the country’s big dreams, the Council could not achieve the expected success. All these efforts by Türkiye with different regional units and its inability to fully integrate with any of them makes Türkiye a cusp (~limbo) state, because it is restlessly on the edge of plenty of geographic regions. Being a cusp state deeply impacted Türkiye’s foreign relations. This doctoral thesis will examine how cuspness has shaped Türkiye’s engagement with the regions of the world by using ideas from Critical Regional Studies under regionalism literature. It will look at regional policy directions of the country by using key texts from Türkiye's foreign policy (leadership speeches and regional treaties) by implementing content and discourse analysis in the post-Cold war era when regional activities worldwide gained momentum with the effects of globalisation. Overall this research will help develop both knowledge about Türkiye as a regional policy actor and the field of Critical Regional Studies.