It is argued that under the leadership of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and his doctrine of ‘strategic depth’, the AKP government has changed the content of foreign policy in Turkey, and adopted a normative language. Additionally, conventional wisdom states that Turkish foreign policy has been adopting a peaceful approach since Turkey has been declared as a candidate for accession to the EU since 1999 Helsinki Summit. However, no attempt has yet been made in order to measure these assumptions empirically. This paper aims to test empirically the extent to which Turkish foreign policy has changed and whether this change is generated by the EU influence mechanisms or product of a more general process of globalization. In doing so, the paper relies on a large number of foreign policy statements and speeches of the high profile Turkish officials, namely, Prime Minister, President and Foreign Minister and analyze the changes at the domestic level first and then compare and employ Putnam’s Two level game in order to understand the domestic and international factors that has triggered the change, if any. It relies on qualitative content analysis methods of these speeches since Turkey applied for the EU membership in 1987.
