Shifts in Turkey’s Neo-Ottoman Foreign Policy Under Erdoğan vis-à-vis the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

Abstract

Former Prime Minister and current President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became the third in a galaxy of Turkish leaders (after Halil Turgut Özal and Necmettin Erbakan) who de facto adhered to the ideology of “neo-Ottomanism” in the conduct of their foreign policy. Roughly defined, neo-Ottomanism is the aspirations of Turkey to revert to its historical memory of the Ottoman Empire (which ruled over much of the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe for about 600 years up until its dissolution in 1922), and endeavor to build a regional hegemony over Islamic-majority and Turkic states of today. A vivid example of the practice of neo-Ottomanism is the intervention of Turkey in the second Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan that took place in the fall of 2020. This Thesis explored the reasons why Turkey under Erdoğan (and not his ideological predecessors) decided to intervene in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Turkey’s intervention on the side of Azerbaijan was followed by the 2020 six-week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, resulting in around 6,000 deaths. This study showed that Turkey’s intervention in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict under Erdoğan was driven by his introduction of “populism” into the country’s neo-Ottoman foreign policy. Intervention in this conflict on the side of Azerbaijan was for Erdoğan a way both to implement his neo-Ottoman foreign policy and to strengthen his position among his electorate, mainly consisting of Turkish conservatives and nationalists. Thus, he wanted to increase the chances of himself and the AKP-MHP coalition he leads to win the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023. As shown by the discourse analysis of the speeches of Erdoğan, Özal and Erbakan, as well as secondary data, Turkey’s intervention under Erdoğan’s leadership was expressed in a strong pro-Azerbaijani and anti-Armenian position, increased arms exports to Azerbaijan, increased joint Turkish-Azerbaijani military exercises, and the dispatch of Syrian mercenaries to Nagorno-Karabakh during the 2020 war. This, in turn, strengthened the Azerbaijani forces and played a significant role in the victory of Azerbaijan over Armenia and the return of nearly all of its de facto lost in the 1990s territories in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.