Explaining the Role of Intervening Variables in Turkey's Foreign Policy Behaviour

This article aims to offer a neoclassical realist analytical framework to identify the influence of agent-structure interplay on Turkey’s foreign policy behavior during JDP-led governments. The main argument is that the adjustments in Turkish behaviors between 2003 to date, analyzed by most scholars starting from the systemic or domestic level alone, could be better explained inter- twining the explanans. Considering four intervening variables – national role conception, decision- making model, perception of strategic environment and orientation towards the regional order – this article discusses Turkey’s shift from a wary isolationist attitude to a wary interventionist one. The last two decades ofTurkey’s foreign policy will be analyzed to show why the neoclassical realist analytical lens is particularly useful to grab the different determinants that have affected Turkish foreign policy behavior.