Specificity of Turkey’s Security Relations with Neighboring Countries

Abstract

The article analyzes the historical dynamics of cooperation and differences in conceptual understanding of approaches of Turkey’s international security and terrorism cooperation with the European Union and the United States in countermeasures. In the 2000s in spite of successful cooperation in the fight against international terrorism, these disagreements did not allow Turkey to fully unite to the system of international security in the Middle East, which is being built by the West. With the largest army in the Middle East and the second largest in the NATO bloc, a dynamic economy and a significant foreign policy weight (not to mention the ambitious leaders in charge), Turkey is playing an increasing role in regional and world politics. In recent years, Turkey’s foreign policy has undergone repeated, sometimes drastic changes, and its relations with a number of countries, from hostility to cooperation and vice versa, have always been the focus of the governments of the Middle East regional countries and NATO allies.