During the last two decades, Turkey has reoriented its focus of foreign policy. From being a close ally to the U.S. and Israel, who both guaranteed Turkey’s security in a threatening neighbourhood, Turkey is now more than ever making independent and unilateral decision within its foreign policy. This master’s thesis deals with this complex change of focus. The main argument of this thesis is that the Turkish foreign policy has changed immensely since the end of the Cold War and offers an explanation to these changes by using both realism and constructivism from the International Relations theoretical framework. This is done by providing a three-stage-analysis, which consists of an assessment of the domestic, regional and systemic environment that Turkey is in.By using primary and secondary literature, the thesis presents both its own assessment and analysis of relevant statements from articles; however, these assessments are backed by a wide selection of established scholars in order to assure the credibility of the thesis.Finally, this thesis concludes that the focus of Turkish foreign policy has changed since the end of the Cold War, and that this change can primarily be explained by applying constructivist theory to the empirical findings. That being said, there still exists both realism and other theoretical frameworks that can add to the explanation, however, the primary change is explained through constructivism.
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