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Free keywords:
regional power, political economy, Turkey, AKP, Middle East
Abstract:
In 2006/2007 Turkey became a regional power in the Middle East, a status it has continued to maintain in the context of the Arab Spring. To understand why Turkey only became a regional power under the Muslim AKP government and why this happened at the specific point in time that it did, the paper highlights the self-reinforcing dynamics between Turkey's domestic political-economic transformation in the first decade of this century and the advantageous regional developments in the Middle East at the same time. It concludes that this specific linkage - the "Ankara Moment" - and its regional resonance in the neighboring Middle East carries more transformative potential than the "Washington Consensus" or the "Beijing Consensus" so prominently discussed in current Global South politics.
