Turkish foreign policy during Azerbaijan's 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Military Operation: A thematic analysis of discourse within a neoclassical realist framework

This study examines Turkish foreign policy during Azerbaijan's 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Military Operation within the framework of neoclassical realism. Neoclassical realism argues that the opportunities and constraints created by the international system are transmitted to foreign policy through unit-level variables such as the leader's perception and the institutional structure of the state. Within this framework, the aim of the research is to analyze Türkiye's foreign policy discourse throughout the Karabakh process, revealing how systemic conditions were transformed through the leader's perception and how they were reflected in foreign policy behavior. Additionally, the terms "military operation" and "intervention" have been adopted as terminological choices regarding the Karabakh process, and the legal and analytical grounds for these choices are discussed. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's speeches, press statements, and social media posts from February 2020 to June 2021 were analyzed using thematic analysis. The discourses were categorized under the themes of "threat," "opportunity," "identity construction," "alliance rhetoric," "legitimacy," "diplomatic maneuver," and "civil–military instrument distinction." The findings indicate that Türkiye's foreign policy discourse underwent a clear transformation in three phases — pre-operation (threat), operation period (alliance), and post-operation (victory). The process was institutionalized through steps such as the Joint Monitoring Center and the Shusha Declaration, evolving Türkiye–Azerbaijan relations from a strategic partnership into a de facto alliance. The analysis demonstrates that Turkish foreign policy during the Karabakh process cannot be fully explained as a mere reaction to systemic constraints; rather, the leader's perceptions of threats and opportunities served as the main driving force. In this regard, the study empirically highlights the explanatory power of leader perception in foreign policy analysis by making the interaction between system, leadership, and policy outcomes visible through leadership discourse.