The economic foundations of Turkish foreign policy during AK Party era

This thesis examines the foreign economic relations of Turkey which is an instrument of Turkish foreign policy and the contribution of Turkish foreign policy to Turkish economy by benefiting both from the statistics and indices. In this context, the economy foreign policy relationship will be scrutinized. Our study is focused on the change of Turkish economy during the period of 2002 – 2012 of Ak Party that came into power after the crisis of year 2001 and the new approaches in the foreign policy within this period. In this study the basic findings are: Firstly, the performance of the Turkish economy in the 1990s is compared with its performance between the years 2002 – 2012 with different parameters and it was seen that there was a relative improvement. Second, in this period the scale is enlarged with new approaches in global and regional areas in the Turkish foreign policy and as a result of this the quests of regional economic integration has been shown by benefiting from statistics. Thirdly, depending on the growth of the scale in Turkish Foreign Policy; by removing visas within the frames of new approaches, it has been facilitated the opening of diplomatic embassies, the signing of free trade agreements, the Non-governmental organizations, to be able to cooperate and conducting trade of the business world with the global and regional world rapidly. In this context, Turkish Foreign Policy has increased the global and regional cooperation and its quests for conducting trade in becoming a "Trading State". Keywords: Ak Party, Foreign Policy, Soft Power, Economy, Trading State