Foreign policy in election proclamation documents of Turkish political parties: 1982-2016

This study contains analysis of foreign policy issues in the electoral declarations of Turkish political parties those represented in The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT) during 1982-2016 period within the frame of international relations discipline and by benefiting from political science and political communication. Because of the military coup d'etat of 12th September 1980 and the following constitution of 1982, this year, 1982 has chosen as a beginning for the period under analyze. The consideration of electoral declarations as fundamental resources for investigation is based on the tenet of usage of solid data for the work. Since there has been a lot of a political party in Turkish political life, the parties which had the ability to be represented in GNAT has chosen to analyze. Within this work, some of the basic concepts of international relations and political science and issues on methodology has been examined in detail along the part entitled conceptual framework. Within the thesis the historical development of Turkish foreign policy and fundamental dynamics has been evaluated, besides, the factors on foreign policy has been analyzed from the aspect of Turkey. The main part of the thesis is focused on the investigation of electoral declarations of Turkish political parties within the framework of Turkish foreign policy. It is believed that this study will make contribution to resources on historical and more current foreign policy issues and their affects on declarations, attitudes and perceptions of political parties of Turkey.