Turkish Support for the Arab Issues in the New Millennium

Abstract

Turkish-Arab relations have witnessed a new phase since the end of the last decade of the twentieth century. As a result of noticeable changes in the internal and external environment, Turkey has adopted a new foreign policy paradigm; generally reflecting the traditional Paradigm, which limited Turkey's foreign policy options to two main circles:  the first is with the NATO and the second with Europe. The aim of this study is to describe and analyze the Turkish support for the Arab issues in the third millennium. Accordingly,this study assumes that Turkey's support for Arab issues is resulted from the surrounding environmental changes in the internal and external levels. The Turkish policy has become more interested in the Islamic roots of the Turkish people with a prominent role worldwide. Furthermore, global changes have brought Turkey's attention to the Arab and Islamic worlds.The emergence of the new Paradigm of Turkish foreign policy has resulted in a change in the Turkish position towards Arab issues،which has shifted from a position of neutrality and indifference to the position of the pro-Arab causes in general. The data of this study confirmed that Turkey strongly supports the Arab issues related to the Palestinian case and the Arab-Israeli conflict during the third millennium. However, this support becomes less clear with Arab issues regarding controversial nature،such as human rights. Therefore, the environmental changes surrounding Turkey have resulted in increasing the support for Arab issues in the third millennium. This represent a gap in the context of the traditional Paradigm of Turkish foreign policy.