Turkish Foreign Policy

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu dismissed speculations on Thursday and stressed during an interview with private Azerbaijani ANS TV station that Turkey’s recent strategic partnership agreement with Azerbaijan is not in response to any other country in the region.Speaking about the recent strategic partnership between Russia and Armenia and its possible implication to the Turkish-Azerbaijani partnership, Davutoğlu said the scope of the Turkish-Azerbaijani strategic partnership agreement is very broad and an advanced form of previous signed treaties. He said the treaty includes military cooperation, considering the needs of both countries and that it will be more comprehensive in the future. “We will realize cooperation in military areas.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said yesterday that Turkey will not open its border gate with Armenia temporarily during an upcoming exercise of NATO, signaling a reversal of earlier statements that it was under consideration.“This exercise is for entirely humanitarian purposes and it is about extraordinary circumstances. As a NATO member Turkey will, of course, participate in it,” Davutoğlu told reporters in the Doğanşehir district of the central Anatolian province of Konya, when asked to comment about Azerbaijani opposition to a temporary opening of the Turkish-Armenian border. “As I have told the Azeri media earlier, opening of the border, even temporarily, is out of the question. Unnecessary rumors should be avoided,” Davutoğlu said.

Turkey and Afghanistan have always enjoyed warm relations due to their strong cultural and historical connections. For instance, immediately after Afghanistan gained its independence on 19 August 1919 under the leadership of Amanullah Khan, it established diplomatic contacts with Turkey -- while Turkeys own Independence War was still ongoing. Afghanistan became the second state after the Soviet Union to recognize the Turkish Republic. As a result, the two countries signed the Turkey-Afghanistan Alliance Agreement on 1 March 1921 in Moscow, the first official agreement between the two states.

Political developments in Baku which I have been living in for a couple of years, have given a direction to my field of research and make me take a close interest in the geography on which I live. Caucasia, which affects Turkey’s strategic location and occasionally being Turkey’s soft spot in foreign policy, is kind of a composition of nations with its different elements reserved in it. The fact that I have continued my Caucasia research just on the Baku-Tbilisi and Ankara direction has made me realize my shortcomings in some points. Neglecting the most important ternary of the Caucasia with the information taken from an external source or any other person has prevented us from understanding most of the problems. It is not possible to work out Caucasia without taking Baku-Tbilisi-Yerevan ternary into consideration.