Introduction: Compatible and Incompatible Visions of Grand Strategy
Scholarly debates on Turkey’s grand strategy have finally begun. A special issue on Turkey’s grand strategy published by the academic periodical of Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2020, which includes five different grand strategic proposals,1 followed by other academic articles and op-eds discussing different aspects of Turkey’s grand strategy from descriptive and normative vantage points, and the TRT World Forum 2021 devoted to the theme of “Power and Paradox: Understanding Grand Strategy in the 21st Century,”2 are indicative of the rapidly rising interest on this subject. Despite this recent scholarly efflorescence, comparative analyses of grand strategies that include Turkey are still very rare. Moreover, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a single study of the compatibility of Turkish grand strategy and the grand strategies of multiple great powers. This article attempts to address this lacuna by reviewing the grand strategies of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) with an eye to gauging their degree of compatibility or incompatibility with Turkey’s grand strategic priorities.
