Assessing Turkey’s New Global Governance Strategies: The G20 Example

Abstract

This chapter attempts to scrutinize Turkey first as a status-seeking country and second as a G20 middle power with different expectations in terms of geopolitics, economics, and foreign policy. Third, this study attempts to examine Turkey’s performance in the G20 as a middle power state in comparison with its peers in the same group by the use of G20 compliance data set from 2008 to 2013 and the final compliance reports of the 2014–2016 summits. Here, the main objective is to grasp the extent to which Turkey has met its commitments and in which areas between 2009 and 2016 compared with its middle power peers. This analysis also engenders an assessment of the main characteristics of Turkey’s changing priorities, preferences, and adjustments in the G20’s institutional sub-system. In the final analysis, the chapter concludes that despite its lack of compliance with G20 summit commitments compared with other G20 middle power members, Turkey’s bridging status between the North and the South grants it a special role as both an institutionally accommodating and challenging actor.