Turkiet, AKP och Israel : En studie av en utrikespolitik i förändring

Sammanfattning: Turkey has often been described as a cultural and geographical bridge between West and East. When the Islamic AKP came to power in Turkey 2002 many critics feared that the country was going to abandon its former Western allies and strengthen their relations with the Arab world instead. The criticism was intensified when the AKP increased Turkey’s bilateral relations with the Middle East and moved closer to former foe’s like Iran and Syria, at the same time as their long-time friendship with Israel experienced serious crisis. The aim and purpose of this thesis is to describe and explain the change in AKP’s foreign policy towards Israel. The research method is a combination of a qualitative text analysis of Turkey’s speeches in the UN General debate and Jakob Gustavsson’s model for explaining foreign policy change. The results show that the Turkish-Israeli relations have deteriorated after the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010, particularly regarding diplomatic relations and military agreements. Based on Gustavsson’s model, possible explanations to AKP’s foreign policy change towards Israel, is structural changes such as a growing economy, a strong Turkish public opinion and new partners, with the Gaza war and the attack on the Freedom Flotilla functioning as catalysts for the deterioration.