Turkey – Interconnecting Bridge or Geopolitical Trader?

Abstract

The division of the world, the opposition of East and West, the differencies of social, religious and world-viewing aspects between civilisations had always been having huge impacts on the way of history. One important epicenter of those great forces – if not the most important – is Turkey. The turkish empire, which looks back to a multiple thousand year old past – although from time to time it had to share its territory with other regional powers – managed to preserve its continuity and rule the area referred in the literature as the between East and West. During the cold war the region was not only described as the guard of the borderline between the two rivalising superpowers, but as the neighbor of the third world who had been watching the conflict outwardly, therefore Turkey in the postbipolar era also earned a determinate central strategic-geographical role, describing itself as the center of Afro-Eurasia. Turkey, thanks to its geopolitical attributes - beside its key role in the international migration -, plays an active role in the actual middle-eastern security processes. In light of the above-mentioned it became expedient to review Turkey’s geopolitical potential and Ankara’s steps of growing importance in the field of international migration and regional security.