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Over the last few years, Turkey seems to have embraced the East again. Ankara’s closer relations with Eurasian countries go hand in hand with the global shift eastwards, towards the ever-growing and most dynamic region in the world. It is therefore the result of an increasing differentiation of Turkey’s foreign relations, driven by strategic, economic and energy interests. Stronger ties with Eurasian countries, i.e. Russia and China, are also the litmus test for the ups and downs in relations with Washington and Brussels. While Ankara still retains strong ties with the West, it is laying the groundwork to further widen its interests to the East. This report aims to analyse the multi-faceted aspects of Ankara’s Eurasian shift, highlighting the domestic drivers of Turkey’s “Eurasianism”, the interests at stake, the areas of cooperation and competition, and last but not least the implications for the EU.

Turkey --- Foreign relations.

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“Whoever controls Central Asia controls the world” saidHalford Mackinder, the English father of geopolitics. He was looking at the world at the beginning of the 20th century, whenthe British Empire reached its apogee. It is ironic then that,only a few decades after he developed his ideas, great powers would almost forget about Central Asia and turn their attention back to the Middle East. The reasons? History, geography,and the discovery of vast hydrocarbon resources.Over the past century, it has been an almost constant refrain:as great and middle powers rise, they will almost invariably look at the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It was therefore to be expected that, with the world’s economic andpolitical centre of gravity moving increasingly towards East and South Asia, a number of countries in these regions would devote more attention to the MENA region. China and India, inparticular, have been at the forefront of an astonishing rise, astheir GDP has grown respectively fourteen-fold and six-fold, ata constant rate, between 1990 and 2019, with China climbingfrom the eleventh to the second largest economy in the world,and India from the thirteenth to the fifth. With the unfoldingof this monumental change, MENA countries have started to“look East” more and more and with a keener interest, alsowith an eye to rebalancing the influence and interference of“classical” non-regional actors such as the United States, Russia and a number of European countries (especially former colonial powers).

Topical Subject Heading. --- Geographical Subject Heading. --- Middle East --- Economic conditions