Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: An Introduction, Emel Parlar Dal, Gonca Oğuz Gök (eds.), Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs, V. 19, n.4, Winter 2014

Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: An Introduction Emel PARLAR DAL and Gonca OĞUZ GÖK* In recent years there has been a signiicant increase in the number of academic studies on changes in the current international order and the way the so-called rising powers have been contributing to these changes through their behaviours and strategies of global governance.1 Hot debates are still ongoing in academic and political circles about whether, despite their normative challenges to the current order, these rising states have been successfully integrated into the rulebased and open liberal international order through international cooperation or have been destabilizing the liberal global governance with the aim of changing the order and functioning of global governance institutions according to their own interests. If a power transition is currently under way in the international system, how the rising, middle and major powers are facing the systemic, regional and domestic efects of * Emel Parlar Dal is associate professor of International Relations in International Relations Department at Marmara University. Gonca Oğuz Gök is assistant professor in International Relations Department at Marmara University. PERCEPTIONS, Winter 2014, Volume XIX, Number 4, pp. 1-18. this transition remains as a fundamental question requiring an answer. On the other hand, there exists confusion in the International Relations (IR) literature with regard to the conceptualization and categorization of the ‘rising powers’ and their similarities and diferences. here is a general tendency in the literature to restrict the ield of research to the key rising powers such as China, Brazil, Russia and India or the middle powers and their subcategories. ‘Regional powers’ also appear as another category of states which have become of greater concern to many scholars and observers in recent years. his overlapping conceptual luidity adds new confusion to the literature and makes it harder for countries like Turkey to be appropriately conceptualized and categorized. his special issue aims to address this theme by opening a new ground of research for Turkish foreign policy and its changing power status in the global system by proiling Turkey as both a “middle” and “rising” power. Turkey has become the world’s 17th biggest economy and a member of he Group of Twenty (G-20) in the last decade, with 1 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök an increasingly expanding material and soft power. Turkey is certainly leaping forward, though at a lesser degree when compared to the core big rising powers like China, India and Brazil. Yet its rise is somehow diferent from the latter, not only structurally, but also ideologically. Despite its increasingly critical stance in regard to the global governance institutions and their decision-making mechanisms in recent years, the normative challenges to Turkey and its behavioural posture within the current international order need to be nuanced from those of the other rising powers in the Global South. Turkey’s complaints about the current international order are not informed by an anti-Western attitude or hird Worldist ideology, but clearly fall into the framework of a within-system challenge. his special issue also touches upon the “normative” dimension of Turkish foreign policy through an in-depth analysis of Turkey’s understanding of international law, justice and ethics and of its shifting approach to the UN over the years. It is known that the increasing normativity and cosmopolitanism in Turkish foreign policy under the AK Party government have been harshly criticized by some political and academic circles both inside and outside the country in recent years. It is thus important to draw on the regional and international challenges to Turkey’s regional and global rise, as is done in this special issue. 2 his issue also looks at Turkey’s rise and quest for a new international order from the window of the Muslim world and through the use of alternative approaches, discourses and policies such as “the civilizational discourse”. It also takes up the theme of, “civilizational justice” and the Muslim perception of injustice as key components of the Muslim grievances about the global order. A number of analyses in this issue take on board the recent developments in the Middle East after 2011, commonly known as the “Arab Spring”. he dual themes of “Turkey in the global governance” and “Turkey-asa-middle power” have conspicuously been lacking in Turkish foreign policy literature and thus are in need of further elaboration, both conceptually and empirically. To partially ill this gap, this special issue also contains an article that seeks to locate Turkey in the current liberal global governance as a “rising middle power” occupying a middle ground between the traditional middle powers and the non-traditional or emerging middle powers. he said study then assesses Turkey’s preferences, capabilities and strategies in the changing network of global governance. A second article serves a similar purpose by providing an evaluation of Turkey’s global governance strategy in the context of its 2015 G20 Presidency. Against this backdrop, a set of questions crop up to lesh out Turkey’s Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: interaction with the international order, such as the following: How can one best locate and conceptualize Turkey in the current international order? What are the delineating features of Turkey’s conception and behavioural posture vis-à-vis the current international order in the context of law, justice and ethics? How can one make sense of Turkish conceptions of “world order” through alternative lenses? How can one interpret its relatively diferent approach to the UN today compared to the past? How can one proile Turkey’s recent activism in global governance and compare its “rising” power status with that of other traditional middle powers and the BRICs countries? Informed by such questions, this special issue brings together ive articles under the main theme of this special issue and aims to understand the ways in which Turkey and other rising powers position themselves in the current international order vis-àvis the major powers. hey also seek to shed light on Turkey’s behavioural posture and conceptual outlook that accompany its quest for a new international order. Aside from these ive articles under the main theme of “Turkey and the international order”, this special issue also contains two other articles providing insights into Jordan and the Arab Spring and Afghanistan’s transition challenges after 2014. Turkey’s Behavioural and Normative Posture within the Current International Order It is known that the world is currently witnessing colossal global changes, which are in fact the birth pangs of an emerging post-Westphalian international order: the decline of the hitherto consecrated principles of sovereignty, territoriality, and non-intervention; the rise of democracy and human rights; the entry of new actors and processes into the realm of international politics; the expansion of supranational organizations and legal systems. Today, international society is facing three main challenges, as observed by Hurrell: “the need to capture shared and common interests, to manage unequal power, and to mediate cultural diversity and value conlict.”2 hese aspirations will continue to be adjourned so long as global politics continues to be marred by a legitimacy deicit.3 Hence the choice about the nature of international order is between one emphasizing technical management of global afairs and global governance, against one that underscores manifold problems, “political” in nature, that have to be solved. In the aftermath of the Cold War, contrary to expectations, the armed and non-armed interventions and imperialistic intrusions launched by 3 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök states with hegemonic impulses and allegedly humanitarian motives in the Muslim world and more generally in the developing world have aborted the likelihood of a transition to a peaceful and egalitarian international order. he West’s promiscuous exploitation of the low level of human rights and democracy in certain non-Western countries that stand up against Western hegemony, by virtue of military interventions, geopolitical exclusion, and international sanctions, speaks volumes about the chequered history of the place of human rights and democracy in the international order after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. he collective enforcement mechanism of the UN as formulated in Chapter VII often falls prey to the power political game played out in particular by the permanent members of the UN Security Council. he Council, more often than not, has stiled the hope of the world community for genuine peace and justice since the early 1990s. he troubling question, therefore, revolves around the level of deterrence which could possibly be exercised by the UN Security Council against aggressive states. If the contemporary international order is to be sustainable, it ought to give greater voice to the will and aspirations of the South within international political, economic and inancial institutions, while formulating policies that will assist in the elevation of the standards of peace, justice and material conditions 4 in the impoverished South. In the words of Shapcott, “he ethical framework associated with Westphalian sovereigntywhich gives only minor moral signiicance to the sufering of outsiders- seems less than adequate.”4 In an age in which “democracy” and “human rights” have become the “mantra” of world politics, the sustainability of the international order can only be achieved if and when global structures and processes become transparent, democratic and inclusive. If we assume that international order shapes the rules and mechanisms through which international society is constructed, this could easily presuppose the existence of a “family” of nations and communities that are bound together and cooperate in solidarity. his solidarity is a prerequisite for peace, prosperity and justice in the world. In spite of the globalization of international law, which holds the promise of ofering efective solutions to global problems while elevating the status of human rights and democracy as cardinal principles of international law, the power politics emanating from the imperial appetite of hegemonic actors continue to stile the longing of Asian and African societies for peace, justice and better living standards. Indeed, we ought to be aware of the existing “…crisis of global governance beyond the capacities of a world of sovereign states. In such a setting, the global war on terrorism has been understood as a new hegemonic project to assert dominance Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: over the South while keeping the world economy tilted to favour the North. One reason for eforts at dominance may be to control resources, but other motives, including partisan national interests, also play a role.”5 One disturbing feature of the current changes and trends in international law is the apparent disregard of the needs, aspirations and interests of the Muslim world by international institutions and powerful states. Although the Muslim world constitutes roughly one ifth of the world population, it gets a very low share of world revenues or a say, inter alia, about the future of international law and society. As noted by Abu Ni’meh, “the Islamic countries are being pressured and even harassed into being ready for ‘appropriate’ changes in International Law, however much that disturbs or upsets them.”6 hat the Muslim world does not get its fair share of decision-making prerogatives in the UN (and most other international organizations such as the World Bank and World Trade Organization) once again became manifest when, during debates about reforming the UN Security Council, which was a fashionable topic a decade ago, there was almost no discussion about possible ways in which to ensure better representation for the Muslim world within this body, while the same actors had no qualms about conceiving the possibility of conferring permanent membership within the UN Security Council for states as diverse as Japan, Germany, India and Brazil. As is noted by observers, Turkey has been pursuing a multilateral and multidimensional foreign policy since 2002. Turkish foreign policy is no longer attuned to the vagaries of the American geopolitical interests or the whimsical dictates of the European Union, but is rooted irmly in the “Ankara criteria”. he point of departure for this behavioural role is the Turkish priorities, vision of international society, and long-term projections. Turkey’s present government is committed to “reforming” the international system which, in Turkish eyes, is beset by global injustices, economic and social inequality, excessive militarisation, undemocratic representation and decision-making in major international institutions, and the geopolitical, geoeconomic and geo-cultural marginalisation of the Muslim world. Not surprisingly, therefore, global and/regional actors with hegemonic ambitions have become rather weary of Turkey’s moral stand7 on issues ranging from the endurance of poverty in the South to Israel’s enduring military occupation of and massive human rights violations in the Palestinian territories, from its unlinching denunciation of the coup d’êtat in Egypt that removed the elected President Mohammed Morsi from power in July 2013 to its repeated calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. his normative search and behavioural posture reinforce the “moral” ingredient of Turkish foreign policy. 5 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök Turkey’s challenging posture within the international order is also linked to its ascendancy to the club of “rising powers”. he narrative about “the rise of the rest” has become a major explanatory framework for the shifting constellation of power in the world today. he new power challengers are variably referred to as “emerging or rising powers”, “great/ major powers”, “middle or middle range powers (traditional or non-traditional (or emerging))” and “regional powers”. As is commonly agreed, the successive economic crises and the high inlation rates, as well as big societal and economic inequalities made it hard for Turkey to gain the status of an “emerging/rising power” up until the irst years of the 2000s. However, the monetary policy and the structural reforms carried out just after Turkey’s currency and banking crisis of 2001 helped Turkey’s economic recovery and the improvement of its inancial sector in the second half of the irst decade of 2000s. With high economic growth over the last decade, Turkey gained the opportunity to utilize its material resources for inluence at the regional and global levels. In other words, over the last decade, many aspects of Turkey’s power were fungible in important policy frameworks. Turkey’s ability to turn resources into outcomes and its clear upward trajectory in economic power made it possible for it to raise its power status to that of a “rising middle power” in the global hierarchy of power. 6 However, when compared to the core rising powers like China, India and Brazil, Turkey’s material power, and thus its bargaining power, still remains lower vis-à-vis the established powers. As in the case of other rising powers, Turkey has still limited ability to exert inluence in the more traditional realms of foreign policy. Turkey’s rising power status can only yield policy outcomes if it can use its regional, economic, military and political weight against the major powers on a host of geopolitical matters as a bargaining tool. On the other hand, Turkey’s active participation in regional and international organizations would certainly give it substantial multilateral weight and bargaining capacity. On some regional issues, Turkey appears to have the ability to frustrate or block (although it has done so very rarely) Western posturing as seen clearly in the 2010 Turkish-BrazilianIran swap deal (which was aborted by the US).8 However, in the Syrian crisis, Turkey failed to turn its rising power status into a useful asset for its foreign policy strategies and convince its Western allies, particularly the U.S., to put its full weight behind the opposition against the Assad regime. In this respect, the Syrian civil war clearly illustrates the limitations of Turkey as a rising and regional power. his also conirms the assumption that rising powers may occasionally punch above their weight, especially in a threat environment with transnational security challenges.9 Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: Obviously, like other rising powers, Turkey is clearly seeking to establish itself as the pre-eminent power in its region. Yet, the ongoing disorder and turmoil in the Middle East seem not to have provided it with a convenient atmosphere to wield its power. However, Turkey seeks to balance its relatively low proile regional actorness in the Middle East with a growing middle power activism at global governance institutions and forums like the UN, the G20, and in other extra-regions like Africa and Latin America. In the inancial realm, it appears clear that Turkey would wish to see the construction of a more efective global inancial governance system, and is ready to use some bargaining mechanisms vis-à-vis the major powers together with the other rising powers. In matters of security, especially as it relates to the Middle East, despite the existence of divergences of its point of view with some of its allies, particularly the U.S., with regard to the region’s key problems, Turkey stands out as an accommodating and challenging actor,10 and not as a hard bargaining and blocking one; indeed Turkey prefers cooperation as a response to regional and transnational threats. As a natural concomitant of its membership within the Western security system, Turkey’s challenging attitude is not meant to obstruct major-power initiatives. his posture separates out Turkey from other rising powers on major questions of world order and in the management of global problems. A multitude of writers working from quite diferent perspectives agree that directing attention to the rising powers beyond the West is vitally signiicant for an understanding of how the global order is being reshaped in the 21st century. Accordingly, a scholarly literature is burgeoning that problematizes the “foreign policy choices” of rising powers with regard to the “international order”, while drawing on the rising powers’ increasing economic and political might that could pose a challenge to “established institutions”. In this vein, a prominent scholar on rising powers, Andrew Hurrell, suggests that international institutions are not just concerned with liberal purposes of solving common problems or promoting shared values, but they are also “sites of power” that relect and entrench power hierarchies.11 Accordingly, rising powers are well aware of the reality that “world order is increasingly maintained by international institutions”.12 Against this background, it is no surprise that aspiring major powers or rising states are expected to devote so much attention to international institutions like the United Nations. We are thus able to witness Russia’s preoccupation with the Security Council; Chinese resistance to any reform of the UN Security Council that would add new permanent members; Brazil’s campaign for a permanent seat in the Council;13 and India’s eforts to become an “agenda mover” on various 7 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök issues relecting its newfound role as a bridge between North and South in the UN.14 Turkey’s UN Security Council temporary membership in 2009- 2010 and its application for the period 2015-2016 clearly illustrate increasing willingness on the side of Ankara to have an active role in the UN. Similarly, South Africa wanted a repeat of its holding a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council in 2007-2008 by applying for membership in the same body for the period between 2010-2012, which eventually materialized. hese foreign policy moves on the part of aspiring rising states are consistent with their insistence on an “inter-governmental” and “UN-based vision” for the future world order. he rising powers often articulate a desire to strengthen aspects of international institutions, but with a speciic emphasis on “egalitarian” and “just” redistribution of political decision-making authority, while at the same time championing their own case for representation. In this regard, rising powers tend to advocate a more “equitable”, “just” and “legitimate” multilateralism through United Nations.15 his goes well with Hurrell’s suggestion that power transitions among major states have never been simply about clashes of material power and material interest; rather, conlicts over “rival justice claims” have often been a determinant factor in the history of world order. Contestation over these 8 “normative claims” has long been at the heart of international politics, and the return over the past decade of more Hobbesian or Westphalian tendencies has brought them once more to centre stage. hus, for Hurrell, emerging powers have laid great emphasis on arguments for normative issues like, “justice” and “fairness” and they will naturally seek to revise the dominant norms of the system in order to relect their own interests as well as values through international institutions.16 What is notable is the way in which “rising states” have become more proactivefor example, using the language of democracy and representativeness to constantly push for the “reform” of international institutions, particularly the UN Security Council. States like Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey have mobilized claims for “normative” issues like greater representational fairness (as with membership of the Security Council) and distributional justice (as with Brazil’s promotion of a global hunger fund and Turkey’s attempt to lead global humanitarian eforts relected in its hosting of the irst UN Humanitarian Summit in 2016) in the UN platform. In this vein, Fontaine and Kliman assert that states like Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Turkey ofer great potential as partners to “extend” the global order.17 However, it is much less clear how far any of these rising states, including Turkey, have moved in terms Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: of becoming producers of the “ideas” that will shape conceptions of global order in the future.18 Assessment of Individual Articles In “Muslim Perceptions of Injustice as an International Relations Question”, Hasan Kösebalaban argues that the Muslim world is deeply suspicious of the international order on account of the deeply felt sense of injustice committed against Muslims. In the author’s view, the root of the problem lies in the lack of suicient opportunities within the existing international institutions and decision-making bodies for Muslim participation. his is compounded by the lack of stable political institutions and political fragmentation within the Muslim world which undermines Muslim actors’ ability to take a joint and assertive posture within the international order. Kösebalaban asserts that Muslim grievances about the existing international arrangements derive in particular from the failure to address the Palestinian problem, lack of overall interest in the plight and aspirations of Muslim minorities, and the lack of democracy in most of the Muslim countries. In all these cases, it is irst and foremost the West which impedes the cause of justice, (positive) peace and democracy in the Muslim world. he author also notes that the West has also sought to sabotage the emancipatory potential of the “Arab Spring” that began at the end of 2010 by aligning itself mostly with the counterrevolutionary political forces, as in the case of its support for the military junta that deposed the elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and its failure to support the opposition against the murderous Assad regime in Syria. Kösebalaban is also critical of the fact that international relations theories decline to address the issue of “justice” in favour of political and economic interests of states because they are grounded in a materialistic paradigm. By contrast, Islamic international relations theory considers “justice” as a key component of its conceptual and analytical concerns and views “peace” not only as the “absence of war”, but combines it with justice and a just social order. In the article entitled “Turkey’s Quest for a “New International Order”: he Discourse of Civilization and the Politics of Restoration”, Murat Yeşiltaş argues that the most important efect of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) in Turkish foreign policy has been that it re-opened Turkey’s understanding of “international order” up for discussion on the basis of a “new representation of civilizational belonging”. According to him, the increased emphasis on civilization in Turkish foreign policy fundamentally afected Turkey’s cultural critique of the international order and caused it to change its foreign policy paradigm 9 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök that coded the “Western system as the inal target of an advancing political understanding”. Foreign policy makers and political elites deined this period as “restoration politics” and thus both historicized it and then recreated it along the axis of the “New Turkey” discourse. Building on Ahmet Davutoğlu’s three scholarly works, namely Alternative Paradigms: he Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanshchauungs on Political heory, Civilizational Transformation and the Muslim World, and Strategic Depth, the paper asserts that Davutoğlu leans toward the concept of “civilization” as a “unit of analysis” and the key discourse for “New Turkey” which seeks to reproduce the “civilizational identity” as part of Turkey’s international order narrative by blending it with an antihegemonic “dissident” discourse. Accordingly, Yeşiltaş argues that this “civilizational identity” caused the birth of a new geopolitical vision that was blended with the Islamic solidarity discourse and which was shaped around the institutional and normative representations of the Islamic world on a historical level. It is the start of a new way of viewing Islamic civilization’s normative-based order narrative as a value in establishing the multi-cultural structure of world order. his goes well with Davutoğlu’s conceptualization of new “cultural order” in the sense that in a period where globalization ofers a re-blending of the continuity elements 10 of old cultural basins, a Euro-centred civilizational fancy will not keep its hegemonic position for long. In the inal analysis, Yeşiltaş demonstrates that since the early 2000s Turkey has placed its critique of the international order within a political and economic discourse as well as a “civilizational” one. Yet, as the paper suggests, how and through which mechanisms the representation of Islamic civilization will be transferred to the international system by virtue, inter alia, of Turkey’s rise still remain as openended questions. In her contribution to this special issue, “Tracing the Shift in Turkey’s Normative Approach towards International Order through Debates in the UN”, Gonca Oğuz Gök draws on Turkey’s changing “normative approach towards international order” in a historical perspective through the debates in the UN over the last decade. To this end, she irst analyzes the normative challenges posed by rising states towards the international order by giving reference to the rich literature on “rising powers and international order”. In doing so, she also focuses on the role of international institutions in providing the rising powers with space for coalition building, bargaining and counterbalancing the major powers. Secondly, Oğuz Gök aims at understanding the historical evolution of Turkey’s normative approach towards international order from a comparative perspective by mainly focusing on two consecutive periods, the 1990s and 2000s. Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: Here the author investigates to ind out if there has been a shift in Turkey’s normativity towards the international order and in its order criticism since the 1990s. For the author, Turkey’s “ordercriticism” is not a new phenomenon and goes back to the Republican era. However, as stated by the author, despite its criticisms with regard to the UN’s decision-making system, Turkey was generally cautious in adopting an anti-system stance towards the UN and its mechanisms and, as a result of this, it followed the decisions and resolutions of the United Nations throughout the Cold-War years. In the post Cold War era, Turkish rulers started to raise the tone of their criticism about the UN’s failure in responding to crises and did not hesitate to openly declare their expectations from the UN. he author also points out that the second half of the 1990s was marked by Turkey’s multiple quests for a new role and position in the changing world order. he “world state”, “bridge”, “Turkish model” concepts can be seen, in this respect, as part of Turkey’s willingness to relocate and reconceptualise itself in the changing international conditions of the 1990s. From the article by Oğuz Gök, one can also deduce that since the 2000s there has been a gradual shift in Turkey’s order-criticism compared to the 1990s. his new approach to international order has been shaped by both more “concrete” normative suggestions and a brand new order-building role at the regional and global levels. he author also underlines the “Davutoğlu” efect in the construction of this new international order understanding both discursively and empirically over the last decade. In the last part of her article, Oğuz Gök also explains the reasons behind Turkey’s vociferous criticism of the UN and other major global governance institutions. She concludes that Turkey’s normative resistance to the international order is concretized by its increasing reform demands and its willingness to extend the existing international order by proposing an “international justice-based alternative approach” to the current order, which needs to be reconstructed within, not outside, the UN platform. In the article entitled “On Turkey’s Trail in the Network of Global Governance as a ‘Rising Middle Power’: Preferences, Capabilities, and Strategies”, Emel Parlar Dal discusses Turkey’s contributions to global governance as a “rising middle power”. She seeks to take up the case of Turkey which, she notes, is largely neglected within the academic literature on the “rising powers”. Parlar Dal takes up this challenge by evaluating Turkey’s shifting status in the power hierarchy within international society. She argues that the root causes of Turkey’s elevation to the status of a “rising middle power” within the last decade could also be sought in the current Turkish government’s more “nuanced” pluricentric perception of international society, its difering 11 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök civilizational understanding and its new cosmopolitan worldview. he author also draws on a number of other factors: “possession of necessary material, ideational and institutional power resources, the increasing dependence on global economy, and the strength of civil society.” She designates Turkey’s place between traditional middle powers such as Canada, Australia and South Korea and non-traditional middle powers like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. In this context, she draws on Turkey’s “unique position and its bridge-building role between ‘the West and the rest’”. he author delineates the main contours of Turkey’s “reformist”, and certainly not anti-systemic, rather “within system” posture on the issue of global governance, which include a call for greater justice, more representative and participatory mechanisms for international decision-making, more efective conlict-resolution mechanisms, and the recognition of the pluricentric coniguration of the world order today. his overall context explains a great deal about Turkey’s reformist agenda as the new holder of the presidency of the G20 in 2015: overseeing sustainable growth at the global level; reducing economic disparities between the North and South; establishing coalitions with which it has similar developmental needs; and engaging the G20 with global problems that are beyond its immediate and speciic concerns. 12 In his contribution to this special issue, entitled “Transformation Trajectory of the G20 and Turkey’s Presidency: Middle Powers in Global Governance”, Sadık Ünay irst presents a historical and institutional evolution of the G20 since its foundation in the aftermath of the Asian inancial crisis in 1997. In this study, Ünay also touches upon the evolution of the G20 after the 2008 global inancial crisis under the Bush and Obama administrations respectively, and explains how the G20 was symbolically and supericially designed at the leader’s level as an umbrella organization through an expansion of the club of the G7; with the former now including prominent rising powers like China, India and Brazil. As noted by the author, after the elevation of the Forum to the leader’s level in 2008, the G20 engaged in transforming global inancial governance into a shared operational area between the Global North and the South. Despite all these eforts, as indicated by the author, there still exists some limitations of the G20 in terms of institutional efectiveness, legitimacy and agency. In Ünay’s view, in order to overcome the current structural problems and the “legitimacy/ownership deicit” of the G20, a more inclusive policy agenda regarding development issues appears as a must. he difering strategies of the BRICS and middle powers regarding the G20 are also scrutinized by Ünay. He holds that while the Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: middle powers as insiders in the G20 are more committed to the activities of the forum, the BRICS prefer adopting hedging strategies and thus remain reluctant towards actively becoming involved in the day-to-day running of the forum. In the inal analysis, the author explains how the transformation trajectory of the G20 over the years and the middle powers’ increasing activism in this platform have matched Turkey’s ambitious global governance agenda in general and its 2015 G20 Presidency programme in particular. According to the author, the increasing weight of development issues in the G20 agenda over the last ive years has also itted well Turkey’s multidirectional foreign policy, geographically covering the developing countries from diferent continents. Ünay also states that Turkey’s objective of establishing an institutional basis for the G20 that would also welcome the least developed countries (LDCs) may also be seen as a relection of Turkey’s middle power activism and its bridge building role between the developed and developing countries. he author suggests that Turkey’s rotating 2015 G20 presidency could create leverage for Turkey’s middle power actorness in global governance and its call for reform in major global governance institutions. Two articles on a theme diferent from the main theme of the issue are also included in this special issue and contribute to this special issue’s multi-perspective approach to regional and international afairs. In “Jordan and the Arab Spring: Challenges and Opportunities”, Nuri Yeşilyurt aims to analyze the impacts of the Arab Spring on the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Acknowledging the fact that among Arab monarchies, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is one of the most vulnerable because of its small size, poor economy, fragmented society and uneasy neighborhood, the article speciically deals with the survival of the Hashemite regime in the course of the Arab Spring by analyzing the main sources of stability/instability for the regime. Yeşilyurt asserts that Arab Spring brought more beneits to the Hashemite regime than problems in the sense that the regime has been successful in overcoming radical Islamist challenges, deepening economic problems and the growing unrest among East Bankers. Yet, the article stresses that the long term sustainability of Jordan’s stability is still questionable since it is highly dependent on external factors, namely the regional conjuncture and foreign assistance. In “Post-2014 Drawdown and Afghanistan’s Transition Challenges”, Saman Zulfqar draws on the challenges of transition that Afghanistan has been facing since the 2014 drawdown of foreign troops from the country. he author aims to depict the country’s various transition challenges related with security, economics and domestic 13 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök politics and tries to assess how regional states could play a constructive role in facilitating the transition process in Afghanistan. For the author, among all the transition processes it is the process of political transition that has been the most challenging and decisive in shaping the contours of the new order in the making in Afghanistan. Saman Zulfqar also emphasizes that political transition will be incomplete unless the reconciliation process with insurgent groups, namely the Taliban, is successfuly resumed. In the inal analysis, the author concludes that the onus for making the transition process successful rests on the Afghan people themselves, who have been sufering for decades from tribal and ethnic conlicts and civil war. his special issue wraps up with a tribute dedicated to Ali Mazrui, written by one of his students, M. Akif Kayapınar. As a complementary piece to Hasan Kösebalan’s article, the tribute, entitled “A Life of ‘Long Debate’: A Tribute to Ali A. Mazrui (1933-2014)”, presents a short biography of Professor Mazrui, who was a spirited Africanist, a conscientious public intellectual, a proliic writer and a life-long activist against abuses of power and violation of human rights. In his works, Mazrui speciically focuses on the role and signiicance of “culture” in world politics, as opposed to power based explanations. Kayapınar asserts that the solution ofered by Mazrui for the prevailing 14 inequalities in the world today was a “world-federation of cultures”, which he believed to be more relevant than an order based solely on the distribution of power and security concerns. his tribute completes this special issue’s “order” debate by emphasizing once again the “ethical” and “cultural” dimension of international politics as well as sensitivity towards basic freedoms, fundamental human rights and inequality in a changing international order. In Guise of Conclusion his special issue thus ofers a multidisciplinary panorama for assessing Turkey’s changing power status in the existing international order via a framework of multiple perspectives, and locates Turkey as a “rising” power with a number of peculiarities. Turkey’s rise in the current power hierarchy seems to inluence not only its normative stance vis-à-vis recent international developments and regional crises, but also its preferences and strategies with regard to the changing global governance and the liberal international order. As most of the papers of this special issue have argued, despite the existing limitations and constraints to its regional and, to a lesser extent, global rise, Turkey has shown its willingness to participate in eforts to build a more efective set of arrangements for a more equitable and just international order. Turkey’s new pluralistic and multi- Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: centric approach to international order is not only based on a communitarian understanding of international solidarity, but also on a cosmopolitan worldview which is universalistic in terms of global citizenship, justice and ethics.19 In this respect, in the new normative agenda of Turkish foreign policy, the quest for global justice and order criticism are interlinked. On the other hand, Turkey’s quest for a new international order, its civilizational approach and encompassing understanding based on the idea of the coexistence of multiple civilizations and multiple modernities also constitutes a critical dimension of its new outlook. Turkey’s multicentric approach to the international order also explains its recent activism in global governance institutions. he new global governance, as understood by Turkey, seeks to establish interactions between civilisations, while contributing “to the emergence of a genuine global culture in which convergence and pluralism coexist.”20 Aside from Turkey’s nuanced normative stance vis-à-vis international crises and its quest for a justice and ethics-based international order, that which is new in Turkey’s current approach to the global order is its increasing willingness to act as a middle power between the West and the rest. However, given current structural and regional constraints, this new role conception has been held in check by some limitations. Compared to the other rising powers like China, India, Brazil and South Africa, Turkey’s ability to exert diplomatic inluence in its own sub-region, namely the Middle East, is actually limited due to the ongoing regional instability, chaos and the emerging security threats, such as the one emanating from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In contrast, other rising powers enjoy an incomparable manoeuvring capacity and growing diplomatic inluence in their sub-regions, which may enable them to frustrate Western diplomacy and wield signiicant power. Since the occupation of Iraq by the US in 2003, no new regional order has emerged in the Middle East, and, with the outbreak of the Arab revolts in late 2010, the region has come to witness new power antagonisms among major powers, regional states and the emerging non-state actors (armed and unarmed). In this highly chaotic atmosphere, no state is powerful enough to play a regional power broker role. Here it must be reminded that between roughly 2005-2013, Turkey positioned itself as a regional power in the Middle East thanks to its proactive foreign policy, increasing trade relations, and socialization with the regional countries. Although Turkey successfully responded to the region’s challenges and performed credibly in the areas of mediation, conlict resolution and development cooperation in the irst decade of the 2000s, the aggravation of the Syrian civil war after 2012 and the military coup d’état in Egypt in 2013 15 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök partly sabotaged its regional calculations; as a result, its rising regional power status in the Middle East could not generate efective policy outcomes. Turkey’s relatively diminishing political inluence in the Middle East over the last three years has slackened its global rise by weakening its regional competitiveness vis-à-vis the other rising powers who are, at the same time, eminent regional actors in their own sub-regions. In spite of occasional “road accidents”, Turkey continues to be unequivocal about its active advocacy for a reform of the Western-dominated global order in order to introduce more representative, efective and just institutional structures. In this context, in its criticism towards the West for having adopted a doublestandard vis-à-vis the international crises of the last decade, Ankara has come to take on “a brand new role” aiming to “bring a higher moral standard to global governance” during this period.21 Yet, despite intense criticisms towards the workings of the UN system, in practice, the UN has continued to be an important arena in Ankara’s search for a just international order as well as in its eforts to “restructure” the world order. Furthermore, as a rising power that takes part in the Western institutions, Turkey’s emphatic calls for a revision of the international system are clearly distinguished from those of other rising 16 states, granting it membership within a plethora of Western international institutions. In this context, Turkey’s “normative resistance” of the last decade is designed to propose an “international justice-based alternative approach” to the existing international order which needs to be reconstructed within, not outside, the UN platform. Finally, as guest editors we would like to thank irst Prof. Berdal Aral for his valuable contribution to this special issue since the very beginning. He made signiicant eforts at every stage for maximizing the academic value and content quality of this issue. Without his rigorous help, criticism and sense of organisation we doubt it would have been possible for us to inish this issue of Perceptions. We also thank all the authors for their valuable contributions to this issue as well as Birgül Demirtaş, deputy editor of Perceptions, for her feedback and editing and Murat Yeşiltaş for his encouragement and kind help. As the guest editors, we hope this issue on Turkey and the International Order will bring novelty to both the IR and Turkish foreign policy literature and will provide a thought-provoking volume about the current debates on how to locate Turkey in the changing international order and how to understand its new position in global governance institutions compared to other prominent rising powers. Locating Turkey as a ‘Rising Power’ in the Changing International Order: Endnotes 1 Richard Fontaine and Daniel M. Kliman, “he Global Swing States”, he Washington Quarterly, Vol. 36, No.1 (Winter 2013), pp. 93-109; Andrew F. Hart and Bruce D. Jones, “How Do Rising Powers Rise?”, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Vol. 52, No.6 (2010), pp. 63-88; Matthew D. Stephen, “Rising Regional Powers and International Institutions: he Foreign Policy Orientations of India, Brazil and South Africa”, Global Society, Vol. 26, No.3 (2012), pp. 289-309; Breslin Shaun, “China’s Emerging Global Role: Dissatisied Responsible Great Power”, Politics, Vol. 30 (S1) (2010), pp. 52- 62, Michael Zürn and Matthew Stephen, “he View of Old and New Powers on the Legitimacy of International Institutions”, Politics, Vol. 30 (S1), (2010), pp. 91–101; Florini Ann, “Rising Asian Powers and Changing Global Governance”, International Studies Review, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2011), pp. 24- 33; Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko, “Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Responses to U.S. Primacy”, International Security, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Spring 2010), pp. 63- 95; Miles Kahler, “Rising Powers and Global Governance: Negotiating Change in a Resilient Status Quo”, International Afairs, Vol. 89, No. 3 (2013), pp. 711- 729; Sean W. Burges, “Brazil as A Bridge between Old and New Powers?”, International Afairs, Vol. 89, No. 3 (2013), pp. 577- 594; Maximilian Terhalle, “Reciprocal Socialization: Rising Powers and the West”, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 12, No. 4 (2011), pp. 341–361; Amrita Narlikar, “India Rising: Responsible to Whom?”, International Afairs, Vol. 89, No. 3 (2013), pp. 595–614; Amrita Narlikar, “Introduction Negotiating the Rise of New Powers”, International Afairs, Vol. 89, No. 3 (2013), pp.561–576; Stefan A Schirm, “Leaders in Need of Followers: Emerging Powers in Global Governance”, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 16, No.2 (2010), pp. 197-221; Suresh P Sing and Memory Dube, “BRICs and the World Order: A Beginner’s Guide”, (2013), pp.1-46; Kevin Gray and Craig N. Murphy”, “Introduction: Rising Powers and the Future of Global Governance”, hird World Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2013), pp.183-193; Gregory Chin and Fahimul Quadir, “Introduction: Rising States, Rising Donors and the Global Aid Regime”, Cambridge Review of International Afairs, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2012), pp. 493-506. 2 Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order: Power, Values and the Constitution of International Society, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 2. 3 Ibid. 4 Richard Shapcott, “International Ethics”, in John Baylis, Steve Smith & Patricia Owens (eds.), he Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, Fifth edition, New York, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 200. 5 Richard Falk, Balakrishnan Rajagopal and Jacqueline Stevens (eds.), “Introduction”, International Law and the hird World: Reshaping Justice, New York, Routledge-Cavendish, 2008, 1-7, p. 6. 6 Hassan Abu Ni’meh, “Consequences for Islamic Nations if International Law is Reshaped –How can Islamic Nations Best Utilize International Law”, Restarting the Dialogue in International Law, Documentation of the International Workshop held in Amman, 21-22 July 2003, p. 68. 7 İbrahim Karagül, “Gazze Ortak Utanç, İsrail bir Sapmadır” (Gaza, our common shame, Israel as deviation), Yeni Şafak, 21 July 2014. 17 Emel Parlar Dal and Gonca Oğuz Gök 8 Hart and Jones, “How Do Rising Powers Rise?”, p. 84. 9 Ibid., p. 69. 10 Tarık Oğuzlu and Emel Parlar Dal, “Decoding Turkey’s Rise: An Introduction”, Turkish Studies, Vol.14, No.4 (December 2013), p. 618. 11 Andrew, Hurrell, “Brazil: What kind of a rising state in what kind of an Institutional Order”, in Allan S. Alexandrof and Andrew F. Cooper, (eds.), Rising States Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance, Brookings Inst. Press, 2010, pp. 3- 4. 12 Matthew D. Stephen “Rising Regional Powers and International Institutions: he Foreign Policy Orientations of India, Brazil and South Africa”, Global Society, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2012), p. 297. 13 Andrew Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order: What Space for Would-be Great Powers?”, International Afairs, Vol. 82, No. 1 (2006), p. 10. 14 A. Cooper, and T. Fues, “Do the Asian Drivers Pull their Diplomatic Weight? China, India, and the United Nations”, World Development, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2008), pp. 293- 307. 15 Hurrell, “Hegemony, liberalism and Global Order”, p. 11. 16 Andrew Hurrell and Sandeep Sengupta, “Emerging powers, North–South Relations and Global Climate Politics”, International Afairs, Vol. 88, No. 3 (2012), p. 464. 17 Fontaine and Kliman, “International Order and Global Swing States”, p. 94. 18 Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order”, p. 11 19 Emel Parlar Dal, “Assessing Turkey’s ‘Normative’ Power in the Middle East and North Africa Region: New Dynamics and their Limitations”, Turkish Studies, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2013), p. 716. 20 Emel Parlar Dal, “A Normative heory Approach to Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy through the Cosmopolitanism-Communitarianism divide”, International Journal, Vol. 70, No. 3 (September 2015, forthcoming). 21 Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Global Governance”, SAM Vision Papers, No. 2 (March 2012). 18