Turkey’s cultural diplomacy and soft power policy toward the Balkans

This article examines Turkey’s Balkan policy in 2000s within the framework of cultural diplomacy and soft power. Turkey followed a security-oriented policy due to the conflicting dynamics of the region in 1990s while it chose a cultural diplomacy based soft power diplomacy due to the relative stability in the region in 2000s. In this context, the main research question of this paper was determined to be “what is the changing aspect of Turkey’s Balkan policy in 2000s?” The fundamental argument within the framework of this question is that Turkey’s Balkan policy during the AK Party reign is that the country mainly followed a strategy to increase cultural-social effectiveness in the region through a soft power policy on the basis of the publiccultural diplomacy. In this framework, the other two arguments of the study are as follows: Firstly, Turkey opted to develop its relations with the Balkans on the societal and cultural levels. The reason is the historical and cultural ties are the most significant ties of Turkey with the region. Turkey desired to revive these ties through cultural diplomacy. Secondly, Turkey followed a policy of being a soft power in the region. Therefore, Turkey opted to implement the instruments of the public and cultural diplomacy. The Yunus Emre Institute, TİKA, TRT and Anatolian Agency were introduced in 2000s as the instruments that generate the soft power of Turkey in the region.