Turkey in role of regional super power

Turkey's role as a regional leader has recently increased amid the aggravated socio-political and economic events in the Middle East.

Along with its political activity, Ankara has assumed the role of an economic centre due to stable economic growth and strategic position.

There is no doubt that Turkey will become an alternative player in the region where the interests of the biggest world powers are traditionally strong.

Being tired of waiting to join the European Union, perhaps Ankara decided to use its growing economic and political influence to establish its control over the region, previously divided into the spheres of influence of the world's biggest powers.

According to these intentions, Turkey is strengthening military cooperation with the countries of the region - Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and several in Central Asia. On the other hand, it renders financial assistance mainly to the countries suffering from the Arab Spring which have not fully determined their foreign policy priorities.

In this regard, Turkey has recently allocated $2 billion to Egypt to develop the economy and a soft loan to Kyrgyzstan worth more than $100 million which is likely to be an additional attempt to strengthen its economic presence in the region.

Such projects as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum and the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP) project which is under construction and the restoration of the Europe-Asia transport corridor strengthened Turkey's role as a regional energy and transport hub.

Besides the Middle East, Turkey has recently started to actively cooperate with Central and South-West Asia. As an example, the Turkish authorities recent statement about the desire to join the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas project and to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which Ankara apparently, considers as an alternative to the EU can be mentioned as an example.

A proposal of creating a Turkish Lira (TL) zone as an alternative to the Eurozone are among other interesting ideas put forward by Turkey. Creating aTL-zone involves first doing business in lira between member states of the zone. Undoubtedly, while making this proposal, Ankara primarily hoped for the support and participation of Turkic-speaking countries and other Asian countries.

Perhaps, Turkey's proposal to establish the TL-zone is designed for the long term prospects, but we can see significant prerequisites to implement this project in the future given the growing power of the regional economies and the existing potential for cooperation.

Turkey's foreign policy vector of the operations can be considered as Ankara's attempt to turn into an influential centre in the vast territory from the Middle East to South-East Asia. Perhaps, Ankara intends to replace or at least hold an important place among the other influential countries in the world arena.

Taking advantage of the situation in the regional countries, Turkey has a real chance to become a leading force in the vast territory. Changing the power in some Arab countries and partially a common religion which can create the image of an 'elder brother' for Turkey may contribute to this

It is beneficial for Ankara that Russia and the U.S cease to be reliable allies in the region. Thus, Russia easily gave up its closest partners in the face of the former leaders of Egypt, Libya and Iraq, thus putting into question its reliability.

As for the U.S., it has become a symbol of the country for Muslim peoples, bringing blood and suffering to the people of these countries, because of long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Thus, Turkey, which has been vainly trying for many years to become a full member of the EU, decided apparently, to direct its efforts towards another political course and to become the leading power in the region, capable of replacing the presence of the superpowers.


Aygul Taghiyeva /Trend/