Fresh off a closely scrutinized critical election season, Türkiye is beginning to forge its foreign policies for the next five years under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his new Cabinet.

According to several experts, Ankara's hotly debated international approach is set to advance to a more independent level without severing Türkiye's relations with the West and the selection of Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and National Intelligence Organization (MIT) chief Ibrahim Kalın means experience will shine in security and diplomacy.

Smart diplomacy

The appointment of new officials, particularly Fidan and Kalın, is evidence Türkiye is adopting a new manner of leading a responsible foreign policy, said professor Mesut Hakkı Caşın, the deputy chair of the Center for Strategic Research and a member of the Presidential Security and Foreign Policies Council.

"We’re talking about smart diplomacy here," Caşın pointed out. "Backed by a much more self-confident military, Turkish foreign policy will become more dynamic and didactic," he explained, citing new Defense Minister Yaşar Güler who Caşın argued had inspired more support within the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).

As the head of intelligence, Fidan was pivotal in normalization talks with Israel and Syria, as well as peace talks with the PKK terrorist group in the early 2010s. Former presidential spokesperson and policy adviser Kalın, who also took part in negotiations with Syria and Russia, is broadly known as a "black box" of a confidant for Erdoğan.

The two are proof of how intertwined security and diplomacy have become in this age, another expert Mehmet Özkan, author and a foreign policy expert currently serving in the Joint War Institute and the National Defense University, quipped. "It also highlights Erdoğan’s emphasis on the separation of powers."

Expert Oğuz Çelikkol, too, praised Fidan and Kalın as "experienced figures with deft and valuable insight" that will contribute to Türkiye’s outward course.

"It will be an advantage for fortifying the international stance," said Çelikkol, an academic who previously served as Türkiye’s consul-general to Los Angeles, as well as ambassador to Syria, Greece, Iraq and Israel.

The experts agreed there wouldn’t be a radical shift in Türkiye’s international stance, but emphasized it would further deepen to buttress existing achievements earned in the field and negotiating table over the past two decades under Erdoğan.

"In a way that will not exhaust the Turkish economy, the new foreign policy will overlap with defense industry sales and expand Türkiye’s parameters to the Caucasus, China, Black Sea and the Balkans while still firmly being rooted in the Middle East and Africa," Caşın argued.

Türkiye as a third option

Erdoğan himself has been emphasizing a comprehensive and reconciliatory "national foreign policy" based on the principle of "Peace at home, peace in the world" — a slogan coined in 1931 by founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as the core of Türkiye’s foreign policy.

According to Caşın, this means Türkiye will stick to its attitude of neutrality as much as it can, especially, he said, in light of an increasingly Cold War-like atmosphere taking over international politics, with the U.S.-China and Russia polarization, as well as uncertainty in the Asia-Pacific where superpowers are competing for influence, and rising tension in the Balkans, notably the renewed Serbian aggression in Kosovo.

For Özkan, this points to Ankara’s rising prominence as a more active player that can bring stability to many points of conflict thanks to a search for order across the Middle East.

"The normalization of ties with Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Armenia and others should be interpreted as such, too," he noted.

A few decades after Ankara sided with Western powers and subsequently joined NATO to protect its southeastern border against Soviet expansion during the Cold War era, global systemic changes transformed Türkiye’s political, economic and social structure, pushing its pro-Western existence to a central position. By the 1980s, Turkish mentality broadened with the hope of influencing a vast region extending from Balkans to the Central Asia.

East-West scales have since largely operated on the same frequency and Türkiye’s self-proclaimed "bridge" status between the two has evolved to occupy a crucial spot in international politics, evidenced today by Ankara’s ability to comfortably hold dialogue with any state, supply military reinforcements and mediate pivotal agreements in hot zones like Libya, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, even Sudan and most recently Kosovo.

This ability, however, has drawn a lot of heat in Ankara’s way in recent years, particularly in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Erdoğan’s working relationship with Putin is widely criticized, despite Türkiye’s role in helping restrain Moscow in Ukraine.

According to Özkan, the idea that Türkiye is "stuck" between the East and the West under such terms is "incorrect" and every move Ankara makes is aimed at "ensuring that does not happen."

"Türkiye is a third path," he said. "While building its relations with both the West and the East, Ankara’s policy is one to guarantee its strategic autonomy and ability to move independently in order to avoid being caught between the two blocks."

For Özkan, Türkiye wants more "corporate and calm" relations with its allies but Caşın anticipates fresh clashes between the U.S. and China and Russia over Asia-Pacific and the Baltic Sea, all of which pose regional challenges.

"And these mean Türkiye will be dedicated to a foreign strategy that will engage and prioritize the interests of Türkiye and its people," Caşın remarked.

‘No finger-wagging’

Ankara is in the meantime enduring the imposition of the U.S. in its NATO relations, especially on Sweden’s stalled membership process.

Washington, along with other Western allies, has been not-so-covertly pressuring Türkiye to ratify Sweden’s accession before the summit in Vilnius next month, despite Ankara’s insistent security concerns over terrorist groups and sympathizers active in Sweden.

Caşın said its steadfastness meant Türkiye would not allow anyone to "wag its finger" at it, which informs the essence of "national foreign policy."

"Türkiye is proclaiming its presence in the Balkans and the Black Sea but it’s asserting that it will not lead a foreign policy with impositions. It will be on its own terms," Caşın added.

As far as Western criticism of Ankara’s counterterrorism operations in northern Syria and Iraq goes, it won’t last long since Türkiye will be able to legitimize its stance against terror groups better, according to Özkan.

"The international community is bound to realize that while political processes continue, terrorist groups like PKK must be fought, that they constitute a big problem as disrupters and other nations too will support Türkiye," he explained. "At the least, they will not criticize it."

As it now blatantly expresses its national interests, Türkiye’s attitude about Swedish NATO membership too is a clear message that its counterterrorism approach must be taken into account, Özkan added.

The PKK, a terrorist group outlawed in Türkiye, the U.S. and the EU since the 1980s for the massacring of over 40,000 people over its so-called separatist agenda, threw out another "cease-fire" decision immediately after Erdoğan’s reelection on May 28, injuring a pair of Turkish soldiers and striking southeastern districts.

Caşın called the cease-fire a "ploy," and said Turkish operations would "insistently continue hammering down on the PKK as it is a matter of security and perpetuity for Türkiye."

"An agreement with PKK is only possible if they drop arms," he said, also dismissing the notion that peace talks with the group could be restored.

"There are two options in politics," Caşın said. "World nations will either reconcile with Türkiye against Russia and China or continue criticizing it. If not, Türkiye will pull itself up its own bootstraps, as they say."