Parlamenter Sistemde Başkanlık Dış Politikasını Şekillendirmek: Erdoğan ve Muhtarlar Toplantıları

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ağustos 2014’de cumhurbaşkanı olarak seçilmesinden Nisan 2017’de başkanlık sistemini getiren anayasal referanduma kadar, kendisinin daha önceki cumhurbaşkanları gibi sembolik bir siyasi figür olmayacağını göstermeye çalışmıştır. Tam tersine, ülkenin iç ve dış politika gündemini, aynı başkanlık sisteminde görüleceği gibi, şekillendirmeye devam etmiştir. Bunu gerçekleştirdiği araçlardan ilki Ocak 2015’de düzenlenen muhtarlar toplantıları serileri olmuştur. Bu tarihten, arzulanan anayasal değişimlerin halk tarafından onaylandığı referanduma kadar Erdoğan toplam otuz yedi muhtarlar toplantısı düzenlemiştir. Bu toplantılarda doğrudan muhtarlara, ama daha önemlisi dolaylı olarak Türk halkına ve dış aktörlere Türkiye’nin iç ve dış politikası hakkında konuşmalar yapmıştır. Bu çalışma Erdoğan’ın muhtarlar toplantılarındaki söylemleri yoluyla Erdoğan’ın dış politika mesajlarını analiz edecek ve kendisinin dış politika ideolojisi hakkındaki iki tartışmalı soruya cevap arayacaktır: kendisinin İslamcı olup olmadığı ve Türkiye’nin dış politika yöneliminin değişip değişmediği.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, muhtarlar toplantıları, Türk dış politikası, başkanlık sistemi, Avrasyacılık

Framing a Presidential Foreign Policy in a Parliamentary System: Erdoğan and Mukhtars’ Meetings

During the period between his election as the Turkish president in August 2014 and the constitutional referendum that introduced a presidential system in Turkey in April 2017, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tried to demonstrate that he would not be a symbolic political figure in Turkish politics as many former Turkish presidents had been. Instead, he would keep shaping the domestic and foreign agenda of the country, as it would happen in a presidential system. One of the main ways he did this was through a series of mukhtars’ meetings, which began in January 2015. From that point, until the desired changes to the constitution were approved through public referendum, Erdoğan held thirty-seven mukhtars’ meetings. In these meetings he gave speeches about Turkish domestic and foreign policy directly to a group of mukhtars but, more importantly, indirectly to the Turkish public and foreign actors. This article will analyze Erdoğan’s foreign policy messages through his discourse in the mukhtars’ meetings and try to answer two controversial questions regarding his foreign policy ideology: Whether he is an Islamist and whether he is shifting the foreign policy axis of Turkey.

Keywords:

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, mukhtars’ meetings, Turkish foreign policy, presidential system, Eurasianism,

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