Changing Security Paradigm in West Asia: Regional and International Responses, Eds. by Meena Singh Roy, Md. Muddassir Quamar, India, 2020, pp. 39-54
Mustafa Aydın & Cihan Dizdaroğlu
Turkey has consistently avoided being part of the regional politics of the Middle East during most of the 20th century and, thus, has not had a holistic approach towards the region. However, global geopolitical and domestic political changes since the end of the Cold War have brought Turkey increasingly closer to the region. Besides, although unwilling, Turkey has been an important player in Middle Eastern politics, and has occasionally attempted to play an active role, creating the Saadabad Pact in 1937 and the Baghdad Pact in 1955. Though these efforts mostly backfired, these intermittent attempts were never transformed into a fully developed regional policy, and Turkey perceived the Middle East during the Cold War only within the context of East-West rivalry.