Turkey's Foreign Policy: A Twofold Perspective

The Director of GPoT Center, Dr. Mensur Akgün, with his colleagues from TESEV, participated in a joint event organized by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and TESEV in Berlin on May 23rd, 2011.

During the event, they presented a study conducted by TESEV and supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, examining how Turks perceive the current foreign policy of their country. According to the findings, in the past, the views of the ordinary citizen differed from the official foreign policy. This is less and less the case - examples are relations with Israel, Armenia, Iran and Greece.

After the presentation of the research, representatives of Turkey, Germany and the European Union discussed what implications these developments can have on future EU-Turkey relations as well as on the outcome of the parliamentary elections in Turkey that were held on June 12, 2011.

On May 24, 2011, Dr. Akgün participated in a EPC-FES-TESEV joint roundtable entitled "Perception of Turkish Foreign Policy", which was organized in Brussels.