Converging Interests, Differing Motives: Understanding and Explaining China-Turkey Relations, 2002-2018

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, China and Turkey have experienced an invigoration of a relationship that has traditionally been characterised by distance, disinterest and a divergence of policy and ideological orientations. This new relationship between the two is characterised by a number of formal policy pronouncements, and a steadily increasing level of bilateral cooperation, including signing a strategic partnership, increasing bilateral trade and growing military ties. Some have proclaimed that "Turkey pivots east while China marches west". Some alarmists have even gone so far as to argue that Turkey is turning into a "Chinese client state". By contrast, liberal optimists believe China's rise, and its Belt and Road Initiative, will produce growing strategic interdependence between China and Turkey. However, the trajectory of bilateral relations has been far more complicated than these perspectives imply. Although China and Turkey have expanded the scope and depth of their bilateral relations, this has occurred in a manner that is largely ad hoc, inconsistent, underdeveloped, and lacking in strategic and political direction. The primary purpose of my thesis is to shed light on China-Turkey relations between 2002 and 2018. While there has been some growing scholarly interest in China-Turkey relations since 2010, the relations remain understudied in the literature. Recent work has sought to explore the general aspects of bilateral relations, focusing on descriptive but less rigorous analysis and relying on secondary sources. Few have provided in-depth analysis of the causes and motives of bilateral relations. By covering three major dimensions of China-Turkey bilateral relations, including political, economic and military relations between the two, and by analysing the driving factors in China-Turkey relations, this study hopes to contribute to current literature on understanding the how and why of interactions between China and Turkey between 2002 and 2018. This study mainly employs primary sources, including interviews with government officials, retired diplomats, experts and scholars based at government-affiliated think tanks in both China and Turkey. It draws on a large body of media coverage in Chinese, English and Turkish languages, as well as government press releases and documents. The thesis also introduces an overarching methodological framework derived from international relations theory to explore the different factors that come into play in bilateral relations. The thesis concludes that despite the growing bilateral relations between China and Turkey between 2002 and 2018, contrary to popular understandings, these bilateral relations are not particularly close. There is neither a move towards alliance-like cooperation nor a strategic pivot in China-Turkey relations. Instead, bilateral relations have expanded by taking on a momentum of their own and are primarily driven by a development imperative, rather than the result of considered and strategic decision-making. As such, the China-Turkey relationship can be described as one of converging interests but differing motives.