Tag: Turkey and the Balkans

Ankara-backed campaign has fallen short of its aim to boost the recorded percentage of North Macedonia’s ethnic Turks to 6 percent.

Europeanization had once been the starting point of Turkey’s relations with the Balkans, but over the last decade both have drifted away from the EU orbit. Ahmet Erdi Ozturk and Basak Alpan explain how and why on FeniksPod’s Balkan and EU Series.

A documentary film produced by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University analyzes how Turkey under President Erdogan’s political Islamist rule uses Islam to increase its soft power in Bosnia and how it is perceived by Bosnian Muslims.

Bulgaria will likely form a government after its third round of snap elections this Sunday. The country’s ethnic Turks are hoping to use their performance to influence the presidential pick.

Erdogan’s Turkey has trouble defining both its kin societies in the Balkans and the policies directed at them. Nonetheless, its actions still divide and polarize Balkan Turks and Muslims.

Relations between Turkey and the West have been eroded by years of crises, and Turkish President Erdogan’s recent attempts at rapprochement have their limits. Still, while Turkey may be drifting further away from the US, European-Turkish relations have remained remarkably resilient.

The identity of the Turkish state has been transformed under the rule of Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the central role that religion has come to play in its foreign policy is best exemplified in its relations with the Balkans.

Even though Turkey eyes greater influence over its Turkic kin in Moldova, the Gagauz favor Russia and Turkey’s current foreign policy trajectory leaves it little room to gain leverage.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been giving expensive gifts to Balkan leaders only to see them betray him when it comes to issues of great significance for Turkish foreign policy