ABSTRACT
The end of the Cold War brought confusion and new sources of instability into geopolitical calculations of the Turkish foreign policy elite. In the early 1990s, Turkey was hard pressed to replace its relationship with the West based on the security aspect of the transatlantic community. With the end of the Cold War, what were the Turkish geo-strategic options? The new trend in Turkish foreign policy was to replace reliance on the West with an extension of Turkish influence into areas that were historically part of the Ottoman Empire, and to penetrate the Turk Dunasi (“Turkic world”) building upon historical, cultural and ethno-linguistic ties. Ottoman and Azeri Turks, for example, are connected by bonds of common descent and language, and supported each other throughout the centuries, especially, during the dramatic period of the short-lived independent republic of Azerbaijan (1918-20).
