The Deinstitutionalization of U.S. and Turkish Foreign Policy: Why Societal Ties Are an Anchor in Bilateral Relations

Year 2025, , 62 - 82, 28.01.2025

Andrew O’donohue

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.1621528

Abstract

This paper offers a domestic institutional explanation for the rising volatility
of U.S.-Turkey relations and conceptualizes societal ties as an anchor in the
bilateral relationship. In doing so, this paper challenges the prevailing narratives
that international and individual-level factors are responsible for changes in
U.S.-Turkey relations and that bilateral relations are uniformly bleak. In contrast
to these perspectives, this paper advances two inter-related arguments. First, I
argue that a key driver of volatility in U.S.-Turkey relations since 2016 is the
deinstitutionalization of U.S. and Turkish foreign policymaking. In the United
States, the root cause of deinstitutionalization is intensifying polarization over
foreign policy, fueled by the rise of populism. In Turkey, by contrast, foreign policy
has deinstitutionalized through personalization: the steady concentration of
decision-making power in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Second,
against this backdrop of deinstitutionalization, I show that societal ties between
the United States and Turkey provide a uniquely stable and enduring area of
bilateral cooperation. I provide evidence for this argument in two key domains:
1) civil society and media and 2) higher education. These societal linkages, I
argue, are often resilient precisely because they are disconnected from domestic
politics and foreign policy. These societal ties should thus be understood not as
agents that can reshape interstate relations but as anchors that prevent the two
nations from drifting apart.

Keywords

foreign policy analysis, bureaucratic politics, U.S. foreign policy, Turkish foreign policy, political polarization, civil society, media, higher education

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