TÜRKIYE’S FOREIGN POLICY

Two important questions need to be examined here: one, how did the Ottoman and Kemalist elites look at the world and what were the major determinants of the Ottoman and Kemalist outlook and worldview towards the self and the outside? And two, how did the end of the empire and the birth of the republic affect the collective consciousness of the Turkish people towards themselves and the world at lar. [...] 1380– 1402) continued to widen the territorial expanse of the dynastic rule, leading to the expansion of the state from Anatolia to the Balkans and the emergence of the Ottomans as one of the major Muslim states at the western end of the Islamic territories. [...] Thus, the Ottoman legal system consisted of two sets of laws, the şeriat and the kanun”.25 Notably, despite the Islamic foundations of the legal and jurisprudential framework of the Empire, when it came to the Sultan and the Ottoman elites’ understanding of the world and their conduct of relations with the outside world, these were guided by Islam but not exclusively. [...] The multi-ethnic experiences drawn from both the large masses of the Ottoman subjects and the majority of the officials and elites, both in Istanbul and the provinces, contributed to the shaping of the Ottoman consciousness and worldview about the Empire as well as its relations with the world.33 In other words, despite the Islamic and Turkish nature of the Empire, the day-to-day experience of the. [...] The Treaty of Lausanne established Mustafa Kemal as the undisputed leader of the nationalist faction within Türkiye.62 With the declaration of the Republic and the appointment of Mustafa Kemal as the president, the Kemalist era formally started and continued until the death of the Atatürk.