Turkey’s alignment with Qatar—regional and domestic dynamics in an era of multipolarity

Abstract Turkey’s relations with Qatar are a good and rare example of alignment in Turkey’s regional policy in the second decade of the 2000s. Finding themselves in a similar regional position in the aftermath of 9/11 and having pursued compatible foreign policies since the Iraq War of 2003, the two countries became ‘strategic partners’. This paper will try to understand the major drivers for Turkey to pursue a close partnership with Qatar by using neoclassical realism as an explanatory framework, and while taking into account the developments at the structural level, will focus on how these changes are understood as opportunities and challenges by the foreign policy-making elite domestically. As unit-level intervening variables, it will underline that ideology, domestic consolidation/regime survival, and economy play important roles in pushing Turkey toward alignment with Qatar.