Soft Power as a Effect Instruments in Foreign Policy: Turkey's Soft Power Analysis and the Assessment of its Soft Power Capacity on Azerbaijan

Abstract

Abstract. With the emergence of first political structures of the world, struggles between them gave rise to the concept of power. Since the ancient times, power has played an important role in the concept of international relations and made a significant contribution to the establishment of the discipline as an autonomous structure. The concept of power, which has always maintained its importance, has evolved in time and, for the time being, is known for its rather soft side. In this century, many academic studies that dealt with the soft side of the power have been published, however, while being mentioned in popular publications, the concept has not been favored in the academic publications in Turkey. With this dissertation that is the first study that deals with the soft power within the context of international relations, we intended to contribute to the filling of the void in the Turkish literature. For this purpose, we first discussed the concept of power and the soft power in every aspect. Afterwards, we analyzed the soft power potential of Turkey culturally, politically and within the frame of foreign affairs practices and essentially in the context of Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia regions. As the soft power sources that may influence the national politics may vary for every country, we chose Azerbaijan as the model of this study and sought for an answer to the question, "How Turkey can possibly/efficiently have the soft power influence over Azerbaijan?". As the hypothesis of the study and the answer of the question, we considered the cultural link between these two countries would constitute the most important and effective soft power source. In the conclusion of the study, we interviewed a group of fifteen Azerbaijanis that consisted NGO members, journalists and academicians thus proved the hypothesis of the study.Keywords. Soft Power, Azerbaijan, Culture, Political Values, Foreign Affairs.JEL. B30, H19, H70, L31, P40.