On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of our Republic, ASBU Department of International Relations organized a panel titled "A Centennial Perspective on Turkish Foreign Policy".

The panel discussed the experiences of Turkish Foreign Policy in 100 years and what can be done about the new challenges Türkiye will face in the future.

The first speaker of the panel, Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences Prof. Dr. Mehmet Akif Kireçci drew attention to the existence of various problems and issues that have been recurring in Turkey's foreign policy making process for a hundred years.Emphasizing that the legacy of the Ottoman Empire has a great impact on this continuity, Kireçci said that this legacy, which the Republic of Turkey inherited, especially geography, is an opportunity when strong, but a great challenge when weak.

The second speaker of the panel, Prof. Dr. Murat Yeşiltaş from the Department of International Relations, emphasized the lack of strategic culture in Turkish Foreign Policy and the inability to draw a coherent framework in this regard. He stated that this strategic culture, which is composed of cognitive, environmental and systemic factors, has never evolved to a point where it is adopted by the entire ruling elite throughout the history of the Republic and policies are formulated within the framework of that strategy, and that this is the point where Turkish foreign policy must first decide within the framework of the Turkish Century in the coming period.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özgür Özdamar, a faculty member of Bilkent University Department of International Relations, made a presentation seeking an answer to the question of whether Turkish Foreign Policy is successful. Özdamar stated that Turkish Foreign Policy has been quite successful in providing security and partially successful in welfare, which are the two main areas in which states are responsible to their societies, while emphasizing that there is still some distance to be covered in the third area of identity satisfaction and consensus.

In the closing speech of the panel, Prof. Dr. Muhittin Ataman, Head of the Department of International Relations, underlined that the key concept of the new era of Turkish Foreign Policy will be strategic autonomy and that both the causes and solutions of the new challenges Turkey will face in this period should be sought in this key concept.