Turkey facing east is about the importance of Turkey's relations with its Eastern neighbours - Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Soviet Union - during the emergence of the modern Turkish nation-state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. The originality of Turkey Facing East lies in part in its theoretically informed analysis of history exploring the causal links between the construction of a modern nation-state, secular identity and nationalised foreign policy during the transition from an Islamic Empire to a modern state. The role of the Islamic legacy, territorial unity and national identity construction are re-examined in order to understand the complexity of a long historical and sociological process.

This book combines historical and theoretical arguments in order to provide a better understanding of Turkey's foreign relations from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective, and applies this new approach to the analysis of the country's policy towards the South Caucasus between 1918 and 1921. Turkey facing east stands out with its original interdisciplinary approach to the critical analysis of Turkish transition and foreign policy-making that offers perspectives on the possibilities for the particular transitional regimes resulting from the Arab spring uprisings. It has the potential to meet the expectations of academics and policy makers, as well as post-graduate and undergraduate students in Middle Eastern Studies, Turkish Studies and International Politics.