Turkish foreign policy activism and involvement in the Middle East boosted the literature and debates analysing the why, how and when of this new trend. Since Turkey strengthened its ties with the Middle East in the 2000s, a region that traditionally enjoyed little weight in Turkish foreign policy, some experts assumed a brand new Turkish foreign policy had emerged.

This paper could be considered as one of many in the recent literature about Turkish foreign policy. However, the aim here is to draw an analysis from an outsider-European perspective through the systemic level of foreign policy analysis. While the domestic and the ideological factors may be born in mind, this paper considers the structural changes in the international system as the main catalyst for the “new” Turkish foreign policy.