Behind Turkey’s ‘Blue Homeland’ doctrine

Maritime space is a key element in contemporary Turkey's geopolitical doctrine. However, the sea was never among the critical strategic priorities of the late Ottoman Empire nor of early Kemalist Turkey. Thus, despite the definitive loss of the Aegean islands enshrined in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Treaty itself was initially perceived and treated in Turkey as a success and promoted domestically as such. This was also due to a significant extent to the Turkish nation's historical identity as a land-based one. Even the nomadic character of the early Ottomans evolved into a settled farming/livestock-farming one and the pursuit of maritime dominance, mainly through Muslim pirates, was short-lived and was halted in 1571 by the Naval Battle of Lepanto (Nafpaktos).

From the beginning of the 1970s, however, this began to change. The development of the technical capacity for...