Turkey’s ‘Soft Power Interventionism’ in the Turkish Cypriot Community: Agents, Objectives, and Implications

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the rationale and modus operandi of Turkey’s soft power projection in north Cyprus [‘TRNC’] with the aim to better understand its effects on the Turkish Cypriot political and social spheres. The study explores the recorded activities carried out by Turkey’s most prominent soft power agencies in north Cyprus and cross-checks findings with field-notes collected from 2018 to 2021. While acknowledging that under AKP’s rule, religion, history, and humanitarian ideals have constituted the backbone of Turkey’s soft power agenda in areas important to its foreign policy interests, the analysis demonstrates that Turkish soft power does not simply rest on the attractiveness and persuasiveness of its ‘message value’ alone. Turkey exercises a centrally coordinated and multi-dimensional soft power that capitalizes heavily on dependencies and local vulnerabilities. With the use of subtle and direct forms of coercion and interference, understood as part of a legitimate exchange of ‘influence for security’, Turkey’s soft power content and methodologies have become particularly problematic, as they do not presume the purely voluntary, independent, and co-opting nature of relations between the powerholder and the receptor community.