A critical approach to soft power: Grasping contemporary Turkey’s influence in the world

I. Thinking Turkish influence in the midst of a dramatic political shiftOn 5 April 2015, Joseph Nye, the scholar who first coined the term “soft power”, was quoted in an article published in Today’s Zaman asserting that Turkish soft power had declined over the past few years. According to Nye, as a result Turkey would subsequently have “less soft power, less democracy”. During the 2000s, the concept of soft power became a popular term applied to the perceived rise in Turkey’s global and regi...