Turkey-China Rapprochement: Turkey’s Reconstruction of Its Liminality

Abstract

This chapter by utilizing liminality as a conceptual framework argues that Turkey’s journey toward Asia and particularly toward China is a recent example of the reproduction of its in-betweenness. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the literature on Turkey’s liminality by illustrating how Turkey has utilized its liminal position as a capital in establishing a close relationship with China. Moreover, it contributes to the existing knowledge on Turkey’s liminality, in contrast to previous work largely focusing on how the EU/West situated Turkey in a liminal position, by analyzing Turkey-China cooperation through the lenses of liminality. China and Turkey’s cooperation on the BRI has been utilized to demonstrate how China’s economic and political alternative normative frameworks inspired Turkey to realign its long-standing liminal positions to attract infrastructure investments from China. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.