Against the background of deteriorating EU–Turkey relations and EU’s multiple crises, Turkey has been attempting to use its soft power to consolidate its influence in the Western Balkans and fill a power vacuum left by the EU in the region. Turkey pursues pragmatic Neo-Ottomanism, a Realpolitik, pragmatic and interests-based, rather than ideological, foreign policy in the region. Through active diplomacy and economic statecraft, it seeks to establish itself as an economic and political power in the region before these countries become EU members. As long as Turkey’s accession to the EU remains deadlocked and the Turkish political elites feel alienated from the West, Turkey is tempted to split with the EU to pursue an increasingly independent foreign policy or play a spoiler role in the Western Balkans. Turkey has stepped up its economic, cultural, political, and diplomatic relations with the countries in the region and demanded that priority to be given to regional ownership initiatives and regional economic zones. Turkish foreign policy in the region moves from boundary testing to boundary challenging, as Turkey increasingly competes against the EU for regional influence.

The academic literature is abundant with works on Turkey–EU and Turkey–USA–NATO relations. Nevertheless, most of the works in the literature study these topics through descriptive analysis, without the incorporation of any theoretical framework, or through the lenses of Europeanization theory or Constructivism. This chapter identifies the gaps in the existing literature and formulates a framework of intra-alliance opposition. The extant literature on soft balancing is theoretically vague (Brooks and Wohlforth 2005) and lacks rigor in terms of the definition of the tools of statecraft a second-tier power utilizes within an alliance. There is conceptual overlap between different tools that are identified by the IR literature in general, and the soft balancing literature in particular, which leads to conceptual confusion, as they may also be used for different ends, i.e. bargaining, issue linkages, retaliation, and tit-for-tat strategies. Accordingly, Chapter 1 offers a clear delineation of the interactive processes of intra-alliance opposition and offers a framework of intra-alliance opposition.

While the new security environment necessitates an enhanced dialogue between the EU and NATO, since 2004 Turkey opposes NATO’s sharing of sensitive intelligence information with non-NATO EU members that did not sign a bilateral agreement with NATO (i.e. the Republic of Cyprus) on protecting classified information. Through its NATO membership, Turkey constitutes a veto player in the inter-institutional relations between the EU and NATO and engages in boundary-testing strategy using active diplomacy, entangling diplomacy, and issue-linkage bargaining. Turkey engages in boundary challenging through strategic noncooperation and inter-institutional balancing against the EU. The veto gives Turkey a voice against the EU and helps Turkey pursue long-term interests, such as increasing its leverage against the EU in its accession negotiations, resolving the Cyprus problem to its advantage, and getting fully integrated into the European Defence Agency (EDA). The chapter concludes that as long as the uncertainties around Turkey’s EU accession and EDA associate membership remain and the Cyprus conflict remains unresolved, Turkey will continue to challenge its boundaries against the EU.