Contrary to the dominant consideration of Turkey as the oldest candidate for membership in the European Union (EU) and Turkey's foreign policy strategy towards the Western Balkans, which envisions acting as the EU’s partner, this work analyzes Turkey as an independent foreign-policy actor. On the basis of two research questions on the normative elements of the Turkish foreign policy strategy, I am testing a hypothesis that after 2009, due to the shallow Europeanization in the Western Balkans, one observes an increase of the Turkish normative influence in this region. As a control variable, I consider the declaratory withdrawal of the EU from Western Balkans enlargement efforts in 2014. In the theoretical part of the thesis, I conceptualize the normative foreign policy influence and construct my own analytical model of the normative elements of the foreign policy strategy. Following the description of the historical context of the EU and Turkey’s foreing policy in the Western Balkans, the empirical part is followed by the biggest contribution of this thesis to science: analysis and interpretation of the primary document - Turkey's foreign policy strategy (Disisleri Bakanligi, 2018), for which I provided the first translation into English. I then identify and analyze Turkey's foreign policy actions, where I measure the normative influence on societies, markets and countries of the region, and offer its critical evaluation.
Findings show that it is not possible to ascertain that shallow Europeanization causes greater normative influence of Turkey in the region. Turkey's normative influence on the countries was the largest between 2009-2012, when, through mediation in the Serbian part of Sandžak and the establishment of a tripartite platform, when the state achieved the desired reputation of a great power from Ottoman times. However, after 2013, this impact declined, as some countries in the region are more likely to oppose Turkey's foreign policy values or application of instruments. The normative impact on the markets and on the societies of the region is constant; through TIKA Agency, Yunus Emre Institute, religious institution Diyanet and TV series Turkey promotes its social values: Muslim faith, diaspora, patriarchate and reputation of great power.
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