A return to “factory settings” in Turkey’s foreign policy and defusing tensions in international ties are key elements in the election platform of the country’s opposition bloc, but it might well maintain existing policies in some areas should it win the May 14 polls.

A policy continuity is likely to be seen in the energy rivalry in the eastern Mediterranean and Turkey’s territorial disputes with Greece, even though the six-party Nation Alliance is expected to prioritize diplomacy and abandon the confrontational style that has marked Turkish foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the past decade.

The AKP-led People's Alliance has yet to unveil its election manifesto. Amid economic turmoil at home, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently sought to mend Turkey’s fraught ties with regional heavyweights, making U-turns on ambitious foreign policy chapters. 

Turkey has conducted a series of military operations in Syria and Iraq since the last elections in 2018, with Erdogan vowing to create a 30-kilometer-deep (19-mile) security belt along the country’s southern borders against perceived threats from Kurdish groups. Ankara’s military interventions extended to Libya in 2019, and its military support helped Azerbaijan defeat Armenia in a war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2020.