Beyond the Soft–Hard Power Binary: Resource Control in Turkey’s Foreign Policy Towards Sub-Saharan Africa

Once depicted as a flagship case for the soft power—based foreign policy of young democracies, Turkey’s conduct affairs following its authoritarian backsliding has been increasingly associated with hard power. Using Africa under AKP, this article challenges reading and underlying conceptual assumptions. To overcome spurious democracy—soft power vs. autocracy—hard dichotomy, it argues adopting process-oriented approach to analysing policies (autocratising) states by focusing on, firstly, situations in which they mobilize resources particular end; and, secondly, extent attempt gain control over societal resources.