「Gゼロ」提唱者イアン・ブレマーと読み解く、グローバルサウスの正体

Potolicchio: In our quest to have my daughters' understand the world more, we have done a lot of travel to the furthest reaches of the globe with them. But we were intentionally specific in our 1 year celebration for our eldest. We cut cake on the Bosphorus, in Istanbul, Turkey, looking both East and West. Your take on this pivotal linchpin country that seemingly straddles the geopolitical divide?

Bremmer: Erdogan and many Turks want Turkey to be seen as an emerging power that is challenging the existing West-led order. The credibility for doing so given their massive economic challenges is hot as well. That underpins some of their alignment with the Global South because Erdogan wants to be the voice of the downtrodden and the unheard. You see him advocating for Palestinian rights and self-determination, arguing for a shake-up of the UN Security Council to give the rest of the world the sort of say the permanent five members have.

The US and the Europeans are both viewed with a lot of skepticism. The Turks' relationships with them are largely transactional, looking for leverage wherever they have it and you've seen a lot of that, of course, on the NATO accession conversations on the Black Sea Green Deal and the rest, on Syria, with the overarching belief that Western powers want to have hegemony over world politics and keep the developing world and right rival major countries at bay. Relations with the West are kind of a necessary evil. India is not yet a big focus for Turkey, because they're concentrating their diplomatic and commercial efforts on their immediate neighborhood, the Middle East, the eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, as well as their extensions, the Balkans, Central Asia, and some Africa. I would say that among major non-western powers, Turkey has been more focused on developing strong ties and working relations with Russia, China, and Brazil, and not so much with South Africa or India.