20. Middle Powers in International Development Cooperation: Assessing the Roles of South Korea and Turkey

Fast-developing economies of the “Global South” have led to power shifts in international politics (Cornelissen 2009). It is believed that these rising, emerging, or latecomer countries play a pivotal role in future global governance (Cooper 2016; Okano-Heijmans 2012). They challenge “the Western-dominated patterns of international politics” (Schirm 2019, p. 2), as well as contribute to it (Grimm et al. 2009; Mawdsley 2012).

This chapter analyses the cases of South Korea (hereafter referred to as Korea) and Turkey as emerging powers in the field of development cooperation under the theoretical framework of Middle Power Theory (MPT). In international relations literature, they are considered as “emerging middle powers” (Bradford 2015; Cooper 2015b; Engin and Baba 2015; Jordaan 2003; Öniş and Kutlay 2017), which are members of the middle-power grouping MIKTA (Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, Australia), established in 2013 at the margins of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. MIKTA members claim to be like-minded peers as democracies and free market economies. Moreover, they show cooperative behaviour through multipolar, mediation oriented foreign policy activism (Manicom and Reeves 2014, p. 30).

Korea and Turkey make use of their middle-power identity with the aim of increasing their presence around the globe, where development cooperation is used as an important foreign policy tool (Baydag 2017). Both countries locate their foreign aid approaches between those of traditional donors, that is, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which is mainly composed of advanced Western economies,¹ and emerging donors, that is, developing countries of the Global South engaging with South-South Cooperation (SSC) based on a “horizontal cooperative relationship”² (Klingebiel 2014, p. 19; Woods 2008). Nevertheless, whereas Korea positions itself more in line with the DAC, Turkey adopts a Southern narrative.³

The comparative study of Korea and Turkey reveals their divergent approaches to foreign aid discourse,⁴ which creates significant implications for global aid governance. Considering that effective international development cooperation based on a common framework depends on enhancing the dialogue between the DAC and the Southern providers (Fues et al. 2012, p. 144; Mawdsley 2012, p. 218), it is also crucial for Southern providers to reach common ground on their shared principles, which at the same time should lead towards efforts to fulfil the post-2015 agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (Bracho 2018). As middle powers, Korea and Turkey have the capacity to contribute to the rapprochement between the traditional and the emerging donors as well as among the Southern providers. However, collaboration between the peers is seemingly being contested as a result of their divergent approaches to foreign aid, which stem from differing strategic and ideational paths in aid provision—the main focus of this chapter.

Broadly speaking, the increasing weight of emerging powers in international politics is primarily the result of the rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), which wish to change the distribution of power in the system by actively participating in different policy fields of global governance (Ferguson 2015; Hurrell and Sengupta 2012). Before designating Korea and Turkey in international development as donors, first it is necessary to briefly mention the aspects of their emerging power characteristics.

Korea and Turkey are mid-sized, emerging countries in terms of economy, population, and resources (Çağaptay 2013; Chin and Quadir 2013; Schirm 2019). In this respect, clustered among the second tiers, they are not expected to reach the BRICS level in terms of global ranking and are instead expected to remain regional players (Cooper 2015b). Nevertheless, Korea and Turkey combine their growing economic power with political power (Chin and Quadir 2013; Manning 2006; Woods 2008), that is, political power in the sense of active participation in global decision-making processes (Florini 2011; Klingebiel 2016, 2017). Additionally, they are not challengers of the liberal developed West⁵ and remain integrated into the system of Western alliances (Hurrell 2006). Last but not least, they are expected to play an essential role in sharing the burden of global challenges such as financial crises, climate change, and development (Flemes and Habib 2009; Grimm et al. 2009).

The mainstream development cooperation agenda is largely dominated by Western practices and includes bilateral agencies, multilateral organisations, and even non-governmental organisations (Mawdsley 2012, p. 2). The term “mainstream” therefore refers to the foreign aid behaviours of the traditional donors, summarised as follows (Fues et al. 2012): traditional donors tend to emphasise altruistic motives in aid-giving by “concealing” their self-interest, unlike Southern providers, who frame their aid mostly in terms of mutual benefit based on solidarity and economic progress, resulting in a “win-win” situation (Fues et al. 2012, p. 139). In addition, traditional donors set political conditionality in their aid provision, especially regarding governance criteria such as the protection of human rights or the rule of law, which, in the past, has led to external interference in the political affairs of low-income countries. Although this started changing when many Western providers became more careful about not imposing culturally biased values, they still do not insist on the primacy of national sovereignty in all aspects of international relations as much as the Southern providers do. In this respect, the principle of non-interference, together with a pragmatic interest-based approach, is more visible in Southern foreign aid behaviour (Fues et al. 2012, p. 140).

On the one hand, Korea’s and Turkey’s aid discourses converge with those of traditional donors as a result of them being OECD members (i.e. Korea being a DAC member and Turkey regularly reporting to the Committee). In other words, they have traditionally been part of the mainstream aid agenda and do not significantly diverge from the Committee (Cihangir-Tetik and Müftüler-Baç 2018; Hausmann 2014; Stallings and Kim 2017).

On the other hand, their official discourses put emphasis on providing better approaches to development cooperation with insights from SSC. This has gained prominence among Southern providers as an alternative to traditional donor-recipient relations, which are based on “one-way giving”, in order to eliminate the differentiation between partners (Davis and Taylor 2015, p. 154; Mawdsley 2012). The stress on eliminating differentiation in particular explains well how the official foreign aid discourses of both Korea and Turkey converge with those of the emerging donors of the South.

To illustrate, Korea focusses on “learning from experience” in its official motto and positions it as a model that is based on its own experience of receiving and using aid for poverty eradication—and most importantly in becoming a DAC donor as a result of its development success (Stallings and Kim 2017). Turkey, on the other hand, after a brief period of rapprochement with the OECD-DAC, has adopted a foreign aid discourse detached from the Committee, which envisages a global role for Turkey through its engagement with Southern partners, wherein Turkey will ideationally rebuild the historical and cultural ties of the Ottoman Empire (Donelli and Levaggi 2016).

Despite convergences with both camps, the foreign aid aspirations of Korea and Turkey can be further elaborated by referring to their mindset for following certain strategies in international development cooperation. In this respect, neither donor can be simply categorised as an emerging or traditional donor. The next section emphasises ideational aspects of their proactive role in employing the presumptions of the MPT as a significant cornerstone in positioning both countries within the international development cooperation system.

Middle powers are not as influential or powerful as great powers, but they still have a considerable amount of influence in promoting cohesion and stability in the international system (Chapnick 1999; Glazebrook 1947; Jordaan 2003). In other words, they are not powerful enough to act alone, but they are effective in collective action with either like-minded peers that have similar capacities or less powerful ones (Da Silva et al. 2016). They are also effective when acting through international organisations (Flemes and Habib 2009).

At first, the term “middle” evokes a positional understanding based on a hierarchy of states and material capabilities, for example size, population, or resources. Some scholars also emphasise their functional importance, whereby they either follow a great power or resort to niche diplomacy in international affairs (Chapnick 1999). Both approaches, however, do not reflect the assumptions of MPT in ideational terms. Of the different definitions, therefore, this chapter relies on the behavioural approach to MPT, with the following elements serving as the underlying determinants.

First, middle powers take positions in international disputes as mediators and pursue diplomacy by relying on the notion of “good international citizenship” (Cooper et al. 1993). Second, the state’s will to—and capacity for—dedicating itself to becoming a middle power in accordance with good international citizenship is significant (Bélanger and Mace 1997; Hynek 2004). Third, middle powers are considered to be driven by “a role conception resting on the notion of a distinctive mode of statecraft” (Hynek 2004, p. 36).

Constructivist theory has strong foundations in behavioural approaches. It is assumed that the identity of a state—constructed by the country itself—determines its position in international politics. In that vein, non-material structures define actors’ identities and form their interests (Finnemore and Sikkink 2001) in “how they think they should act, what perceived limitations on their actions are and what strategies they can imagine” (Reus-Smit 2005, p. 197). To that effect, middle-power identity is strategically constructed to justify actions and interests. Accordingly, Cooper (2015a) argues that using a flexible form of behaviour and strengthening the international system through diplomatic means are distinguishing characteristics of middle powers (Cooper 2015a, p. 35). They pursue multilateral solutions to global issues by affecting international outcomes (Cooper et al. 1993, p. 19; O’Neil 2015, p. 75) and being political representatives of “the social, environmental and human interests of humanity” (Bradford 2015, p. 9).

Based on the theoretical framework of this chapter, the increasing influence of Korea and Turkey can be linked to their adopted middle-power identities. Hence, they are not simply second-tier emerging donors of growing political and economic importance. Their rise, in John’s (2014) words, can also be considered as “a new discourse of [international relations] from the middle-power perspective as an alternative to the dominant narrative of great powers” (John 2014, p. 332).

Korea and Turkey claim to provide a better perspective based on their long history as aid recipients. Korea and Turkey also differ from some of the significant emerging donors, such as China and Russia, since they do not radically challenge the established system and have long been bound by Western institutions and practices (Hausmann 2014; Hausmann and Lundsgaarde 2015; Kim et al. 2013). Notwithstanding the above, their declarations of being like-minded peers in international cooperation do not seem to have led to converging perspectives on foreign aid.

Starting from this point, the chapter proceeds as follows. First, the official middle-power discourses of Korea and Turkey are introduced, and the role of foreign aid as a foreign policy tool is highlighted. Second, the foreign aid discourses of Korea and Turkey are discussed. Third, the section concludes with comparative results in relation to the OECD-DAC. In this respect, the OECD-DAC constitutes the main reference point for categorising the two donors for the purpose of comparing their discourses—not only to each other, but also to their traditional counterparts.

This chapter elaborates on the foreign aid behaviours of Korea and Turkey as emerging middle powers, broadly in international relations and specifically in development cooperation. Korea and Turkey are contributors to the new context in which development cooperation is taking place. They play active middle-power roles and are asserting their power to assume a moral stance as well as global responsibility. Despite claiming to be like-minded peers, they leave the issue of collaboration in international development cooperation contested by adopting an official discourse based on divergent narratives on development aid. In this regard, their role as significant aid providers should be studied carefully for further attempts at collaboration at the global level.

Today, a comprehensive partnership in international development is needed to address the visibly urgent global challenges. In the same vein, international development is in a transition period, whereby traditional donors are trying to maintain the status quo, and the emerging ones are challenging the established system. Middle powers play a role by either stabilising the system or decreasing the friction between clashing donor strategies. In this picture, Korea and Turkey could possibly be important binding stakeholders that contribute to the convergence between practices and values of different aid providers in the field. For that reason, their claim of being a bridge between the developed and the developing worlds should not be neglected by policy-makers and practitioners, despite the growing divergence in their approaches.

By the same token, we also see that the differing discursive stances of similar donors, such as Korea and Turkey, create a messier picture rather than positively contributing to the transformation of development cooperation as a policy area. In other words, global partners find it difficult to reach a global consensus in the presence of divergent approaches. Consequently, this contribution is significant in unveiling the core differences between seemingly similar aid providers, and therefore, it should be taken as a reminder of the challenges to global efforts to achieve international collaboration. Divergent foreign aid motivations of similar donors mentioned in this chapter might help us to formulate new ways of handling global aid governance, otherwise pledges for furthering cooperation remain mere lip service.

Further studies on Korea and Turkey should focus on whether their development cooperation practices (actual aid flows) are compatible with their foreign aid discourses, because discourse does not always accurately reflect reality. More generally, a domestic politics perspective should not be neglected in studying foreign aid policy, as its political economy requires examining the domestic economic context in which aid decisions are made (Lundsgaarde 2013). It would be worth paying attention to the extent to which issue-specific controversies on the global level result from the heterogeneity of governmental preferences at the domestic level (Schirm 2013). This would also contribute to the discussions on the divergent/convergent approaches among different donors in global aid governance. Last but not least, the middle-power concept should be further clarified, since a wide range of states are now considered to be middle powers but are too diverse to identify a common pattern of middle-power behaviour (Jordaan 2017).