Determinants of Turkey’s foreign aid behavior Hüseyin Zengin and Abdurrahman Korkmaz Abstract This paper analyzes a hundred Turkish aid recipient countries in order to explore the determinants of Turkey’s foreign aid behavior during the period 2005–2016. By estimating the model with the system-GMM estimator, it is demonstrated that Turkey is a regular donor whose amount of foreign aid is positively influenced by the export-based embeddedness of Turkish firms in the recipient countries. Recipients with low levels of per-capita income attract more Turkish aid. However, this income’s effect diminishes in states that were formerly part of Ottoman territory. Recipient countries in an aid relationship with OECD-DAC members also receive more foreign aid from Turkey. In addition, Turkey disburses more foreign aid to recipient countries that can be classified as Turkic republics. Turkish foreign aid behavior is also motivated by Ottomanism, especially in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Finally, and interestingly, although Islam has a considerable impact on attracting Turkish aid overall, this impact disappears in former Ottoman states and Turkic republics. Keywords: Foreign aid; Islamism; Ottomanism; rising donors Introduction Turkey has become a prominent and permanent donor country, with its offi- cial development assistance (ODA) gradually reaching more than six billion US dollars by 2016, up from 500 million US dollars in 2005. This increase has definitely affected Turkey’s visibility in the developing world and interna- tional community in a positive way. What is the motivation behind this increase? Do historical and religious affiliations with recipients affect the pattern of Turkish aid? Do economic relations matter for determining Turkish aid? In this paper, we will undertake a quantitative analysis in order to discover the determinants of Turkish foreign aid for the period 2005–2016. In addition, the paper aims to reconsider the Justice and Development Party’s 109 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 60 (2019): 109–135 © New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2019 10.1017/npt.2019.1 use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/npt.2019.1 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Pittsburgh, on 26 Jun 2019 at 11:53:29, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of