AND THIS YEARS RESOLUTION WILL BE *drumroll*
TÜRKIYE. (Yes we spelled it correctly)
Here we go again: next season’s Team Policy resolution has been announced, and plenty of people are less than thrilled. They’re worried that Türkiye is too obscure, boring, and irrelevant. As two longtime TP debaters, we can say that this isn’t new. Every year, skepticism is often the first reaction to an unfamiliar resolution, especially in foreign policy years like this one…. (Keep Reading Below…)
NOTE – We are excited to welcome Tyler Barron and Derek Sun to the Lasting Impact! Team this season! They will be coaching at some of the Online Speech and Debate Camps offered by Lasting Impact! this summer. Check them out – https://lastingimpact.info/product-category/online-camps/ ALSO- don’t forget our NCFCA TP Sourcebook and GUIDE will be coming out soon!
Like in seasons past, we’re confident that this spirit of disappointment will fade away as debaters settle down and immerse themselves in this resolution, which (dare we say it) is one of the best foreign policy resolutions we’ve seen. That’s why my partner and I stand resolved: that the United States Federal Government should significantly reform its foreign policy toward the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye).
In the United States it’s easy for us to ask why a country like Türkiye matters when there’s more important things going on at home. Foreign policy, however, affects every area of our domestic policy. Trade influences employment and our economy, alliances determine economic cooperation and security guarantees, military conflicts engage our men and women in uniform, and so forth. The device you’re reading this blog post on wouldn’t exist without an effective trade policy that allows for raw materials and innovative technology to arrive here.
Now let’s look at Türkiye. The price of the gas used to power your vehicle can increase from 3 dollars to 5 dollars depending on whether energy supplies can move freely through strategic chokepoints controlled by Türkiye. Here’s a fun fact you probably didn’t know: the safety of the entire world could come down to the nuclear bombs reportedly housed at an American air base in Türkiye.
A lot of Americans couldn’t point to Türkiye on a map. Yet our nuclear weapons are stored there, American soldiers operate there, and some of the world’s most important shipping routes pass through its territory. Whether we realize it or not, U.S.-Turkish relations affect our security every single day. Former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s observation from thirty years ago is all the more prescient today: “Türkiye stands at the crossroads of almost every issue of importance to the United States on the Eurasian continent.” True to form, we want to provide you with 3 reasons this resolution is so exciting and in the process address the loud concerns that have reverberated around many group chats and text threads.
- Scope
A common concern we’ve heard is that Türkiye is so narrow and boring – it’s only one country after all. When was the last time you heard Türkiye in the news, other than news about the World Cup?
Off the bat, it’s not abnormal for NCFCA to have a single country as the focus for a foreign policy resolution. The league’s resolution centered around India in the 2008-09 season, Russia in 2010-11, and China in 2016-17. We think Türkiye could not be a more fitting country to join that list of pivotal rising powers, given its active relationships with every nation on that list. Türkiye is the world’s 17th largest economy and deploys the second largest military in the NATO alliance. Its strategic location between the European and Asian continents affords it control over key shipping lanes and access to the Black Sea. Türkiye’s government maintains sly strategic ambiguity on the multipolar geopolitical stage. Türkiye is part of NATO, but it maintains active diplomatic and economic relationships with China and the U.S.; Hamas, Iran, and Israel; and Russia and Ukraine. Türkiye is part of a European customs union when it comes to trade, while actively occupying parts of Cyprus and Syria. A NATO ally besties with U.S. adversaries, with human rights abuses and repression of ethnic minorities to boot? A major military power supporting countries on both sides of every conflict?
Debaters under next year’s resolution will have an unprecedented opportunity to research all of those major conflicts, by reforming our foreign policy toward what NCFCA’s background paper aptly calls a “global swing state.” The resolution allows debaters to explore the implications of our foreign policy on all of those conflicts without having an overbroad resolution that names each of them in its text. Carrots and sticks that AFF teams can offer are plentiful. A few things to consider under scope: The U.S. trades billions in goods with Turkish companies, maintains an active military base in Türkiye, trains Turkish troops, and sells millions in weapons to Turkish forces.
- Timeliness
Türkiye’s relevance on the world stage also addresses a doubt that we’ve heard expressed about the resolution: that Türkiye’s just not as relevant as Israel, Iran, or other countries that often appear in the headlines. Consider every major international incident in Eurasia in the last 15 years: the annexation of Crimea, the war between Russia and Ukraine, the fight against ISIS, Israel’s war with Hamas and Iran, the civil wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Sudan, and so forth. Türkiye was actively involved in each.
Imagine if the resolution called for reforms to our foreign policy towards Israel or Iran. Such a resolution would undercut the stability that debaters need to argue and prepare for cases. The resolution hits a sweet spot. It’s relevant enough to be timely, but not so tied to the headlines that cases will become obsolete en masse halfway through the season. As a bonus, the Türkiye resolution inherently carries less political baggage than a resolution about Israel. It’s narrow enough to be manageable, but broad enough to touch on several major geopolitical challenges facing the U.S. today.
- Philosophical Clash
Now wait a minute – isn’t this a reason to jump ship and do LD? We’re not casting shade on the LD resolution (we love it). We’re just saying that doing TP will not mean missing out on a significant philosophical clash that is extremely relevant for the future of our country. A common misconception that most people make when describing the difference between TP and LD is that LD is about philosophy and TP is not. We’ve found that policies in TP absent an animating philosophy are empty, and rounds that neglect the underlying principles of policy miss the heart of TP itself. Especially in foreign policy years, philosophical clashes between the two teams are unavoidable. For those worried that the Türkiye resolution will lack philosophical depth, think again. The central question posed by Türkiye is as old as foreign policy itself: should America prioritize its ideals or its interests? Should it value realism or idealism? Interventionism or isolationism? Debaters will wrestle with whether human rights abuses and democratic backsliding should outweigh Türkiye’s real value as a strategic ally and military partner. How ought we engage with a country that simultaneously jails pastors and trains with our troops, that aids our adversaries and sits on chokepoints that offer us leverage against them? Far from abandoning applied ethics or philosophy, this topic places one of foreign policy’s oldest debates front and center. We suspect that any policy which ignores these philosophical undertones will fail to grasp the fullness of the educational opportunity the resolution offers.
We understand that when debaters are given the choice between a classic LD resolution and a less flashy TP resolution, people gravitate towards the other format. But it’s important to remember, resolutions aren’t supposed to be limited to the topics debaters already understand. To the extent that you’re not familiar with foreign policy, we’d urge you to view this resolution as an educational opportunity, because the value of Team Policy comes from mastering complex questions, rather than avoiding them. ‘This topic is too boring and technical’ is usually what debaters say in September. By June, debaters can explain the filibuster, arms sales, and the gas tax better than most adults. We are confident that the same debaters who ably explained the intricacies of the appropriations process at the end of last season will capably explain our foreign policy towards Türkiye at the end of this one.
Thank you, it’s been a pleasure writing for you.
Tyler Barron & Derek Sun