There is a visible political and academic consensus on the idea that Turkish foreign policy (TFP) has gradually deviated from its traditional trajectory since the beginning of the Justice and Development Party’s rule in November 2002. This study aims to illustrate “how” this supposed transformation in TFP correlates with a changing Turkish national self-perception in the case of Turkey’s relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq (KRGI). It demonstrates how Turkey’s ethnically/culturally pluralized national self-understanding between 2002 and 2017 made certain momentous policy shifts towards the KRGI “conceivable” via the medium of national identity discourses. The article employs a post-structural constructivist theoretical lens in order to unveil this national identity-foreign policy nexus. The article is a macroscopic analysis of 15 years showing path-dependent oscillations and rhythmic developments in discourses and policies instead of a microscopic description of a frozen historical “moment” or a specific incident within the relations.