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Turkish foreign policy in the Balkans amidst ‘soft power’ and ‘de-Europeanisation’
Abstract
Since the beginning of the 2000s, extensive academic research has echoed one popular opinion, ‘Turkey is back to the Balkans’. These studies have been scrutinizing the complicated role of Turkey in the Balkans, usually drawing upon the use of soft power by the former. This impact in the region remained intact during the 2010s, although the overall Turkish foreign policy in the 2010s has been highly securitized and de-Europeanized, losing its soft power character that had been its trademark starting from the early 2000s. In this regard, this paper aims to decipher different dimensions of Turkey’s foreign policy in the Balkans through a more general exploration of the de-Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy in the 2010s. Through more than 80 semi-structured interviews, which were conducted between 2016–2020, with political actors, diplomats, religious leaders, scholars and journalists in Turkey and the Balkans, we address the question of whether the divergence of Turkish foreign policy from a soft power perspective and its concomitant de-Europeanization tendency had been crystallized in its policy towards the Balkans within the context of the 2010s.
... Although economic diplomacy has incrementally prevailed, other forms of soft power in Turkey-Balkan relations-ethnoreligious background and interpersonal ties between leaders-should not be excluded. In fact, all these forms of diplomacy have selectively served Turkish pragmatism in the Western Balkans (Alpan & Öztürk, 2022b). ...
... Thus, an approach largely based on soft power has held sway up until today. Moreover, Ankara has diversified its approach to encompass both economic and leader-to-leader forms of diplomacy (Alpan & Öztürk, 2022b). Nevertheless, it can be maintained that the AKP-dominated government has lost some of its earlier charm in the Western Balkans with regard to soft power as it has undermined democratic credentials (Dursun-Özkanca, 2016: 38;Demirtaş, 2015). ...
... For a robust evaluation of Ankara's rendition of a set of policies in a simultaneous manner arising out of distinct soft power bases toward the Balkans, seeAlpan and Öztürk (2022b). ...
... Although economic diplomacy has incrementally prevailed, other forms of soft power in Turkey-Balkan relations-ethnoreligious background and interpersonal ties between leaders-should not be excluded. In fact, all these forms of diplomacy have selectively served Turkish pragmatism in the Western Balkans (Alpan & Öztürk, 2022b). ...
... Thus, an approach largely based on soft power has held sway up until today. Moreover, Ankara has diversified its approach to encompass both economic and leader-to-leader forms of diplomacy (Alpan & Öztürk, 2022b). Nevertheless, it can be maintained that the AKP-dominated government has lost some of its earlier charm in the Western Balkans with regard to soft power as it has undermined democratic credentials (Dursun-Özkanca, 2016: 38;Demirtaş, 2015). ...
... For a robust evaluation of Ankara's rendition of a set of policies in a simultaneous manner arising out of distinct soft power bases toward the Balkans, seeAlpan and Öztürk (2022b). ...
This volume sheds new light on the interaction between Turkey and the Western Balkans. Written from a multidisciplinary perspective, the contributions decode the essence of bilateral relations by analyzing various aspects of regional diplomacy, including official initiatives for cooperation and the impact of different interstate exchanges. In addition to the political aspect, the book highlights the economic dimensions of Turkey’s involvement in the Western Balkans, by exploring trade linkages and prospects for future partnership arrangements. Finally, socio-cultural components of bilateral relations are examined, with some contributors focusing on the role of art, religion, and cultural heritage in Turkish foreign policy toward the Western Balkans. While providing detailed analysis and reflections on Turkey’s direction and policy preferences, this unique collection appeals to scholars of international relations, Balkan and Turkish studies, and other neighboring disciplines, as well as to policymakers and general readership interested in the region and international collaboration.
... Another frequently cited shift in AKP's foreign policy was its 'de-Europeanization'. De-Europeanization of the Turkish foreign policy refers to Turkey's growing scepticism and indifference towards Europe, as well as a shift away from the EU membership criteria driven by increased authoritarianism. It also highlights the rising tensions between Turkey and the EU over several issues, including the situations with Greece and Cyprus (Alpan & Erdi, 2022;Aydın-Düzgit & Kaliber, 2016;Christofis, 2022;Kaliber & Kaliber, 2019). Especially in the aftermath of the 2013 Gezi Park protests against the AKP government, and subsequent criticisms from Europe regarding the government's handling of the protests, anti-western sentiments further solidified the trend of de-Europeanization in Turkish foreign policy (Atmaca & Torun, 2022;Kaliber & Kaliber, 2019). ...
Despite their claims to sovereignty, nearly all de facto states exist only as
dependents on their patrons, rendering them highly vulnerable to external
domination and interference. This dependency also constrains their ability to
foster democratic processes. This article examines the relationship between the
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), the only democratic de facto state,
and Turkey by focusing on the political developments in the TRNC from 2000
and 2023. It argues that despite the relatively more democratic environment in
the TRNC compared to other de facto states – especially during 2002–2009—the
expanding foreign policy ambitions of the AKP government in Turkey resulted
in a more controlling and dominating role for Turkey in the TRNC. This shift
became evident from 2009 onward, as Turkey imposed greater influence in
economic and cultural spheres. This culminated in another turn in 2017 that led
to overt interference in the domestic affairs of the TRNC, contributing to
a decline in democracy.
... Sohn's work on South Korea highlights this issue and argues that middle powers may be inclined to combine soft power with "network power," namely a state's relations with other states (Sohn 2012). Work by Chatin on Brazil, as well as Chatin and Gallarotti's edited volume (Chatin and Gallarotti 2018) on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries, details how middle powers dedicate substantial effort and resources to developing soft-power offensives, paying more attention to soft power in potential zero-sum or competitive contexts (Alpan & Öztürk 2022); yet, they do not explore specific middle-power dyads whose rivalry is affected by soft-power competition. Ultimately, how are middle powers expected to use soft power in the context of an interstate rivalry? ...
Scholars of international relations have long recognized the importance of soft power in great powers’ hegemonic designs. In contrast, we know little of middle powers’ employment of noncoercive strategies of attraction and, in particular, how soft power operates in the context of middle-power antagonism. We suggest that, first, soft power enhances coalition-building strategies for middle powers. Contrary to expectations that states join forces against a shared threat, the use of soft power via development aid produces an “Us” versus “Them” distinction in target states that unites them in the absence of a common enemy. Second, middle states’ soft-power strategies are likely to support coalition maintenance so long as it does not challenge target states’ national interests. Utilizing extensive archival and interview-based data, we examine how soft power featured in Egyptian–Israeli competition across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from 1957 to 1974. We demonstrate how soft power operates beyond the context of great power agenda setting, therefore providing novel evidence for the importance of soft power in the interplay between interstate antagonism and noncoercion in world politics.
... Bunlardan ilki, Avrupa Komisyonu tarafından Türkiye'nin hazırlıklarının oldukça yeterli olduğu ifade edilen fasıllarda müzakerelere başlanması önerisinin, Fransa ve Güney Kıbrıs Rum Yönetimi (GKRY) tarafından tek taraflı veto edilmesi ve Türkiye'nin üyelik süreci kapsamında AB'nin güvenirliliğinin zayıflamış olmasıdır (Turhan ve Wessels, 2021). İkinci etken ise, üyelik perspektifinin güvenirliliğinin azalmasına da bağlı olarak Türkiye'de AB ve değerlerinin temel kriter olarak alındığı Avrupalılaşma sürecinin 2010'un ortasından itibaren yerini adım adım Avrupalılaşmadan uzaklaşmaya (de-Europeanization) bırakmış olmasıdır (Alpan ve Öztürk, 2022). ...
Küreselleşmenin etkisiyle Avrupa Birliği (AB) ve üçüncü ülkeler arasında giderek güçlenen (asimetrik) karşılıklı bağımlılık, AB’ye üye olmayan ülkelerin AB normlarını kısmen benimsemesinin ehemmiyetini arttırmıştır. Dolayısıyla, AB müktesebatının belli kısımlarının Birlik sınırlarının ötesinde uygulanması olarak tanımlanan harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyon (external differentiated integration) konusunda gerçekleştirilen akademik çalışmalar önem kazanmıştır. Türkiye, bir yandan üyelik perspektifi oldukça zayıflamış bir aday ülke, öte yandan da birçok politika alanında AB’nin stratejik ortağı olarak, harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyon çalışmaları açısından önemli bir örnek teşkil etmektedir. Son yıllarda AB, düzensiz göçün yönetimi amacıyla sınır yönetimi normlarının Türkiye’ye aktarımını, Türkiye ile olan diyaloğunun merkezine yerleştirmiştir. Buna bağlı olarak sınır yönetimi, Türkiye’nin AB’ye harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyonunu kavramsal ve ampirik açılardan analiz etmek için oldukça elverişli bir politika alanı olarak öne çıkmaktadır. Çalışmada, Türkiye’nin sınır yönetimi konusunda AB ile harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyonunun sınırları ve belirleyici faktörleri analiz edilmektedir. Çalışma, bu politika alanında kilit öneme sahip iki konuyu mercek altına almaktadır: Türkiye tarafından Entegre Sınır Yönetimi (ESY) sisteminin uygulanması ve AB Sınır ve Sahil Güvenlik Ajansı (FRONTEX) ile işlevsel iş birliğinin durumu. Makalenin kuramsal bölümünde, harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyon ve belirleyici faktörleri, farklı politika aktarımı modelleri ve literatür haritalandırılması üzerinden kavramsallaştırılmaktadır. Ampirik bölümdeyse, ESY’nin uygulanması ve FRONTEX ile iş birliği konularında gerçekleşen farklılaştırılmış entegrasyonun kapsamı Avrupa Komisyonu Türkiye ilerleme/ülke raporları temel alınarak incelenmektedir. Entegrasyonun kapsamını ve sınırlarını etkileyen faktörler, makalenin kuramsal bölümünde gerçekleştirilen haritalandırmadan yararlanılarak ele alınmaktadır. Makalenin ana bulgusu, cazip ve güvenilir teşviklerin Türkiye’nin sınır yönetimi konusunda AB ile entegrasyonunu kolaylaştırırken, sektörel siyasallaşmanın ve öngörülen yüksek uyum maliyetlerinin harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyonu olumsuz etkilediğidir.
... Bunlardan ilki, Avrupa Komisyonu tarafından Türkiye'nin hazırlıklarının oldukça yeterli olduğu ifade edilen fasıllarda müzakerelere başlanması önerisinin, Fransa ve Güney Kıbrıs Rum Yönetimi (GKRY) tarafından tek taraflı veto edilmesi ve Türkiye'nin üyelik süreci kapsamında AB'nin güvenirliliğinin zayıflamış olmasıdır (Turhan ve Wessels, 2021). İkinci etken ise, üyelik perspektifinin güvenirliliğinin azalmasına da bağlı olarak Türkiye'de AB ve değerlerinin temel kriter olarak alındığı Avrupalılaşma sürecinin 2010'un ortasından itibaren yerini adım adım Avrupalılaşmadan uzaklaşmaya (de-Europeanization) bırakmış olmasıdır (Alpan ve Öztürk, 2022). ...
Amaç: Bu çalışma, Türkiye’nin sınır yönetimi konusunda AB ile harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyonunun sınırlarını ve belirleyici faktörlerini Entegre Sınır Yönetimi (ESY) sisteminin uygulanması ve AB Sınır ve Sahil Güvenlik Ajansı (FRONTEX) ile işlevsel işbirliğinin durumu kapsamında analiz etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Yöntem: Makalenin kuramsal bölümünde, harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyon ve belirleyici faktörleri, farklı politika aktarımı modelleri ve literatür haritalandırılması üzerinden kavramsallaştırılmaktadır. Ampirik bölümdeyse, ESY’nin uygulanması ve FRONTEX ile işbirliği konularında gerçekleşen farklılaştırılmış entegrasyonun kapsamı Avrupa Komisyonu Türkiye ilerleme/ülke raporları temel alınarak incelenmektedir. Entegrasyonun kapsamını ve sınırlarını etkileyen faktörler, makalenin kuramsal bölümünde gerçekleştirilen haritalandırmadan yararlanılarak ele alınmaktadır.Bulgular: Makalenin ana bulgusu, cazip ve güvenilir teşviklerin Türkiye’nin sınır yönetimi konusunda AB ile entegrasyonunu kolaylaştırırken, sektörel siyasallaşmanın ve öngörülen yüksek uyum maliyetlerinin harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyonu olumsuz etkilediğidir.Özgünlük: AB-Türkiye ilişkilerinin ele alındığı yazında, harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyon konusundaki kuramsal çalışmalar az sayıda olmakla birlikte, oldukça da yeni bir alandır. Bunun ötesinde, kuramsal tartışmaları farklı politika alanları bağlamında inceleyen sınırlı sayıda ampirik çalışma bulunmaktadır. Bu makale, AB-Türkiye ilişkilerini, göç ve sınır yönetimi gibi oldukça önemli ve güncel bir politika alanında, harici farklılaştırılmış entegrasyon tartışmaları bağlamında inceleyerek özellikle Türkçe yazına önemli ve özgün bir katkı sağlamaktadır.
El revisionismo de fronteras y la instrumentalización de la protección de las minorías
étnicas representan amenazas para la estabilidad y seguridad europeas. Los Balcanes Occidentales son candidatos a la adhesión a la Unión Europea, donde perviven identidades múltiples resultado de una composición multiétnica y cuya distribución sobrepasa las fronteras nacionales. Se repasan los principales reclamos territoriales y conflictos políticos: reconocimiento de Kosovo, secesión de la Republika Srpska, influencia croata en Herzegovina, reclamos serbios en Montenegro, autonomía de la región bosníaca del Sandžak, pueblos albaneses en Montenegro, Serbia y Macedonia del Norte, así como la cuestión identitaria macedonia y la multiculturalidad en Voivodina. Es esencial fortalecer la democracia y restaurar la credibilidad en el proyecto europeo
Transregionalism is identified with loose and less-institutional interactions functioning via both state and non-state actors. Its lesser need for multilateral and ruled-based institutions makes transregionalism naturally flexible, multifaceted, and more bilateralism-oriented. Türkiye’s enthusiasm to deepen relations with Asia, which was officially encapsulated within the Asia Anew initiative (2019), is a good example of such multifaceted transregional bilateralism. The initiative prioritized this interaction scheme by stressing the importance of inter-agency mechanisms operating via state and non-state stakeholders. Accordingly, this study argues that Türkiye’s interactions with South Asia, especially regarding state/peopleto- people relations, which merge state with non-state actors can be analyzed within the conceptual framework of transregional bilateralism. Departing from this premise, this study argues that the geocultural affinities between the South Asian and Turkish communities perform as the main “booster” of this framework.
This article focuses on the changing nature of Russia-Turkey energy trade relations. The main argument of the article is that climate change, as well as EU institutions and environmental
protection regulations, have been decisive in the long-term transformation of bilateral natural gas relations. The EU favors competitive market structures to combat climate change, and the EU Green Deal sets ambitious targets for renewable energy consumption. These variables establish grounds for legitimacy among EU members in the face of Russian dominance of the EU energy market. However, as discussed in this paper, the Russian government’s main
strategy to counter this opposition from the EU side is to circumvent the EU’s institutional arrangements through its relations with Turkey. The final point to be discussed in this paper is the impact of the EU energy and environment policies on changes in Russian perceptions of Turkey.
This article deals with Turkey’s increasing involvement and activism in the Balkan Peninsula between 2002 and 2022, under the rule of the Justice and Development Party and asks two different questions 1) If the Balkan elites perceive the policies implemented by Turkey differently and relatively pejoratively, what is the reason for this and how can we explain it theoretically? 2) What kind of differences does the current position of Turkey-Balkan relations cause us to observe in classical international relations? To answer these questions, this study seeks to shed much needed light on this aspect of Turkish relations with its Balkan neighbours in the context of the broader shift in Turkish domestic and foreign policy under the AKP from a realist-secular orientation to an ambiguous Sunni Islamic. Therefore, it explains the complex relations between religion, nostalgia and identity, and its reflections on state power.
This paper focuses on the geographical, historical, and cultural spatializations of Turkish national identity by political elites in the post-2000 era. Considering the close link between the formation of national identity and the spatial constructions of homeland, the paper shows that Turkish national identity since the foundation of the Republic has been constructed through different supranational visions, navigating through different civilizational ingredients. We show that the Kemalists’ Western-oriented or Eurocentric geopolitical discourses, which perceive Turkey as a “bridge country”, have been transformed in the postCold War era into a more ambitious geopolitical discourse of a “central country”, which aims to broaden Turkey’s “identity space” through its Ottoman heritage. In line with this transformation, in the 2000s, the Turkish homeland was imagined as the “cradle of civilizations”, but the national identity did not develop as a counter-hegemonic measure against the West (Europe). The post-2010 era – with a pronounced emphasis on Islamic culture and Ottoman geopolitical space – constitutes a departure from the previous years’ spatial and identity constructions of Turkey, in the sense that the political elites’ perception of national identity has never gone beyond the national frontiers to this extent, and the West (Europe) has never been so trivialized in terms of progress and civilization.
Turkey is a prime example of the growing importance of diaspora related policies in countries with emerging power status. Based on reports, observations, and interviews with Turkish and Kosovar citizens in Pristina in February 2019, this article examines how Turkey since 2002 has created societal infl uence in Kosovo—a new and insecure country with which Turkey established relations since its inception—by using, among other things, the Presidency for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) for its diaspora policies. Looking at how the inclusive and repressive tactics of Turkish diaspora-building feed into each other, I argue that Ankara has expanded the boundaries of the Turkish state’s reach by harnessing religion (Islam) in addition to existing ethnic bonds (Turkishness), thereby allowing Turkey to create a diaspora out of a much larger group of people including non-Turkish Muslims. As a result, certain segments among the Sunni-Muslim Albanians in Kosovo have developed close relations with Turkey that may be employed when needed to police elements of the diaspora that are seen as oppositional. While Turkey’s “domestic abroad” has expanded considerably due to the initial inclusive outreach, it has also become more fragmented, more contested, and more unruly, delivering continuously diminishing returns in terms of regime security at home. Although the repression of disloyal diaspora members by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is aimed at stabilizing
rule at home, it creates divisions in the diaspora and risks Turkey’s relations with the countries in which it asserts its authority.
Europeanization is deservedly one of the most popular yet most volatile buzzwords for Turkish politics and EU–Turkey relations. This chapter takes stock of the Europeanization literature and examines the EU–Turkey relationship by referring to particular mechanisms and variants of Europeanization. The main argument is that Europeanization is a versatile and complex process covering vast areas of policy, politics, and polity, intertwined with larger domestic, regional, and global processes, which is not limited to Turkey’s EU accession. The analysis refers to particular mechanisms and variants of Europeanization in four different phases between 1963 and early 2020: In the first period, ‘Europeanization as rapprochement’, Turkey’s age-old Westernization project was consolidated through Europeanization. In the second period, ‘Europeanization as democratic conditionality’, there has been strong interest in the impact of Europeanization on particular aspects of domestic issues through conditionality and the EU’s role as a ‘democratization anchor’. In the third period, ‘Europeanization as retrenchment’, and the fourth period, ‘Europeanization as denial’, ‘Europe’ was no longer the lingua franca in the Turkish political landscape, a trend that is also associated with a ‘de-Europeanization’ turn in the literature. This does not mean that ‘Europe’ completely disappeared from domestic policy orientations, political debates, and identity negotiations. Rather, Ankara used ‘Europe’ strategically to justify actions that were criticized by the EU.
This chapter assesses the compatibility of Turkish and EU foreign policies between 1959 and 2020. Based on the analysis of key international developments and Turkey’s alignment with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the chapter identifies four periods that were characterized by different degrees of convergence and divergence. In the period between 1959 and 1998 compatibility was relatively high as Turkish foreign policy was guided by the goal of remaining part of the Western community of states throughout the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. Between 1999 and 2002, Turkish foreign policy became regionally more active, in a similar way to that of the EU, but produced few results. The period between 2003 and 2010, up to the Arab Spring, is identified as the ‘golden age’ of compatibility between Turkish and EU foreign policies. Turkey’s prevailing ethos of this period, i.e., relying on soft power and cooperation with neighbors, was generally in line with the EU’s foreign policy approach. Since 2011, divergences between the EU and Turkey have increased, in particular with regard to Syria, Cyprus, and the Eastern Mediterranean. As Turkey defined its norms and interests differently from the EU, its rate of alignment with the EU’s CFSP decreased remarkably. The chapter concludes by looking to the future, arguing that cooperation between the EU and Turkey is likely to focus on issues where there is strong compatibility in selected areas only, such as pandemics, counterterrorism, migration, and energy, and will be primarily based on ad hoc mechanisms.
This chapter discusses Turkey’s efforts to align and then de-align its migration and asylum policies and laws with the European Union. It argues that the Europeanization of migration and asylum policies and laws corresponds to the internalization of a rights-based approach by state and societal actors in Turkey up until the beginning of the civil war in Syria. The period of the war corresponds to the ascent of the process of de-Europeanization of Turkey that has resulted in the framing of migration and asylum policies at the national and local levels in cultural and religious terms. The chapter argues that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has successfully accommodated the Syrian refugees on the basis of a religious rhetoric called ‘Ansar spirit’.
The countries of the Western Balkans have experienced more than a decade of democratic backsliding. Analysis of survey results revealed that these trends were accompanied also by substantial changes in citizens' political attitudes. The support for a strong political leader has noticeably increased, while support for democracy has suffered a substantial decline. The results suggest that these tendencies can better be explained by the economic insecurity thesis than by the cultural backlash thesis. The analysis also revealed that the support for a strong leader has become increasingly compatible with the general support for democracy.
Under the AKP government, Turkey’s foreign policy towards the Western Balkans, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular, has led many analysts to suspect it of possessing neo-imperial, or so-called neo-Ottoman, objectives. These suspicions have been compounded by the repeated declarations of former Prime Minister Davutoğlu and current President Erdoğan that the history and religious identity shared by Turks and Western Balkan Muslims forms the basis of both Turkish-Balkan relations and a common future. Critical examination of official Ankara’s attitudes toward the Western Balkans in general, and especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, identifies four distinct phases in which cultural, historical, and religious appeals morphed into the set of distinctive foreign policies. These policies have also been shaped by pragmatic pursuits of regional influence, the effects of internal (Turkish) transformations, and more recently, the ad hoc policies of President Erdoğan. This article will reconstruct the development of Turkish foreign policy since 1990, from multilateral and soft power efforts to religious and economic objectives, and will analyse the limits of this policy.
Turkey’s security-oriented foreign policy during the 1990s, which changed dramatically by the 2000s towards a more liberal mode and which can also be considered as the “Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy”, returned to its re-securitized phase in the 2010s by resorting to hard power. This article aims at explaining this reversal by analysing changes in the intensity of Turkey’s internal and external threats. In this analysis, it will mainly concentrate on the ongoing civil war in Syria, as an enabling factor for the revival of PKK terror in Turkey and terrorist attacks from ISIS. Consequently, the unstable political and security environment surrounding the South-eastern borderline of Turkey has led to the use of hard power in national foreign policy. In contrast with the previous decade, the use of military power has become inevitable in the pursuit of national security interests against intra-country and cross-border terror threats. ÖZ: Türkiye’nin 1990’lardaki güvenlik odaklı dış politikası 2000’li yıllarda Türk dış politikasının Avrupalılaşması olarak da nitelendirilebilen daha liberal yönde bir değişim geçirmiştir. Ancak bu dış politika, 2010’larda sert güce başvurulmasıyla yeniden güvenlikleştirme sürecine yönelmiştir. Bu makale söz konusu yönelimi, Türkiye’ye yönelik iç ve dış tehditlerin yoğunluğundaki değişimi analiz ederek incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu analizde temel olarak, Suriye’de devam eden ve Türkiye’deki PKK terörünün yeniden ortaya çıkışına olanak sağlayan iç savaş ve DAEŞ’in terörist saldırıları üzerinde durulacaktır. Sonuç olarak, Türkiye’nin güney doğu sınırını çevreleyen istikrarsız siyaset ve güvenlik ortamı, ulusal dış politikada sert gücün kullanılmasına yol açmıştır. Önceki on yılın aksine, ülke içi ve sınır ötesi terör tehditlerine karşı askeri güç kullanımı, ulusal güvenlik çıkarları açısından kaçınılmaz hale gelmiştir.
Recent Turkish foreign policy (TFP) under the successive AKP governments has seen different populist turns. A clear distinction can be made between the thin and thick populisms of TFP, based on the status of the West. The first decade of AKP rule, when foreign policy was thinly populist, was characterised by steady de-Europeanisation, increasing engagement with regional issues and a decentring of Turkey’s Western orientation. The turn toward thick populism has been characterised by anti-Westernist discourses in which the West is resituated as the ‘other’ of Turkish political identity.
Why do Muslim-majority countries exhibit high levels of authoritarianism and low levels of socio-economic development in comparison to world averages? Ahmet T. Kuru criticizes explanations which point to Islam as the cause of this disparity, because Muslims were philosophically and socio-economically more developed than Western Europeans between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Nor was Western colonialism the cause: Muslims had already suffered political and socio-economic problems when colonization began. Kuru argues that Muslims had influential thinkers and merchants in their early history, when religious orthodoxy and military rule were prevalent in Europe. However, in the eleventh century, an alliance between orthodox Islamic scholars (the ulema) and military states began to emerge. This alliance gradually hindered intellectual and economic creativity by marginalizing intellectual and bourgeois classes in the Muslim world. This important study links its historical explanation to contemporary politics by showing that, to this day, ulema-state alliance still prevents creativity and competition in Muslim countries.
Ever since the election of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in 2002,
Turkey has been undergoing a multileveled transformation—social, political, economic,
ideological and cultural. As a consequence, many suggested that Turkey was becoming
more difficult to understand and predict. Much of the debate about Turkey during the
2000s (and the first years of the 2010s)—at least among ‘Western’ circles—revolved
around two main clashing lines of analysis. On the one hand, many scholars and
pundits argued that Turkey was experiencing unprecedented levels of democratization
and economic development, and that it aspired to play a positive role in its broader
neighbourhood through trade, enhanced diplomatic relations, mediation in regional
problems, etc. On the other hand, sceptics warned of a more Islamic conservative turn
in Turkish domestic and foreign politics which would also pursue a regional hegemonic
role and take place at the expense of the county’s secularist tradition and Western
orientation.
The countries of the Western Balkans during the 1990s were dominated by competitive authoritarian regimes that combined multi-party elections with nationalist rhetoric and the privatisation of the state to affiliated business interests. After a move towards democratisation in the early 2000s across the region, authoritarian practices began re-appearing in the late 2000s and have now firmly taken root in many of these countries. This article will argue that the current competitive authoritarian systems (Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism. Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) are structurally different from those of the 1990s. These new regimes draw on the failure of reformist governments during the early 2000s to decisively break with authoritarian practices and establish independent and democratic institutions, thus facilitating the return of competitive authoritarian regimes. The current pattern in the Western Balkans is part of a global trend, but is also one embedded in the particularities of democratic transformation of the region. This article argues that the return of competitive authoritarianism is the result of weak democratic structures, facilitated by the weakening and insufficient transformative power of external actors, first and foremost the EU, in incentivizing continued democratisation.
This article examines the circumstances shaping the evolution of the Gülen movement. Once considered a relatively liberal and pluralistic Islamic movement based in Turkey, the movement later succumbed to authoritarianism and illiberalism following its political alliance with the AK Party and their subsequent falling out. The paper opens with a brief overview of the historical context of the relationship between state and society in the Ottoman Empire and then examines the politicization of Islam as a movement of resistance against the modernizing reforms of the Kemalist state. The complex interplay of these factors culminated in the construction of a secular communalism in Turkey. The remainder of the paper focuses on the triangulated relationship among state, society, and religion, targeting the alliance and political struggles between the AK Party and the Gülen movement. The paper concludes that once legal and political checks and balances are removed, Islamic movements bend towards authoritarian tendencies seeking to monopolize or, at least, influence nearly every sphere of social and political life. After a decade-long experiment with Islamic movements in power, Turkey—increasingly authoritarian in character and socially fragmented—is experiencing the most serious institutional crisis in its history as a modern republic.
In the wake of the July 2016 putsch and the subsequent purge of followers of the outlawed Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen in every sphere of Turkish life under the ruling AKP government’s state of emergency, the Gülen movement (GM) is in disarray and crisis. A fruitful way to bring some analytical order to this issue is through the frame of diaspora, which we contend provides some useful analytical purchase on understanding the movement historically and in transition. The GM as it stood prior to 2016 is, we contend, best conceived as a transnational parapolitical network—a ‘diaspora by design’—dedicated principally to the service, not of humanity, but of power. Based on interviews with over 70 key members of the movement conducted between 2012 and 2018, we show how, from the late 1990s Gülen and his supporters crafted a complex transnational structure that has combined extensive financial operations with a distinctive organizational morphology. We map out the contours of this structure and show how it emerged over time via instrumentalization of Gülen’s parapolitical ideology and the steady accretion of politically directed, corporate projects outside Turkey. Finally, drawing again on the notion of diaspora, we offer a framework for thinking about how the movement may evolve in future as it transitions to a fragmented community in transnational in political exile.
In recent years, several observers of Turkey have recognised a novel development in Turkish politics: the rise of Erdoganism. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personality and style have come to embody the Turkish nation, the state and its economic, social and political institutions. But what is Erdoganism? What are its main attributes? Is it a mere ideology or the name of the emerging political regime in Turkey? While commentators have provided several observations of Erdoganism, it has not been duly examined on its own in the academic literature. This paper’s main premise is that in Turkey, a new political regime has emerged in recent years which can best be defined as Erdoganism. Erdoganism has four main dimensions: electoral authoritarianism as the electoral system, neopatrimonialism as the economic system, populism as the political strategy and Islamism as the political ideology. We first explain why we think Erdoganism is a better concept to define the emerging political regime in Turkey. We briefly discuss Sultanism, Khomeinism and Kemalism in order to produce a set of references for our discussion of Erdoganism. We then provide a thorough analysis, explaining the ways in which Erdoganism manifests itself through electoral authoritarianism, neopatrimonialism, populism and Islamism.
This article argues that patriarchal discourses can play a legitimizing role for the undemocratic elements of regimes. It focuses on neopatrimonial regimes in contemporary politics, which create impediments to democracy. Showing neopatri-monialism's link to patriarchal discourses, the study highlights the need to situate neopatrimonialism beyond its dominant contemporary usage as material exchange between the ruler and the ruled for political support. The Turkish case is analyzed to show how neopatrimonial acts of politicians are justified with a patri-archal discourse that is paternalistic and serves to reinforce personalistic rule, de-legitimize opposition, and suppress pluralism.
This article takes issue with the question of whether Turkey has been turning away from Europe in recent years, by adopting a critical constructivist lens to understand how, rather than why, Turkey’s presumed distance from the European Union (EU) is taking place. In doing that, it seeks to analyse the ways in which the political–societal transformation of the country as distanced from the EU is enabled by certain discursive practices which in turn contribute to the growing rift between Turkey and the EU. This is mainly conducted through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of texts produced by former Prime Minister and now President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Europe and the EU during key election periods starting with the 12 June 2011 general election.
This article provides a novel conceptual framework to understand the impact of the European Union on Turkish politics and policies in the aftermath of the opening of accession negotiations in 2005. It argues that the post-2005 developments in Turkey not only attest to lesser and more limited Europeanisation, but also entail a process that is increasingly gaining momentum in the country and which is referred to as ‘de-Europeanisation’.
National and State Identity in Turkey uses the concepts of national and state identity to examine Turkey’s domestic and international politics and explain how the country’s position in the international system has changed over the last ten years. State identity is understood as the end result of a transformed national identity, linking both domestic and international levels.
Toni Alaranta argues that there has been a radical reformulation of Turkey’s national identity, interest, and positioning in the world since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002. This transformed identity has helped the country renegotiate its status in the world. He first examines the changing nature of Turkey’s national identity before looking at the struggle between two extreme positions—secularism and Islamism. He then explains how the “New Turkey” discourse is part of an Islamic-conservative ideology that targets the notion of the “domestic other,” or minorities, versus the Turkish-Muslim “self.” This discourse is transforming not only the notion of national identity but also Turkey’s relations with the rest of the world, and particularly with the European Union.
Turkey and its recent ethno-religious transformation have had a strong impact on the state identity and country’s relation to the Balkan Peninsula. This book examines Turkey’s ethno-religious activism and power-related political strategies in the Balkans between 2002 and 2020, the period under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), to determine the scopes of its activities in the region. This study illuminates an often-neglected aspect of Turkey’s relations with its Balkan neighbours that emerged as a result of the much discussed ‘authoritarian turn’ – a broader shift in Turkish domestic and foreign policy from a realist-secular to a Sunni Islamic orientation with ethno-nationalist policies. In order to understand how these concepts have been received locally, the author draws on personal testimonies given by both Turkish and non-Turkish, Muslim and non-Muslim interviewees in three country cases: Republic of Bulgaria, Republic of North Macedonia and Republic of Albania. The findings shed light on contemporary issues surrounding the continuous redefinition of Turkish secularism under the AKP rule and the emergence of a new Muslim elite in Turkey.
This study deals with Turkey’s increasing involvement and activism in the Western Balkan countries mostly between 2002 and 2018, under the rule of the Justice and Development party. It therefore, seeks to shed much needed light on this aspect of Turkish relations with its Western Balkan neighbors in the context of the broader shift in Turkish domestic and foreign policy under the AKP from a realist-secular orientation to a more religious and active one with its new state identity. Therefore, it also explains the complex relations between religion and state identity. In order to analyze this process, the article explore the actives of various Turkey originated transnational institutions which are the dominant actors of Turkey in the region and the perspectives of the policy-makers both in Ankara and in the Western Balkan capitals.
This chapter introduces the Europeanisation debate with extensive discussion on the mechanisms, scope conditions and potential outcomes, with a special focus on gender equality policy. We first introduce the research questions guiding the process of Europeanisation as well as the domestic and EU-level independent variables guiding three theoretical models: the interest-driven, the norm-driven and the lesson-driven model. Then, we apply these theoretical models and their variables to the case of Turkey and discuss how the political system, parties, electoral systems and the judicial system in Turkey affect the Europeanisation of gender equality policies. Finally, for the individual chapters of the book, we define a two-stage analysis that lists the potential indicators of positive, negative and selective Europeanisation at the norm adoption and norm application phases. This analysis allows us to capture not only the formal transposition of the EU’s gender equality policies in the domestic context but also to examine the changes occurring at the level of implementation and discourse.
Since 2015, Turkey gradually has been moving toward a more nationalist discourse and direction in its foreign policy. This sharply contrasts with the liberal foreign policy orientation that Turkey implemented during the first decade of the Justice and Development Party government, as well as its idealistic assertiveness during the Arab Spring. In the Syrian conflict, Turkey has turned away from its initial goal of helping the anti-Assad opposition to a strategy that aims to restrain the territorial gains of separatist Kurdish groups. This transformation of strategic orientation is a product of emerging security threats, as well as changes in domestic politics including Turkey’s new presidential system. Rather than representing a return to rationality and realpolitik, the new orientation rests upon the traditional fears of disintegration and the culture of insecurity that the AKP governments had attempted to overcome. The Kurdish question has returned to its traditional position as the primary foreign policy challenge, and in reversing its original reformist agenda the AK government has embraced a military response to cope with this challenge, as demonstrated through numerous military land operations it has conducted in Syria. This new orientation has caused major frictions in relations with the United States and Europe, whereas it has led to a strategic rapprochement with Russia.
Bulgaria, Greece, and North Macedonia have demographically the largest and politically the most significant Turkish minorities in southeastern Europe. Yet the official recognition of Turkish ethnicity and language varies very significantly across these three neighbouring countries. This variation is particularly puzzling and counterintuitive if one considers a number of alternative explanations, all of which would predict different outcomes. The country with the highest level political recognition for Turkish language and ethnicity (North Macedonia) is not the one with the largest Turkish minority in absolute or relative terms, or the one with the highest Turkish minority representation in parliament, or the one that is a new or old EU member, or the ones that neighbour Turkey, the kin state of the minority. Through process tracing based on primary and secondary sources, we argue that a particular type of political polarization over identity among the ethnic majority, which we conceptualize as the ‘nationhood cleavage,’ facilitated the highest level of official recognition of the minority.
The Europeanisation process in Turkey that extended roughly from 1999 to 2006 boosted the political and cultural rights of diverse ethnic groups in Turkey, including Circassians, and strengthened their claims for equal citizenship. With the loss or weakening of the EU as an anchor for democratic reform in the post-2007 period, however, the de-Europeanisation process has resulted in the disappearance of the main legal and institutional basis for the democratic integration of ethnocultural minorities. Nevertheless, analysis of the activities of four large Circassian communities in Turkey shows that the same process has enhanced the cultural reification of these groups as their survival strategy.
Since roughly 2011, the Turkish state and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been going through a process of mutual transformation. Some of the historical apprehensions, biases and frustrations exhibited by Turkey as a middle power have been absorbed by the relatively reformist AKP. Conversely, the AKP and its undisputed leader Erdoğan have seen their socio-political fears, power based conflicts and ethno-religious desires become dominant in all areas, including religion. As a consequence of this bilateral transformation, Turkey has become both an inclusionary and a hegemonic-authoritarian state, and at the same time a weak one. Within this new identity and structure of the state, Sunni Islam has become one of the regime’s key focal points, with a new logic. This article seeks to explain the transformation of the relations between the AKP’s Turkish state, religion and religious groups, by scrutinising Karrie Koesel’s logic of state-religion interaction in authoritarian regimes.
Literature on Turkey’s post-2011 authoritarian turn – especially after the eruption of the 2013 nationwide Gezi Protests – adopts modern concepts such as ‘dictatorship’, ‘authoritarianism’, ‘totalitarianism’, ‘one-party government’, ‘party-state fusion’, and even ‘fascism’ mainly in order to pin down the nature of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Turkish acronym) or depict the current character of Turkey’s regime. Through engaging the pre-modern concept of neopatrimonialism, which is derived from Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism, this paper argues that Turkey’s encounter with authoritarianism is deeply associated with the proliferation of neopatrimonial domination, into which the legacy of patronage politics, fracture of security power, and the metastasis of crony capitalism have been conflated. This article argues that neopatrimonial features have always, to a degree, marked state-society relations in Turkey. Furthermore, this article suggests neopatrimonial characteristics started to dominate Turkey’s modern legal structure under the AKP, which led to a state crisis culminating in the 2016 attempted coup. However, despite the fact that neopatrimonialism cannot be argued as a pathological deviation from modern-legal domination, this paper concludes that tension exists between the crony capitalism-based economic model of neopatrimonalism and Turkey’s decades-long market-based capitalism.
Turkey is the only Eurasian state surrounded in almost a full circle by acute hot or “frozen conflicts,” ranging from low-intensity violence, terrorism to fully fledged wars. The prevailing pattern of intercommunal and interethnic conflicts in the continental Balkans and on Cyprus has long been different from those in the rest of Europe and in the Near East. This difference is closely related to the fact that these lands had experienced in the past centuries-long rule by the Ottoman Empire, whose legal successor is the Republic of Turkey. The intercommunal conflict potential in the rest of Europe used to differ substantially, but the difference has been greatly reduced as Western Europe has, in one respect, become “balkanized.”
Since its transition to a multiparty system in 1950, Turkey has witnessed six attempted military interventions in politics. Of these, four (1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997) were successful and two (1962 and 1963) failed. The latest coup attempt made world news late on the evening of 15 July 2016, when fighting broke out in Istanbul and Ankara and it seemed for a time as if the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s leader since 2002, might be falling. Yet as that dramatic midsummer evening and night wore on, something unprecedented happened: For the first time in modern Turkish history, a civilian government was able to call on its own mass following to stop a putsch in its tracks. © 2017 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press.
This article investigates the political dynamics shaping the post-2010 ‘de-Europeanisation’ of Turkey’s judicial system, particularly regarding judicial independence and rule of law. The analysis suggests the limits of conventional Europeanisation accounts emphasising causal factors such as European Union (EU) conditionality and the ‘lock-in effects’ of liberal reforms due to the benefits of EU accession. The article argues that the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP’s) bid for political hegemony resulted in the reversal of rule of law reforms. De-Europeanisation is discussed in terms of both legislative changes and the government’s observed discourse shift.
The European Union (EU) has successfully been exercising its transformative power through both its enlargement and its neighbourhood policies for decades. Nonetheless, transformation towards a more European model of governance through Europeanisation is not a linear process, but a differentiated one. Adverse consequences for Europeanisation (i.e. de-Europeanisation) have often been neglected. The case of media freedom in Turkey, with a deteriorating trend across time, exemplifies such an outcome. This article explores media freedom in Turkey in the last decade. It argues that media reforms have been reversed over time in a de-Europeanising trend, with the EU losing its position as a reference point for reforms.
While Europeanisation of civil society in Turkey has received considerable attention, there has been much less interest in how environmental organisations, as key civil society actors, have been affected by Europeanisation/de-Europeanisation dynamics. Interviews with civil society representatives and European Union (EU) and Turkish policy-makers indicate that the EU impact on environmental organisations has been ambivalent, and that Europeanisation dynamics are intertwined with the adverse consequences of these processes. While Turkey’s EU candidacy has empowered civil society through both EU-isation and Europeanisation, there has also been a remarkable rise of scepticism towards the EU’s civil society strategy and the EU has lost its attractiveness as a normative context in environmental debates.
This study discusses the dynamics of de-Europeanisation and the changing impact of Europe on the politically mobilised civil society involved in the public debates concerning Turkey’s Kurdish question. The article first critically assesses how and in what ways the legal and constitutional reforms on the freedom of assembly required by the European Union (EU) changed the political structure in which civil society organisations (CSOs) operate in Turkey. It then examines the views of CSOs on the potential roles and limitations of the EU in the Kurdish question and the peace process which lasted between March 2013 and July 2015. It also delineates the reasons why the political context of Europeanisation is not seen as instrumental by these CSOs to framing and justifying their arguments.
Many Turkish and European scholars have been (re)producing texts that praise the normative impact of the European Union (EU) which has helped the political transformation of Turkey. Nevertheless, the recent deterioration of democracy in the country indicates that the EU has been losing its transformative influence on Turkey. This might be regarded as de-Europeanisation. However, this article argues that the conceptual framework of de-Europeanisation can only partially explain the current situation in Turkey and the EU’s impact, and that an analysis based on counter-conduct, as produced by EU governmentality, may provide insight into a subtler dynamic at work in the country.
Following the AKP’s victory in the 2002 general elections, ‘conservative democracy’ has emerged as a trademark in Turkish politics, focusing on cosmopolitanism and European integration. In the late 2000s, the party’s favourite notion was ‘advanced democracy’, this time underlining Turkey’s leadership claim in the region and displaying a more critical approach to ‘Europe’. In this paper, I aim to show how different narratives on ‘Europe’ emerged within the context of these empty signifiers. The paper claims that the difference in the two narratives on ‘Europe’ in two different periods does not point to a complete and fully fledged de-Europeanisation trend.
This article analyses Turkey’s integration into the Bologna Process, concentrating on the questions of why and how Turkey is transferring norms in the area of higher education. As an example of policy transfer, the Bologna Process provides important insights into the question of why states choose to voluntarily adopt norms where there is no top-down pressure for change. Focusing on Turkey as a case study, the article identifies the narratives of the agents of change responsible for the reform process. The agents are the intermediaries in the Europeanisation process – they construct the discourses and they are the ones responsible for transmitting the process to the society at large. The article concludes that while institutional Europeanisation is taking place in the area of higher education, discursive Europeanisation is lacking.
After examining the causes of Turkey's failure to help secure a benign environment in its neighborhood during and after the so-called Arab Spring, this article tries to answer how foreign policy dynamics played a role between the two parliamentary elections in Turkey held in June and November 2015 respectively. Another question is whether foreign policy developments taking place in Turkey's neighborhood, particularly in the wider Middle Eastern region, will drive Turkey closer to its Western partners in the post-election era. Whether Turkey's rediscovery of the Western international community will be long-term or conjectural development, given its growing security challenges, warrants a closer attention.
This book provides a rare window into the micropolitics of contemporary authoritarian rule through a comparison of religious-state relations in Russia and China - two countries with long histories of religious repression, and even longer experiences with authoritarian politics. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in multiple sites in these countries, this book explores what religious and political authority want from one another, how they negotiate the terms of their relationship, and how cooperative or conflicting their interactions are. This comparison reveals that while tensions exist between the two sides, there is also ample room for mutually beneficial interaction. Religious communities and their authoritarian overseers are cooperating around the core issue of politics - namely, the struggle for money, power, and prestige - and becoming unexpected allies in the process.