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Publisher’s note: Turkey’s relations with the European Union are at a stalemate, with accession negotiations effectively frozen. Yet, Turkey opts into the EU acquis in multiple policy areas, where its voluntary compliance-prior to or an alternative to accession, could be conceptualized as external differentiated integration. We analyse Turkish compliance into the EU acquis in one policy area: Development policy. We assess Turkey’s opting into the EU rules on development policy from the perspective of three key factors, institutional structure, volume of aid and geographical focus. We argue that Turkey’s alignment with the EU development acquis is most visible in the institutional structure of Turkish foreign aid, and its increasing volume. Yet, there is also a highly visible divergence between Turkey and the EU in terms of geographical focus, acting as an element of competition in development policy. The transformation of Turkey’s development policy enhances Turkey’s opting into the EU acquis.
Publisher’s note: In recent years, Turkey has allocated humanitarian aid that surpasses much richer economies, including the EU. This article provides a thorough look into the patterns of divergence, complementarity and cooperation opportunities that emerged between Turkey and the EU, on sectoral aid, allocated between 2005 and 2017. The empirical analysis demonstrates whether foreign aid sectors that Turkey is active in could lead to further cooperation with the EU. These possible avenues of cooperation matter precisely because Turkey’s potential role to contribute to the global development agenda, as an emerging donor. Second, Turkish foreign aid has the potential to contribute to the EU’s collective interests in foreign policy, since Turkey is still an EU candidate country. This article aims to contribute to the literature on emerging donors using the Turkish case as an illustration of the differences among donors, as well as foreign aid literature within the contours of European integration.
Publisher’s note: This study attempts to analyse Turkey’s contribution to the United Nations (UN) system in comparison with those of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries between 2008 and 2014 on three levels: personnel, financial, ideational. Employing an integrated methodology of a global governance contribution index (GGCI) and statistical analysis of complementary raw data, this study empirically reveals the degree to which Turkey was able to transfer its capabilities into an effective contribution to the UN system on the three levels. Drawing on the findings of its quantitative analysis, this paper further qualitatively assesses the reasons behind the gap between Turkey’s global governance motivations and its contribution to the UN system. In doing so, this study, first, deals with the main motivational drivers of its activism in global governance in the 2000s. After unpacking its integrated methodology, the second part of this study quantitatively compares Turkey’s contribution to the UN system to that of the BRICS. The third part of this study delves into the main trends and deficiencies in Turkey’s contribution to the UN system. Finally, this study concludes that Turkey, despite its high motivations for activism in global governance, has not performed well in transferring its capacities into contributions to the UN system, particularly on financial and personnel levels.
Publisher’s note: Can natural resources facilitate regional cooperation? Recent discoveries of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean have led many to ask whether natural resources can bring peace and prosperity to the region. This article draws upon the contrast between liberal and realist perspectives on interdependence to explicate the extent to which shared economic interests can facilitate political cooperation in a conflict-ridden region. The analysis of Turkey’s Eastern Mediterranean strategy corroborates the proposition that when states prioritize security over prosperity, they will likely continue to escalate political tensions even if this jeopardizes economic gains from cooperation.
Publisher’s note: This study contextualizes the foreign policy strategies of Turkey and its responses to the two most recent mass refugee flows from Iraq (1989–1991) and Syria (since 2011). Considering migration policy as part of foreign policy, we argue that the foreign policy strategy of a receiving country toward a refugee-sending country is decisive in determining policies adopted for refugees. While the cases stress humanitarian need as a legitimizing tool to mobilize international coalitions to establish safe havens, the Iraqi case, however, did not correspond with any goal of using the refugee inflow to affect Iraq’s domestic policies. Therefore, the strategy focused on strict containment of refugees at camps and repatriation. In the Syrian case, the strategies simultaneously utilize idealistic and pragmatic paradigms to assert Turkey’s involvement in matters in Syria, while maintaining an emphasis on security that has become exclusionary over time.
Publisher’s note: This article analyses Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East and the Gulf region. It argues that Turkey’s activism in the first decade of the 2000s enabled it to put into play its soft power in the region and the new principles of its foreign policy under Ahmet Davutoğlu made it one of the major countries in regional politics. This has radically changed with the advent of the Arab Uprisings. Turkey has found itself a party to the civil war in Syria and lost its major ally, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, after 2013. Thus it has been largely isolated in the region. The article will underline the ideological and geopolitical reasons for this isolation. It will look at the pro-Muslim Brotherhood stance of the AKP government which played a major role in straining this relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the re-emergence of ‘the Kurdish threat’ from Turkey’s south across the Syrian border which has led to the securitisation of its foreign policy.
Publisher’s note: Although the Syrian conflict continues, local and global stakeholders have already begun to consider the return of the six million refugees, especially as neither the option of local integration in the countries of first asylum nor that of resettlement to third countries is seen as a realistic possibility. Elaborating on the return debates in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, we relate the politicisation of this question to the growing acceptance of the option of voluntary and involuntary repatriation in the international refugee regime as well as to policies and public opinion. We argue, based on empirical fieldwork, that any debate about the return of Syrian refugees is problematic, since the conditions of safety, voluntariness and sustainability are not fulfilled. Further, returns should not be left entirely to the individual hosting states and actors in the region but should be carried out in collaboration with representative authorities in Syria and the mediation of international organisations upon full resolution of conflict.
Publisher’s note: Securitization and politicization of migration in the EU, led the states in its periphery to strategically use migration management in negotiations for a wide range of issues. In this setting, Turkish case is unique due to the country’s dual considerations: (i) maintain the accession conditionality framework for longer term benefits and (ii) negotiate through ‘migration diplomacy’ for shorter-term concessions. This article analyses the last two decades of EU-Turkey relationship on migration management, through four case studies representing the migration policy field including regular migration, irregular migration and asylum. It presents the evolution and transformation of migration policy to become a subject of diplomacy and the interplay between accession conditionality and migration diplomacy in Turkey’s relationship with the EU. It shows that, in all policy fields, with the decline in its accession prospects, Turkey was empowered to negotiate through migration diplomacy by establishing issue linkages between various issues including visa liberalization, and the promise of cooperation in migration policy field. This trend of conducting negotiations in the framework of migration diplomacy rather than in an asymmetrical manner through accession conditionality, is expected to become the norm in the future of EU-Turkey relationship.
Publisher’s note: This article investigates the evolving relationship between the European Union (EU) and Turkey following the 2015 refugee crisis. It argues that post-crisis relations have become predominantly functional, measured by strategic EU-Turkey partnership based on interdependence as well as the EU’s relative retreat from political membership conditionality. This is particularly demonstrated by the March 2016 EU-Turkey ‘refugee deal’ whereby functional cooperation deepened amidst material and normative concessions that the EU granted Ankara. The article concludes that although functionalism is set to guide the relations beyond the question of Turkey’s EU accession, a future EU-Turkey external differentiated integration arrangement remains uncertain due to pending challenges.
Publisher’s note: This paper seeks to uncover what drives European Parliament (EP) discussions on a privileged partnership for Turkey. In line with Habermas’s Communicative Action Theory, it scrutinizes the justifications used by the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the Plenary Sessions between 2005–2012, i.e. from the start of accession negotiations until the privileged partnership’s falling into disuse in EP discussions. The research reveals that the alleged benefits of privileged partnership in contrast to the costs of Turkey’s full membership constitute the backbone of the right-wing groups’ arguments whereas the objection to a privileged partnership is justified by MEPs from left-wing groups for being against the EU’s official commitments to Turkey. In disputing Turkey’s full membership, the members of the right-wing parties reconstruct a European identity in which Turkey is the constitutive other.
Publisher’s note: With the retreat of liberalism in the Western world and the US withdrawing on many global issues, the international system is undergoing serious changes. Turkey, also caught within the throes of international disorder, has been facing a variety of pressing challenges. In response, Ankara has undertaken the dual task of providing its own security and mobilizing the international community to resolve the problems in the international system. In Turkey's new presidential system, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's political and diplomatic skills play a key role in the formulation and implementation of Turkish foreign policy.
Publisher’s note: This paper discusses Turkey's role in the Balkans as part of the broader narrative of European integration. 'Europeanization' in the early 2000s was a political platform that was instrumental in allowing Turkey to forge a peace between the country's established elite and moderate political Islam. In the context of Turkey's alienation from the project of European integration, the relationship between Europe and Turkey is becoming narrowly transactional and there is no longer a 'community building' dynamic. Instead, the region emerges as a canvas of competing influences and mutually exclusive choices between Ankara and Brussels that ultimately contribute to “Balkanization”.
Publisher’s note: The EU has a fundamental interest in having a constructive relationship with Turkey. However, the EU–Turkey relationship has become strained over recent years. This is why EU–Turkey relations need a new start, based on honesty about the long-term goal: EU membership is not an option for Turkey. Instead, the EU and Turkey should focus on concrete fields of cooperation. Humanitarian aid in the refugee crisis is a good example of a field in which a joint solution has been successful, as is the protection of the common external border. More joint action from the EU and Turkey is needed as regards the situation in Syria and Iraq. Turkey must overcome its democratic shortcomings. Further economic cooperation will depend on the application of the rule of law in Turkey.
Publisher’s note: This paper's main objective is to explain the concept of transactionalist foreign policy in detail and to demonstrate how it applies to a real-world case in Turkish foreign policy towards the EU under the AKP rule. We define transactionalism as a foreign policy approach that favours bilateral to multilateral relations, focuses on short-term wins rather than longer-term strategic foresight, adheres to a zero-sum worldview where all gains are relative and reciprocity is absent, rejects value-based policymaking, and does not follow a grand strategy. This paper also provides a new layer to the existing periodisation of AKP's EU policy through framing the EU as ‘a foreign policy actor’ in Turkey-EU relations. Scholars divide Turkey's EU policy under the AKP government into three broad periods: Europeanisation, selective Europeanisation and De-Europeanisation. We complement this literature by adding another layer of analysis that focuses on Turkey's foreign relations in its broader region, including the EU, and argue that Turkey's relations with the EU were characterised by the zero-problems doctrine during the selective Europeanisation period, and by civilisational competition with the EU during the de-Europeanisation period, and by transactionalism since 2016.
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