Usages of Europe in Turkish Foreign Policy towards the Middle East

Abstract

Europeanization of foreign policy is often studied from the perspective of the impact of European Union (EU) membership on national foreign policies. What go largely unnoticed are the numerous usages of the EU in presenting, justifying and implementing foreign policy at home and abroad. This paper addresses this lacuna in the literature by exploring how Turkish foreign policy actors have construed and used the EU to justify and explain Turkey's foreign policy towards the Middle East in the domestic and the Middle Eastern context. We draw upon a sociological approach to Europeanization and argue that the usages of the EU in the construction of Turkish foreign policy towards the Middle East vary according to the context.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop co-organized by METU Centre for European Studies and Berlin Graduate School for Transnational Studies. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and all the participants of the workshop for their invaluable feedback, especially Thomas Diez, Başak Alpan and Saime Özçürümez.

Notes

^[1] For example, see: Frank Schimmelfennig et al., ‘Costs, commitment and compliance: the impact of EU democratic conditionality on Latvia, Slovakia and Turkey’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 41(3), 2003, pp. 495–518; Nathalie Tocci, ‘Europeanization in Turkey: trigger or anchor for reform?’, South European Society and Politics, 10(1), 2005, pp. 73–83; Luigi Narbone and Nathalie Tocci, ‘Running around in circles? The cyclical relationship between Turkey and the European Union’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 9(3), 2007, pp. 233–245; Füsun Türkmen, ‘The European Union and democratization in Turkey: the role of the elites’, Human Rights Quarterly, 30(1), 2008, pp. 373–406; Kıvanç Ulusoy, ‘The changing challenge of Europeanization to politics and governance in Turkey’, International Political Science Review, 30(4), 2009, pp. 363–384; Tolga Bölükbaşı, Ebru Ertugal and Saime Özçürümez, ‘The impact of the EU on Turkey: toward streamlining Europeanisation as a research programme’, European Political Science, 9(4), 2010, pp. 464–480.

^[2] For example, see: Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu and Seyfi Taşhan, The Europeanization of Turkey's Security Policy: Prospects and Pitfalls, Foreign Policy Institute, Ankara, 2004; Mustafa Aydın and Sinem Aydın Açıkmeşe, ‘Europeanization through EU conditionality: a new era in Turkish foreign policy’, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 9(3), 2007, pp. 263–274; Tarık Oğuzlu and Burak Bilgehan Özpek, ‘Turkey's Europeanization’, International Journal, 63(4), 2008, pp. 991–1009; Meltem Müftüler-Baç and Yaprak Gürsoy, ‘Is there a Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy? An addendum to the literature on EU candidates’, Turkish Studies, 11(3), 2010, pp. 405–427; Tarık Oğuzlu, ‘Turkey and Europeanization of foreign policy’, Political Science Quarterly, 125(4), 2010–11, pp. 657–683; Bahar Rumelili, ‘Turkey: identity, foreign policy, and socialization in post-enlargement Europe’, Journal of European Integration, 33(2), 2011, pp. 235–249.

^[3] We refer to realist theories as Realpolitik approaches to international relations. Realist theories point out national security as the overriding objective of political actors. Actors are assumed as interest-maximizers. Our understanding of Westernization as an analytical framework is based on the assumption that actors strive to be identified as Western, which serves as an all-encompassing explanation of political behaviour. From a different perspective, Kaliber in this issue argues that Europeanization and Westernization cannot be considered separately.

^[4] Kevin Featherstone, ‘Introduction: in the name of Europe’, in Kevin Featherstone and Claudio Radaelli (eds), The Politics of Europeanization, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, pp. 1–19. For the structuralist foundations of realpolitik and other rationalist approaches, see Colin Hay, Political Analysis, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002.

^[5] Darren McCauley, ‘Bottom-up Europeanization exposed’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 49(5), 2011, pp. 1019–1042; Cornelia Woll and Sophie Jacquot, ‘Using Europe: strategic action in multi-level politics’, Comparative European Politics, 8(1), 2010, pp. 110–126.

^[6] For an account of how the context interacts with conduct in shaping outcomes of political projects, see Hay, op. cit.; Alper Kaliber, ‘Turkey's Cyprus policy: a case for contextual Europeanisation’, in Çiğdem Nas and Yonca Özer (eds), Turkey and the EU: Processes of Europeanisation, Ashgate, London, 2012.

^[7] Claudia Major, ‘Europeanisation and foreign and security policy—undermining or rescuing the nation state’, Politics, 25(3), 2005, pp. 175–190; Karolina Pomorska, ‘The impact of enlargement: Europeanisation of Polish foreign policy? Tracking adaptation and change in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’, Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 2(1), 2007, pp. 25–51; Nicole Alecu de Flers and Patrick Müller, ‘Dimensions and mechanisms of the Europeanization of member state foreign policy: state of the art and new research avenues’, Journal of European Integration, 34(1), 2012, pp. 19–35.

^[8] Major, op. cit.; Pomorska, op. cit.

^[9] Reuben Wong, The Europeanisation of French Foreign Policy: France and the EU in East Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006; Pomorska, op. cit.; Major, op. cit.

^[10] Pomorska, op. cit.; Major, op. cit.

^[11] Pomorska, op. cit.; Wong, op. cit.

^[12] Wong, op. cit.

^[13] For an exception, see Alper Kaliber, ‘Turkey's Cyprus policy: a case of contextual Europeanization’, in Çiğdem Nas and Yonca Özer (eds), Turkey and the EU: Processes of Europeanisation, Ashgate, Burlington, VT, 2012, pp. 225–241.

^[14] Çiğdem Üstün, ‘Europeanization of foreign policy: the case of Turkish foreign policy towards the Black Sea region’, Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea, 10(2), 2010, p. 227.

^[15] Mesut Özcan, Harmonizing Foreign Policy: Turkey, the EU and the Middle East, Ashgate, Burlington, VT, 2008, p. 162.

^[16] Aydın and Açıkmeşe, op. cit.

^[17] Üstün, op. cit., p. 227.

^[18] Özlem Terzi, The Influence of the European Union on Turkish Foreign Policy, Ashgate, Burlington, VT, 2010, p. 21.

^[19] Studies that explain the discursive influence of the EU on Turkish foreign policy are, by and large, concerned with the Cyprus question and developments in Greek–Turkish relations. For example, see: Bahar Rumelili, ‘Liminality and perpetuation of conflicts: Turkish–Greek relations in the context of community-building by the EU’, European Journal of International Relations, 9(2), 2003, pp. 213–248; Pınar Bilgin, ‘Turkey's changing security discourses: the challenge of globalisation’, European Journal of Political Research, 44(1), 2005, pp. 175–201. For an analysis of usage in Turkish foreign policy towards Cyprus, see Kaliber, op. cit.

^[20] Woll and Jacquot, op. cit.

^[21] Ibid.

^[22] Theofanis Exadaktylos and Claudio Radaelli, ‘Research design in European studies: the case of Europeanization’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 47(3), 2009, p. 510; Woll and Jacquot, op. cit., pp. 113–115; Alex Warleigh-Lack and Malin Stegman Mccallion, ‘“Usages of Europe” and Europeanisation: evidence from the regionalisation of Sweden’, Journal of European Integration, 34(4), 2012, p. 382.

^[23] Woll and Jacquot, op. cit., p. 116.

^[24] Ibid., p. 112.

^[25] Ibid., p. 113.

^[26] Ibid., p. 116.

^[27] Ibid., p. 117.

^[28] Ibid., p. 116.

^[29] Ibid.

^[30] Warleigh-Lack and Mccallion, op. cit., p. 383.

^[31] A mental map can be defined as ‘a map of the environment within the mind of an individual which reflects the knowledge and prejudices of that individual’. Susan Mayhew, A Dictionary of Geography, 4th edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009.

^[32] Warleigh-Lack and Mccallion, op. cit., p. 384.

^[33] Sophie Jacquot and Cornelia Woll, ‘Usage of European integration—Europeanisation from a sociological perspective’, European Integration Online Papers, 7(12), 2003, < http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2003-012a.htm> (last accessed 6 March 2013); Colin Hay and Ben Rosamond, ‘Globalisation, European integration and the discursive construction of economic imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2), 2002, pp. 147–167.

^[34] Jacquot and Woll, op. cit., p. 6.

^[35] Ruth Wodak, ‘Critical discourse analysis’, in Ken Hyland and Brian Paltridge (eds), The Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis, Continuum, London, 2011, p. 49. See Alpan in this issue for a different account of discourse. While Alpan focuses on the discursive constitution of subjects, we look into how pre-constituted subjects construct discourses in pursuit of their projects.

^[36] Bülent Aras and Rabia Karakaya Polat, ‘Turkey and the Middle East: frontiers of the new geographic imagination’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 61(4), 2007, pp. 471–488; Tarık Oğuzlu, ‘Middle Easternization of Turkey's foreign policy: does Turkey dissociate from the West?’, Turkish Studies, 9(1), 2008, pp. 3–20; Meliha Benli Altunışık and Lenore G. Martin, ‘Making sense of Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East under AKP’, Turkish Studies, 12(4), 2011, pp. 569–587.

^[37] William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy 1774–2000, Frank Cass, London, 2002, pp. 170–171.

^[38] Mustafa Aydın, ‘Securitization of history and geography: understanding of security in Turkey’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 3(2), 2003, pp. 163–180.

^[39] Sevgi Drorian, ‘Turkey: security, state and society in troubled times’, European Security, 14(2), 2005, p. 259.

^[40] Ziya Öniş, ‘Turkey and the Middle East after September 11: the importance of the EU dimension’, Turkish Political Quarterly, 2, 2003, p. 3.

^[41] Philip Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy since the Cold War, Hurst, London, 2003, p. 97.

^[42] Ahmet Serdar Aktürk, ‘Arabs in Kemalist Turkish historiography’, Middle Eastern Studies, 46(5), 2010, p. 636.

^[43] Pınar Bilgin, ‘Securing Turkey through Western-oriented foreign policy’, New Perspectives on Turkey, 40, 2009, pp. 103–123; Nora Fischer Onar, ‘Echoes of a universalism lost: rival representations of the Ottomans in today's Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies, 45(2), 2009, pp. 229–241.

^[44] Dietrich Jung, ‘Turkey and the Arab world: historical narratives and new political realities’, Mediterranean Politics, 10(1), 2005, p. 6.

^[45] Ibid., pp. 4–5.

^[46] Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye'nin Uluslararası Konumu [Strategic Depth: Turkey's International Position], Küre Yayınları, İstanbul, 2001.

^[47] ‘An eminence grise’, The Economist, 15 November 2007.

^[48] Ahmet Davutoğlu, ‘Turkey's foreign policy vision: an assessment of 2007’, Insight Turkey, 2008, pp. 84–85; Ahmet Davutoğlu, ‘Turkey's zero problem foreign policy’, Foreign Policy, May 2010.

^[49] Examples include Turkey's organization of the meeting of ‘Summit of Iraq's Neighbours’ with the participation of Egypt, Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in January 2003; its facilitating role in peace talks between Israel and Syria in 2008; the facilitation of a meeting among Iraqi, Syrian and Arab League representatives to mediate the dispute between Iran and Syria; the efforts towards getting Professor Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, a Turkish citizen, elected as the secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) in 2004. Turkish policymakers also actively used the OIC forum to convey their observation that the Islamic world needs to put its house in order through democratization, observation of human rights and increased participation in politics. Also see: Bülent Aras, ‘Turkey's rise in the greater Middle East: peace-building in the periphery’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 11(1), 2009, pp. 29–41.

^[50] Crisis Group interview, Turkish diplomat in the Middle East, February 2010. Quoted by the International Crisis Group, Turkey and the Middle East: Ambitions and Constraints, Europe Report No. 203, 7 April 2010, p. 14.

^[51] Davutoğlu, ‘Turkey's foreign policy vision’, op. cit., p. 81.

^[52] Ahmet Davutoğlu, speech delivered at the meeting of the Committee on Plan and Budget, 11 November 2010.

^[53] Ahmet Davutoğlu, speech delivered at the plenary session in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, volume 56, session 35, 18 December 2009, p. 116.

^[54] Ahmet Davutoğlu, opening speech delivered at the Second Ambassadors' Annual Conference in Mardin, 9 January 2010.

^[55] Cüneyt Yüksel, an AKP deputy, speech delivered at the plenary session in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, volume 56, session 35, 18 December 2009, p. 730.

^[56] Yaşar Yakış, speech delivered at the plenary session in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, volume 5, session 35, 20 February 2003, p. 223.

^[57] Abdullah Gül, speech delivered at the plenary session in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, volume 36, session 34, 22 December 2003, p. 42.

^[58] Abdullah Gül, speech delivered at the plenary session in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, volume 127, session 124, 5 September 2006, p. 126.

^[59] Egemen Bağış, speech delivered at the plenary session in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, volume 127, session 124, 5 September 2006, p. 107.

^[60] Ahmet Işık, speech delivered at the plenary session in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, volume 127, session 124, 5 September 2006, p. 115.

^[61] Yousef Al Sharif and Samir Salha, Reflections of EU–Turkey Relations in the Muslim World, 1st print, Open Society Foundation, Istanbul, July 2009 cited in Meliha Benli Altunışık, Turkey: Arab Perspectives, TESEV Yayınları, Istanbul, 2010, p. 18.

^[62] Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speech delivered at the Arab Economic Forum, Dubai, 16 June 2005. Also speech by Erdoğan at the Turkish–United Arab Emirates Meeting, 28 September 2005.

^[63] Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speech delivered at the Turkish–Oman Businessmen Joint Meeting, 27 September 2005.

^[64] Abdullah Gül, speech delivered at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 12 February 2006.

^[65] Abdullah Gül, speech delivered at a dinner organized for the OIC ambassadors, Ankara, 25 October 2005; Abdullah Gül, speech delivered at the OIC Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Yemen, 28 June 2005; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speech delivered at the Jeddah Economic Forum, Jeddah, 21 March 2011.

^[66] Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speech delivered at the Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States, Istanbul, 12 April 2006.

^[67] Abdullah Gül, speech delivered at the Conference of Neighbours of Iraq, Kuwait, 14 February 2004.

^[68] Turkey–Iran Business Council, Istanbul, Sabah Daily, 16 September 2010.

^[69] Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speech delivered at the Arab Banking Union Conference, Lebanon, 26 November 2010; also see interview by İbrahim Kalın given to an Arabic news magazine, Majalla, 26 November 2009.

^[70] Beken Saatçioğlu, ‘Revisiting the role of credible EU membership conditionality for EU compliance: the Turkish case’, Uluslararası İlişkiler, 8(31), 2012, pp. 23–44.

^[71] Cf. Hay and Rosamond, op. cit.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Defne Günay

Defne Günay holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Sheffield. She is currently a part-time lecturer at Atılım University. Her recent publications are on critical realism and Europeanization studies, Europeanization of Turkey and state capacity (corresponding author).

Kaan Renda

Kaan Renda is a Lecturer at Hacettepe University. His research interests are Turkish foreign policy, European security and defence policy and the change in Turkish strategic culture.