The International Spectator, Vol. 54, No. 4, December 2019

60 Years of Turkey-EC/EU Relations

From De-Europeanisation to Anti-Western Populism: Turkish Foreign Policy in Flux
Alper Kaliber and Esra Kaliber
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.
Keywords: Turkish foreign policy, populism, populist foreign policy, anti-Westernism
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The Impact of EU-based Populism on Turkey-EU Relations
Başak Alpan
The May 2019 EP elections once again highlighted the current cultural backlash throughout Europe against progressive values such as cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, which impacts on the ‘future of Europe’ debate, raising important questions for the evolution of Turkey-EU relations. Even though Turkey is no longer a hot topic in EU political parlance and public opinion, opposition to Turkish EU membership continues in the form of nativism, particularly with reference to the issues of immigration and Islam, as the cases of AfD in Germany and UKIP in Britain show.
Keywords: populism, ‘future of Europe’ debate, Turkey-EU relations, UKIP, AfD, EU enlargement
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Europeanisation and Administrative Relations in Turkey in the Post-Helsinki Era
Ali Onur Özçelik
After the Helsinki Summit of 1999, Turkey faced the impact of Europeanisation in the context of regional policy and structural funds. This impact challenged the long-established statist tradition of the Turkish administrative structure and led to the need for reforms in order to bring its regional policy in line with European Union (EU) standards. The polity effect of Europeanisation in Turkey in the post-Helsinki era has been a change in administrative relations between three different territorial tiers: supranational, national and subnational.
Keywords: Turkey, Europeanisation, multi-level governance, EU regional policy, administrative relations
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A Game Changer in EU-Turkey Relations: The Opportunities and Pitfalls of Migration Policy
Nefise Ela Gökalp Aras
The mass migration from Syria has been a major turning point and an important ‘game changer’ in EU-Turkey relations, as it marks a watershed in immigration and asylum between two periods: from 1999 to 2011 and from 2011 to the present. During the first period, the EU was one of the driving forces of change in Turkey’s immigration and asylum policy, along with significant migration movements from the Middle East. Although EU demands were largely implemented due to the country’s changing migration profile, there was also ongoing resistance and reluctance towards the EU, thus a certain degree of conditionality. With the Syrian mass migration in 2011, however, and in particular the so-called ‘European refugee crisis’ in 2015, Turkey started to use migration as a foreign policy tool with which to oppose EU conditionality.
Keywords: EU-Turkey relations, migration and asylum policy, externalisation, coercive engineered migration, Syrian mass migration
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De-Europeanisation and Equal Citizenship in Turkey: The Case of Circassians
Diğdem Soyaltın-Colella and Eylem Akdeniz Gӧker
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.
Keywords: De-Europeanisation, Turkey’s Circassians, equal citizenship, ethnocultural claims
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East Asia and the US in the Age of Trump

The US-Japan Alliance Dilemma in the Asia-Pacific: Changing Rationales and Scope
Elena Atanassova-Cornelis and Yoichiro Sato
The changes in the US-Japan alliance are taking place in times of a global power shift – a transition from unipolarity to multipolarity – and China’s challenge to the US’ security dominance in the Asia-Pacific. The alliance security dilemma now manifests itself in the rise of ‘entrapment’ concerns for Washington and ‘abandonment’ anxieties for Tokyo. The US increasingly insists on more mutuality in alliance arrangements, while seeking to maintain ambiguity in its defence commitments to Japan. The relative decline of US power and the fluid regional security architecture, however, incentivise Japan to step up preparations for abandonment. Although Tokyo’s hedging strategy contributes to enhancement of the bilateral alliance in the short term, it also paves the way for Japan’s pursuit of strategic autonomy in the medium to long term.
Keywords: United States, Japan, alliance, hedging, alignment
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Overcoming US-North Korean Enmity: Lessons from an Eclectic IR Approach
Linus Hagström and Magnus Lundström
Periods of mutual enmity in US-North Korean relations are typically interrupted by more conciliatory gestures. How can the many twists and turns in this relationship be explained and hopefully overcome so that more long-lasting détente is accomplished? Drawing eclectically on realism and constructivism, we conclude that a nuclear deal should address not only North Korea’s interests in security and regime survival, but also its status concerns. Applying the same theories to the other part of the dyad – the US – we conclude that it may now have material interests in ameliorating the relationship, but that such a development requires US foreign policy discourse to cease depicting North Korea as “irrational” and “evil”.
Keywords: constructivism, North Korea, nuclear issue, realism, ontological security, status
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Evolving Institutions in the Middle East

Playing the Diversity Card: Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy under the Salmans
Thomas Demmelhuber
Since the 2003 regime change in Iraq and the 2011 Arab uprisings, the political map of the Middle East has been in flux. Regional actors have taken advantage of emerging windows of opportunity, which have affected the outcome of this process. Saudi Arabia’s role as an aspiring regional hegemon in the region is salient: the country’s assertive course in shaping its neighbourhood coincides with a more independent foreign policy that goes beyond the traditional US alliance and seeks to diversify its international partners. This diversification of Saudi foreign policy since the ascension to the throne of King Salman in 2015 is explained by using the IR concept of hedging.
Keywords: Saudi Arabia, foreign policy, Arab uprisings, hedging, regime survival
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Sharing Power and Faking Governance? Lebanese State and Non-State Institutions during the War in Syria
Carmen Geha
The war in Syria has caused both external and internal pressures on the Lebanese political system and state institutions. Yet, the Lebanese power-sharing system rests on a set of institutional mechanisms, both state and non-state, which allow its politicians to continue to govern, even in this tumultuous situation, and to respond to crisis. Empirical evidence on how policies were negotiated concerning security, elections, and refugees between 2012 and 2018 shows an interaction between state and non-state institutions and highlights the role of such mechanisms in power-sharing institutions.
Keywords: Lebanon, Syria, power-sharing, governance, crisis
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Book Reviews

Reflections on the Arab Spring
Stephen R. Grand
Review of: Political and institutional transition in North Africa: Egypt and Tunisia in comparative perspective, by Silvia Colombo, Routledge, 2018
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The Future of Democracy in the Digital Age
Edoardo Quadri
Review of: The people vs tech : how the internet is killing democracy (and how we save it), by Jamie Bartlett, Ebury Press, 2018
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Historical Materialism and its Relevance in Contemporary Global Politics
Roberto Roccu
Review of: Global capitalism, global war, global crisis, by Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton, Cambridge University Press, 2018
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Kosovo and its Everyday Quest for Statehood
Dimitris Bouris
Review of: Acting like a state : Kosovo and the everyday making of statehood, by Gëzim Visoka, Routledge, 2018
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Recent Publications
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