Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü Koleksiyonu
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11779/1939
Browse
19 results
Search Results
Conference Object A Comparative Analysis of Ruling Right-wing Populism towards Globalization in the Context of Refugee Crises: The Cases of Turkey and Hungary(2023) Saatçioğlu, BekenHow do governing, right-wing populist parties in and outside the EU approach globalization on the issue of international migration? This paper addresses this question by focusing on Hungary’s Fidesz and Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the context of the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. It studies the discourses of these parties and their leaders regarding the liberal international order and the EU, and evaluates whether EU membership makes a difference in these arguments. This fills a gap in the literature because how ruling right-wing populism in middle-power states like Hungary and Turkey challenges the global system, and what kind of globalization or de-globalization it asks for in the light of migration issues remains to be scrutinized. The paper argues: (1) Fidesz and AKP are both “selective globalizers” that still challenge globalization and the EU within a populist foreign policy framework pitting “liberal, corrupt, global, EU elites” against the people (Christians for Fidesz, Syrian Muslim refugees for the AKP), (2) They differ because: (a) Fidesz’ challenges heavily focus on the EU while the AKP’s discourse extends to the global system and its institutions (the UN), (b) Fidesz’ EU contestation revolves around the need to protect “Hungarian sovereignty” and “Christian European culture” from “Brussels elites” while AKP’s rhetoric primarily reflects expectations of satisfactory “transactionalism” from the EU.Conference Object Contesting the EU’s Legitimacy over the Refugee and Rule of Law Crises: Insights from Turkey and Hungary(2022) Buhari-Gulmez, Didem; Soyaltin-Coella, Digdem; Saatçioğlu, BekenThis paper studies how the representatives of illiberal governing parties in two illiberal regimes (Hungary and Turkey) challenge the EU from within (Hungary) and without (Turkey). Is there a variation in their contestations against EU legitimacy? Which issues do they converge or diverge about? What do their similarities and differences imply for the EU’s policies, external relations as well as European integration? To address these questions, the paper uses a bottom-up approach and brings into the analysis the perspectives of Hungarian and Turkish governing political actors in the context of two relevant EU crises which have arisen in recent years: the rule of law crisis and the refugee crisis.Book Part EU-Turkey Relations: Towards a Transactional Future amid Conflictual Cooperation(Nomos, 2021) Saatçioğlu, BekenThis chapter first summarises and synthesises the findings of the chapters in order to advance an overall scenario for the future of EU-Turkey relations, which is “conflictual cooperation”. It then elaborates on the scenario based on the drivers emanating from the chapters and the recent critical developments weighing on the relations. It concludes by reflecting on the future of the relations in light of their current transactional nature which has been growing since the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis.Book Turkey and the European Union: Key Dynamics and Future Scenarios(Nomos, 2021) Saatçioğlu, Beken; Tekin, FundaThis volume studies the enduring complexity of EU–Turkey relations in all their thematic dimensions and with a view to offering future scenarios. It accomplishes three important aims. First, following a narratives analysis, the chapters analysing identity, politics, the economy, security, migration and energy identify the key dynamics that impact the relationship in these areas. Second, they evaluate how these drivers influence the three ideal-type future scenarios of convergence, cooperation and conflict, subsequently offering a relationship scenario for each thematic area. Third, the volume synthesises the chapters’ individual findings and argues that conflictual cooperation is the most likely scenario in future EU–Turkey relations. With contributions by İbrahim Semih Akçomak, Senem Aydın-Düzgit, Lorenzo Colantoni, Angeliki Dimitriadi, Atila Eralp, Erkan Erdil, Doruk Ergun, Hanna Lisa Hauge, Ayhan Kaya, Ebru Ece Özbey, Bahar Rumelili, Beken Saatçioğlu, Eduard Soler i Lecha, Melike Sökmen, Funda Tekin, Sinan Ülgen and Wolfgang Wessels.Conference Object Comparing Right-Wing Populist Parties’ Stance towards the Global Management of International Migration: Insights from Turkey and Hungary(2024) Saatçioğlu, BekenHow do ruling, right-wing populist parties approach the global management of international migration? This paper addresses this question by analyzing Hungary’s Fidesz and Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the context of the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. It studies these parties’ discourses regarding the liberal international order (LIO) and the EU, and particularly, the latter’s proposed handling of the crisis. This fills a gap in the literature because ruling right-wing populist parties in middle-power states like Hungary and Turkey are seldom compared and the presence or absence of EU membership may make a difference in their arguments. The paper argues: (1) Fidesz and AKP selectively challenge the LIO and the EU within a populist foreign policy framework pitting “liberal, corrupt, global, EU elites” against the people (Christians for Fidesz, Syrian Muslim refugees for the AKP), (2) They differ because: (a) Fidesz’ challenges heavily focus on the EU while the AKP’s discourse extends to the global system and the UN, (b) Fidesz’ EU contestation revolves around the need to protect “Hungarian sovereignty” and “Christian European culture” from “Brussels elites” while AKP’s rhetoric primarily reflects expectations of satisfactory “transactionalism” from the EU.Conference Object Empowering Autocrats: The EU’s Migration Partnerships with Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt(2025) Saatçioğlu, Beken; Gümüşçü, ŞebnemThis paper studies the EU’s partnerships with Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt to control illegal migration to Europe. The 2016 EU-Turkey refugee deal, the 2023 EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding, and the 2024 EU-Egypt Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership exhibit the EU’s policy of externalization of migration to countries of origin and transit in the EU’s neighborhood. The analysis assesses the repercussions of this externalization on the EU’s liberal democratic actorness on the world stage and the deepening autocratization in the Middle East and Turkey. Two preliminary findings are presented. First, the EU prefers transactionalism in the conduct of its foreign policy with the three countries. This is evident in the unconditional nature of these migration agreements and the sidestepping of the European Parliament as a critical actor in the process. Second, this transactionalism supports ongoing autocratization in all three countries by lifting external accountability and providing much-needed resources for these regimes: These autocratic regimes not only find greater leeway to contest the EU’s liberal democratic values (practically and discursively) but also resort to strategies of “refugee rentierism” in disregard for international refugee law. As such, the EU has enabled democratic breakdown in Turkey and Tunisia and autocratic deepening in Egypt.Article Turkey and the EU: Partners or Competitors in the Western Balkans?(2019) Saatçioğlu, BekenThe article analyzes EU-Turkey relations in the Western Balkans (WB) in an attempt to uncover the cooperation and conflict potential between the two in the region. Specifically, it assesses the extent to which Turkey can be considered a partner of the EU versus representing acompetitor or even an alternative to Brussels for the WB countries. It argues that positing Turkey as a proactive, alternative regional power seeking to expand its presence and influence in the region at the EU’s expense are overstated.Despite the EU’s damaged credibility in the pursuit of its enlargement policy, Turkey’s capabilities, incentives and foreign policy priorities simply fall short of producing a competitive “Turkish model/alternative” in the region. First, there are practical limits to Turkey’s regional power status, which is far from representing a realistic substitute for the WB countries’ Euro-Atlantic ties. In addition, despite the difficulties ahead, these countries still aspire for integration into European structures, which is also aligned with Turkey’s foreign policy interests. Second, limitations aside, gaining hegemony in the WB is not Ankara’s foreign policy priority given the urgency of multiple policy issues waiting to be tackled on all fronts. Third, from a Realpolitik standpoint, Turkey and the EU are expected to constructively engage to find solutions for common challenges such as migration, which concerns the WB as well.Book Part Rising Illiberalism in the European Periphery and the Eu's Application of Membership Conditionality for Democratic Governance(Springer International Publishing, 2022) Saatçioğlu, BekenIlliberalism has recently risen both within the EU and in the European periphery following a global trend of democratic recession, which includes notable cases such as Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among others. This has revived interest in the EU's role and capacity for promoting liberal democratic governance, as the principal international institution with claims to liberal democratic rule transfer. This chapter investigates how consistently the EU has used its principal policy instrument to tackle illiberalism, namely, membership conditionality. It focuses on EU-Turkey relations within the context of the 2015/2016 Syrian refugee crisis as a test case for the EU's ability and willingness to execute conditionality in times of crisis. Two arguments are made. First, as the EU externalised the crisis to Turkey, consistency of conditionality was compromised by European geostrategic interests that trumped the pursuit of democratic values vis-a-vis Turkey. Second, the strategic EU-Turkey partnership that ensued served to deepen Turkey's move away from the EU's democratic norms that lie at the heart of political conditionality. Consequently, unintended illiberal outcomes were fostered by the EU's transactional policy vis-a-vis Turkey. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.Article Citation - Scopus: 16The Eu’s Response To the Syrian Refugee Crisis: a Battleground Among Many Europes(Routledge, 2020) Saatçioğlu, BekenThis article examines the European Union (EU)’s response to the 2015–2016 refugee crisis. Departing from the understanding that Europe is a contested phenomenon, it investigates how different – Thick, Thin, Parochial and Global – Europes influenced the EU’s management of the crisis culminating in the March 2016 EU-Turkey ‘refugee deal’. Two findings are advanced. First, European actors reacted differently to the EU’s initially attempted Thick Europe approach to the crisis, following their respective Europe conceptions. Second, faced with growing divisions, they ultimately united around a lowest common denominator solution represented by the refugee deal which illustrated Thin Europe at the expense of a more norm-based policy associated with Thick and Global Europes. The findings demonstrate the significance of embedding the various European reactions to the crisis within different Europe categories while showing that consensus was still possible to tackle an external problem.Book The Future of Eu-Turkey Relations: a Dynamic Association Framework Amidst Conflictual Cooperation(Istituto Affari Internazionali, 2019) Saatçioğlu, Beken; Tekin, Funda; Ekim, Sinan; Tocci, NathalieThe FEUTURE final synthesis paper accomplishes two principal aims. First, it synthesizes FEUTURE’s research findings that study EU-Turkey relations in the six thematic areas of politics, identity, economy, security, energy and migration, focusing on how their respective drivers generate different degrees of conflict and cooperation in the relationship. Based on this synthesis, it argues that the scenario of “conflictual cooperation” – where cooperation is likely to endure despite the prevalence of conflictual dynamics mostly emanating from politics – is set to define EU-Turkey relations in the foreseeable future. Second, it develops an institutional design for the future relationship which, given the fact that Turkey’s EU accession process has now become dormant, accepts conflict as an endemic feature of the relations but tries to mitigate it by deepening cooperation. Upon assessing differentiated integration models the EU follows with member- and non-member countries, the paper concludes that, as a result of geopolitical proximity as well as deepened, multifarious interactions over several centuries, the EU– Turkey relationship has become too complex and dynamic to be captured by any single such model. It thus suggests a new institutional framework, termed a “dynamic association”, that would be complementary to Turkey’s albeit stalled accession process. While being centered around a rules-based component represented by an upgraded EU-Turkey Customs Union agreement as a starting point, the association also includes more transactional dimensions of cooperation such as migration, security and energy. The paper concludes that conceptualized as such, the dynamic association promises to foster not only cooperative but also convergent trends between the EU and Turkey into and beyond the 2023 timeframe.