From Convergence to Divergence: The Compatibility of Turkish and EU Foreign Policy

Abstract

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.

Turkish foreign policy in the Balkans amidst ‘soft power’ and ‘de-Europeanisation’

“…The conceptual framework of de-Europeanisation with regard to Turkey had been studied thoroughly in many various fields such as domestic politics (Alpan, 2016;Aydın-Düzgit 2016;Cebeci 2016;Ökten-Sipahioğlu 2017), civil society (Kaliber 2016;Boşnak 2016), gender equality policy (Soyaltın-Collela and Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm 2020), rule of law (Saatçioğlu 2016), media freedom (Yılmaz 2016), education policy (Onursal-Beşgül 2016), citizenship policy (Soyaltın-Collela and Göker 2019) and migration policy (MacMillan 2018; Kaya 2021). Although studies on de-Europeanisation of the TFP are rare (see Rodoplu 2019; Ovalı 2015 for good examples) other concepts such as 'divergence' (Torun 2021) or 'anti-Western populism' (Kaliber and Kaliber 2019) had also been used to denote the depreciation of the EU as a foreign policy anchor in this period. This turning away from the EU anchor had been intertwined with Turkey's descent into authoritarianism.…”