Bahar Rumelili

Civil Society and the Europeanization of Greek–Turkish Cooperation

Drawing on interviews with Greek and Turkish policymakers and civil society leaders, this article analyzes how the context provided by Turkeys EU membership candidacy has facilitated and strengthened Greek–Turkish cooperation. I argue that Turkeys EU membership candidacy has empowered the domestic actors in favour of promoting Greek–Turkish cooperation, and allowed them to use the EU to legitimize their cooperative policies and activities. Thereby, since the Helsinki decisions, Greek–Turkish cooperation has gained an EU dimension, which has made a reversal in bilateral relations much less likely.

Transforming Conflicts on EU Borders: the Case of Greek-Turkish Relations*

Drawing on the trajectory of Greek-Turkish conflicts, this article demonstrates how the EUs bordering practices affect the conflict resolution capacity of the EU on its external borders. Close institutional relations and positive identification with outsider states diffuse the logic of the security community. On the other hand, hard EU borders incapacitate the EU from having a positive influence.

Turkey: Identity, Foreign Policy, and Socialization in a Post‐Enlargement Europe

Abstract This article analyzes the implications of post‐enlargement European international society for Turkey in three areas: identity construction, foreign policy and political reform. First, through an analysis of post‐2007 European Parliament debates on EU–Turkey relations, it argues that the construction of European and Turkish identities vis‐à‐vis each other is likely to remain an important arena of contestation. Second, it provides a brief overview of Turkey’s new regional foreign policy activism, and argues the recent initiatives are in fact signs of adaptation to a post‐enlargement Europe, as they are building on a foreign policy role conception that stresses Turkey’s hybrid identity as both European and Asian, and Western and Islamic. Finally, it analyzes the diffusion of the norms of European international society to Turkey in the post‐2007 period, in particular focusing on the critical role played by domestic political actors. While Turkish political actors are showing signs of adaptation in terms of how they utilize the political opportunity structures in post‐enlargement Europe, the weakening of Turkey’s EU membership prospects is likely to slow down the diffusion of European norms to Turkey.

Multilayered Citizenship in Extended European Orders: Kurds Acting as European Citizens

Drawing on an original empirical study of the European‐level political practices of Turkish citizens/residents of Kurdish origin, this article advances the argument that political actors who lack the status of European citizenship can nonetheless engage in its ‘practice’. While practices of European citizenship by non‐citizen/non‐resident actors are enabled by the extended economic, legal, political and normative orders developed around the EU, they are simultaneously transforming the European polity by blurring the inside/outside and citizen/non‐citizen distinctions.

Enacting European Citizenship: Enacting European citizenship beyond the EU: Turkish citizens and their European political practices

By conceiving of Europe as a broad juridico-political space and order that extends beyond the European Union (EU), this chapter sets out to comparatively analyse the ways in which four citizen groups in Turkey, namely Kurds, non-Muslims, youth and women, enact European citizenship. Although these groups are neither citizens nor residents of EU member states, and hence not in possession of EU citizenship as a legal status, they routinely engage in acts of European citizenship as they demand the extension and full implementation of their citizenship rights in Turkey. Their acts of European citizenship include petitioning the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR); contacting EU officials and politicians; mobilising campaigns that target EU institutions and the European public writ large; invocation of European norms as shared principles; and the attribution of political and moral responsibility to European institutions. The fact that Turkish citizens can, and routinely do, engage in acts of European citizenship attests to Europe being an ultimately open and dynamic assemblage, constituted by both those who are deemed to be ‘in and of’ its historically specific incarnation and those who are left out and excluded. The chapter begins by providing a detailed account of a number of episodes where different groups in Turkey have engaged in multi-layered citizenship acts which embody a European citizenship dimension in addition to the national and, possibly, the sub-national. The following sections of the chapter build on these rich empirical accounts derived from in-depth interviews with activists and analysis of published accounts and news articles. Firstly, we outline the ways in which European-level political activism by Turkish citizens redefines and extends the scope of European citizenship beyond the formal institutions of the EU into associated institutions in the broader European order and into informal networks. Secondly, we analyse the meanings that Turkish citizens ascribe to their European-level political practices, and contend that they are embedded in a broader discourse on Europe as a shared identity and normative order.

Paradoxes of identity change: Integrating macro, meso, and micro research on identity in conflict processes

Identity change is a core element of political conflict and transformation. Most relevant are changes towards and away from dyadically opposed identities. Defining an ‘enemy’, narrowing, or broadening the inner and outer circles of belonging to include or exclude the Other, are integral to conflict processes at international, state, group, and individual levels. This Special Issue brings together scholars with varied sub-disciplinary interests to engage with a set of common paradoxes surrounding identity change, in order to generate more synthetic comparative understandings of these processes. It aims to synthesize insights from different approaches and to show how change from dyadically opposed identities takes place in different contexts.

Breaking with Europe’s pasts: memory, reconciliation, and ontological (In)security

ABSTRACT The European Union is widely credited for consolidating a democratic “security community” in Europe, and bringing about a definitive break with war-torn and authoritarian/totalitarian pasts in many European countries. Drawing on recent discussions in ontological security studies, this article points out that these radical breaks may have come at the expense of ontological insecurity at the societal and individual levels in Europe. While conventional teleological narratives often treat reconciliation and breaking with the past as automatic by-products of European integration, ontological security theory calls for greater attention to the societal tensions and anxieties triggered by these transformations and how they are being managed –more or less successfully – through reconciliation dynamics and memory politics in different societal settings. Illustrating the variation in a number of cases, this article claims that a systematic comparative analysis of the different dynamics of reconciliation and memory politics in different European societies is central to analyzing European integration from an ontological security perspective.

Taking the pressure: Unpacking the relation between norms, social hierarchies, and social pressures on states

This article advances a hierarchy-centered approach to the study of international social pressure on states. Prior scholarship has centered on the exposure of a gap between word and deed as key for social pressure. We argue that the scholarship on social pressure would benefit from paying more attention to the centrality of social hierarchies in the dynamics and effects of social pressure on states. It is through comparative assessments — the normative ordering of states as superior and inferior and placement in a social hierarchy — that social pressure is exerted and states are prodded into action. States positioned at the top or in the middle of normative hierarchies may be subjected to different social pressure than states positioned at the bottom. Developing this claim, we contend that normative hierarchies come in several forms. Reflecting on the dynamics of these normative hierarchies is important in and of itself, in our view, as it provides a deeper understanding of how norms generate shame, embarrassment, or status anxiety. That said, understanding normative hierarchies also gives us added purchase on explaining how states manage the social pressure of being ranked.

Ontological insecurity in asymmetric conflicts: Reflections on agonistic peace in Turkey’s Kurdish issue:

This article contributes to the recent literature on ontological security in conflict studies by empirically investigating, through a case study of Turkey’s Kurdish issue, how ontological asymmetry complicates peace processes. Over time, all conflicts become embroiled in a set of self-conceptions and narratives vis-à-vis the Other, the maintenance of which becomes critical for ontological security. In ethnic conflicts, however, these conceptions and narratives also intersect with a fundamental ontological asymmetry, because such conflicts often pit state parties with secure existence against ethnic groups with contested status and illegitimate standing. We argue that peace processes are easier to initiate but harder to conclude in ontologically asymmetric conflicts. Accordingly, we find that during the 2009–2015 peace process in Turkey, ontological (in)security-induced dynamics presented themselves in cyclical patterns of ambitious peace initiatives receiving greater support among the Kurdish public but giving way, at the first sign of crisis, to a rapid and dramatic return to violence, which neither side acted to stem. Moreover, we underscore that ontologically asymmetric conflicts, such as Turkey’s Kurdish issue, are often characterized by a societal security dilemma, where the conditions of ontological security for one party undermine those of the other. Therefore, building consensus around a new shared peace narrative may not be possible or desirable, and a lasting solution to Turkey’s Kurdish issue depends on the development of an agonistic peace around coexisting, multiple and contestatory narratives.

Brand Turkey: Liminal Identity and its Limits

ABSTRACT Since the 2000s, Turkish policymakers and private sector interests have combined representations of Turkey as both Western and Eastern with a branding approach to identity in foreign policy, trade and investment promotion, and cultural sector activities. This article analyses how the commodification of its liminal identity as a dual identity allowed Turkey to invoke different aspects of its identity in the West and the East in ways that catered to both audiences and enabled the pursuit of different political and economic objectives. However, the article also notes how this branding strategy was limited by the national identity debates and dominant geopolitical discourses that continued to situate the West and East as mutually exclusive and binary opposite identity markers. Overall, the case of Turkey underscores the complex relationship between branding, identity, and discourse, which has thus far received scant attention in the literature.