1st Edition
Turkey and the Balkans Between Europeanisation and De-Europeanization
This book delves into Turkey’s increasing ethno-religious, pragmatic, and complicated involvement and activism in the Balkans since 2002, under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP). It primarily focusses on the intersectionality between domestic and foreign policy that has played an important role in Turkey’s recent relations with the Balkan countries as well as exploring how the Europeanisation process influences this relationality.
Broadly, the chapters in this volume posit that religion, ethnicity and kin politics are indispensable components of identity politics and have the capacity to transform Turkey’s foreign policy attitudes as well as the orientations of the Balkan countries. The book also asserts that the impact of the processes of Europeanisation and de-Europeanisation on the relationship between Turkey and the Balkans needs to be included into the analysis.
This book will be useful to students, researchers and academics interested in Politics, International Relations and Southeast European Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.
Introduction: Turkey and the Balkans: bringing the Europeanisation/De-Europeanisation nexus into question
Başak Alpan and Ahmet Erdi Öztürk
1. A rival or an awkward partner? Turkey’s relationship with the West in the Balkan
Dimitar Bechev
2. Reconstruction of the ‘regional power’ role during the pandemic: Turkey’s COVID-19 diplomacy towards the Balkans
Birgül Demirtaş
3. Turkish foreign policy in the Balkans amidst ‘soft power’ and ‘de- Europeanisation’
Başak Alpan and Ahmet Erdi Öztürk
4. A delicate balancing act: Turkish- Bulgarian relations within the context of foreign and domestic politics
Emilia Zankina
5. Securitizing the Aegean: de- Europeanizing Greek-Turkish relations
Nikos Christofis
6. Foreign direct investment (FDI) as indicator of regime type: contemporary Serbian-Turkish relations
Sabina Pacariz
7. Measuring Turkey’s contemporary influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina: myth and reality
Adnan Huskić and Hamdi Firat Büyük
8. Relations between Turkey and Kosovo: factors and dynamics
Afrim Hoti, Bardhok Bashota and Bekim Sejdiu
9. Assessing a decade of Romania- Turkey strategic partnership in an era of ambivalence and ‘De-Europeanisation’
Aurel Lazăr and Miruna Butnaru-Troncotă
Biography
Başak Z. Alpan is Associate Professor and Lecturer in European Politics and Political Sociology at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration and Centre for European Studies at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. She is also the coordinator of the LEAP (‘Linking to Europe at the Periphery’) Network, funded by the Jean Monnet Networks Scheme under Erasmus Plus Programme, and the executive board member of the Centre for European Studies of the Middle East Technical University.
Ahmet Erdi Öztürk is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at London Metropolitan University, UK. He also works as Marie Sklodowska- Curie fellow at Coventry University in the UK and GIGA in Germany; an associate researcher at Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes; and Non- Residence Scholar at ELIAMEP’s Turkey Programme. He has authored and edited five books, around 30 journal articles, numerous policy reports, opinion pieces, and he is the co- editor of four special issues on Turkish politics.
