Conference Title: New Frontiers in European Studies: UACES Student Forum 12th Annual Conference
Venue: University of Surrey, Guildford
Date: 30 June 2011
Chair: Anne Bostanci (University of Surrey)
Participants
Ali Onur OZCELIK (Sheffield University)
Kaan RENDA (King’s College)
Learning New Roles and Changing Beliefs: Turkish Strategic Culture in Transition
Didem Buhari-Gulmez (Royal Holloway University of London)
Europeanization of Foreign Policy and World Culture: Turkey’s Cyprus policy
Seckin Baris GULMEZ (Royal Holloway University of London)
Explaining the “change” in the attitudes of Turkish political actors towards EU membership
Panel Abstract
This panel, consisting of four panellists and one discussant, seeks to explore the changing attitudes of Turkish political actors’ behaviour in relevant policy sectors during the Turkey’s slow but continuous accession process. The main focus is on the domestic impact of the EU as it is a relatively new yet a popular research agenda. The first wave of EU integration theories mainly looked at how the EU level policies were formulated, thereby generating insights as to how new actors emerged at the supranational level. Even if they offered insights on how these developments might impact the domestic politics in member states, these were limited and later elaborated by the so-called ‘Europeanisation’ literature. The concept of Europeanisation is a short hand for many things but it also refers to changing norms, priorities, resources, loyalties and contexts of domestic actors. This panel looks into how the EU process provided Turkish political actors context, resources and goals to transnationalise their activities. To this end, Ali Onur Ozcelik analyses the extent to which the EU accession process has influenced Turkish sub-national actors(e.g. regional development agencies and municipalities) and mobilized those actors across the European arena by utilising a multilevel governance approach. In his paper, Kaan Renda discusses the changing features of strategic culture in Turkey and looks at how the Turkish foreign policy elite adopted certain foreign policy roles as a result of the EU process from a constructivist perspective. Seckin Baris Gulmez brings three dimensional explanations in order for a better analysis of how the EU gave Turkish political parties a context to react upon thereby producing eurosceptic attitudes. Didem Buhari’s study aims to demonstrate how individual perceptions of Turkey’s national interests in Cyprus issue reflect the incongruence between the European-level stimuli and world cultural standards on conflict resolution. All in all, the panel with its all participants provides a broad spectrum of approaches to the EU-induced transnationalisation of Turkish political actors in relevant policy sectors, emphasising change and underlining positive and negative outcomes of the change rather than a top-down and unidirectional account of Turkey’s Europeanisation.
