Just How Special is Turkey in Europe?

Review by Erik Jones

SAIS Bologna Center, Johns Hopkins University

Turkey-European Union Relations: Dilemmas, Opportunities, and Constraints. Edited by MeltemMuftuler-Bac and Yannis A. Stivachtis. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. 352 pp.,$75.00 hardcover (ISBN-10: 0-7391-2447-1 ⁄ ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2447-5).

Turkey’s application for membership in the European Union (EU) disappearedfrom the headlines in 2007 and 2008, as conflict between secular and politicalauthorities distracted attention inside the country and the Irish referendum onthe Lisbon Treaty cast a chill over the Union as a whole. Popular debate overEU enlargement came to the fore again, however, with the August 2008 armedconflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia followed by the Russian invasion of Geor-gia. Worried about the implications of extending NATO guarantees further tothe East, policy analysts and pundits across Europe reasoned that the best way toshore up the states on Russia’s borders is to offer them the chance at EU mem-bership. Whether such an offer will actually materialize for Moldavia or Ukraineremains to be seen. Certainly they are hopeful that it will. Even Georgia dreamsof the prospect, and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has developed ahabit of issuing statements with the EU flag in the background.

Yet with all the furor about the EU’s role in the Caucasus, the major elementmissing in the debate has been any consideration of EU relations with Turkey asa critical actor in the region. This is surprising for three reasons: Turkey shares aborder with Georgia and offers a land route for the energy pipelines that prom-ise to connect Europe to the Caspian (and so reduce European dependenceupon Russian resources); Turkey is a member of NATO that controls access tothe Black Sea from the Mediterranean; and Turkey is the symbol for the growingsense of popular ambivalence (if not outright opposition) toward any furtherenlargement of EU membership. If the EU cannot agree to bring in Turkey withits obvious strategic significance in terms of force projection and energy inde-pendence, how credible are the EU’s suggestions of membership elsewhere? Theobvious answer is a side step: relations between the EU and Turkey are special.Just how special is what this conference volume is all about.

The collection has all of the strengths and many of the weaknesses of theusual assemblage of conference papers. The editors have done a good job intro-ducing the material with a narrative of EU-Turkish relations. The chapters them-selves – written mostly by Greek and Turkish authors but with a smattering ofother scholars who are familiar with the region – offer an interesting and attimes unexpected set of contrasts. And while the organization is not intuitive,there is no real expectation that the reader will go through the book from coverto cover. That makes the omission of a traditional index all the more unfortu-nate and the thematic cross-indexing in the five pages of ‘‘concluding remarks’’all too brief.

Still there is much to be learned from this volume. Consider, for example, thedifferent perspectives on Turkey’s strategic role. Muge Kinacioglu argues that‘‘security…remains one of the most potent connections between the EU and Tur-key’’ (p. 76) – not least because Turkey sits between the Balkans, the Caucasus,

� 2009 International Studies Association

International Studies Review (2009) 11, 182–183

and the Middle East. Given the prospect of membership, Turkey has sought toalign its foreign policy positions with the EU as a whole. This creates the possibil-ity that the EU could benefit from Turkey’s capabilities and experience both inthe development of its own security and defense identity and looking forward tofuture crisis response. Kinacioglu concludes that Turkish membership ‘‘will becrucial, if the EU is to emerge as an assertive and effective foreign policy actor’’(p. 88).

Constantinous Koliopolous disagrees. He contends that ‘‘Turkey will conferbut marginal strategic benefits, while also presenting…new strategic problems’’(p. 94). He also alleges that Turkey’s strategic significance is being hyped by theUnited States in order to ‘‘cripple the EU as a potential antagonist by making itbear the burden of Turkey’s full modernization and assimilation to the West’’(p. 93). Where Kinacioglu focuses on the Europeanization of Turkish foreignpolicy, Koliopolous emphasizes the titanic struggle between the military andpolitical Islam within Turkey itself. He also points out that ‘‘Turkey has its ownregional agendas that may well exacerbate EU difficulties’’ (p. 104) in the Cauca-sus and the Middle East. Then, of course, there is the question of Cyprus.

The Cyprus issue is a recurrent theme in the chapters of this volume, stressedmore often by authors whose names are more obviously Greek. Yet when Cyprusmoves to the center of attention, the bitterness usually associated with the issuedissipates. In a chapter obviously written before the dramatic events of 2008,Ioannis Grigoriadis sketches the evolution of Greek and Greek Cypriot attitudes.Where Greece itself had become more liberal in its outlook on Turkish EUmembership, Cyprus remained under the influence of its president TassosPapadopoulos and his strongly realist stance. This leads Grigoriadis to speculateabout how relations between Greece and Turkey are likely to evolve in thefuture; implicitly it also suggests how large could be the impact if Papadopouloswere replaced.

Divisions over Cyprus are evident in Turkey as well. Nejat Dogan and BeyhanAsma describe the evolution of official strategy toward Cyprus in Turkey. Whatthey find is that ‘‘there has not been a consensus among Turkish political partiessince 1980 on the Cyprus question’’ (p. 183). In turn, they contend, these divi-sions suggest opportunity as well as constraint. There is scope for compromiseon the issue within Turkey provided that certain fundamental concerns – like‘‘the ‘political equality’ of Turkish Cypriots’’ (p. 184) – are met. Here too theanalysis anticipates recent events.

The final set of chapters considers the extent to which the Turkish case invitesmeaningful comparison. What they reveal is the obvious; all cases are special, butall are comparable as well. What matters is the desire to make the comparison.This fact will not be lost on politicians in countries bordering on Russia whoseek to assess the credibility of European promises of eventual membership. Asthe Turkish case demonstrates, such promises have often been made in times ofexigency or convenience. They have also been bent or broken when the momenthas passed. No matter what the chatter among pundits and policy advisors, thegovernments of Ukraine, Moldova and (certainly) Georgia should not expect anydifferent.

183Erik Jones