European Student Think Tank

With civil war in Syria, tur­moil in Gaza, Arab Spring after­shocks, and the con­flict over Iran’s nuc­lear pro­gram, it’s easy for out­siders to over­look one of the region’s most intract­able eth­nic con­flicts – Turkey’s internal battles with Kur­d­ish sep­ar­at­ists. The Kur­d­ish issue though deserves atten­tion as it remains a major inner secur­ity threat for the most polit­ic­ally mod­ern and eco­nom­ic­ally dynamic coun­try of the region.

No other coun­try aspired mem­ber­ship to the European Union for such a long time as Tur­key. It’s been twenty-five years since EU-Turkey nego­ti­ations began. Dur­ing this time, the EU was able to exert much pos­it­ive influ­ence on the coun­try. The social, eco­nomic and polit­ical sys­tem of Tur­key has fun­da­ment­ally evolved and now resembles the European model more closely than ever. Also the EU would, eco­nom­ic­ally and polit­ic­ally, bene­fit enorm­ously from Turkey’s acces­sion. How­ever, many issues remain. The New Federalist’s Florian Grün­wald and Sarah Dejae­gher take a look at EU-Turkey relations.

Rethink­ing the EU’s future: Two play­ers of a game, Tur­key and the EU It is very likely to hear a joke from Inter­na­tional Rela­tions stu­dents in Tur­key: “Even Venezuela will become a mem­ber of the EU before Tur­key does”. It has been a long time since the Turk­ish author­it­ies have expressed their desire to join the [...]

Ten­sions in the Eastern–Mediterranean area are escal­at­ing: A short time ago, Cyprus begun to con­duct drilling for oil and gas in its exclus­ive eco­nomic area, facing the con­tra­dic­tion of Tur­key. Tur­key claims a share in the “con­tro­ver­sial” Block 12.

Inter­net usage is an undeni­able part of the mod­ern world. If a soci­ety wants to take a place in this mod­ern world, it’s inev­it­able to make big invest­ments in that area. But what kind of invest­ment is this? On the one hand, there are coun­tries which make pos­it­ive invest­ments to increase free­dom of inter­net usage and to make it more qual­i­fied. The E-G8 Forum is a good example. On the other hand, there are some coun­tries which try to restrict the usage of inter­net, such as Turkey.

“Tur­key is not in Europe”. If you have ever found your­self in a dis­cus­sion on the future of the EU enlarge­ment and the Turk­ish case, I bet you have heard this over and over again. I did hear this a lot from the Turko-skeptics and every time I ask them the simplest yet most com­plic­ated ques­tion: which Europe are we talk­ing about?

Iran and Tur­key are get­ting closer than ever and enjoy­ing a unique growth in trade and energy cooper­a­tion. Nation­als of the two coun­tries are enjoy­ing visa free travel and there are plans to use Turkish/Iranian cur­ren­cies for trade instead of US dol­lars. Does this mean an ideo­lo­gical con­ver­gence of the two? Are they becom­ing the same des­pite their sharp reli­gious (Sunni vs. Shi’a) and polit­ical (sec­u­lar vs. Islamic) differences?

Are Turks and “Europeans” vir­tu­ally dis­con­nec­ted from each other polit­ic­ally, eco­nom­ic­ally and socially? Claim­ing a dis­con­nec­tion is a pop­u­lar phe­nom­ena shared by many of the crit­ics of Turk­ish mem­ber­ship to the EU. It is fas­cin­at­ing that the myth of dis­con­nec­tion is still around even though there is no his­tor­ical or con­tem­por­ary evid­ence to sup­port it.

A coun­try with a 70+ mil­lion mostly Muslim pop­u­la­tion is at the door­steps of the EU: the Turks! What do we know about them and how much of what we know actu­ally reflects real­ity? It is not time to talk about who they are but about who they are not. Let’s ana­lyze some of the European myths about “the other” start­ing with the “Tro­jan Horse” analogy.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2011 the French Pres­id­ent vis­ited Tur­key and he stayed in Ank­ara for 300 minutes. Even though the offi­cial pur­pose of the visit was a work meet­ing to dis­cuss regional and inter­na­tional issues as G-20 mem­bers, the Turk­ish bid for EU acces­sion dom­in­ated the atmo­sphere. What does this “300-minutes” mean for Tur­key, France and the EU? The short time of the visit was long enough to cre­ate many implic­a­tions for all the sides around the table.