Work Package 1 - Conceptual and Analytical Toolkit

WP 1 provides an analytical toolkit for the project encompassing two steps: (1) a historical analysis in light of narratives which shaped the debate and political action both in Turkey and in the EU (2) a conceptualisation of three ideal-type scenarios for EU-Turkey relations: conflict, cooperation and convergence. The purpose of the scenario-building was to stylise what conditions need to be met in the EU and in Turkey, and what the facilitating or constraining conditional factors is at the neighbourhood and global levels, for the realisation of these scenarios.

Narratives in Turkey and the EU 

This Work Package provides a critical assessment of the past. It identified narratives which have shaped the debate and political action from a Turkish and an EU perspective. As first step, this entailed mapping milestones and periods of the last decades, starting after WWII, taking into consideration the effects of shifts at the regional and global levels, such as the end of the Cold War.

Building on this, the ensuing narrative analysis of key documents reflecting the debate addressed the following questions: (1) Do the narratives change over time and how? (2) Do EU and Turkish actors’narratives correlate or contrast and how? (3) Do narratives on EU-Turkey relations correlate or contrast in different thematic dimensions and how? (4) What instances of conflict, cooperation or convergence do the narratives depict?

To reflect the variance of the debates within the EU, reports from all 28 Member States complemented the narrative analysis as well as back-up the project’s overall research in view of the three scenarios.

Three scenarios for EU-Turkey Relations 

The  WP drafted  three  ideal  type  scenarios  for  EU-Turkey  relations  within  the  mid-term  perspective  of  2023.  The scenarios are specified in terms of the six thematic dimensions (politics, economics, energy, migration, security, identity) as well as four levels of analysis (the EU, Turkey, the neighbourhood and the global level). 

Papers:

Mapping milestones and periods of past EU-Turkey relations by Nurdan Selay Bedir, Atila Eralp, Hanna-Lisa Hauge, Wolfgang Wessels (September 2016)

Turkey and the European Union: Scenarios for 2023 by Nathalie Tocci (September 2016)

EU 28 country reports (see all reports from Member States here)

Partners involved:

University of Cologne (WP leader)

Istituto Affari Internazionali

Istanbul Bilgi University

Barcelona Centre for International Affairs

Centre international de formation européenne

Caucasus Research Resource Center Georgia

Danish Institute for International Studies

Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies

Middle East Technical University

Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy

Koç University

Middle East Research Institute

Trans European Policy Studies Association