European Borderline and Turkish Schizophrenia - An analysis of Turkey's orientation to the European Security Strategy and human security and its impact on the EU-Turkey relationship

Abstract

The slowing down of Turkey’s accession negotiations with the EU has led to an increased emphasis of the foreign and security policy relationship. This thesis argues that this development, while merging with the EU enlargement policy, will have increased importance in the future. This creates the problem of how to measure Turkish compliance within this area, and the thesis advances the European Security Strategy (ESS) and the theory of human security (HS) as reasonable starting points. Besides elaborating on the possible problems appearing from this emerging merger, three explanatory continua – one treating socio-cultural securitised/normative self-images at an aggregated level, the second traditional political cleavages and the third the notion of geography in the foreign and security policy formulation – are devised for the analysis of Turkey’s orientation to these European views. This methodological skeleton aims moreover to circumvent the methodological nationalism easily trapping country-based studies. In parallel to a discerned duality in the Turkish actorship, suggested to provide a strategic quid pro quo between Turkish foreign and domestic policy, there are clear orientation to the European principles of the HS and the ESS. However, this does not in itself play to Turkey’s advantage in the EU accession negotiations, the thesis concludes.