EU-Turkey Relations: A New Direction for EU Foreign Policy?

• Author: Aslan, Beyza Ceren

By Elena Baracani

Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021, 198 pages, $115, ISBN: 9781788113670

Following the establishment of the European Economic Community in 1958, Turkiye's application in 1959 for partnership with the community paved the way for the European Union (EU) and Turkiye to embark on their relations. Turkiye-EU bilateral relations became official with the Ankara Agreement signed in 1963, which has been the beginning of a process that has survived to today. Different approaches were adopted between the EU and Turkiye during this process, lasting for approximately 60 years. Even though EU-Turkiye diplomatic relations improved during some periods, at certain times they came to the brick of a standstill. Elena Baracani's EU-Turkey Relations: A New Direction for EU Foreign Policy? provides an insight into the foreign policy of the EU between the years 2014-2019 concerning Turkiye, along with touching on bilateral relations in the light of global politics. Baracani investigates EU foreign policy in the axis of enlargement, the EU's basic values, migration, and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

The book consists of six chapters. In the first chapter, Baracani provides an outline of the book, along with underlining the fact that she would deal with the political attitudes of the institutional actors and the current structure of the EU toward Turkiye in the period of 2014-2019. Baracani also sheds light on the role of EU institutions in foreign policy and the significance of EU institutions in the decision-making and implementation processes in bilateral relations with Turkiye.

Chapter 2 mostly emphasizes and examines EU-Turkiye relations under two separate subtitles. In the first one, Baracani expresses the sub-texts of the change in the institutional structure of the EU and discusses the issues that the EU had to cope with within the process. Discussing the priorities of the EU, Baracani points out the primary concerns that the EU had to cope with, the main issues consisting of the immigration problem and terrorism, which Europe had to face due to the natural consequence of the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, Brexit as an ultimate triumph of Eurosceptic thinking that has become the dominant element in the European Parliament, the antidemocratic developments in Poland, the economic crises experienced by the EU member states, the tension between Ukraine and Russia, the strained EU-Russia relations with the annexation of the...