On the 7th May 2025, the European Parliament adapted a report suspending Turkey’s European Union (EU) accession talks referring to Turkey’s non-alignment to the EU’s common foreign and security policy and democratic backsliding, following a crackdown of mass protests after the arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a potential challenger in the forthcoming presidential elections. The Report conceives of Turkey as a strategic ally and proposes to deepen cooperation on issues of mutual interest. This is not new. In the EU’s official reports and strategic position papers published in the last decade, the EU has conceived of Turkey as a strategic partner to deepen cooperation on particular issues such as migration management, approaching the relations in a ‘transactional’ manner rather than membership per se.
In my recently published book, Political Economy of Turkey’s Integration with Europe, Uneven Development and Hegemony, by Manchester University Press in the Progress in Political Economy (PPE) Series, I highlight that discussions around end-state of negotiations, the form of integration, is a non-debate. Instead, I propose to approach the topic through problematising power relations and the socio-economic content behind the ongoing integration of Turkey to European structures.
The book presents a critical political economy reading to Turkey’s membership question through a historical materialist lense with reference to two key categories, hegemony and uneven and combined development. It aspires to fill, particularly, four gaps in the literature: discussing Turkey’s membership within structural dynamics of globalisation; problematising socio-economic content of ongoing integration; uncovering the position of labour and disadvantaged groups from globalisation; and questioning alternatives. It does so through presenting Turkey’s membership bid as an open ended-struggle between social forces, historically comparing two decades. There was a pro-European conjuncture in the 2000s with accession talks opened in 2005 and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) regime conceived as progressive to enhance middle classes and consolidate democracy through a model of moderate Islam. Contrarily, relations deteriorated in the 2010s within a context of polycrisis. Enlargement is off the agenda in Europe while the authoritarian tone of the AKP regime has accelerated.
Methodologically, analyses rely on empirical data generated by 109 interviews conducted at three different historical conjunctures in 2010, 2017 and 2023. I interviewed five categories of actors namely representatives of capital, labour and political parties, state officials, and representatives of social forces in the social factory of capitalism around struggles of ecology, patriarchy, human rights and migration in Turkey. Textile and automotive sectors, Turkey’s main exporting sectors, are analysed as internationally oriented whilst the agricultural sector, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises as well as the public sector are treated as nationally oriented. I tried to uncover the position of these social forces vis-a-vis globalisation and Turkey’s EU membership project by questioning them in relation to globalisation, the effects of participation in the Internal Market and Euro-zone, social policy, foreign policy and democratisation.
After a critical assessment of the existing literature on Turkey-EU relations, the book introduces Gramscian historical materialism and engages with the post-Marxist critique especially with reference to Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2000) and Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), two texts aspiring to go beyond Marxism with the reasoning that capitalism is transformed. The book argues that post-Marxist research operates within capitalism’s dualisms (the separation of economics and politics) while historical materialism presents class struggle in the sphere of social reproduction as an integral relationship between material content and ideational form. This debate then helps me to integrate struggles of political recognition around ecology, patriarchy, migration and human rights as struggles against capitalist discipline in the sphere of social reproduction following an ontology of internal relationship.
After setting out the conceptual framework, the book presents a historical chapter on Turkey’s state-society relations analysing Turkey’s transition to capitalism from the end of the Ottoman period to the capitalist restorations alongside the pre-eminent accumulation strategy of passive revolution in the neoliberal period. It presents the main coordinates of Turkey’s political economy around three categories: social relations of production, forms of state and world orders. It argues that there was little consensus around membership until the neoliberal turn with some groups adapting the motto ‘They are the partners and we are the market’. Turkey applied for full membership and completed the Customs Union after the neoliberal turn. The book then reads the rise of the AKP regime in the 2000s as one of trasformismo considering that it extended the ruling class by integrating small and medium sized enterprises to the neoliberal project while disarticulating dissent through a populist discourse and alligning with hyper-liberal social policies around charities and individualistic welfare mechanisms. Yet, following the 2008 Great Recession, the neoliberal project has no longer been hegemonic providing moral and intellectual leadership while authoritarianism has been on the rise within a context of the growing contradictions of accumulation based on financialisation.
The book then presents its empirical findings in the following three chapters. I argue that there was not one pro-membership, and one alternative counter hegemonic project in the 2000s. The struggle was much more complex. The pro-membership project was supported by internationally oriented capital, nationally oriented capital, the AKP and state institutions related to the global economy to increase competitiveness and to consolidate democracy. It was hegemonic as pro-membership social forces transcended their vested economic interests and presented the pro-membership project on a universal terrain appealing to different segments in political and civil society as progressive for social policy, democratisation and a peaceful foreign policy. It was contested by two rival class strategies, Ha-vet and neo-mercantilism. Internationally oriented labour, emancipatory Left political parties and interviewees involved in struggles against patriarchy, ecology and human rights challenged pro-membership by defending Ha-vet which stands as ‘No to Capitalist Europe, yes to Labour’s Europe’. Nationally oriented labour and centre-left political parties pioneered a neo-merchantilist project under the motto ‘membership on equal terms and conditions’. Yet, none of these rival class strategies stood as an overall alternative as they ended up supporting membership with a different rationale. Ha-vet supported membership as globalisation requires a struggle at the international level and Turkey has lost the economic dimension of struggle with the completion of the Customs Union. They expected membership to consolidate democracy and to improve social standards with reference to the European Social Model. The neo-mercantilist project levelled support as long as Turkey became a full member on equal terms and conditions through benefitting from structural funds and free movement on workers.
The final chapter re-considers the struggle within a context of authoritarian neoliberalism in the 2010s. It argues that pro-membership is no longer hegemonic although pro-membership social forces continue to refer to liberal arguments as well as an additional supportive argument that EU membership is a decisive anchor for Turkey to comply with ecology and digital transitions. However, these social forces fail to appeal to society on a universal terrain and remain limited to defend membership around economic-corporate interests of the dominant class fractions. Social forces defending rival class strategies cannot come up with an overall alternative apart from highlighting that they will not accept any mechanism outside membership, a framework which would not allow Turkey to benefit from regional and structural funds, and free movement of workers. Yet, they increase their critical tone referring to the EU’s silence to the authoritarian turn as long as Turkey acts as a buffer zone for refugees and the failure of EU reform processes to improve socio-economic conditions and working standards. The EU is equally criticised for its imperialist policies vis-à-vis developing countries and ecology, the rise of far right and the failure of the European modern agricultural paradigm to generate a sustainable food regime. As an interviewee put it ‘Turkey should not be a centre of cheap labour and a hub of procurement for European capital’. Meanwhile, Turkey’s membership is discussed in a transactional approach around issue-specific strategic coooperation such as migration, security or resilience in the European periphery rather than membership per se.
In such a conjuncture, the book concludes, the structural power of capital still determines the main coordinates of EU-Turkey relations keeping a membership perspective as decisive for Turkey to comply with rules of international competitiveness with ongoing regionalisation in a conjuncture described as de-globalisation. Turkey is situated in the periphery of Europe with rising economic dependence to the European market in line with China’s decreasing role in global supply chains, policies of nearshoring and a greater carbon footprint of trading with distant geographies. Despite deteriorating labour conditions and real wages in Turkey, dissent is sidelined and fractured through identity politics and the absence of a systematic alternative. Meanwhile, the unevenness of integration is reproduced through negative integration (market liberalisation through the Customs Union) without positive integration (any social mechanism such as structural funds or free movement of workers) to alleviate market failures. Unevenness is equally reproduced in the management of international migration and ecology crisis. The EU promotes inflow of skilled labour of third country nationals through the Blue Card in tackling ageing Europe while externalising irregular migration to non-member third countries through readmission agreements and stricter border controls and/or securitising migration. Regarding ecology crisis, although the EU expects Turkey to comply with the European Green Deal not to encounter carbon tax on the border, Turkey has been one of the largest exporter of European waste, a condition resonating with discussions around ecology imperialism. The 2010s has also proved liberalism wrong in the assumption that liberalisation will consolidate democracies in the periphery with Turkey being an example of limits to formal democracy in the relation between capitalism and democracy. However, as the book concludes, it is ultimately the future coordinates of class struggle that will determine Turkey’s trajectory of EU membership.
Comments