Institute of European Studies

Global challenges
are pushing the EU toward an
unavoidable dilemma. The EU
ought to expand to include new
countries and reach a critical
size that will let it weather the
21st century. However, the EU
has to also be a stronger, more
unified political system whose
functional feasibility depends on
a limited number of countries in
advanced economic and monetary
convergence. The vicious
circle of “a globally competitive,
wider Europe” versus an “institutionally
efficient deeper eurozone,
with a limited number of
countries” can only be broken by
an innovative institutional engineering
in adopting a progressive
approach.

• The trillion dollar question: When will this end? • The trillion euro question: What lessons will humanity learn? • The trillion yuan question: Which states will become the world's new leaders? • The trillion lira question: What will the USD/TRY exchange rate be? Should we have bought gold? The questions are simple, the answers are complex, the consequences are in the trillions. The global annual income is currently around 90 trillion US dollars; 130 trillion when purchasing power is considered. With the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic throughout 2020, this figure will be significantly reduced not only in its monetary, but also human and institutional dimensions. The situation is perilous. When the 2008 financial crisis hit the world after a relatively long period of economic growth, the global economy was not being supported by a well coordinated system. Reactivated with the hope of resolving this crisis, the G20 paved the way for a new international order in many areas, from financial markets to climate change. However, such attempts at global governance were unable to achieve the level of power that was needed for international policy-making. Globalisation, on the other hand, was expanding in all directions. Everything was moving with more freedom around the planet: money, goods, services, people, information, data, ideas, culture… Societies were embracing the irresistible opportunities of globalisation. Meanwhile, increased mobility benefited to global viruses too: biological, financial, digital, ideological viruses. The carbon dioxide virus; the terrorism virus; the organised crime virus; the corruption virus; the unemployment virus; the disinformation virus...

A more positive relationship between the European Union and Turkey is a decade-long project of advocates from all over Europe and across the Atlantic. Drawing on history, witnesses see how this relationship can be an excellent win-win algorithm, as much as it can rapidly turn out to be a lose-lose situation or even a triple win-or-lose equation—with political, economic, and social resonance reaching far beyond the Continent.

The challenge is to upload this historically well-tested algorithm into the twenty-first century: rebooting a version 5.0 of Turkey’s European integration with updates on democratic conditionality, foreign policy cooperation, and an economic framework, as well as on the digital, green, and social dimensions.

The Turkey debate’s focal point is “Europe’s geostrategic sovereignty.”  Turkey should evolve to be a net contributor to Europe’s security and global competitiveness. No matter how significant today’s drawbacks are, such as the definition of freedom of expression and tensions like the life-consuming Cyprus imbroglio, the guiding question for the EU ought to be: “how can Turkey, in the near future, become a country that is progressively in convergence with the values and interests of European citizens?” This includes citizens of the Turkish Republic as well.

In this respect, beyond the narrow scope of the EU-Turkey relationship’s bilateral agenda, EU policies on Turkey may be filtered through the prisms of at least five major axes of change shaping Europe’s global role.

“Five B Effects”: Brussels, Biden, Berlin, Brexit, and Beijing
.  .  .

Parmi les ouvrages de synthèse sur la Turquie le livre écrit en collaboration par Semih Vaner, Deniz Akagül et Bahadýr Kaleaðasý (La Turquie en mouvement, Complexe, Espace international 18) est une réussite. Dans un format de poche et en moins de 150 pages, les auteurs ...