Talha Köse

Türkiye’s positive relations with the European Union (EU) in the early 2000s and its enthusiasm for the membership process started to weaken after 2006-2008. The downward spiral in Turkish-EU relations intensified after the failed July 15 coup attempt in Türkiye. Despite the joint strategic interests in many regional issues, including the Black Sea, the MENA Region, the Balkans, security in the Eastern Mediterranean, hydrocarbon projects, the fight against irregular migration, creating the middle corridor with Asia, European energy security, and counter-terror measures, parties can hardly find opportunities to cooperate, frankly. The way those issues of joint interest are managed shall play a crucial role in the future of Turkish-EU relations. The positive atmosphere that emerged after the May 2023 elections could potentially generate more constructive momentum in Türkiye’s relations with the European Union and the U.S. There are, however, some hurdles that should be overcome by building mutual confidence by working on shared agendas.

In this panel, experts in their fields discussed the ways and purposes of foreign actors' involvement in Libya, the political order in post-revolution Libya, and Turkey's Libya policy and shared their views on the course of events in Libya. The panel was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was broadcast live on YouTube and other social media platforms.

External interventions by both regional and global powers in Libya have not been a scarcity after the 2011 revolution. With the turn of 2014, however, the nature of external interventions became more of a military one especially with the imposition of Haftar’s rule in the east by several counter-revolutionary regional and global actors. At the point that the same counter-revolutionary alliance attempted to geopolitically strangulate Turkey both via propping up hostile and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, and also excluding it from the prospect of exploiting the riches of the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkish intervention materialized in early 2020. This study attempts to explain the various motivations of the major intervening actors in Libya, namely France, Russia, Egypt, and the UAE with a special focus on Turkey. Structural realist perspective is used to elucidate the international interventions to the Libyan civil war. The nature of the uncertainty emanating from the regional transformation motivated the key actors to get militarily involved in the Libyan crisis. The actors with defensive motives are more likely to stick to the conflict despite the risks of escalation.

This study analyzes the peace and reconciliation initiatives of the AK Party governments (2002 until 2017) to address the Kurdish Question, with a special focus on the Reconciliation Process. Steps taken throughout the Reconciliation Process and the strengths and weaknesses of these steps are discussed. It is argued that the main challenges and shortcomings were the shifting political priorities of the Kurdish political actors, the changing balance of power within Turkish domestic politics, new opportunities presented to the Kurdish Movement by the Syrian civil war and the uncertainties Turkey faced due to this war. The main conclusion of the paper is that the regional turmoil, especially the ongoing civil wars in Syria and Iraq, is the major determinant that blocked the Reconciliation Process.

2015 was the year of elections in Turkey with two parliamentary elections and months-long election campaigns that dominated the political agenda of the country. The parliamentary elections of June 7 brought an end to the AK Party’s 12-year long era of parliamentary majority and single-party government in Turkey. Nevertheless, the endeavors to form a coalition government could not be concluded successfully and another election appeared on the horizon. The country was ruled by an AK Party-led interim government and the elections were repeated five months later on November 1. While close in time, the two elections were quite distant with regard to the political contexts in which they were carried out, and in their respective results. The November elections witnessed a comeback for the AK Party, which increased its votes by over 9 points with the addition of five million new votes in the ballot box. 

Identity politics was one of the major dynamics in shaping the results of both the June 7 and November 1, 2015 general elections in Turkey. The parties that were affiliated with Kurdish and Turkish ethno-nationalism, the HDP and the MHP, increased their votes significantly in the June 7 elections. The AK Party was able to pull some of those votes back in November elections. The HDP tried to transform itself from being a regional or ethnic Kurdish party into a national party relevant to all of Turkey. The PKK’s goal of becoming an influential regional actor in the Middle East hindered the HDP’s goal, thus leading to a decline of HDP votes in November elections. CHP remained as the favorite party of Alevi voters by a wide margin despite some challenge from HDP.

The AKP government has undertaken a series of steps to understand and respond to Alevi identity-based claims. Popularly known as the “Alevi opening” process, the initiative is the first systematic effort to deal with the identity-based discontents of the Alevis. This step is also part of the broader policy of “democratic opening,” which intends to address the burning problems of various identity groups (the Kurds, Alevis, religious minorities and the Roma people) in Turkey. This study provides an analytic background for understanding the governing AKP’s “Alevi opening”, which was launched in the summer of 2007. More specifically, the issues that are discussed are the Alevi claims, the obstacles to the fulfillment of these issues, and the methods and the processes of the ongoing “Alevi opening”. In order to provide a holistic analysis, the political, legal, psychological as well as cultural dynamics of the Alevi issue are emphasized here. At the end, a set of policy recommendations are formulated that are consistent with the analytic perspective.

This study examines the possible contributions of the critical perspectives and conceptual frameworks of the Conflict Resolution field to address “civilizational level” conflicts. The possibilities and limitations of dialogue processes at the civilizational level are critically examined. While recognizing the main assumptions and contributions of dialogue processes to deal with cultural/civilizational conflicts, this study puts forward an alternative and more practical vision: that of creating Spheres of Dialogic Interaction (SODI). In the second part of the study, the social and political backgrounds, practical contributions, and limitations of two recent projects the “Dialogue among Civilizations” (DaC) and the “Alliance of Civilizations” (AoC) are analyzed. It is argued that with its action-oriented agenda and the practical environment conducive to flexible, interactive and reflexive interaction, the ongoing AoC project is an important venue for creating SODI.