Elif Uzgören
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This introduces the topic and uncovers how Turkey–EU relations have been debated in the literature. It then explains why the proposed book adapts a historical materialist perspective and reads relations as the uneven and combined development of capitalism as an instance of class struggle for hegemony. In the 2000s, membership debate was very much alive with enlargement being a popular topic in European politics, while Turkey as an emerging market and a candidate country was conducting the reform process. Contrarily, the 2010s is described through deglobalisation, with the growth strategy of developing countries based on delocalisation of production coming to its limits, while Turkey is turning into a more authoritarian regime under the presidential regime. Turkey’s membership is off the agenda both in Turkey and Europe. Rather than a rupture, historical materialism paves the way to read the relations of the last two decades as creating dependence on Europe’s periphery with different set of policy tools. This chapter examines how Turkey–EU relations are studied in each decade in the history of relations and how historical materialism contributes to debate. The book argues that there are four merits of adapting a historical materialist perspective: integrating structure into the analysis; questioning power relations and the socio-economic content of ongoing integration; unravelling agency regarding who supports or contests membership, thereby opening the debate for alternatives; analysing economics and politics (state–society relations) as integral for each historical specificity.

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