Politics
The Conclusion highlights that the book fills two gaps in the literature. It aims to situate Turkey’s EU trajectory within the structural dynamics of the global political economy. It also aspires to go beyond discussing Turkey–EU relations around the ‘form of enlargement’, the question of whether Turkey will become a member or not. Rather, it discusses socio-economic content and the power relations of Turkey’s ongoing integration with Europe by uncovering the position of social forces and presenting it as an instance of class struggle in the last two decades by generating empirical data with interviews. It does so by drawing on historical materialism with reference to two analytical categories: hegemony, and uneven and combined development. After presenting a critique of post-Marxism, the research discusses contradictions around patriarchy, the environment and human rights as instances of class struggle against capitalist discipline in the nexus of the social factory of capitalism. The book argues that there was not a single pro-membership project and a single alternative project in the 2000s. Instead, the contours of Turkey’s struggle were much more complex. The pro-membership project was hegemonic in the 2000s as its representatives transcended their economic corporate interests and took on a role of moral and intellectual leadership by posing the questions on a universal plane. It was contested by two rival class strategies – neo-mercantilism and Ha–vet – and neither provided an overall alternative. Neo-mercantilism ended up supporting ‘membership on equal terms and conditions’ while Ha–vet articulated struggle at the European level.
Chapter 5 revisits the struggle within the conjuncture of global capitalism in the 2010s characterised by deglobalisation, populism and the crisis of neoliberalism. Scholars often describe the political landscape of the 2010s as authoritarian neoliberalism in which the state takes the upper hand to restore capitalist forms of social relations of production. What are the structural factors behind authoritarian neoliberalism and the contradictions of the accumulation strategy of financialisation? The chapter considers coordinates of dependence between the core and periphery and how EU–Turkey relations is redefined in the 2010s. The pull factors of EU membership (political and economic arguments in favour of membership, democracy and economic growth) are increasingly questioned following the 2008 Great Recession in tandem with rising far-right politics in Europe and socio-economic disparities between Europe’s core and periphery. In such a context, what arguments do social forces offer to continue sustaining the pro-membership project? How are Turkish industry’s competitive sectors in manufacturing, such as textiles and the automotive industry, influenced by changes in the global supply chain following the COVID-19 pandemic and rising geostrategic rivalry between China and the West? Has labour’s ‘yes, but’ stance changed? Is pro-membership still hegemonic? How have social forces within Ha–vet and neo-mercantilism revisited their position in the last decade? Can they form an alternative within the context of the crisis of liberalism?
Chapter 3 examines the class struggle between Turkey’s capital and labour in the 2000s. Was there a pro–European hegemonic project in the 2000s and, if so, which social forces supported it? Was the pro-membership project hegemonic with capital groups able to lead society by presenting the project on a universal terrain in civil society? Could the labour movement come up with an alternative to the neoliberal pro-membership perspective? If not, how can we account for their failure? The book argues that internationally oriented capital promoted EU membership to stimulate competitiveness, whereas nationally oriented capital either adapted to globalisation by promoting national champions or gave their consent as they were already integrated with the global economy, mostly via outsourcing. The pro-membership project was hegemonic with capital groups able to present membership on a universal terrain with arguments transcending the economic-corporate phase in the hegemonic struggle. Turkey’s labour movement was split on the membership question and contested the pro-membership project through two rival-class strategies, namely Ha–vet (No–Yes) and ‘membership on equal terms and conditions’. Internationally oriented labour accepted globalisation as ‘irresistible’ and therefore advocated an international struggle. Thus, they defended the EU membership perspective under the motto, ‘Another globalisation and Europe is possible’, with a different rationale than capital groups. Nationally oriented labour was concerned with deindustrialisation caused by liberalisation through membership. Nevertheless, they supported membership on ‘equal terms and conditions’ so long as Turkey would benefit from the EU’s structural funds and European Social Model.
Chapter 4 extends the class struggle to three further categories: political parties, state institutions and struggles in the social factory of capitalism. It questions to what extent the ruling class can transcend their economic vested interests – the economic-corporate phase – in articulating pro-membership on a universal terrain in the 2000s for the hegemonic moment in political and civil society. It also questions whether counter-hegemonic social forces can transcend their economic corporate phase and contest pro-membership in political and civil society. Can struggles around ecology, feminism and human rights form a united struggle with the labour movement? The book argues that the pro-membership project was hegemonic in the 2000s as ideas associated with membership were defended on universal terms in political and civil society. I suggest that, rather than one project for and one project opposing membership, there were two rival class strategies contesting pro-membership: neo-mercantilism and Ha–vet (‘No–Yes’), neither of which provided an overall alternative. The former opposed the capitalist nature of European integration and supported Social Europe under the motto ‘Another Europe is possible’; the latter advocated ‘membership on equal terms and conditions’, supporting membership so long as Turkey would benefit from the EU’s social policy, structural funds and the free movement of workers.
Chapter 1 has two aims. It introduces the conceptual framework, operationalises the research design and lays out the main coordinates of intra-class struggle. It then engages with the post-Marxist critique. Post-structural and post-Marxist critique has become pre-eminent, referring to social change in capitalism through deindustrialisation, digitalisation, rising individualism and identity politics. For instance, Laclau and Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985) criticise Marxism for class and economic reductionism, while Hardt and Negri in Empire (2000) assert that postmodernisation of the global economy necessitates a new political imaginary. In response, scholars within historical materialism claim that social relations of production remain central. I address various important questions raised by this debate: Does historical materialism overlook plural forms of social antagonisms, thereby confining agency to production and class? How do Marxist scholars respond to these critiques? After laying out disagreements, the book argues that post-Marxism operates within capitalism’s dualisms, a condition that ‘de-socialises the material’. In contrast, historical materialism goes beyond ideational-material dualism to present the struggle within the sphere of social reproduction as an internal relationship in a dialectical manner – in agreement with van der Pijl (1998) that it is the ‘discipline of capital over the entire reproductive system’ that has to be resisted. Bieler and Morton (2018) locate it as ‘class struggle in the social factory of capitalism’. Accordingly, alternatives to EU membership and struggles over political recognition – e.g. feminist and ecological struggles – are discussed as class struggle in the capitalist discipline in the following empirical chapters.
Chapter 2 situates Turkey–EU relations within the uneven development of global capitalism and highlights particular coordinates of class struggle historically. This prepares the ground for debating the struggle among social forces in the following three empirical chapters. The analysis is structured on three levels, the social relations of production, the form of the state, and the world order within three distinct historical periods: the Fordist period of the 1960s and 1970s; the neoliberal turn in the 1980s; the post-2007 authoritarian neoliberal period. Turkey–EU relations are analysed at the end of each section. How can we read Turkey’s transition to capitalism under structural conditions of uneven exchange? How has neoliberal restructuring impacted Turkey–EU relations? How have the Great Recession and the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism transformed the future trajectory of Turkey–EU relations? The book argues that, during Keynesian embedded liberalism, relations reflected a tug of war between social forces in favour of industrialisation by protectionism versus liberalisation by the Customs Union. Following the neoliberal turn, Turkey applied for membership in 1987 and participated in the Customs Union in 1995 in the absence of a labour perspective. Turkey’s AKP regime is then read as trasformismo in the 2000s as a condition of the formation of an ever more extensive ruling class. The AKP government has resorted to coercive policies in the 2010s in tandem with the crisis of neoliberal hegemony and dependent financialisation. Turkey–EU relations are not centred around membership but involve transactional cooperation around issue-specific areas such as migration, visa liberalisation and person-to-person cooperation.
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.
The proposed book aims to explain the divergent coordinates of Turkey’s EU membership bid in the last two decades as an instance of class struggle by embarking on two historical materialist categories: uneven development and hegemony. In the 2000s, Turkey was referred as an emerging market, a model with moderate Islam, a market economy and a candidate for EU membership. In the 2010s, enlargement has been off the agenda, with the EU’s credibility to consolidate democracy on its periphery being questioned, while Turkey has become more authoritarian under its new presidential regime. The book questions whether there is any pro-membership project in Turkey and whether there are any alternatives in the last two decades. The analyses rely on interviews conducted in İstanbul and Ankara around three research trips at two different historical conjunctures. The book argues that while the pro-membership project was hegemonic, it was contested by two rival class strategies during the 2000s: neo-mercantilism and Ha–vet (No–Yes). In the 2010s, pro-membership is no longer hegemonic with its social forces encountering difficulties in providing ‘moral and intellectual leadership’ for subordinate social forces in society. Social forces supporting rival class strategies increase their critical tone given the economic disparities between Europe’s core and periphery and rising populist politics in Europe. Yet an overall alternative to the pro-membership project of the 2010s hasn’t emerged, and there has been a failure to develop a universally appealing project.
This chapter focusses on inquiry as an instrument of international order and how the League of Nations used it when dealing with a wide range of international issues during its lifetime. The League’s model of inquiry was not created out of a vacuum but drew upon precedents from international dispute settlement to domestic and colonial inquiries. In this chapter, inquiry as an instrument of international order is discussed through the prism of a border delimitation dispute that created tensions between Albania and neighbouring countries Greece and Yugoslavia in the early 1920s, while juxtaposing this case study with elements from later League inquiries to reach a greater understanding about the instrument’s overall purpose. The chapter shows how officials and politicians at the League of Nations often spoke about truth, impartiality and independence when pertained to inquiry, but it was left unspecified how these aims could be fulfilled when commissioners were sent out to collect information. As a result, inquiries relied on informal practices and the personal authority of individuals to produce and qualify relevant information, creating a contrast between the institution’s formal adherence to fact-finding and impartiality and a markedly different reality on the ground. League inquiry is better understood if it is not strictly considered at face value, not as a fact-finding instrument but rather as an instrument of diplomacy and the interwar international order. Frequently it served as a safety valve, allowing a greater degree of flexibility to respond to an escalating conflict or a sensitive cross-border issue.
The transformation of the concept of self-determination to a principle to be applied in international politics in the first half of the twentieth century gave rise to several key practices that have shaped the field of international relations. This chapter discusses the recasting of self-determination to an instrument of international politics during the Great War and its immediate aftermath. It focusses on the Victorian underpinnings of the liberal understanding of self-determination that came to be associated with Wilsonianism and explains how the concept of self-determination became one of the key regulatory principles of international politics in the dawn of the interwar period. By focussing on Anglophone debates on national questions and the transformation of the Habsburg and, crucially, the Ottoman imperial space, this chapter assesses the application of ‘self-determination’ as a method to assuage national questions and stabilise international affairs.