The Political Economy of Turkey’s Integration into Europe

Critical approaches have for a long time been sidelined within European Studies - Turkish enlargement is not an exemption. This book analyses the trajectory of Turkey's integration into Europe from a critical political economy perspective. Was the pro-membership hegemonic in the 2000s? Was there any alternative project opposing membership? How did pro-membership social forces sustain a membership perspective in the 2010s in a conjuncture of crises of liberalism?
Drawing on over 100 interviews conducted at two historical moments, the volume considers the position of social forces in Turkey through the analytical lens of uneven development and hegemony. It argues that pro-membership was indeed hegemonic in the 2000s, contested by two rival class-strategies: Ha-vet (No to Capital's Europe, but yes to Social Europe) and neo-mercantilism. In the 2010s, pro-membership was no longer hegemonic, with its social forces encountering difficulties to provide moral and intellectual leadership, while the critical tone of opposing social forces increased. The future trajectory is uncertain. Yet, the pre-eminence of transactional cooperation provides hints that unevenness will be further consolidated through market integration and management of migration for the labour market between Turkey and the EU.
As the first historical materialist reading of Turkey-EU relations as an instance of class struggle to be published in English, The political economy of Turkey's integration into Europe provides a novel conceptual engagement between historical materialism and post-Marxism through reflections from a peripheral country.