Imagining Turkish accession to the European Union : the role of TUSIAD in the production of Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey

• Main Author: Kutan, Birgul
• Published: University of Bristol 2013
• Subjects: 337.14209561
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.616866

This thesis explore the process of Turkey's Accession to the European Union through an analysis of the role of TUSIAD, an elite Turkish business organisation that groups together representatives of some of the largest corporations in Turkey, and actively operates and lobbies on the issue of Turkish Accession in both Turkey and Europe. Drawing on a critical globalisation theory approach that links materialist and post structuralist accounts of social change, globalisation and regionalisation, the thesis explores the role of elite non-state actors in the Turkish Accession process. The thesis challenges accounts that see Turkish Accession as a broadly top down process, and Turkish business as operating as merely a conduit for the interests of powerful European capitalist interests. The thesis demonstrates the active social agency of TUSIAD, highlighting that while it indeed expresses much of the interests of broader neoliberal capitalist actors, it works hard both in Turkey and in Europe to shape its vision of what a future Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey might look like. Through exploring TUSIAD's attempts at the production of imaginaries, technologies, and subjectivities, the thesis highlights the complex way that the European Accession process becomes a mechanism through which TUSIAD seeks to construct a particular Turkish geography conducive to its aspirations, that both links to earlier national modernizing attempts and the cultural particularities of Turkey's historical emergence as a developed capitalist state, and simultaneously shapes European attitudes towards Turkey. Through revealing the practices of TUSIAD, the thesis demonstrates the way it seeks to engage across the economic, social, cultural and political domains, to address what it sees as an unfinished project of returning Turkey to its historic place amongst the most powerful nations in the world, economically, politically and culturally, and shaping that process in its own strategic interests and visions. In doing this, the thesis also demonstrates the complex relationship between modernity and capitalism, decentres Eurocentric accounts of the Turkish Accession process, and highlights the important role that non-state actors are playing in the making and unmaking of a new European geography.