Geopolitics of Identity Constructions: The case of 18 March EU-Turkey Deal

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Geopolitics of Identity Constructions in EU-Turkey relations:

The case of 18 March EU-Turkey Deal

MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Çağıl Bakacak 12181617

Prof Luiza Bialasiewicz Dr Hanna Muehlenhoff

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“…a great deal of demagogy and downright ignorance is involved in presuming to speak for a whole region or civilization. No, the West is the West, and Islam Islam”

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On the occasion of the third year of the EU-Turkey Deal, the European Commission published a short paper headed “EU-Turkey Statement – Three years on” (European Commission, 2019a). On the paper, the model cooperation between the EU and Turkey is praised by underlining that “three years later, irregular arrivals remain 97% lower than the period before the Statement became operational, while the number of lives lost at sea has decreased substantially.” It also defines the Deal as a game changer and “an important element of the EU’s comprehensive approach on migration,” since it proves that the business model of smugglers exploiting migrants and refugees can be broken.” In Commission’s quoted words, one can detect almost all anomalies inflicted within the European – and to some extent Turkey’s - discourse on refugee crisis, when measured against the plethora of events witnessed since 2015 in the Eastern Mediterranean or Aegean Sea.

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In turn, on the same occasion, Amnesty International performed a stunt in Athens by projecting a huge Humanity First, Refugees Welcome” message onto the side of the Acropolis.

source: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/03/greece-message-for-european-leaders-beamed-onto-acropolis-on-anniversary-of-eu-turkey-deal/) Fotis Filippou, Campaigns Director for Europe at Amnesty International stated that, three years after the EU-Turkey deal was implemented, it is vital that this call for humanity is seen not just across Athens, but across the whole of Europe. The situation facing thousands of migrants and refugees on the islands is a scar on the conscience of Europe. Anyone looking up at the Acropolis can see thousands of years of civilization. Anyone looking towards the refugee camps on the Greek islands will see that our leaders have learnt nothing.” (Amnesty International, 2019, emphasis added).

Jumbert and Tank also reported that the suffering of the displaced persons remains, accused the EU for prioritizing security over protection, and stressed that numerous humanitarian organizations including UNCHR and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are warning about the deteriorating mental health conditions of the refugees due to traumas experienced by refuges stuck in overcrowded camps in Greece while waiting the clarification of their status yet to be made (Jumbert and Tank 2019)

Furthermore, MSF issued a report on the same occasion again on 18 March 2019 which includes many accusations and warnings:

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For the past three years, the EU-Turkey deal has trapped thousands of men, women and children in overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe and degrading conditions with little access to basic health services, which has resulted in a deterioration of their health and well-being and caused widespread misery…Three years on, the EU and the Greek government are still failing to provide dignified and humane living conditions and proper medical care to those trapped on the Greek islands… Whilst the overall number of arrivals has greatly decreased since 2016, more than 5,000 men, women and children have arrived in Greece since the beginning of 2019. The vast majority of arrivals are from refugee-producing war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Democratic Republic of Congo, and more than half are women and children. This shows that the EU’s containment and deterrence approach to managing migration has failed to create alternative pathways to safety for those forced to flee (MSF,2019).

The sides are odds with each other whether 18 March is something that the anniversary of which should be celebrated or commemorated or, may be, even lamented, since their focus is different from each other while the officials present it as a story of success as it has fought criminals decisively, the humanitarian organizations consider the situation of refugees that emerges as an unfortunate consequence of the Deal. However, they agree on a certain point: it was and still is a European problem.

The same tendency is also observed among the scholarly accounts since the literature which addresses the EU-Turkey Deal predominantly occupies with the impact, implications and consequences of the Deal on the EU. The Deal is mostly portrayed with its implications and consequences for the human rights and refugee protection in the EU (Hasian, Olivas and Muller, 2017; Vollmer 2017; Bialasiewicz, and Maessen, 2018; Grigoriadis and Dilek 2018; Kfir, 2018; Murray and Longo, 2018). Turkey’s part on the making of the Deal as well as Deal’s appeal, benefit and also the implications for Turkey are the issues rarely visited topics if not completely neglected.

In turn, as regards Turkey’s role, a study (Sönmez and Kırık 2017) addressing the impact of the Deal on Turkey focused exclusively on the readmission agreement and understudy the other dimensions of the Deal, and another one which approaches to the issue within institutionalist perspective predict that migration-like dynamic parameters will influence the structure of the European integration in a way that “a differentiated membership” would appear as a reasonable option both for Turkey and the member states (Kaplan 2018). Another study that focuses on the development of cooperation between the EU and Turkey in the field of preventing irregular immigration covering the period from 1999 to 2017, providing for the recent history of this

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cooperation leading to the EU-Turkey Deal of 2016 (Dimitriadi et al. 2018). However their approach is conducted within realist perspectives, my study will be critical to their findings as within this study the issue is approached with the lenses of critical geopolitics and focus not on what has been found or pre-given but what the EU and Turkey made out of this challenge/opportunity they commonly faced.

As regards methodological context of the thesis, critical geopolitics can be defined a critic of the modes of employing geographical knowledge for practical political ends through geopolitical reasoning in foreign policy-making. This criticism is originated from a wider task of reconceptualizing geopolitics in terms of discourse. Drawing its inspiration from Michel Foucault, discourse is defined as follows: “Discourses are best conceptualized as sets of capabilities people have, as sets of socio-cultural resources used by people in the construction of meaning about their world and their activities… Discourses enable one to write, speak, listen and act meaningfully” (O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 192-193)

O’Tuathail’s approach is of a seminal importance since it questions the very basis that the geopolitical tradition has been founded, and thus provide an occasion to see the geopolitical reasoning under a new light. The traditional understandings of geopolitics specify the field as the study of the impact of physical environment on the conduct of international politics; in a sense, “it is more than just the study of global politics… it is the study of how geography is implicated in that politics” (Dittmer and Sharp, 2014: 3). Given that geopolitical reasoning is developed through employing and manipulating the knowledge and facts borrowed from the scientific field of geography, the geopolitics is endowed with objective quality and asserted to be a field of “hard truths, material realities and irrepressible natural facts” (O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 192). After all, those references to scientific truths made by the prominent figures of the imperial geopolitics like Mackinder who claimed to find a “fundamental pattern of geography in history that is objectively true”, and Haushofer, the alleged inventor of Nazi Geopolitik, who insisted that “the dependence of all political developments on the permanent reality of the soil” (former, Dittmer, 2014: 15 and latter Haushofer, 2014: 54). A quotation from Gray also demonstrates that this view of geopolitics is still valid in more recent times: “geopolitical analysis is impartial as between one or another political system or philosophy” (Gray, 1988: 93, quoted in O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 192).

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The application of geographical knowledge in geopolitics is not for scientific aims, it is, first and foremost, employed to enhance state power by considering its geographical features, thus it is a field of practice under the limitation of the political objectives it serves, and the production of the geopolitical views is also performed in relation to this fact. The geopolitics which is defined by the claims to objective truth constructs the field as an ahistorical discipline beyond the social, political, economic effects that change the world. O’Tuathail and Agnew criticize this view as it defines the geopolitics as a non-discursive phenomenon, and they propose a critical approach in which geopolitics appears as a discursive practice performed by intellectuals of statecraft who “spatialize international politics in such a way as to represent it as a ‘world’ characterized by particular types of places, peoples and dramas… [and thus] the study of geopolitics is the study of the spatialization of international politics by core powers and hegemonic states.” (O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 192).

They further define an interface between the formal and the practical geopolitics where the production of geopolitical discourse is made in terms of a partial political reasoning. This interface is the exact place where the reductionist reasoning is realized. The reductive geopolitical reasoning appears in transferring the geographical knowledge from the field of formal geopolitics in which “highly formalized rules of statement, description, and debate” is the operating mode, to the level of practical geopolitics where “narratives and binary distinctions found in societal mythologies” dominate the production of “geopolitical reasoning … of a common-sense type” (O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 194).

This transference is the main cause of the loss of geographical diversity and complexity. O’Tuathail, when criticizing the work of Mackinder, also names the process as the loss of geography: “The great irony of this god-like labeling of the earth is that, in so doing, Mackinder eliminates the tremendous geographical diversity and particularity of places on the surface of the earth. Difference becomes sameness. Geographical heterogeneity becomes geopolitical homogeneity. This “loss of geography” is … a recurrent feature of those geopolitical discourses that play the game of earth labeling” (O’Tuathail, 2003: 17).

However, what is problematic with this view is that it is based on the suggestion which presupposes the possibility of a form of an authentic geographical knowledge that properly projects the diversity and heterogeneity of a certain spatiality in its historical setting. Even O’Tuathail and

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Agnew do not explicitly mention that this kind of authentic knowledge is the production of formal geopolitics, they nevertheless implicitly suggest that it is the case while exemplifying distortions occurred during the transformation of authentic geographical knowledge. Within this context they announce the irony of “anti-geographical quality of geopolitical reasoning” as such: the “geopolitical reasoning works by the active suppression of the complex geographical reality of places in favor of controllable geopolitical abstractions” (O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 191 and 195).

They further define an interface between the formal and the practical geopolitics where the production of geopolitical discourse is made in terms of a partial political reasoning. This interface is the exact place where the reductionist reasoning is realized. The reductive geopolitical reasoning appears in transferring the geographical knowledge from the field of formal geopolitics in which “highly formalized rules of statement, description, and debate” is the operating mode, to the level of practical geopolitics where “narratives and binary distinctions found in societal mythologies” dominate the production of “geopolitical reasoning … of a common-sense type” (O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 194). This transference is the main cause of the loss of geographical diversity and complexity.

However, what is problematic with this view is that it is based on the suggestion which presupposes the possibility of a form of an authentic geographical knowledge that properly projects the diversity and heterogeneity of a certain spatiality in its historical setting. Even O’Tuathail and Agnew do not explicitly mention that this kind of authentic knowledge is the production of formal geopolitics, they nevertheless implicitly suggest that it is the case while exemplifying distortions occurred during the transformation of authentic geographical knowledge. Within this context they announce the irony of “anti-geographical quality of geopolitical reasoning” as such: the “geopolitical reasoning works by the active suppression of the complex geographical reality of places in favor of controllable geopolitical abstractions” (O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 191 and 195).

Therefore, this methodological problem is tried to overcome by applying Benjamin’s critical accounts on violence as his critic is based on the premise that “it is never reason that decides on the justification of means and the justness of ends, but fate-imposed violence on the former and God on the latter.” (Benjamin, 1978: 294). What can be understood from this quote is not a

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theological pattern or a modern kind of agnostism but rather a critique of a very political issue, as Benjamin puts forward the impossibility of justice when enforced by state apparatus. The methodological point regarding this, however, can be found in another article from Benjamin which also bases his main argument in the Critique of Violence (Benjamin, 1978). In this article Benjamin (1997) criticizes the way the language understood in bourgeoise science (logocentric or positivist), and instead constructs a framework that underlines the human inability to grasp the truth by imposing names and considers the relation between the signified and signifier as contingent, singular and also broken; as the Greek original of the word symbol which means a broken metal piece each of which denotes the holders commitments to the other. The wider implications of the Benjamin’s critique on the relation between power, law, justice and violence is reflected on the first part of the study that reserved to the European case.

Within this context, the following two chapter provide the application of critical geopolitical perspective to both European and Turkish contexts with a view to deconstruct their identity positions and further analyse their re-making of their identities during the post-Cold War period up-to-the making of the EU-Turkey deal. For the EU side, it covers the analysis of post-Cold War EU foreign policy (in particular ENP) and recent policy developments like the Global strategy or ENP revision(s) through the discourses of policy documents and EU officials. These foreign policy developments provide the context to the making of European identity, also reveal the contradictions, challenges, and failures that the EU encountered in defining its place in the world. The analysis is considered to reveal the inner contradictions of the European approach between its norms/ideals and interests by also analysing the conceptual labels like civilian power, normative power, transformative Europe. In short, how the EU takes positions in the pursuit of its geopolitical interests and how it amounts to a challenge to the self-perceived, desired and promoted identity of the EU are the main points in this chapter.

As regards the situation of the Turkish side, its efforts to define its place in the post-Cold War context will be addressed in two periods; through the 1990s the discourse which was constructed with a representation of Turkey as uniting East and West thus transcending the dividing lines between the two thanks to a self-claimed hybrid or liminal identity (Turkey as both Eastern and Western), but also as a gate, and thus as an asset for Western powers, to Turkic post-Soviet geographies. Followingly, in the 2000s and notably under the rule of JDP (Justice and

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Development Party) this representation persisted albeit with an ever-growing emphasis on the civilizational aspects of Turkish identity (Islam) and by drawing on this JDP's efforts to build Turkey as a regional power with a leading role in its surrounding geography, but this time more focused on the imperial geography of the Ottomans and its role as a spokesperson for Islam. The scholarly and popular conceptual labeling efforts are also taken into consideration with a focus on Eurasianism and neo-Ottomanism.

Both chapters are written in a manner to serve to frame and explore the geopolitical context (or self-made post-Cold War geopolitical cultures of the parties) preceded and eventually gave birth to the EU-Turkey Deal. Thus, it is designed to have an explanatory and a grounding role to further analyze the identity positions of the parties as to discern the impact of the Deal on these positions. While for the EU it is plausible and not unexpected to be a party to such a Deal given the previous development of its policy initiatives as the mirror of its identity, albeit it contradicts the self-desired identity of the EU, but for Turkey it is arguably non-sense and unexpected to assume the role of the (privatized) border patrol of the EU, as it committed to filtering the people who belong to the same civilizational background, creating a huge obstacle for by recognizing, even building, the borders which also possibly set limits to Turkey's membership. The one possible explanation for this involvement may be to instrumentalize the cooperation with the EU to compensate for the consequences of the failures in its Syria policy, particularly regarding the financial aspects of hosting millions of Syrians (given that Turkey has so far been achieved nothing but money in terms of the Deal, yet stayed loyal). The other explanation will be searched among the foreign policy discourse of the JDP, most notably created and implemented by Ahmet Davutoğlu.

Drawing upon the preceding chapters, third part aims to portray how the Deal, as a tool to serve desired ends, fits into the geopolitical visions and foreign policy approaches of the ‘partners in crime’ namely, the EU and Turkey, and further how the Deal can be considered as an illustration and the outcome of the geopolitical visions that overlapped and agreed on a particular issue. However, it also envisages to achieve this end with the awareness of that the ‘crisis’ was constructed as a ‘European crisis’, a depiction that attracted much criticism, nevertheless it also has the explanation capacity to the point that it reflects the character of an extraordinary measure that hastily put to effect by the EU while it is under the influence of multiple crisis the combined effect of which eventually perceived and presented as an “existential threat” to the Union.

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In a nutshell, the Deal is fit to understand as an emergency response when the Union is in a state of exception; i.e. the outcome of the negotiation between the EU’s adherence to international humanitarian norms and its security interests. At the end, European discourse has constructed the issue within the security/threat nexus. Additionally, it also bears to the fact that why the presence of millions of Syrians in other hosting geographies has not been constructed and further portrayed as a crisis experienced as heavily as in Europe, though given that the situation was much worse in those affected geographies.

To this end, this thesis claims that the EU-Turkey Deal of 18 March can be understood as a geopolitical tool which reflects and confirm geopolitical visions of both the EU and Turkey.

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1. Mirroring or Mapping? The (re)making of EU identity in the post-Cold War era

1.1. A Shattered Mirror: Changing the Narrative

The Union’s High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy, and Vice-President of the European Commission (HR/VP) Federica Mogherini, on July 4, 2017, while defending the European Defence Plan at the European Parliament plenary, abruptly defined ‘what the EU is’:1 “if there is anyone in the world that knows the power of soft power, the need to combine different instruments, the need to have an integrated approach in responding to crisis and conflicts, in using all different tools from the diplomatic to the humanitarian, the development, the economic, the cultural one – well, this is the European Union” (EEAS, 2017/emphasis added) However, then she further pattered the ways in which the EU will remain to be ‘as it is’:

1_{Beck and Grande assert that “[the European project] cannot, it must not offer an answer to the questions: Where does}

Europe end? What belongs to Europe? If Europe answers these questions conclusively, then it risks falling back into the state form” (Beck and Grande, 2007: 71, cited in Bachmann and Sidaway, 2009: 104-105). This view is in line with what Bialasiewicz shows as how ‘uncertainty’ or ‘Europe’s unwillingness to define itself’ entails an emergence of Europe, as an extension of its sphere of rights, “that allows for claims to (its) law to come from – and extend to – also putatively non-European spaces (Bialasiewicz, 2008: 77); and also with the questioning of Europe by Derrida: “What if Europe was nothing but the opening, the beginning of a history, for which the change of course, the change of the heading, the relation to the other heading or to the other of the heading, would become a continuously existing possibility? Could Europe in some sense carry the responsibility for this opening, which is the opposite of exclusion? Could Europe in a constitutive way be the responsibility for this opening?” (cited in Diez, 2004: 324).

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So, the European Union not only is but will stay the most relevant donor of humanitarian and development aid – and that is going to remain. We are going to stay the main pillar of the multilateral system based on the UN agencies, on the UN values and principles, and also on the approach that preventing a conflict is always better than dealing with it militarily. We know very well there is no single crisis or threat in the world that can be dealt with a purely military approach. This is the European way to security, and I want there to be no doubt about the fact that this approach is not changing (EEAS, 2017).

She, then continued with a ‘but’: “But at the same time, we can and we must do better and more efficiently on defence and security in the narrow sense of the word… we have a responsibility to use the instruments we have also when it comes to security and defence in the narrow sense” (EEAS, 2017/emphases added). And finally, she made a controversial combination when considered against the background of EU identity-making practice:

There is a genuine European way to security and defence. It is made of civilian and military means together, hard and soft power together, cooperation with our partners and also strategic autonomy…This is the European way... We are a force for peace and human development. This is how and what we are, and this is how and what we will continue to be with more instruments to serve this way of working on security. We are even more so a security provider for our citizens and

for our partners… A stronger European Union in the field of security and defence is good for

Europeans and is good for the rest of the world (EEAS, 2017/emphases added).

Apart from some overt and superficial contradictions2_{that can be observed in the text of the}

HR/VP’s speech, one should ask what is ‘genuine’ about mixing civilian and military; soft and hard power in foreign policy exercise? In fact, what was genuine about EU and its self-claimed identity is that its intentional abstinence of employing hard power measures, and of talking hard power rhetoric, i.e., asserting to be a “civilian power”; a somewhat corroded concept due to overuse when defining EU’s international role and identity since François Duchêne.

The nuanced shift in identifying the EU in Mogherini’s speech can better be understood when compared to previous endeavors, like Javier Solana’s contribution to the debate on the EU as a civil power: “… a certain complementarity of efforts and capabilities on the two sides of the Atlantic: America seems set to maintain her military predominance for the foreseeable future, while Europe has an unrivalled claim as a global “civil power”. Such a complementarity offers

2_{Mogherini starts with the remarks that: “our work is not leading to a "militarisation" of the European Union. It is not}

leading to a European Union army”, and then invites the audience to pay tribute to “men and women in EU uniform serving under the EU flag” and elaborates on “how we use our military” (EEAS, 2017). It, still, does not mean the overall militarization of the European foreign conduct, however, as once Chekhov said, “if there is a rifle hanging on the wall, then it must go off.”

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many advantages, in terms of efficiency, specialisation, and the degree to which our two publics are likely to be supportive of different conceptions of a global role.” (Solana, 2002: 3).

It seems that with the words of the HR/VP and also with the Global Strategy’s ‘strategic autonomy’ invention, the EU, thereafter, would like to fulfil such a ‘complementarity’ solitarily.3 In her ‘foreword’ to the Global Strategy, Mogherini also underlies this shift in EU foreign policy-making which is loaded with salient consequences for EU’s international identity: “the idea that Europe is an exclusively ‘civilian power’ does not do justice to an evolving reality” (EEAS, 2016: 4).

Bachmann and Sidaway, in an examination of the critical geopolitics of the concept of civilian power, point out the fact that, “[c]onceptions of civilian power have subsequently been reworked and revitalised, again mostly at times of geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts, such as the end of the Cold War, the succession of European enlargements, the coming of the Euro and challenges from American neo-conservatism” (Bachmann and Sidaway, 2009: 95). Nevertheless, a more accurate description of this repeating pattern may be provided as whenever Europe perceives a shift in global power relations, thus an opportunity, it tends to redefine itself, either endorsing some conceptual patterns or renouncing them.

As Bachmann and Sidaway follow the genealogy of the civilian power concept, they demonstrate how, in the period of détente, Duchêne, at the first place introduced the concept with a view to define a place and role to the then-EEC “at a time when the whole world system appears to be in flux”4_{(Duchêne, 1973:1). The opportunity was raised out of an uncertainty regarding the future}

role of the USA and fulfilled by Duchêne first to describe to world ‘as it is’5_{by an appeal to his}

3_{Albeit, acknowledging the role of the NATO in Europe’s collective defence, the EUGS is frank in presenting its}

eagerness for autonomous action and more responsibility in self defence.

4_{As underlined by Bialasiewicz and Elden, the key to understand the success and power of such ‘new global visions’}

is “the fact that they draw on existing, well-consolidated stereotypes and imaginaries, all the while asserting a

fundamental break in the international order, a fundamental turning point in the conduct of international relations”

(Bialasiewicz and Elden,2006: 630/ emphases in the original). However, in the particular case of the concept ‘civilian power’, its success was also a product of “its articulation with other influential policy intellectuals in member states and at the European Commission that its subsequent influence is grounded.” (Bachmann and Sidaway, 2009: 97).

5_{“The enlargement of the European Community from six countries to nine, including Britain, comes at a time when}

the whole world system appears to be in flux. In Europe, a series of agreements culminating in the codification of the status of West Berlin is virtually closing that phase of history associated with the phrase 'the cold war', though they do not settle the ambiguities of the long-term balance between the Eurasian super-power, the Soviet Union, and the rest of the European peninsula, especially if, as it now seems, the position of the United States is uncertain... The

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privileged geopolitical eye. Then he proposed, to balance this power void, a tailored international identity and role for the then-EEC:

Europe as a whole could well become the first example in history of a major center of the balance of power becoming in the era of its decline not a colonized victim but an exemplar of a new stage in political civilization. The European Community in particular would have a chance to demonstrate the influence which can be wielded by a large political co-operative formed to exert

essentially civilian forms of power… a force for the international diffusion of civilian and

democratic standards (Duchêne, 1973: 19-20/emphases added).

In such a context, the role of the EEC is appeared as exerting civilian means (power and force) to spread the transformative influence of civilian ends in the international arena which proved successful for Europe; so Duchêne proposed a civilian role for Europe by which it shall mirror its unique civilian presence - that crafted in a very particular geography as an outcome of very bounded endeavors – to an outside world, and, above all, by employing non-violent, i.e., civilian means. In such an equation, congruence between means and ends is of essential.

1.2. Straddled between Means and Ends

In his Critique of Violence, Walter Benjamin first observes that “the most elementary relationship within any legal system is that of ends to means, and further, that violence can first be sought only in the realm of means, not of ends,” and then warns against that “a system of legal ends cannot be maintained if natural ends are anywhere still pursued violently… is a mere dogma. To counter it one might perhaps consider… that violence, when not in the hands of law, threatens it not by the ends that it may pursue but its mere existence outside the law”6 (Benjamin, 1978: 278 and 280-281).

Soviet Union is coming out for the first time from its North Eurasian glacis and claiming all the prerequisites of global power. At the same time, in the West (if that term is taken to include the easternmost state of Asia, Japan), the smooth surface of post-war economic co-operation, so long suggestive of a new, contractual, and more civilised form of relations between states, has been broken by uncouth sounds of rising competition between a hitherto invulnerable United States and hitherto outclassed Western Europe and Japan.” (Duchêne, 1973:1-2).

6_{Benjamin’s critique of violence follows a double path; it examines both natural law and positive law theories in}

terms of violence. Drawing upon this, it should be taken into consideration with an awareness of neoconservative efforts to define, label and promote an EU they see or want to see; of which Kagan’s piece ‘Power and Weakness’ is second to nothing in defining comparative roles and standings of the EU and the USA as Kantian paradise – a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation – and Hobbesian state of nature where violence reigns, respectively. (Kagan, 2002).

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With keeping in mind the above mentioned remarks of Benjamin, it is possible to further observe that promotion of the EU as a civilian force also comes with a positive content apart from anti-violence, and it is to present Europe as a model for the rest of the world which is considered legitimate without a doubt, given the success of European institutional enterprise in the role of a peacemaker: “At the heart of Duchene's vision of civilian power was the claim that Europe could collectively exert a positive and stabilizing influence on the international system. Europe would be particularly well suited to play such a role, because the integration process had already transformed the space of the EEC from a historic domain of geopolitical conflict to a system whereby relations amongst its members are regulated through a commonly agreed upon framework and network of economic links, in lieu of force” (Bachmann and Sidaway, 2009: 97/emphases added).

Since Europe is promoted as a force that exerting power for peace, what must be presupposed that Europe has the ‘non-violent means of agreement’, and that is intrinsically related to the question originally asked by Benjamin in his Critique: “Is any nonviolent resolution of conflict possible? ” Benjamin answers this question in affirmative:

Nonviolent agreement is possible wherever a civilized outlook allows the use of unalloyed means of agreement… [which] are never those of direct, but always those of indirect solutions. They therefore never apply to directly to the resolution of conflict between man and man, but only to matters concerning objects. The sphere of nonviolent means opens up in the realm of human

conflicts relating to goods… It is profoundest example is perhaps the conference, considered as a

technique of civil agreement…This makes clear that there is a sphere of human agreement that is wholly inaccessible to violence: the proper sphere of “understanding”, language” (Benjamin, 1978: 289).

However, what has been considered so far is only limited to relations between individuals, yet, according to Benjamin, nevertheless analogically applicable,7 in understanding ‘pure means in politics’ or in interstate relations:

… the means of nonviolent agreement have developed in thousands of years of the history of states… Fundamentally they have, entirely on the analogy of agreement between private persons, to resolve conflicts… in the names of their states, peacefully… Accordingly, like the intercourse

7_{“We can therefore only point to pure means in politics as analogous to those which govern peaceful intercourse}

between private persons” (Benjamin, 1978: 290-291). It is also the case for Duchêne: “Europe would be the first major area in the Old World where the age-old process of war and indirect violence could be translated into something more in tone with the twentieth-century citizen's notion of civilized politics” (Duchene 1972, 43).

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of private persons, that of diplomats has engendered its own forms and virtues, which were not always mere formalities even though they have become so (Benjamin, 1978: 293).

With considering this background, it may be assumed that European integration process since its very beginning has applied indirect means of nonviolent agreement on a transnational scale, starting with border geographies having goods that causing conflict (coal and steel) and extended the scope up to the completion of a single market covering the four freedoms. These all achievements are considered against, in particular, violent nationalism and geopolitical conflict, so as to portray the EU a new civilian force in the international arena in the pursuit of just(ified) ends: “The post-1945 European Movement therefore turned Hobbes on his head. The nation-state no longer seemed the pacifier that guaranteed a good life, but the origin of hatred and war.” (Diez, 2004: 323). The EU has also proved to be satisfying in the application of techniques of civil agreement; negotiation, bargaining and deliberation to deliver peace and prosperity on a continental scale within the framework of “a sphere of human agreement that is wholly inaccessible to violence: the proper sphere of “understanding”, language.”

The view that the EU having the pure means was already presented and asserted as an integral component of European identity by Romano Prodi in a speech that he made at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques Paris, on 29 May 2001:

The genius of the founding fathers lay in translating extremely high political ambitions, which were present from the beginning, into a series of more specific, almost technical decisions. This indirect

approach made further action possible. Rapprochement took place gradually. From confrontation

we moved to a willingness to cooperate in the economic sphere and then on to integration… the Union has a role to play in world "governance": in relations between European States, the rule of

law has replaced the crude interplay of power. After so many bloody conflicts, the Europeans have

declared their "right to peace". That gives us a very special role to play: by making a success of integration we are demonstrating to the world that it is possible to create a method for peace (Prodi, 2001/ emphases added).

However, what is a matter of interest is not the achievements of European integration process, but what these achievements come to mean for the rest of the world steadily over the decades, and how Europe is depicted vis-à-vis the outside world; an emerging and alternative centre of (civil) influence beyond the hard powers of the world and a source of inspiration for the path to follow for the rest.8 Additionally, what is of interest is how the world outside Europe has imagined to be

8_{“Duchene was remarkably prescient in his assessment of Europe's future role… Europe is acting as a model of a new}

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conducive to be elevated towards and through the European standards. While in Duchene’s vision Europe comes to mean as an asset for the world security;9_{so is again in Mogherini’s view,}10_{in the}

broad sense for the former, and the narrow sense for the latter.

Ian Manners, the inventor of the term normative power Europe, criticizes the ways in which the use of terms “civil, civilian, civilianize, civilianizing, civilize, civilization, and civilizing as if they were interchangeable” by particularly problematizing the term ‘civilizing’ against its connotations of colonial Eurocentric narratives; and by generally arguing against the concept of ‘civilian power’ as it was built upon Cold War mentality and “assumptions about the fixed nature of the nation-state, the importance of direct physical power, and the notion of national interest.” (Manners, 2002: 238; Manners, 2007: 16). However, while Manners asserts that the concept of ‘civilian power’ is short of adequately appreciate “what [the EU] is, does and should do”, he disregards an essential quality of the conceptualization; its endurance and adaptability over diverse (geo)political contexts as well as its continuous adoption by both official and academic accounts.

Even Mogherini, while dethroning the concept, also embraces it as an essential character of the EU.11 Back in 2000s, the concept was endowed with central importance by Romano Prodi at the very start of his term with announcing that the “aim [is ] to become a global civil power” and also underlined that the one of the primary ways of achieving this goal is to “project European model of society into the wider world.” (Prodi, 2000). As mentioned above, Solana, still, promoted the EU’s “unrivalled claim as a global ‘civil power” in the aftermath of 9/11. Barroso, in 2004, announced that “strengthen the European Union as a civilian power” also as his “goal” (Barroso,

remaining true to its core characteristics of civilian means and ends, developing its credentials as a force for the diffusion of civilian and democratic standards. In the process, it has developed a model of a superpower that is distinctive from its American and Soviet predecessors.” (McCormick, 2007, 83).

9_{“Western Europe could in a sense be the first of the world's civilian centres of power... a primarily civilian power on}

the scale of Western Europe... could play a very important and potentially constructive role. More and more, security policies today, even for the super-powers, consist in shaping the international milieu often in areas which at first sight have little to do with security. From this point of view Western Europe would be endowed with resources… which could give it great influence” ((Duchene 1972, 43)

10_{“A stronger European Union in the field of security and defence is good for Europeans and is good for the rest of}

the world” (EEAS, 2017).

11_{This tension or ambivalence can also be trailed in the wording of the Global Strategy: “The European Union has}

always prided itself on its soft power – and it will keep doing so, because we are the best in this field” and “[i]n this fragile world, soft power is not enough…” (EEAS, 2016: 4 and 44).

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2004). However, what should be taken into consideration is that the conceptual package of civilian power always comes with projecting this identity abroad, as put forward by Manners that “it is extremely easy to characterize the EU as a ‘civilian power’ and then take a simple step to granting it the mission of ‘civilizing’ international relations” (Manners, 2007: 16) and also as in Prodi’s self-reliant eloquence: “We are not simply here to defend our own interests: we have a unique historic experience to offer. The experience of liberating people from poverty, war, oppression and intolerance. We have forged a model of development and continental integration based on the principles of democracy, freedom and solidarity and it is a model that works.” (Prodi, 2000). The concept has also been put into circulation in academic debates through the 1990s and 2000s, to define EU’s role and place respectively in post-Cold War order and in the aftermath of 9/11. (Bretherton and Vogler, 2006; Diez, 2005; Hettne and Soderbaum, 2005; Manners, 2002, 2006, 2007; Maull, 1990, 2005; Sjursen, 2007, Stavridis, 2001). However, within these debates, the permeation of military vocabulary into the conceptual construction of civilian power appears as a matter of interest which marks the works of Maull (2005), Stavridis (2001) and Diez (2005) and also Manners (2006). Maull asserts that “civilian power does not describe any inability or unwillingness to use military force; rather, it suggests the specific way in which military force will be applied - never alone and autonomously, but only collectively, only with international legitimacy, and only in the pursuit of 'civilizing' international relations” (781) while Stavridis highlights that “the question of how to use military power as part of a civilian power concept has not been studied sufficiently” (44), and Diez puts forward that “normative and military power are not necessarily incompatible” with assuming that “the concept of ‘normative power’, rather than being distinct from ‘civilian power’, is already embedded in the latter” (635), Manners also explains the rise of military means in the European tool-box as not incompatible with normative presence: “Despite a gradual involvement in military power (WEU actions, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Congo), the EU’s normative power has, so far, predetermined its exercise of physical force” (173).

These accounts eventually come to embody what Benjamin points as the “basic dogma” of both legal schools: “just ends can be attained by justified means, justified means used for just ends. Natural law attempts, by the justness of the ends, to ‘justify’ the means; positive law to ‘guarantee’ the justness of the ends through the justification of the means. This antinomy would prove

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insoluble… if justified means on the one hand and just ends on the other were in irreconcilable conflict.” (Benjamin, 1978: 278).

In half a century, the content of the concept of civilian power has been altered decisively. While Duchene stressed the ways in which Europe could contribute to the world security by its experience on unconventional (non-defence oriented) approaches to security policy, both the academic and official discourses, recently, have explored the opportunities for compatibility of military power with civilian ends to redefine the role and place of the EU in a supposedly altered conditions of global order - what eventually crystallized in the HR/VP’s speech as security and defence ‘in the narrow sense’ that shall be added to the European toolbox.

It is possible to observe the implications of this shift in rhetorical formulations as in “the EU is to punch its weight in the wider world” (EU HR/VP, 2015 :145), however its impact has been more profound on the conceptualizations of EU’s identity. Its very first salient consequence has been stepping back from the aim to export European model to the outer world and shift the focus to a more security and military oriented discourse.1213 This further and more dramatically affect the sibling conceptualizations of ‘civilian power’ like Manner’s normative power Europe (Manners, 2002) and Leonard’s Europe’s transformative power (Leonard, 2005), since both draw upon the feature that mirroring European-self in forms of norms or laws as a model which was discarded with the EUGS.

Although increasing salience of discursive and policy-related features of hard power have already been on the agenda since the Treaty of Maastricht, and most notably with the 2003 European Security Strategy, its ultimate influence on shaping the identity discourse can be detected with stepping back from the EU as a model for the geographies that it is intended to be so. As it is possible to clearly observe this security orientation in the process started with the Bratislava

12_{Although increasing salience of discursive features of hard power have already been on the agenda since the Treaty}

of Maastricht, and most notably with the 2003 European Security Strategy, its ultimate influence on shaping the identity discourse can be detected with stepping back from the EU as a model for the geographies that it is intended to be so.

13_{“The EU has increasingly included military means in its foreign policy machinery. This is most obvious in the}

development of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) as part of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) pillar, including the Rapid Reaction Force and various political and military committees to govern military efforts on EU level” (Diez, 2005: 623).

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declaration,14_{stepping back from the model role has also been addressed within the process of}

developing the EUGS.

1.3. ‘Unbearable lightness’ of interests: Geo-politicizing Europe

Presented as the “lead pen holder” of the EUGS (Tocci, 2017: 487), Tocci describes the previous reflection and writing phases of the EUGS and highlights how “the Strategy15_{discarded the notion}

that the EU is the only or even best possible model to be followed by other regions… in a paradigmatic leap, rather than assuming the EU would Europeanize the world, the EUGS does not even take for granted the security, prosperity and democracy within the Union itself.” (Tocci, 2017: 497 - 498).

This concession should be taken as the corollary of depicting the state of Europe in a particular way and very different from the previous European Security Strategy (ESS); while ESS started with describing Europe as having “never been so prosperous, so secure nor so free” (CoEU, 2009: 27), the EUGS depiction of Europe is dark since it assumes that the EU is under an existential threat because of many challenges that it has been facing off: “We live in times of existential crisis, within and beyond the European Union. Our Union is under threat. Our European project, which has brought unprecedented peace, prosperity and democracy, is being questioned.” (EEAS, 2016: 13). With a governance structure that has proved to be inefficient for even the EU would not be proper to propose to the outer world for imitation. Yet, curiously, within the text which is presented as a groundwork16 for the Global Strategy, the EU is not at all portrayed as it suffers from

14_{In the December of 2016, European leaders held first ever informal meeting in Bratislava to discuss the future of}

the Union, particularly to display a concrete ceremonial standing against a wide range of issues, most notably Brexit and refugee crisis, among others. However, the security narrative took the lead as it also covers most of the issues at stake. As it was put forward in the annexed document to the Bratislava declaration – the roadmap – it was considered essential to “strengthen EU cooperation on external security and defence, in a challenging geopolitical environment.” (European Council, 2016: 5/ emphasis added).

15_{“We will not strive to export our model, but rather seek reciprocal inspiration from different regional experiences”}

(EEAS, 2016: 32).

16_{The European Union in a changing global environment: A more connected, contested and complex world, 25 June}

2015. Tocci defines the text as “an assessment of the strategic environment is the ground zero of a strategy. It is the snapshot of the world, and how it is expected to evolve, that informs ensuing policy action: it is the diagnosis that precedes the prognosis.” (Tocci, 2016a: 464). Selchow observes that this text, which depicts a post post-Cold War world situation, exposes two contradictory tendencies: “On the one side, the ‘interpretive disposition’ in the text effectively rules out any questioning of existing EU institutions and programmes – they are strictly symbolically

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vulnerability: “the very nature of our Union – a construct of intertwined polities – gives us a unique advantage to steer the way in a more complex, more connected, but also more contested world….As a microcosm of complexity and connectivity and the most successful experiment of conflict transformation on a continental scale, the EU has experience in dealing with challenges and opportunities that now present themselves on a global scale” (EU HR/VP, 2015: 123 and 151). Howsoever, discarding the feature of being a model comes with unavoidable consequences of which losing the ground of legitimacy17 for international action is second to nothing in this regard. Since all previous foreign policy conduct had been designed to export European norms, standards and policies, in short, the European path to development,18 and promoted as ‘Europeanization’ process which constitutes the discursive and operational nucleus of these efforts, renouncing it inevitably creates a void that must be filled - the how of which is of a particular interest for this study as it is built on the hypothesis that this rupture in EU identity constitutes the European context in which the EU-Turkey Deal, as a geopolitical tool, has been made possible.

Tocci starts with criticizing the previous foreign policy endeavors, most notably the ENP, in a manner that is short nothing of an exercise in critical geopolitics, in particular with her understanding of the term ‘neighbourhood’, which according to her, “conveys a Eurocentric vision of a homogenous space beyond the EU’s borders” (Tocci, 2017: 496). Tocci seems to conceive

conserved. On the other side, [it] challenges established conceptions of the world, for instance, by bringing in the concept of a world of ‘human mobility’ or by deconstructing and rewriting established concepts, such as ‘polarity’ and ‘power’” (Selchow, 2016). It is also worth mentioning that while Diez asserts that post-1945 order had been based on seeing the nation state not as the pacifier but origin of the violence; Selchow observes in the making of the Global Strategy a mentality that once again endows nation-state as the guarantor of peace: “Paradoxically, although it is the unique, integrated nature of the EU that is regarded as the foundation of its strength in the contemporary ‘complex’ world… the concrete EU external approach is guided by ‘international thinking’, at the heart of which is the idea of the nation-state as the guarantor of peace” (Selchow, 2016) by quoting this part from the text: “Beyond the imperative of fostering democracy, human rights (including the rights of minorities) and good governance, the conflict over Ukraine underlines the need to bolster the statehood prerogatives of our neighbours. These include recognised and protected borders, a sustainable fiscal capacity, as well as functioning customs services and police and military forces.” (EU HR/VP, 2015: 132).

17_{“Europeanisation is a legitimising process through which the EU “strives to gain meaning, actorness and presence}

internationally” (Jones and Clark, 2008: 546).

18_{“[T]he ENP is a means to export the European model to neighbouring countries and to act as a soft power to secure}

its borders” (Beauguitte, Richard and Guérin-Pace 2015: 854); “[ENP], represents both the articulation of the limits of Europe’s physical and legal space and, through a series of rewards for ‘neighbourliness’, an extension of the norms and discourses of ‘Europeanness’ beyond those limits.” (Jones and Clark, 2008: 551).

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the founding conceptualization of the ENP as a reductionist earth-labelling which “eliminates the tremendous geographical diversity and particularity of places on the surface of the earth. Difference becomes sameness. Geographical heterogeneity becomes geopolitical homogeneity. This ‘loss of geography’ is … a recurrent feature of those geopolitical discourses that play the game of earth labeling” (O’Tuathail, 2003: 17). Tocci, even, expresses her discontent for the neighbourhood concept with saying that: “[it] is only used once in the EUGS and in reference to the European Neighbourhood Policy, a policy born in 2004 and whose name survives to this day.” (Tocci, 2017: 496-497). Providing that the EU’s commitments to the enlargement and neighborhood countries are clearly acknowledged in the EUGS, denouncing the previous approach, brings out the question that what conceptual substitute is provided in place of Europeanisation? It is resilience, a broader concept covers a much larger area than in terms of both geography and policy,19 and as it is defined in the EUGS, “the ability of states and societies to reform, thus withstanding and recovering from internal and external crises… A resilient state is a secure state, and security is key for prosperity and democracy… resilience is a broader concept, encompassing all individuals and the whole of society. A resilient society featuring democracy, trust in institutions, and sustainable development lies at the heart of a resilient state” (EEAS, 2016: 23). It is designed to cover both state and society as well as it is to be pursued within and without Europe. The main rationale to introduce such a concept is presented as “it is in the interest of our citizens to invest in the resilience of states and societies to the east stretching into Central Asia, and south down to Central Africa” (EEAS, 2016: 23), however the internal dimension20_{is also related to}

external dimension as it is supposed that “living up consistently to our values internally will determine our external credibility and influence” (EEAS, 2016: 15). What can be concluded about the concept is that it arguably aims to enhance security both home and abroad, thus the invention

19_{“… to invest in the resilience of states and societies to the east stretching into Central Asia, and to the south down}

to Central Africa. Under the current EU enlargement policy, a credible accession process grounded in strict and fair conditionality is vital to enhance the resilience of countries in the Western Balkans and of Turkey. Under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), many people wish to build closer relations with the Union: our enduring power of attraction can spur transformation in these countries. But resilience is also a priority in other countries within and beyond the ENP. The EU will support different paths to resilience, targeting the most acute cases of governmental, economic, societal and climate/energy fragility, as well as develop more effective migration policies for Europe and its partners.” (EEAS, 2016: 9).

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of a security-oriented concept which has been introduced to forge a common narrative for European identity as well as for common foreign policy vision and action.

The main difference from the previous term - which marked by the concept Europeanisation - – (however it seems more like a continuity in the logic apart from the orientational concept,), is that while the primary foreign policy leading mentality, which also informed conduct and action, of the EU foreign policy in 2000s as it had been solidified under the efforts towards neighbours at the east and south by proposing to share or gather under the outcome of the post second World War institutional experience of the European integration process without any access to institutions or to have a saying on the decision making-process of the Union; the new strategic concept rather proposes to enhance security in a supposedly deteriorating environment by differentiating levels of contributions from partners as they wish to participate into the securitizing process. In the former, the expectation from the neighbours was to assume and obey the constituent features of European identity21 without being recognized as European;22 in the latter it is to come the terms with the European concerns regarding the Union’s security at first, and then an overall security construction for neighbours and others, again with the recipes invented by the EU, to take action internally in their own domestic environments.

The EUGS and the strategic reflection period preceding it, were, indeed, tailored to craft and brand a new identity for the EU that shall rise on the centrality of the security which also marked a rupture from the past in terms of a merely civilian and soft power EU, as stated accordingly “to preserve

21_{Diez indicates in the context of Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) and the Barcelona process which forms the}

basis of EMP that the norms included in the Declaration (rule of law, democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms, societal diversity and pluralism, etc.) which have a binding character for signatories are “part of what Manners sees as ‘the EU’s normative basis’ and are included in the Copenhagen Criteria. They are therefore prerequisites for EU membership and, by extension, constructed as characteristics of all EU member states…while the Declaration claims to establish a partnership between its signatories, it becomes clear very soon that most of the text is primarily directed at the non-EU Mediterranean states. Since, on the basis of the Copenhagen Criteria, the EU member states see themselves as having fulfilled the principles written into the Declaration, the principles’ explicit incorporation makes sense primarily as a means to exert influence on a set of others that do not stick to them.” (Diez, 2005: 631).

22_{However, as commonly regarded, the ENP was originated in the ESS, and thus oriented around a concern for}

security: “[A]s a policy the ENP originated in the European Security Strategy – the ENP’s ultimate aim is to help the EU address the threats it currently faces… the ENP is in fact the Commission’s response in proposing ways for addressing the security threats for the EU arising from the area of its neighbours” (Kostadinova, 2009: 247); “the seeds of what became the European Neighbourhood Policy were sown precisely when the ESS was being drafted.” (Tocci, 2017: 495).

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and develop what we achieved so far, a step change is essential” (EEAS, 2016: 19). More than a decade ago, Zaki Laidi asked the question that ‘why Europe cannot be a superpower?’ and answered it as such “Europe has several instruments of power, even the instruments of superpower. But its chance to achieve the rank of superpower is very low… because, fundamentally, Europeans neither live like nor see themselves as the ultimate guarantors of their security”23 (Laidi, 2005: 16). Considering Laidi’s conditionality with Global Strategy’s ambition for Europeans “must take greater responsibility of their security” and “must be able to protect Europe”, it can arguably be asserted that the EU aspires to be a ‘superpower’ by consolidating its hard-power capabilities with a view to provide self-protection from threats. Accordingly, the EU, as is defined or imagined under the EUSG, also seems to show symptoms of seeing the world like a ‘superpower’ as these are asserted by Laidi:

To be the ultimate guarantor one’s own security means constantly speculating on the conditions of existential survival, the extreme situations that could jeopardize it, and tight interweaving of different dimensions of power… Being a superpower also means integrating the fact that one’s survival is at stake almost on a daily basis… [and] a superpower seeks to ‘create reality’ and not react to it… Hard power is the actor potentially trying to produce a world reality in its own image, whereas soft power does its best to influence it (Laidi, 2005: 17-18 and 20).

Evidences to this threat perception and existential anxiety are ubiquitous both in the texts of the EUGS and The European Union in a changing global environment, however, achieving beyond reactive action is also among the main aspirations of European strategic foreign policy reflection: “Reacting to crises is essential. But reaction alone is insufficient.” (EU HR/VP, 2015: 5), and what is considered key for the joined-up approach to Europe’s external action is “a proactive rather than reactive EU policy” (EU HR/VP, 2015: 149). However, it is certain that the EU can be considered in a liminal situation where the EU decisively leave being exclusively a civilian power and in the

23_{A view also voiced by Kagan in more historical terms: “The presence of American forces as a security guarantee in}

Europe was, as it was intended to be, the critical ingredient to begin the process of European integration. Europe’s evolution to its present state occurred under the mantle of the U.S. security guarantee and could not have occurred without it.”, but also with, to a certain degree, exorbitant philosophical comments: “The United States, in short, solved the Kantian paradox for the Europeans. Kant had argued that the only solution to the immoral horrors of the Hobbesian world was the creation of a world government. But he also feared that the “state of universal peace” made possible by world government would be an even greater threat to human freedom than the Hobbesian international order, inasmuch as such a government, with its monopoly of power, would become “the most horrible despotism.”11 How nations could achieve perpetual peace without destroying human freedom was a problem Kant could not solve. But for Europe the problem was solved by the United States.” (Kagan, 2002: 13 and 14).

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way of enhancing its deterrence by investing in its military capacity with a view to become a super-power; a target, as it is observed, not yet achieved.

While in the Strategy it is emphasized that “the EU Global Strategy starts at home”24 mentioning that the first priority of the EU is the security of the Union and that “the EU needs to be strengthened as a security community”; and, to this end, it is considered that “an appropriate level of ambition and strategic autonomy is important for Europe’s ability to foster peace and safeguard security within and beyond its borders” (EEAS, 2016: 18-20), and in turn, in The European Union in a changing global environment, it is observed that “current level of ambition and capability targets are not tailored to the degraded strategic environment”25 (EU HR/VP, 2015: 125-126). The operationalization of the resilience concept is announced to be realized through and in line with an underlying approach to all EU foreign policy making that is called ‘principled pragmatism’ which is said to “stem as much from a realistic assessment of the current strategic environment as from an idealistic aspiration to advance a better world” (EEAS, 2016: 8). However, it is also designed to overcome the tension between principles/values and interests which is considered as a ‘part of the old debate’ on normative power or civilian power Europe. Instead of upholding this dichotomy, the new strategic reasoning chooses to interweave interests with values26_{“in a manner}

which clarified that values are part and parcel of the definition of European interests” (Tocci, 2017:499). It is, of course, a very interesting way to by-pass the question posed by Benjamin regarding the irreconcilable conflict between means and ends: “The EU therefore has an interest in the security of its citizens and peace in its surrounding regions, in the prosperity of the Union

24_{However, its security mentality mostly proves the otherwise as the EUGS has more emphasis on the vision that}

European security starts abroad.

25_{Lack of ambition to be a ‘power’ is also an argument voiced by Kagan, before: “the political will to demand more}

power for Europe appears to be lacking” (Kagan, 2004: 68).

26_{Being a part of this ‘old debate,’ as indicated by Tocci, Diez also highlights the ways in which this interplay of}

norms/values and interests have been addressed before: “Another criticism of the EU as a normative power concerns its consistency… Thus, there have been charges of bias and arbitrariness related to the EU’s application of human rights… One version of this argument is that EU insistence on norms embodies strategic or economic interests. In the strong version of the argument, those interests are cloaked in a mantle of values and norms rhetoric. In a weaker, more sophisticated version… normative concerns and strategic interests always go together in the EU’s external relations (Diez, 2005: 624-625). See also: “Our interests and values go hand in hand. We have an interest in promoting our values in the world. At the same time, our fundamental values are embedded in our interests.” (EUGS, 2016:13)

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and sustainable development worldwide, in the resilience of its democratic systems, and in a rules based global order centred on international law and multilateral institutions.” (Tocci, 2017: 499). It is further clarified that how the driving philosophy of the Strategy should be correctly understood without having the impression that “the EU should compromise on its principles as a result of pragmatic interest-based considerations”:

The point is rather that of saying that the EU would remove its rose-tinted glasses and pragmatically look at the world as it is, and not as it would like to see it. The pragmatism comes into play in the

assessment of the external environment, not in the guidance to the EU regarding how to face up to

it… EU pragmatism should be principled. While different pathways, recipes and models are to be embraced, international law, including human rights and humanitarian law, should represent the benchmark for what is acceptable and what not for the EU... the EUGS sought to shelve the sterile debate between interests and values. The pragmatism would inform the diagnosis. The principles the prognosis. (Tocci, 2017: 499/emphases added).

Within this view it is claimed, the world beyond the borders of the EU would no more be imagined and spatialized as a homogenic geography that is a homogenic geography that is eager to be Europeanized, rather with an accompanying critical self-reflection of previous foreign policy exercise, notably European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), this new strategic gaze is allegedly committed to an approach that acknowledges and respects differences and adopts a no-one-size-fits-all policy perspective, as conceded in the EUGS: “there are many ways to build inclusive, prosperous and secure societies.” (25).

It is important to note that while post-1945 order was supposed to be built on a decisive rejection of power politics and geopolitical conflict,27 now, in turn, the post-Cold War process of building an identity for the EU is criticized and denounced on the grounds that it depends on a reductionist geopolitical reasoning, since “geopolitical reasoning works by the active suppression of the complex geographical reality of places in favor of controllable geopolitical abstractions” (O’Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 195). As regards this second turn, the violence is supposed to be detected, rather than in an active conflict, but through imposing a reductionist and homogenizing

27_{This view is already presented above as it is put forward by Diez, however, also Laidi also interrogates that whether}

the European project is compatible with the very idea of power” and underlines that “the philosophy of the European project is historically dominated by a refusal of power’ (Laidi, 2005:15-16).

Geopolitics of Identity Constructions: The case of 18 March EU-Turkey Deal

Geopolitics of Identity Constructions in EU-Turkey relations:

The case of 18 March EU-Turkey Deal

Contents