Damla Cihangir-Tetik, one of the Ph.D. students of political science, participated in the 58th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Baltimore (Maryland), USA on 22-25 February 2017 and presented the paper titled “The European Union and Turkey as Foreign Aid donors: Patterns of competition or complementarity”, co-authored with Prof. Meltem Müftüler-Baç. You can find the abstract of the paper below.
The European Union and Turkey as Foreign Aid Donors: Patterns of Competition or Complementarity?
Damla Cihangir-Tetik and Meltem Müftüler-Baç
Abstract
The European Union's development policy is an important tool in its foreign policy, going beyond the more traditional analysis of its role as an international actor. The EU's Development Policy could potentially play an important role in alternative modes of integration, especially with such countries as Turkey. While the development policy does not stand alone as a separate chapter in negotiations, candidate countries are expected to contribute to that specific policy area upon their accession to the EU. It is, therefore, important to see whether they could potentially play a role in the EU's foreign policy in that aspect. This becomes a particularly important consideration, especially with Turkey. That is because Turkey's development and humanitarian aid increased significantly during the last decade. This paper aims to assess the possible avenues of complementarity and differentiated integration between Turkey and the EU in that realm, and proposes that Turkey and the EU have overlapping competencies and interest areas with regards to development aid. It remains to be seen whether and if such complementarity exists between Turkey and the EU, and whether this would enable them to overcome some of the challenges they face in the Turkish accession process. The paper will first analyze whether significant patterns of cooperation in development and cooperation policy area could be seen as differentiated integration. Secondly, it will examine the evolution of Turkey’s development and cooperation policy. Finally, it scrutinizes whether it is possible for both the EU and Turkey to cooperate in this specific policy area, and if so under which conditions. In this regard, the article proposes that the development and cooperation policy is one of the main areas in which Turkey could end up with closer integration into the EU. The paper provides a comparative analysis of the Turkish and the EU developmental and humanitarian aid to third parties, enabling us to assess the patterns of competition or complementarity between the EU and Turkey.
Keywords: EU, Turkey, Enlargement, Development and Cooperation Policy, Foreign Policy