Seeking Complementarities in the Future Security Strategies of Turkey and Europe
SEEKING COMPLEMENTARITIES IN THE FUTURE SECURITY STRATEGIES OF TURKEY AND EUROPEAYHAN BAKAR, Justice and Home Affairs: Impact of the European Union on the Internal Security of Turkey (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)MEHMET EFE BIRESSELIOGLU, European Energy Security: Turkey's Future Role and Impact (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)CIGDEM USTUN, Turkey and European Security Defence Policy: Compatibility and Security Cultures a Globalized World (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010)Each of this trio of books addresses an important aspect of Turkey's evolving security relationship with the European Union. There are a few points of overlap, but they complement each other well.Ustun begins by setting out a theoretical framework on the effects of globalization on security and security cultures. She argues for an expansive view of security policy, including economic and other dimensions of human security. Globalization means that the difference between international and national security largely disappeared: effect of deterritorialization on national securities, while decreasing the perceived authority of providing increased interdependence among states (37).The chapter on security culture sets up a framework for comparing the security cultures of Turkey and the EU, the latter being presented a regional security community, drawing on liberal approaches within international relations. But Ustun also draws on constructivism to argue that perceptions, norms, ideas, and beliefs guide the decision-makers sorting out the strategic priorities of the foreign and security policies (49). Her conception of security culture is one that can change over time, new experience is absorbed, coded, and culturally translated (50). She sees culture part of everyday life, literally everywhere (52), and says that theories of security and foreign affairs cannot be separated from the effects of culture. The core of the book's comparison of security cultures is between the EU's self-perception as liberal institutional and democratic and Turkey's perception of herself a realist (60).Ustun conceptualizes Turkey's security perception being affected by four main identities present domestic debate-state, nationalist, Islamic/conservative and European-none of which is likely to seem implausible to an informed observer of Turkish politics. Evidence includes quotations from policymakers, named and unnamed, newspapers and official documents well secondary sources. She tracks a rather consistent security perception over the course of several periods of the Republic's history, yielding foreign policy in line with the state identity and traditional regardless of changing domestic policy orientations of different parties power (83). But she also shows evolution policy toward neighboring and regions under the influence of globalization. She argues that the founders of the Turkish Republic constructed a national identity, which accepts the Traditional/Realist approach foreign policy and the non-interference principle the Middle East (75). NATO membership is depicted a function not only of geopolitics, but also of culture (81). After a relatively brief influence of Islamic identity on foreign policy the 1990s, the post-9/11 period seen, she argues, a diminution of the relative importance of the state identity, even while the traditional/realist emphasis remained the field of counterterrorism. This survey sets up a comparison with the EU's security culture the following chapter.Ustun describes the EU's security culture having a civilian and global or international character. The EU, she argues, has a weight political issues which is based on civilian power rather than military power, which uses soft security rather than hard security, meaning part that it aims to shape the environment which it operates (119-120) by promoting human security. …