Join us, in person or online on the evening of Wednesday 19th April, from 1700 to1830 for The Emre Işık annual lecture hosted by the Department of Sociology, the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies, supported by MUSSI.
Title: Turkey and the EU: Is there a way forward?
Speaker: Dr Dimitar Bechev (Oxford University and The Atlantic Council)
The seminar will examine relations between Turkey and the EU after almost twenty years of rule by the AK Party and President Erdogan. After making significant early progress with its application to join the EU, Turkey went increasingly cold on the idea after 2007. Since then, the relationship with the EU has been characterised by regression and mutual distrust. Yet, Turkey remains an important partner of the EU on a range of important issues, including migration, security and the Ukraine war.
This event will evaluate the Turkish relationship with the EU in advance of important elections in Turkey which will determine whether Erdogan remains in office or produce a dramatic end to the AKP dominance of Turkish politics.
Dr. Dimitar Bechev is a distinguished visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, a lecturer at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford, and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has authored several books, including Turkey under Erdogan (Yale University Press, 2022), Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia (Rowman, 2019), and Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe (Yale University Press, 2017), and has co-edited Russia Rising: Putin's Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Dr. Bechev's research interests primarily focus on the politics of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Turkey, as well as Russian foreign policy. He has published extensively in both academic and policy formats with leading think tanks such as the International Crisis Group, Carnegie, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), the Atlantic Council, EU Institute for Security Studies, and RUSI on topics such as EU foreign relations, the politics of Turkey and the Balkans, Russian foreign policy, and energy security. He is also a frequent contributor to publications such as Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera Online, Oxford Analytica, Politico.EU, and EU Observer and he is frequently cited in leading newspapers such as the Financial Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.
Dr. Bechev holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, was a lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2016 to 2020, and served as senior policy fellow and head of the Sofia office at the European Council on Foreign Relations from 2010 to 2014. In addition, he has held fellowships at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna, Harvard's Center for European Studies, the European Institute at the London School of Economics, and Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. He has provided advice and counsel to several influential entities, including the US State Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK), the European Commission, the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Parliament, and various governments in the EU and the Western Balkans.
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