201. The Europeanization of the Aegean Dispute Between Turkey and Greece: A Constructivist/Discursive Approach.
- Author
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Yavaş, Gökçen
- Subjects
- *
EUROPEANIZATION , *INTERNATIONAL relations - Abstract
The Aegean dispute between Turkey and Greece refers to a package of interrelated issues over sovereignty and related rights in the Aegean Sea. The dispute in the area has profoundly had impact on the relations between these two countries since the 1970s and throughout the 1980s. The issues cover the disputes on territorial waters, national airspace, continental shelf, flight information regions, demilitarized status of Greek islands. The tensions in the Aegean region have gradually been overcome since 1998 with a view to easing Turkey?s accession to the European Union. Although the dispute has not resolved yet, it has become ?Europeanized? in the sense that the tensions have ceased in the 2000s with the European impact on the dispute. ?Europeanization? is used as a process through which the parties of the dispute and the dispute itself have been converged to a European mainstream. In this study, after giving an in-depth explanation of the background of the Aegean dispute and a definition of the concept of ?Europeanization?, the subject will be analyzed at three levels: First, the Europeanization process at the European Union level; second, (in order to understand how the European Union?s policies and instruments reflect on the Turco-Greek relations in terms of their foreign policy orientation levels) Greek foreign policy and how it uses the EU?s instruments in the pursuit of its national goals and its reflections on the dispute; and the implications in Turkish foreign policy in tackling the problem. When analyzing the term ?Europeanization? which provides us a wide range of theoretical frameworks, in the Aegean dispute, I will apply the discursive/constructivist approach as a theoretical framework. It briefly displays that the national foreign policies are not given but socially constructed. Foreign policy discourse provides us a set of statements setting a particular understanding of national foreign policies, interests and connections between goals and means. In this paper, the Copenhagen concept of ?securitization? and ?desecuritization? as a ?speech act? will be referred in analyzing the Aegean issue whether it is presented as a threat or shifted into a normal processes of political sphere in different times. These constructivist arguments and the foreign policy discourse will be centrally applied to analyze the possible transformation and adjustment of foreign policy discourses in this issue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2007