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Browsing International Relations by Author "Eliküçük Yıldırım, Nilgün"
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Article Turkey in-between the EU and China: from Europeanization to cooperation with China(Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2023) Yılmaz, Gözde; Eliküçük Yıldırım, NilgünTurkey has been on the path of EU membership since the 2000s, and the democratization process was well underway during the initial years of its candidacy. However, this trend was reversed substantially, with Turkey growing increasingly authoritarian during the 2010s. This substantial democratic backsliding has led to increasing authoritarian cooperation with the authoritarian powers on the rise, one of which is China, whose increasing engagement and cooperation with Turkey marked an alternative gravity centre for Turkey to be pulled by. This article argues that Turkey, in line with the worsening domestic authoritarianism, has been engaging with the authoritarian powers for survival rather than engaging with the EU, which provided legitimacy to the rule of the AKP during the initial years of its rule.Article Use/misuse of Chinese BRI investment? BRI-related crony capitalism in Turkey(Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2023) Eliküçük Yıldırım, Nilgün; Yılmaz, GözdeCrony capitalism as a type of capitalism entailing the close relations of political authorities and business circles based on mutual profit maximization is not a new phenomenon in Turkey. However, crony relations have accelerated with the Justice and Development Party (Adalet Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) rule. Despite growing scholarly work on crony relations in the AKP era, the literature remains inward-oriented without analysing the external dimension of crony capitalism, which this article intends to alleviate by providing an analysis of crony capitalism and bringing back the external dimension through an analysis of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-related crony relations. It argues that the case of Turkey demonstrates how the BRI is used to feed instrumental cronyism without the promotion of China and how recipient countries use and misuse Chinese BRI investments to create alternative resources for the government’s cronies.