Between Rapprochement and Rejection: Identity and Cultural Drivers in Europe-Turkey Relations

Introduction

This report contains the proceedings of the expert session of the EUNIC-FEUTURE Stakeholder Conference titled “Between Rapprochement and Rejection: Identity and Culture Drivers in the Europe-Turkey Relations” held at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Yeniköy, Istanbul, on September 14, 2018. The idea for the conference first originated during the research conducted for the Horizon 2020 project FEUTURE (The Future of EU-Turkey Relations: Mapping Dynamics and Testing Scenarios). The conference brought together fifteen international partners to map the dynamics of EU-Turkey relations across six thematic dimensions (politics, security, economics, energy, migration, and identity), examine underlying narratives and thematic drivers, substantiate the most likely future scenario(s) and assess its implications, and draw policy recommendations. Two partners of the project, Koç University and Sabancı University, were mainly responsible for the thematic field of culture and identity, where they sought to analyze and understand the mutual representations of identity in the relations between Turkey/the Ottoman Empire and European countries since the 19th century through to the present day. Thanks to the efforts of Johanna Chovanec from the University of Vienna, who took part in the project as a researcher while based at Sabancı University, the interest in cultural interaction and identity issues in the relationship between the two sides led to a cooperation between these universities and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Istanbul, resulting in the aforementioned conference. The Austrian Cultural Forum is part of the cultural network EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture).