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Failed promises: economic integration, bureaucratic encounters, and the EU-Turkey Customs Union

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Abstract

European integration is based upon the promise to bring prosperity by creating economic and social equilibrium among member states and its regions via integrationist policies jointly managed by states and the institutions of the EU. As one common market initiative for greater economic integration in the wider region, goods circulate without tariff and customs duty barriers in the EU’s common customs area. Turkey, not an EU member, has been in this common market since 1996. The EU-Turkey Customs Union, which promised to bring deeper economic and political integration through eventual Turkish membership, represents Turkey’s aspirations to move from the periphery of Europe into its core. As an anthropological contribution to investigations of advanced European capitalism, this paper examines fundamental conflicts of interest between the EU and Turkey and locates them in their unequal power relations and in the disjuncture of each side’s overall objectives from economic integration. Most importantly, it shows that these interest conflicts have ramifications at the individual bureaucratic level and in daily bureaucratic practice. Dramatic expressions of Turkish state power, which are initially geared toward balancing out power inequities, exacerbate Turkish and EU officials’ failures to maintain at least a facade of mutually sustainable interests. Interpreted by EU officials as Turkish bureaucratic inertia, such disintegration of interests has implications for ongoing economic integration and membership negotiations between the two parties, with Turkish officials experiencing loss of control. The paper calls for a critical political economy that pays due attention to the cultural settings in which the former is embedded.

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Notes

  1. The literature on world-systems analysis and its processes of incorporation and peripheralization is vast. For a useful summary, see Wallerstein (2004).

  2. For anthropological and other ethnographic studies of the EU-building that paid special attention to Eurocratic encounters between officials from national governments and the EU institutions whether they took place in Brussels or in EU member states, see Abélès (1992); Abélès et al. (1993); Bellier (2000, 2002a, b); Geuijen et al. (2007, 2008); McDonald (1996, 2000); Muntigl et al. (2000); Shore (2000, 2002, 2007); Shore and Black (1994); Shore and Baratieri (2006), Thedvall (2006, 2007); Wodak (2009).

  3. See, DG TAXUD—Turkey: Customs Unions and preferential arrangements—General introduction, http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/customs/customs_duties/rules_origin/customs_unions/article_414_en.htm.

  4. Interviews with a consultant (March 13, 2009, Brussels) and a former trainee (June 2, 2009, Brussels) from Hill and Knowlton, both of who had worked on the Turkey-EU customs union campaign at the time. The Turkish government had hired another lobbying company in Washington to lobby the US government in order to get them lobby the EU publics. The Turkish government’s efforts resulted in the US Mission to the EU in Brussels and US embassies in big member states mobilizing their support at the EU level.

  5. Interview with a Hill and Knowlton consultant (March 13, 2009, Brussels).

  6. http://www.avrupa.info.tr/AB_ve_Turkiye/Gumruk_Birligi.html.

  7. See “Trade Relations between Turkey and the EC,” prepared by the Directorate-General for European Affairs, Undersecretariat of the Prime Ministry for Foreign Trade. Online available at http://www.dtm.gov.tr/dtmadmin/upload/AB/ABKurumsalDb/trade.doc.

  8. See “Turkey-EU Bilateral Trade and Trade with the World,” prepared by the Directorate-General for Trade (DG TRADE) of the European Commission, March 21, 2012. Online available at http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/html/113456.htm.

  9. Personal communication with a chemical engineer working in the pharmaceuticals sector (September 20, 2010, Istanbul).

  10. Sureyya Ciliv, the CEO of Turkcell, and Tugrul Kutadgobilik, the chairman of the Turkish Confederation of Employer Associations (TISK) both speaking at the “Opportunity of Enlargement to Europe: Turkey,” a working session organized by Turkcell during the European Business Summit held on March 26, 2009 in Brussels.

  11. From a statistical perspective, Turkey’s foreign trade with the EU seems in gradual decline, but this is due to the global financial crisis (Kirisci and Kaptanoglu 2011:715). Nevertheless, Turkish businessmen are now also eyeing on alternative markets in neighboring regions such as in Africa and the Middle East, and in Russia, with their politicians helping them by brokering politically favorable business environments.

  12. The customs union agreement went into force on July 1, 1996, upon ratification in the national parliaments of EU members and Turkey. A committee to ensure its proper functioning was subsequently established. The EC-Turkey Customs Union Joint Committee (CUJC) thus provides a common platform for officials from both sides to meet regularly and discuss issues directly pertaining to the technical functioning of the customs union. Cochaired by one representative from each side, the CUJC now meets once in six months, although it was initially envisaged to meet once a month. These meetings are exclusive gatherings with restricted access. Here, I rely on minutes of the meetings kept by a consultant based in Brussels who regularly attends on behalf of Turkey’s main representative body of big business.

  13. Ülgen and Zahariadis (2004:9) noted that the Commission invoked such a clause in the draft free trade agreement with Vietnam. But the issue remained unresolved since the matter repeatedly came up in subsequent CUJC meetings as we learn from the minutes of meetings from 2008 and 2009 to which I refer here.

  14. Interview with a Commission official (March 19, 2009, Brussels).

  15. Interview with two Commission officials from DG AGRI (April 9, 2008, Brussels).

  16. There are also those few who had been assigned to Turkey as seconded national experts by way of the twinning program and other bilateral administrative cooperation schemes for short-term stays.

  17. For a discussion of bureaucratic politics in terms of environmental policymaking within the framework of Turkey’s EU accession, see Unalan and Cowell (2009).

  18. See http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regcomitology/index.cfm?do=FAQ.FAQ, accessed on December 15, 2011.

  19. Interview with an official from the Permanent Delegation of Turkey to the EU (May 29, 2009, Brussels).

  20. Interview with a Commission official (May 25, 2009, Brussels).

  21. “Courtier” is a term first used in the 14th-century Renaissance Italy to describe those “in attendance at a royal court” and those “who practice flattery,” usually in order to get something or to win favors. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary-Entry on Courtier, available http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/courtier. Accessed on August 25, 2010.

  22. Interview with Commission officials (9 April, May 25, 2009, and June 2, 2009, Brussels).

  23. Phone conversation with a Turkish official from the Ministry of Economy (August 2, 2012).

  24. Interview with a Commission official from the DG Enlargement (December 18, 2008, Brussels). The “tomato quotas” this official was referring to are export quotas the EU applies to Turkey on tomato paste. Since 1998, the EU is not allowing Turkey to utilize its 38,400-ton duty-free tomato paste export quota due to a dispute over duty-free EU meat exports to Turkey. Over quota imports of tomato paste to the EU are subject to a 15 % tariff. In 2006, the tariff quota for prepared tomato decreased to 8,900 tons in order for a reduction in the most-favored nation duty to be applied at 100 % (2006/999/EC: Decision No 2/2006 of the EC-Turkey Association Council of October 17, 2006, amending Protocols 1 and 2 to Decision No 1/98 on the trade regime for agricultural products.) The nature of the dispute between Turkey and the EU over beef and live bovine animals is quite complicated to cover in here.

  25. Interview with a Turkish official (May 29, 2009, Brussels).

  26. In another case with an imperial cultural context, Uchiyamada (2004:7) makes a similar point regarding Japanese officials, who he described as “beautifully decorated surface matters.” He associated lower level bureaucrats’ acting like “subalterns, who are not allowed to express their views, [but] are nevertheless expected to be present to show their corporeal and collective conformity” to Japan’s imperial history and its reflection in Japanese bureaucratic culture.

  27. Interview with a Turkish official (May 29, 2009, Brussels). For an ethnographic study of Turkish bureaucracy from the peripheries of state power, see Alexander (2002).

  28. Interview with a Commission official from DG MARKT (June 2, 2009, Brussels).

  29. Interview with a Commission official from DG TRADE (February 4, 2009, Brussels).

  30. Interview with a Turkish official (December 10, 2008, Brussels).

  31. Interview with a senior-level bureaucrat from Turkey’s Delegation to the EU (December 10, 2008, Brussels).

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Acknowledgments

An internship with the European Economic and Social Committee during initial stages of fieldwork in Brussels from February to May 2009 provided me with the time, energy, encouragement, and insider’s access to Eurocracy. Fieldwork in Brussels from June 2008 to June 2009 was generously funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Inc. (Grant Nr: 7783). I thank Thomas M. Wilson, Denis O’Hearn and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Firat, B. Failed promises: economic integration, bureaucratic encounters, and the EU-Turkey Customs Union. Dialect Anthropol 37, 1–26 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-012-9283-9

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