by S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell
In 2015, the EU revised its Strategy for Central Asia, and finalized an Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Kazakhstan. These welcome steps will not turn the EU into a regional powerhouse overnight, but provide the EU with a platform to play a constructive role in Central Asia. The EU can achieve that if it avoids focusing on issues where it has little hope of direct influence, such as regional security affairs and domestic governance. Instead, to gain such a role eventually, the EU should focus on revitalizing the promise of its visionary initiative of the 1990s – the Transport Corridor linking Europe to Asia via the Caucasus and Central Asia – which it allowed to slip, handing the initiative to other powers, primarily China.
Svenska Dagbladet, December 12, 2015.
Svante Cornell: EU gör säkerhetspolitiskt självmål mot Turkiet
Det är ett misstag att tro att Turkiet närmar sig Väst, trots att landet redan är en del av Nato och att EU för samtal om medlemskap. President Erdogan går i en helt annan riktning och Europa borde inse att hans politik innebär säkerhetsrisker.
Turkey Transformed: The Origins and Evolution of Authoritarianism and Islamization Under the AKP
This study’s excavation of the ideological and political origins of the AKP sheds light both on Turkey’s current situation and its future trajectory. In the process, however, it also yields insights about some of the myopic or unwarranted assumptions underlying policy thinking about Turkey that have implications for policymakers going forward.