Turkey and the Balkans

Başak Z. Alpan is Associate Professor and Lecturer in European Politics and Political Sociology at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration and Centre for European Studies at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. She is also the coordinator of the LEAP (‘Linking to Europe at the Periphery’) Network, funded by the Jean Monnet Networks Scheme under Erasmus Plus Programme, and the executive board member of the Centre for European Studies of the Middle East Technical University.Ahmet Erdi Öztürk is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at London Metropolitan University, UK. He also works as Marie Sklodowska- Curie fellow at Coventry University in the UK and GIGA in Germany; an associate researcher at Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes; and Non- Residence Scholar at ELIAMEP’s Turkey Programme. He has authored and edited five books, around 30 journal articles, numerous policy reports, opinion pieces, and he is the co- editor of four special issues on Turkish politics.

• Introduction: Turkey and the Balkans: bringing the Europeanisation/De-Europeanisation nexus into question 1. A rival or an awkward partner? Turkey’s relationship with the West in the Balkan 2. Reconstruction of the ‘regional power’ role during the pandemic: Turkey’s COVID-19 diplomacy towards the Balkans 3. Turkish foreign policy in the Balkans amidst ‘soft power’ and ‘de- Europeanisation’ 4. A delicate balancing act: Turkish- Bulgarian relations within the context of foreign and domestic politics 5. Securitizing the Aegean: de- Europeanizing Greek-Turkish relations 6. Foreign direct investment (FDI) as indicator of regime type: contemporary Serbian-Turkish relations 7. Measuring Turkey’s contemporary influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina: myth and reality 8. Relations between Turkey and Kosovo: factors and dynamics 9. Assessing a decade of Romania- Turkey strategic partnership in an era of ambivalence and ‘De-Europeanisation’