Repositioning Türkiye in Europe’s Defence Landscape: Insights from the Türkiye–Italy Partnership

Date: 10 December 2025

Time: 14:00–15:3 PLURIEX at the IKV 60th Anniversary Meeting: Plural, Cross-Sectoral Dialogue on Türkiye–EU Relations

The 60th anniversary meeting of the Economic Development Foundation (İktisadi Kalkınma Vakfı – IKV), titled “Türkiye–EU Relations: The Way Forward and the Role of IKV”, convened a broad and highly engaged community of academics, civil society representatives, policy practitioners, and think-tank experts working on Türkiye–EU relations. The meeting served as an important space for dialogue at a moment when Türkiye–EU relations continue to be shaped by overlapping political, economic, and security dynamics and by debates over the EU’s evolving institutional and policy architecture.

Across the sessions, participants reflected on both the structural challenges facing Türkiye–EU relations and the possibilities for renewed engagement. Discussions addressed the roles of civil society and policy institutes in sustaining dialogue and expertise, as well as the need for stronger cooperation between knowledge-producing communities and policy actors. A recurring theme was the value of people-to-people contacts and bringing together different sectors—academia, civil society, and the policy community—to ensure that debates on Türkiye–EU relations remain analytically grounded, inclusive, and responsive to changing regional and global conditions.

Importantly, the meeting enabled wide-ranging discussion across key policy domains central to Türkiye–EU relations, including:

• the EU’s changing institutional architecture and the implications for Türkiye’s place in Europe’s future;
• debates on differentiated and flexible integration and what these might mean for accession and partnership models;
• migration and mobility governance, and the wider politics of borders and responsibility-sharing;
• shifting debates on security and defence cooperation, alongside Europe’s evolving strategic environment, increasing necessity for Europe’s geostrategic autonomy;
• the place of social policy, culture, and cultural diplomacy in sustaining societal connections; and
• challenges raised by Türkiye’s alignment with emerging EU frameworks, including discussions around SAFE and related policy constraints.

PLURIEX – Pluriversal Excellence in EU Studies was represented at the meeting by Prof. Dr Selcen Öner, PLURIEX Communication and Knowledge Dissemination Lead. Her participation supported PLURIEX’s wider commitment to strengthening connections between scholarly expertise and policy-facing debates, the interactions and collaboration between academics and civil society and to ensuring that discussions of Europe are not confined to a single institutional or geographic viewpoint.

The meeting also reaffirmed IKV’s long-standing role as a key convenor in Türkiye–EU relations—bringing together business, civil society, and academic communities and sustaining a shared space for informed discussion. The strong participation of scholars working on EU-related issues in Türkiye—alongside postgraduate and doctoral researchers—demonstrated the vitality of the field and the continued need for forums that enable collective reflection and cross-sectoral engagement.

In line with PLURIEX’s mission of epistemic pluriversality, this event strengthened a knowledge space where multiple perspectives on Europe—across disciplines, sectors, and geopolitical experiences—can meet, contest, and co-produce more inclusive understandings of Türkiye–EU relations.