Southeast European and Black Sea Studies

22/10/2024

Complementarity between the EU and NATO in light of the war in Ukraine: an analysis from the perspective of collective securitization theory, by Armağan Gözkaman

📌 Gözkaman, by using the prism of collective securitization theory (CST), explores NATO & EU’s strategic alignment and corresponding measures, the notion of complementarity, for addressing Russia’s war in Ukraine.

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Although the majority of studies on collective securitization theory (CST) focus primarily on states as the principal actors, certain scholars also concede the potential occurrence of collective se...

21/10/2024

A neighbour no more: evolution of Ukraine in the EU geopolitical discourse from the 1990s to the post-Russian invasion, by Selin Türkeş-Kılıç

📌 Türkeş-Kılıç explores the evolution of the EU’s geopolitical discourse on Ukraine from the 1990s to the aftermath of Russia’s 2022 invasion by analysing the statements of EU officials, particularly within the European Commission.

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in many ways, significantly altered the perceptions of both countries. This study employs a critical geopolitics framework to analyse the evolution of the E...

02/09/2024

Our 3rd issue of 2024 is out! Including the special section on “The ‘Russian factor’: implications for the EU’s policy in the Black Sea/Caucasus region” and more!


📌 Interested? Find the full issue at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fbss20/24/3

26/06/2024

📌Our 2nd issue of 2024 is out!

📌This special issue, ‘Continuity and Change in Turkish Politics: Economic and Behavioral Explanations of Democratic Backsliding,’ examines the 2023 Turkish General elections, presenting alternative perspectives on how the incumbent party maintains its electoral success. Thanks very much to our Guest Editors, Mustafa Aydın and Kerem Yıldırım.

Continuity and Change in Turkish Politics: Economic and Behavioral Explanations of Democratic Backsliding. Volume 24, Issue 2 of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies

14/06/2024

📌 Chechen diaspora members as foreign fighters in Syria and Ukraine: a diachronic study, by Emil A. Souleimanov and Roberto Colombo

📌 OPEN ACCESS!

Souleimanov and Colombo, through the data collected from in-depth interviews, examine the willingness of Western Europe-based Chechen diaspora members to travel to Syria and Ukraine as foreign fighters.



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Drawing on unique diachronic interviews, this article explores the self-reported willingness of Western Europe-based Chechen diaspora members to travel to Syria and Ukraine as foreign fighters. It ...

10/05/2024

How incumbents create uneven patterns of competition during autocratization: the AKP case of Turkey, by Pelin Ayan Musil



📌🇹🇷 Ayan-Musil focuses on the system of pre-electoral alliances created by AKP after the decline of its popular support in the 2015 June elections. The article explores the survival of AKP in Turkey’s late stage of autocratization from 2017 to the present by analysing the strategies the incumbent party used to create uneven patterns of electoral competition.





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This article explains the survival of the AKP in Turkey’s late stage of autocratization (2017-present) through its strategy of shifting the primary drivers of competition from individual parties to...

19/04/2024

🇹🇷 Right-wing populism in Turkey and the 2023 elections, by Ezgi Elçi

📌By focusing on the 2023 general elections in Turkey, Elçi seeks an answer to ‘what makes the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) a right-wing populist party or populist radical right party?” For this purpose, the article examines first the predecessors, the Democratic Party and National Outlook Movement, and then AKP. Through this, the study illustrates how AKP’s people-centric, anti-elitist, and Manichean outlook (three characteristics of populism that the party is representing) are damaging the democratic game in the country.



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18/04/2024

Paradox of Optimism: Opposition Coordination Against Autocratic Incumbents in Turkey’s 2019 and 2023 Elections, by Evren Balta and Seda Demiralp

📌 🇹🇷By taking the 2019 local elections and the 2023 general elections in Turkey as the case studies, Balta and Demiralp examine the opposition coordination under the resilience of an electoral authoritarian regime. The study illustrates how the conditions that increase the chances of alliance formation can paradoxically decrease the alliance’s chance of electoral victory in such examples.



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In the 2019 local and 2023 general elections, Turkey’s opposition parties joined forces in pursuit of a common objective: to oust autocratic incumbents and democratize the political system. While t...

29/03/2024

🇧🇬 Planning and truth: the Bulgarian 1963 reform and the problem of profitability, by Todor Hristov

📌 By focusing on the Bulgarian 1963 reform, Hristov examines what socialist planning proposed economically and how it responded to the inefficiency of this planned economy with the economic reforms introduced in the 1960s by pointing to the importance of the political elites as the decision-makers. In this respect, the article argues that Bulgarian economic reforms can be described as an attempt to reimagine the market as a mechanism for discovering the truth about the actual situation of the economy. Therefore, through studying the decisions of the party leadership of the Bulgarian Communist Party, which was to reform the plan to enable it to capture the truth about the economic agents’ performance and resources, the article describes the rationality and the effects of this attempt to reform the planning process.





📌 Interested? Find the full article at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14683857.2022.2155292

26/03/2024

OPEN ACCESS! 🇹🇷 Governance crises and resilience of authoritarian populism: 2023 Turkish elections from the perspective of Hirschman’s ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’, by Mustafa Kutlay and Ziya Öniş

📌 Turkey’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections in May 2023 resulted in the victory of Erdoğan and his ruling coalition government, despite the economic hardship, a devastating earthquake, and a series of governance failures in domestic and foreign policy realms. Through pointing to the puzzling outcome of the election results where such political-economic failures do not erode the public support for President Erdoğan, Kutlay and Öniş examine the explanation for such a political outcome in the face of multiple governance crises by adopting Hirschman’s ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’ framework.



📌 Interested? Find the full article at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14683857.2024.2315652

26/03/2024

OPEN ACCESS! 🇹🇷 Governance crises and resilience of authoritarian populism: 2023 Turkish elections from the perspective of Hirschman’s ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’, by Mustafa Kutlay and Ziya Öniş

📌 Turkey’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections in May 2023 resulted in the victory of Erdoğan and his ruling coalition government, despite the economic hardship, a devastating earthquake, and a series of governance failures in domestic and foreign policy realms. Through pointing to the puzzling outcome of the election results where such political-economic failures do not erode the public support for President Erdoğan, Kutlay and Öniş examine the explanation for such a political outcome in the face of multiple governance crises by adopting Hirschman’s ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’ framework.



📌 Interested? Find the full article at:

The May 2023 elections in Turkey are puzzling because public support for President Erdoğan did not erode despite political-economic failures of considerable magnitude. The economy was ailing, the g...