Authoritarian middle powers and the liberal order: Turkey's contestation of the EU

Abstract

Abstract The conventional expectation that middle powers support the liberal international order (LIO) is now increasingly being questioned. This article seeks to explore why and how emerging authoritarian middle powers contest the LIO through a study of Turkey's contestation of the EU. By conceptualizing contestations of the LIO as claims to global justice, the article examines the justice claims that underlie Turkey's contestation; with regard to discourse, it does so through a qualitative content analysis of President Erdoğan's speeches, and with regard to practice, through a survey of Turkey's contestatory foreign policy practices. The article shows that middle powers can discursively attack the legitimacy of the LIO by underlining its constituents' failures in upholding their moral duties towards citizens extending beyond their borders (impartiality) and to those who suffer from structural inequalities in the international order (mutual recognition). It demonstrates that their contestatory practices, however, are made with a view to pursue the sovereign interests of the state, with minimal regard for impartiality and mutual recognition. The article unpacks this inconsistency and finds that authoritarian middle powers' contestation of the LIO is mainly driven by concerns for regime security, where the centrality of an issue area to the government's survival prospects is the key factor which determines whether contestation will occur.