This study aims to understand the role of the leadership styles of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in European Union-Turkey relations by conducting a Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA), which takes into account the leaders’ personalities in foreign policy. The article makes use of the verbal records of the two leaders regarding the bilateral relations between their countries and the European Union. The results unveil that the two leaders’ personal characteristics bear similarities to a considerable extent; i.e., both leaders are sceptical in inter-personal relations, discernibly intuitive, self-confident and so forth. The study suggests that those personal traits of the leaders which have occasionally outweighed crude rationality have been some of the important factors enabling the sustainability of relations between Turkey and the EU against all odds.

This article critically analyzed the Turkish and Libyan refugee deals. We argued that these deals proved to be unsustainable policy frameworks by focusing on their practical outcomes regarding humanitarian objectives. We utilized the -Fortress Europe‖ concept to demonstrate how the European Union's security concerns shaped the framework of these deals. Our study elaborated on two main arguments: First, these deals have undermined both Turkey and Libya's migration management capacities. Second, these deals failed to provide adequate mechanisms supervising the enforcement of humanitarian objectives. We focus on two dynamics leading to the failure of these deals. First, the EU's prioritization of security concerns has resulted in overlooking the irregular migration's humanitarian and societal costs to the third countries. Second, the EU's securitarian strategy contributed to further politicization and securitization of cooperation on migration. In conclusion, we argue that the EU should revise its securitarian strategy on irregular migration to include a more effective multi-lateral and multi-dimensional framework that focuses more on humanitarian issues while ensuring that the responsibilities will be fairly shared between the EU and third countries based on their capacities.

This paper is written in the belief that the European Union uses different instruments in order to maintain a permanent peace environment in the post-conflict regions. To answer the question of what those instruments are, we begin by taking a closer look at Macedonia and Kosovo cases which clarify the peace-building conception of the Union. In accordance with the aims of this study, the concept of human security will be regarded to mean a circumstance that the European Union has officially recognized as a basic policy to evaluate the peace-building instruments. The major instrument that the European Union uses at the nation and state building processes of post-conflict regions is the Stabilization and Association Process. Under that process, the European Union signed several agreements with the Western Balkans countries known as Stabilization and Association Agreements. We found a significant correlation between Stabilization and Association Agreements and the reconstruction of the Western Balkan countries' economic and political conditions, which have gained their independency after the disunification of Yugoslavia but experienced serious state-building problems. These consequences of the Stabilization and Association Agreements with Macedonia and Kosovo complement each other and help to illuminate the phenomenon of the success of Stabilization and Association Process of the European Union.Bu makale için önerilen kaynak gösterimi (APA 6.

Traditional security approach focuses on the state and the problem of national security. However, it is argued that individuals should be privileged as the referent object of security. Human security concept consists of actors and agendas that are not evaluated by traditional security approach. Human security holds that the security of the state does not necessarily ensure the security of its citizens. The nation-state is experiencing an erosion of power and sovereignty, and non-state actors are part of the cause. One aspect of them is violent non-state actor (VNSA) that contests the monopoly on violence of the state and pose a pressing challenge to human security. This paper aims to identify factors, trends, and developments that have contributed to the emergence of VNSAs and their implications upon human security.

This study claims that the state of "Eurosclerosis" experience in the European Union countries has been transformed into to "Eurosteoporosis" as a result of developments resulting from several causes. As the European Union´s ability to solve the problems today it faces decreases, the prominence of its functional disability in institutional meaning and the ineffectiveness of steps taken to overcome problems incresase the concerns about the future of the European Union. It is not possible to claim that the European Union has undergone such a transformation that it can overcome the robust problems of the millenninum through the reforms after the Lisbon Treaty. The developments in international politics in the 2000s and the effects of the global financial crisis that the emerged after 2008 triggered the state of "Eurosteoporosis".