Diplomacy and lobbying during Turkey’s Europeanisation

Shadowing and gendered fieldwork roles in the Brussels Bubble

“…This is also reflected in academic literature -for example, by demonstrating the normative whiteness in EP institutional practices (Kantola et al, 2023); by critiquing pervasive stratifications by nationalities into 'Old' and 'New' Member States (Lewicki, 2019(Lewicki, [2017) and by highlighting some ethnic minority voters' ambivalent identifications with the EU (Begum, 2023). Indeed, for researchers too, nationality, migration status and race affect how the Brussels Bubble is experienced (Firat, 2019;Lewicki, 2019Lewicki, [2017; Sarikakis, 2003) -and this would undoubtedly have affected our experiences as white, cis-gendered researchers in the Brussels Bubble.…”

“…10 Thus, even when lacking official status and being assigned the spy role when shadowing, having a national/notional family can prove to be supportive in the Brussels Bubble (cf. Firat, 2019;Lewicki, 2019Lewicki, [2017; Sarikakis, 2003).…”

Geopolitics as an ethnographic object and agenda

“…Inspired by such ethnographic works on geopolitical infrastructures and on my earlier work on the negotiations between the Turkish and EU diplomats and lobbyists over the terms and conditions of Turkey's Europeanisation (Firat, 2019), in my current work on the role of geopolitical infrastructures in regionalism and regional integration, I trace how, throughout the planning, construction, and post-construction phases, a variety of elite, expert and professional actors construct specific geographical and political imaginaries through a particular geopolitical infrastructure known as the Southern Gas Corridor-a long-range, cross-border natural gas transit regime and infrastructure connecting Caspian Basin gas reserves to Europe-from their historically-and culturally-specific vantage points; how they imbue it with culturally-specific political and geographical (past and future) imaginaries; and how they strive to shield it from uncertainty, contention, and subversion. By necessity a multi-sited and comparative study (Holmes & Marcus, 2005;Marcus, 1995Marcus, , 2000, this research requires me to interview national, supranational, and international actors from state and non-state sectors, who participated in the making of the Southern Gas Corridor across its value chain; conduct participant and non-participant observation during energy, infrastructure, finance and security conferences around the world; and collect Corridor-related textual policy, media and material artifacts for critical discourse analysis purposes.…”

“…For instance, just as non-elite geopolitical actors and their imaginaries, discourses and practices merit continuous ethnographic scrutiny, I suggest that ethnographers of geopolitics also pay more attention to the proliferation of elite actors of geopolitics. Ethnographies of the constructions of geopolitical interests and imaginaries with particular attention to the cultures of elite, professional and expert actors as seen from their situated perspectives do exist (Kuus, 2007(Kuus, , 2008(Kuus, , 2014Firat, 2019;Johnston, 2005;Mountz, 2010;Nolan, 2018). Nevertheless, unlike the conventional intellectuals of statecraft, such as the legislators, diplomats, advisors and members of national intelligence communities, as well as those who populate interstate organizations and agencies like those of the United Nations (see Hyndman, 2000;Mountz, 2010), some of today's intellectuals of statecraft operate in non-state or extra-state fields of power.…”

“…Equally significant is to explore the limits of the power and agency of those who have a claim to have the ability to advance such top‐down hegemonic geopolitical programs in the first place, which in the minimum requires de‐fetishizing power and the powerful. In fact, I am intrigued by how relative the power of elite geopolitical actors, post‐Foucault, can be (Firat, 2019; Kuus, 2014; Mountz, 2010).…”