Dimitar Bechev on Turkey, Russia, China and the ‘scramble for Europe’
September 29, 2026
Turkey Book Talk #279 – Dimitar Bechev, Director of the Dahrendorf Programme at St Antony’s College, University Oxford and Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe, on “The Scramble for Europe: Russia, China, and Turkey Challenging Regional Order” (Oxford University Press)
The book questions whether Turkey can be placed alongside Russia and China as a direct competitor to the EU, with a fundamentally different view on the challenges posed by an increasingly unstable world. As Bechev writes: “The argument is straightforward: Whereas formerly the trio was on the receiving end of order-building from the EU, it is now in the business of reshaping and rearranging power hierarchies, institutions, and norms in Europe.”
The conversation asks what has changed since the formal launch of Turkey’s EU accession process in the 2000s, and whether the current situation of low-expectation, pragmatic engagement – with fundamental disputes left unresolved – was always inevitable.
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