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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Dimitar Bechev on Turkey’s trajectory under Erdoğan
July 5, 2022
Turkey Book Talk episode 171 – Dimitar Bechev, lecturer at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford, on “Turkey Under Erdoğan: How a Country Turned from Democracy and the West” (Yale University Press)
The book gives a neat overview of how the country and Erdogan came to where they are today, covering domestic and foreign politics at this crucial point ahead of elections scheduled for next year.
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Check out Dimitar’s previous appearance on the podcast from back in August 2018.
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Dimitar Bechev on Turkey-Russia relations, past and present
August 7, 2018
Turkey Book Talk episode #70 – Dimitar Bechev on the past and present of Turkey-Russia relations, “rich in history, ambivalent, multifaceted and rich in nuance, blending fierce competition with cooperation.”
Bechev is a research fellow at the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is the author of “Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe” (Yale University Press), and he has written extensively on Turkey, its policy in Europe and the Middle East, and its relationship with Russia.
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Support Turkey Book Talk by becoming a member. Membership gives you full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (over 60 conversations so far), and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
