Different theories  from different disciplines produce different explanations to the questions on EU actorness leading  to large debates in the literature. As for the collective identity formation at EU level, the constructivists argue through a process of intense foreign policy cooperation and institutionalisation shared standards of behaviour, a common identity are developed which brings about the collective action at the end, while liberal institutionalists puts more emphasis on the extent of international interdependence as the catalisator for the collective action. [2] The intergovernmentalists focus on the shared and overlapping interests of the member states as against the realists who argue that external threats and powers lead to collective action and alliance formation.[3] Not only the motivations for the collective action at the EU level but also the limitations to it have constituted divergence in the academic literature. The fist and the famous ‘capabilities-expectations gap’ theory of Christopher Hill reveals the gap between the expectations of collective EU action and the EU’s capacity to deliver it, while Stanley Hoffman with ‘logic of diversity’ argument focuses on the diverging interests of the member states which are difficult to reconcile. The bureaucratic politics between the institutions in Brussels or the pillar structure has been proposed as hurdles for the collective action while David Allen links the foreign policy to the idea of state with a set of interests identified by a government .[4] Realists see EU as incapable of using coercive military force due the the inability of the member states to act collectively on hard core policy issues where national interests can not coverge which as in Kagan’s words is the result of a Hobbesian international system as against to the Kantian one.[5]

As the questions on the existance of European Foreign Policy are invalidated with the behavioural evidences on the influence of the EU in world politics, more attention needs to be directed towards the  issue of what exactly EU foreign policy is,  what it stands for, what it does, or in other words taking the existance of EU foreign policy as given then what is its raison d’etre.[6] In order to find the right answer to the question at hand, it is necessary to understand the evolution of the EU foreign policy system including the institutions, the formal rules, norms; the policy making process and the impact of common policies on the system itself, on EU member states, on the world, as well as the its justifications.

European European has develeoped as civilian power from the very beginning especially institutionalised Europe has been successful in excluding force as an element in interstate relations and been called as zone of peace since the demolition of Berlin Wall which continued until the post-cold war era where European governments and leaders faced with the challenge of justifying their public expenditures on military forces. The conecpt of ‘civilian power Europe’ developed in 1970s by Duchene focused on mainly the division of labor between US focusing on force and Europe spreading prosperity and democracy. European Union’s self image was constructed around the seperation of soft-civilian power reinforced by trade incentives and financial assistance from hard military power. Institutionalised Europe has been associated with the force for good, spreading civilized values across the globe, promoting human rights.[7] Altough most of the literature on the EU’s foreign policy is explained on the definite results it produces to the collective or individiual interests of the EU member states, the notions of ‘eurocentric power or normative power’ EU are necessary to be employed for justifying EU’s foreign policy with a referrence first to common values, second to universal principles. While Manners puts the argument that EU can be conceptualized as a normative power which is normatively different  and promotes universal norms and principles in its relations with non-members[8], another argument has been raised by Bretherton and Volgler on the tendency of the EU to reproduce itself in its relations with non-members referring to patterns of interdependence ‘through the external projection  of internal solutions’.[9]

Paralell to normative or civilizing connotations of the EU foreign policy, the logics  underpinning the EU foreign policy were a matter of discussion. As Sjursen and Smith says EU foreign policy can be explained as an effort to find efficient solutions to concrete problems; or as a reference to what is considered as appropriate given a particular group’s conception of itself and what it represents ; as well as set of  principles mutaually recognized as morally acceptable and just by all parties.[10] In fact the detailed analysis of different waves of the enlargement and different conditionality terms put forward through both enlargement and neighbourhood policies will reveal the fact that EU is not en entity to be limited within the boundaries of a specific approach and logics. All three elements are present in the logics underpinning the EU foreign policy and EU carries elements of both civilizing power projecting its understanding of norms to the rest of the world and normative power promoting universal norms.

The most effective instrument of the EU’s foreign policy over the past 30 years has been the promise of enlargement conditional on the acceptance of some political and economic criteria by the candidate states.  During the cold war EU membership was not a matter of concern since the membership of the states other than the west European countries was not on the agenda while the other west European countries were not so interested in EU membership. When we come to 1970s first enlargement wave to Britain, Ireland and Denmark were realized without the membership criteria.  Infact till 1978 the conditionalty did not become a matter of concern when the European Council declared that ‘respect for and maintenance of representative democracy and human rights’ in each memberstate are essential elements of membership as a clear signal to Greece, Spain and Portugal to proceed with democratisation. In fact the clarification of democracy as a membership criteria was crucial in terms of showing that the European integration is not only an economic project but linked to deeper values with the first signals of its normative connotation.[11]

Bichi while classifying theoretical approaches and arguments about the EU, talks about mainly two broad criteria of inclusiveness nad reflexivity and labels the cases where EFP is neither inclusive nor reflexive as civilizing power. He also makes a referrence to the tendency of institutions to export institutional isomorphism and defines EU unreflexively eurocentric. [12]

According to Manners and Sjursen, normative value of EU rests on the universal character of the principles it promotes; i.e. EU acts normatively when it promotes values that empower actors affected by EFP. Shortly, normative power of EU shall be capable of giving voice to people outside Europe. The issue of reflexivity is not free of division which sharply divides between rationalist and sociological institutionalism. While rationalist and sociological institutionalist portray EU as eurocentric with no room for outsiders, constructivists draws a more inclusive picture for EU. Rationalists argue that EU intentionally exports norms from which it benefits with only enough attention to the receiving end for the beneficial effect to occur which rests on the logic of consequentionalism and expected outcome of the rational choices. This argument that EU promotes its norms because it expects to benefit from their adoptation as a reflexive and eurocentric entity, is being supported by Youngs and Hyde-Price. Young says that promotion of human rights is a part of EU’s general strategy of consolidating regimes and taking third party support fot the EU. Also Haddadi puts forward a similar argument saying that EU promotes the human rights in Maghreb countries to provide security and stability in the area. Moreover, Hyde and Price define EU as a regional hegemon trying to shape the external area by using both soft and hard power.[13]

More radical argument belongs to sociological institutionalists who mainly focus on the institutional isomorphism as a rule for the EFP where norms are exported unreflexively with a single model promoted to all its partners regardless of their context. EU’s projecting its own identity of democratic polity into its relations with third countries is explained by Bözel and Risse’s words as ‘one single cultural script’ or ‘one size fits all’ attidue.[14]

Contrary to the eurocentrism put emphasized by the rationalists, for constructivists EU promotes norms of universal value as an inclusive entity. As the time passes, the line between reflexivity and unreflexivity blurs and an intentional behaviour at the beginning will be a routine which is quite close to the famous ‘path dependency’ argument of historical institutionalism according to which the repetition of communications and practices lead to a standardisation of practices and an eventual change in actor’s reciprocal disposition. In this sense, constructivists focus more on the inclusive character of EU’s foreign policy with the norms and values having universal character.

Whether the diversity of approaches and debates on European Foreign Policy is a signal for the health in the literature or rather a ‘cacophony of dissonant voices’ is a matter of discussion as Walter Carlsnaes argues. He focuses on the need for an emprical research on the EU international actorness instead of giving effort to find a dominant approach explaining the evolution and working of the system.[15] EU as a sui generis entity different from the socalled international actors as states, state-like actors, without any government but with a form of governance, can not be easily explained within the boundries of the ‘foreign policy actorness’ legal definition.  On the other hand as the behavioural observations indicate EU compared to many states or state-like actors exerts more influence on the international arena even affecting in a direct or indirect way the policy decisions executed within the third countries as well as the reforms taken through the famous notion of ‘conditionality’ as it was the case in Turkey. As the constructivist argument says, there occurs an emotional environment between the EU and third countries within which both sides form expectations from eachother through some policy tools, hence EU at the end appears as en entity unique to be investigated over which foreign policy actorness should be redefined as against the traditional terms.

Rather than limiting the analysis to the justification of EU’s actorness on one of these aproaches, or giving effort to explain EU’s foreign policy within the boundaries of the selective approaches, it is better to base the analysis on the emprical and historical research of the evolution of EU foreign policy system  (the institutions, the formal rules, the informal norms), the policy-making process and impact of common policies or the failure to agree common policies on the system itself, on EU member states as well as on the world.[16] This emprical research will lead us to approach from a broader perspective to the question ‘Is the EU a normative power, promoting universal values or is it a eourocentric civilizing power projecting its own understanding of norms onto the rest of the world or both?  While capturing the answer the policy tools employed by the EU and its impacts vis a vis member states, candidate countries and the rest of the world should be the subjects of emprical analysis, namely enlargement and neighbourhood policies of the EU.  The emprical analysis of EU foreign policy around those policy tools will bring us to the logics underpinning the EU enlargement and neighbourhood policy.

Diğdem Tümtürk

[2] Alexender Wendt, ‘Collective Identity Formation and the International State”, American Political Science Review, 88, 2, 1994, pp. 389-390.

[3] Roy Ginsberg, The Foreign Policy Actions of the European Community (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1989).

[4] David Allen, “The European Rescue of National Foreign Policy?”, in Hill, ed., The Actors in Europe’s Foreign Policy, p. 303.

[5] Robert Kagan, “Paradise and Power: America and Europe in New World Order”, (London: Atlantic Books, 2003)

[6] Ibid.

[7] William Wallace, “Is There a European Approach to War?”, European Foreign Policy Unit Working Paper, 2005, 2, p. 2.

[8] I. Manners, “Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?”, Journal of Common Market Studies, 2002, 40, p. 241.

[9] Bretherton, C. and Volgler, J., “The European Union as a Global Actor”,(London: Routledge, 1999), p.249.

[10] Sjursen and Smith, op.cit., p.3

[11] Federica Bicci, “Our Size Fits All”, European Foreign Policy Unit Working Paper, 2005/3, p.7.

[12] Ibid., p. 201.

[13] Ibid., p. 207.

[14] T.Börzel and T. Risse, “One Size Fits All! EU Policies for the Promotion of Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law”, Workshop on Democracy Promotion and the Rule of Law, 4-5 October, Stanford University.

[15] Walter Carlsnaes, “Where the Analysis of European Foreign Policy Going”, European Union Politics,5, 4, 2004, p.495.

[16] Karen E. Smith, “The EU in the World: Future Research Agendas”, European Foreign Policy Unit Working Paper, 2008/1, p. 3.

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Kurdish question can be explained by referring to the transformation of Turkey from a traditional society where the identities were religiously determined at communal level, to a modern society where the aim was to define an individual’s identity at the state level and the driving force behind this nationalism was Turkish nationalism.[1]

The nation has been defined on the bases of three different concepts throughout Turkish history which was “God” under the Ottoman Empire.  In Ottoman society the nationality was on the bases of religion which means that a person’s membership to a religious community was the determining element of nationality. In this sense, many Turks had little or no self awareness. The Ottoman Empire as an authoritarian monarchy with a religious foundation derived from Sultan’s claim that he was also caliph of the world, the spiritual head of the all Muslims of the world so it recognized minorities by defining them in religious terms and gave them extensive self-rule.[2] Both the logic of emperorship and that of Islam exceeded the logic of the nation in Ottoman.

Alongside the newborn nation states, the real inheritor of the Ottoman Empire has become a nation state that is Turkey and under huge efforts for nation building in Turkey, religion  gave its place to ‘nation’ where secularism got the upper hand over God.

In fact the transformation from Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic can be described as a transfer from “Ottoman patriotism” to “Turkish nationalism”. As the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating, the need to build a new order came to agenda. The population of Turkey would need a new identity which would replace the one based on religion and from 1923 onwards  Turkish nationalism came to agenda. This meant a break with the monarchy of the past, with the Islamic character of the state. The founders of the Turkish Republic had the aim of transforming Ottoman Empire to a modern and secular republic and in line with this aim from 1923 an increasing emphasis was given to developing a sense of nationhood based on the Turkish language in contrast to Ottoman Empire where ethnic identities  among the Muslim population had no much significance beyond the cultural and the linguistic.[3]

This notion of nationality continued until the the beginning of 2000s where greater commitment to EU membership opened the way for some political reforms  and increased the hopes for some solution to the Kurdish problem. For countries like Turkey where the real changes can not come from the bottom which is not conscious and enlightened enough to question and bring the change, a catalyser is needed to make people come around a common idea. In Turkish case, The EU acted as a crucial catalyst for some reforms to be brought into life as a civilian power which used carrots as against to sticks. Not the EU itself but the “idea of EU membership” has been the motivator for Turkey’s democratization or the so-called Europeanization process which includes reforms on human rights, plural democracy and minority issue. At the base of these reforms lies the idea to define “human” as the defining element of identity in Turkey which unfortunately was stuck today due to both internal and external dynamics as well as lack of real commitment of governments to the solution of the problem due to their short-visioned electoral concerns.

Shortly, much rests on how successful the governments are in implementing social/ political reforms and opinion makers are in shaping the society’s perception of the issue. Otherwise Turkish hardliners and Kurdish nationalists will come to the scene which means return to the very beginning. In this sense, Turkey by playing the game according to rules of 21^st century, being conscious diplomatic player in international arena instead of taking the role of East’s emotional and courageous rescuer should be very cautious and strong inside. Now is the time for promoting the idea of Turkey’s patriotism where “individual” is valuable just because of his/her existence, neither of religious nor ethnic origins.

Diğdem TÜMTÜRK

[2] Svante E. Cornell , ‘The Kurdish Question in Turkish Politics’, Orbis, 45, 1 (Winter 2001), p.32.

[3] Kirişçi, op.cit., p.280.

One of the most important policy fields in the EU is regional policy whose effective implementation depends on the compatibility of local and regional governance systems of member states with EU practice and regulatory norms. In line with the European Regional Policy, the potential member states pass through a transformation process where EU accession enacts as catalyst to the policy enhancement in terms of European Regional Policy standards. However, this period of policy transformation in candidate countries are not free of challenges. In that respect, Turkey constitutes a special case study in terms of its still ongoing adaptation process with EU regional policy regulations and norms. Turkey is a country with huge interregional disparities which has passed through a fast structural and policy changes in an unstable macroeconomic environment over a long period of time. Throughout this transformation period Turkey made remarkable attempts to develop a regional policy. Firstly, the transformation from a plan-driven import-substitution to an open export-based economy was realized in 1980 and further steps were taken to develop a fully market economy. The eventual admission of Turkey’s candidate status in the Helsinki European Council (1999) accelerated Turkey’s efforts in the way of harmonizing its policies with the acquis. From that time onwards, the policy transformation period posed some challenges to Turkey as other candidate countries.

In order to make a detailed examination of those challenges and Turkey’s actions as against to those challenges, it would be useful to make a comparative analysis of this transformation between a recently acceded country to the EU namely, ‘Poland’ and Turkey who had experienced similar challenges while adopting their regional policies to EU standards. Similarity in territorial length, average population and share of rural population in the total, sharp east-west division in terms of socio-economic development, levels of unemployment rates may be given as reasons laying behind our choice to study on Poland.

Moreover Polish experience of post-communist transition in early 1990s and Turkey’s transformation from a centrally planned economy to a more liberal in 1980s; the fact that both countries are characterized with huge disparities between West-East and Rural-Urban regions; centralization being an important hurdle in the way of implementing its regional policy in the pre-accession policy in both countries; and the dominant position of sectoral policies over regional policies for long years again both in Turkey and Poland, constitutes another dimension which makes Poland and Turkey as suitable units for a comparative analysis.

PROBLEMS IN THE POLICY TRANSFORMATION IN TURKEY& POLAND: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

1. Regional Unevenness

It is usually argued that Turkey is characterized with huge internal disparities which means that Turkey’s accession to the EU would increase the already existing regional disparities within the EU. The western/eastern divide of Turkey in economical terms constitutes a significant hurdle on the way of Turkey’s policy transformation in line with EU conditionality. Despite Turkish economy’s long-term growth, the even development across the country could not be observed. Besides regional disparities, provincial disparities in the country are also unbearable. The disparities between the East and the West of Turkey can be related to the characteristics of the local politics executed in those regions besides the economic and social factors. The local politicians  in the West are approaching local problems and demands from a national-level perspective in that sense they put a great importance to their relations with Ankara in the way of achieving local political objectives. On the other hand, in the eastern part of the country due to the low-income and agriculture-based economy, the voters are highly involved in local politics and reflect their regional identity by this way.[i]

For Polish case, we can say that Poland faces serious problems of uneven regional development which constituted a hurdle in its progress to EU as well. Due to its historical heritage, Poland is still suffering from a division between the better developed western part and the lower developed eastern part division.[ii] Similar to Turkey, the eastern part of the country was portrayed as peripheral region by the regional planners in Poland and the post-communist systemic transformation of the national economy pointed out the weakness of the regional structure in the country which was shaped under central planning.[iii] The changes in industrial and agricultural production, the process of privatization and the spatial adaptation have not been uniformly intensive throughout the country on the basis of which lies the regional diversity, levels of wealth, dependence on production conditions and the level of social development.[iv] As a result, this transformation led to a polarized regional development with two groups of winner and looser regions between 1990-94 period.[v] The 1999 reform of country’s territorial organization has not greatly affected this spatial polarization of the country and this polarization continued to be a hurdle on the way of Poland’s regional policy harmonization with EU as it was the case in Turkey. The urban-rural tension continues to have an impact on the regional policy development of Poland. This division affected the direction of investments as well. Since the rural regions were in trouble surrounded with a weak infrastructure, poor privatization and fragmented agriculture were not attractive for the investors; they were directed towards the urban areas associated with well-developed infrastructure, strong privatization prospects and cheap labor.[vi] This regional unevenness in Polish case is quite similar to Turkish case in the sense that in both countries rural areas are highly differentiated in terms of their preparedness for EU accession, with the regions in the western part of the country in a much better position to overcome the EU membership than those in the East.

The regional disparities in both countries together with the general shift in the EU regional policy away from “equalization and solidarity” to “efficiency and competitiveness” led to concerns on the ability of the eastern regions  to meet the challenges in formulating and implementing the regional policy especially their scarce resources are taken into account which will deepen the regional disparities.

2. From Centralization to Decentralization: A Difficult Progress

In order to understand the complexity and uniqueness of the regionalization process in Turkey, it’s necessary to examine the regional structure in Turkey.  The unitary state in Turkey does not have a legal definition of “region”.[vii] Within the framework of the provincial system the main relations are centered on two actors, namely center and province. This is a quite centralized system in the sense that the center determines the performance of the provisions through financial and political measures.  What’ more the reforms realized in the way of accessing to EU did not change the top-to-bottom approach in regional policy implementation. The regionalization attempts by State Planning Organization and State Institute of Statistics were realized without collaborating with the regions and without giving them sufficient decision-making power and economic resources. This centralized nature of the governance led to a belief that “the centre knows the best”[viii] and this kind of an approach prevails the political culture of Ministries and SPO as well. This understanding in Turkey can be related to the absence of both capitalistic class and industrial heritage from the very beginning of the Republic which led to a state-led economy even after 1980s when the shift to economic liberalization was the case and this state-dependency diminished the importance of regional and local politics has to a great extent in Turkey.[ix]

As mentioned before this centralization is an Ottoman legacy consolidated by the nationalist government of the new Republic of Turkey. Recent years witnessed a transformation of this method of governance due to some external and internal pressures like the motivation to harmonize with EU for accession. In line with this transformation the constitution was amended several times with the aim of reexamining the administrative structures in the country. However, at the end of the day the public administration remained still highly-centralized since the laws don’t emphasize on local democracy and decentralization of power. What’ more the bureaucrats did not perceive the regional planning as a necessary function and since 1960, sectoral logic dominated the regional one and the national plannings were prepared in line. Although some proposals were made by the SPO to establish regional representations, the desire to implement those proposals was quite limited. One of the factors at the basis of the regionalization failures is problematic nature of the institutional structure at the central level. The horizontal coordination between the sectoral Ministries and SPO in regional planning could not be realized due to status questions of SPO vis-à-vis the Ministries.

Turkey’s centralized governance system constitutes a big challenge in Turkey’s harmonization of its regional policy with EU norms and regulations since it’s nor compatible with the multi-level governance at EU level. The absence of an intermediary institutional structure between the center and local made it difficult for Turkey to bring its regional policy to EU standards in the pre-accession periods.[x]

For Poland the centralization has been an important hurdle in the way of implementing its regional policy in the pre-accession policy although not as severe as in Turkey. As already mentioned before, the biggest weakness of Polish regional policy stemmed from centralization which was a legacy of Communist era. Within this system regions run from Warsaw and had no institutional capacity for self-managed development.[xi] After long years of a centralized system the 1999 reform delivered a decentralizing promise of equipping the country with administrative structure that would facilitate the EU entry. However, even after this transformation the Poland’s EU pre-accession programmes were largely managed within one central organizational framework which resulted in a big coordination problem. During the pre-accession period the funds were not coordinated as support instruments for regional development, meaning that they operated separately without any multiplier effect.[xii]

3. Priority of Sectoral Policy over Regional Policy

Despite the steps taken to establish new structures at regional level, the absence of a real agency or ministry for regional policy at national level led to SPO assuming the full competence on this area in Turkey and for nearly 40 years or more the SPO has been preparing five-year development plans on sectoral basis So in addition to the centrality we must add the sectoral understanding to define traditional planning method in Turkey. Within this approach, the plans were made to promote the development of certain sectors without considering the regional dimensions. Thus the incentives were directed to the businesses that will enable sectoral growth rather than development of needy regions. As an example to this understanding we can give the national development plans focusing largely economic measures and city plans at the local level without tackling the regional disparities.[xiii]

The same problem reveals itself while examining the Polish case. The National Development Programmes in Poland were composed of a complex set of priorities and initiatives. The so-called coordination problem in the implementation of those programmes led to implementation of regional initiatives and this predominance of the sectoral policy over regional policy led to the imbalanced regional development. This problem is related with one of the important principle governing the EU regional policy, the so-called ‘concentration’ principle. In line with this principle the candidate countries should concentrate the funds on most needy regions instead of directing it to sectors with a growth potential. However, in Turkey the resources most of the time were oriented to national industrialization rather than to the reduction of regional disparities. Even giving 35 provinces the status of Priority Development Areas in 1993 did not the direction of resources from industrialized provinces to underdeveloped ones. While these provinces received 15.7 percent of public investment in 1991, 12.4 percent in 1992 and 17.8 percent in 1993, provinces in Marmara and Aegean regions attracted more than 50 percent of the public investment.[xiv] The same concentration problem is relevant for Poland in its pre-accession period during which the workforce and finance were concentrated mainly in the largest Polish cities as it was the case in Turkey.

CONCLUSION

The comparative analysis above addresses the problematic dimensions of regional policy implementation in Turkey and led us to make concrete conclusions on the way recording a successful score for Turkey’s harmonization with acquis. First of all, in the pre-planning stage, regional analysis shall be realized from a broader perspective including the sharing of responsibilities among relevant ministries, regional agents and civil society organizations, meaning a shift from a centralized approach to a decentralized one. Moreover, the problems within the bureaucracy have to be solved for efficient regional governance as well. Although the EU conditionality has been a strong driving force for Turkey’s alteration of its regional governance, there are still counter forces within the bureaucracy acting against change.[xv]

Turkey has to take lessons from the experiences of existing EU countries to revise its regional policies and in order to increase the pace of its adaptation process with the acquis. In line with this revision the first step shall be to share and reorganize this responsibility. Also the regions shall firstly rely on their internal power instead of state dependency. The establishment of regional self-governments to implement regional policy is another lesson to be taken for Turkey in this pre-accession period. These regional self-governments are crucial in the sense that they will be able to make independent investment decisions to support economic activity and to establish cooperation between different institutions.[xvi] Most importantly, an accelerated and healthy period of policy transformation needs a qualitative change instead of quantitative financial transfers which means a radical change in the values, institutional structures and communication.

Diğdem Tümtürk

[ii]Poznan (Wielkopolskie), Wroclaw (Dolnoslaskie), Gdansk (Pomorskie) and Krakow (Malopolskie) and Warszawa (Mazowickie)[ii] are those limited number of prosperous regions which are located in the western and southern parts and backed by strong economic, cultural, scientific and academic centres and attracting high levels of investment hence creating lots of job opportunities, and boosting their economies. Please see Annex for detail information.

[iii] Miroslawa Czerny, Andrzej Czerny, “The Challenge of Spatial Reorganization in A Peripheral Polish Region”, European Urban and Regional Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, (2002) p.60.

[iv] Justyna Weltrowska, “Economic Change and Social Polarization in Poland”, European Urban and Regional Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, (2002) p. 49.

[v] The winning regions with a developed services and technical infrastructure, skilled kabor forces, a scientific and technological base before 1999 consists of Warsaw, Poznan, Cracow, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Szczecin, Bydgoszcz and Bielsko- Biala. The loosers are the old industrial regions (Lodz, Katowice, Walbrzych, Jelenia Gora, Legnica, Konin and Tarnobrzeg); recession regions (Koszalin, Slupsk, Olsztyn, Suwalki, Tırun, Wloclawek, Plock and Ciechanow); poorly developed regions ( Ostroleka, Lomza, Bialystok, Biala Podlaska, Siedlce, Chelm, and Zamosc)

[vi] Blazyca, Heffner and  Huhes, op.cit., p.265.

[vii] There are different examples for different conceptualizations of the term ‘region’ in Turkey. First of all, the country is divided into seven regions considering the climatic and topography conditions. Moreover the regional development projects initiated by the SPO like  Eastern Black Sea Regional Development Plan (DOKAP), Zonguldak-Bartin-Karabuk Regional Development Project used the term ‘region’ on a project basis.The South-eastern Anatolia Project (GAP) has a distinctive regional development administration regulated by a specific legislation. Another conceptualization of ‘region’  is about the Emergency State Region (OHAL) which was established in the South-eastern Anatolia to fight against terrorism.

[viii] Ebru Loewendahl-Ertugal, “Europeanization of Regional Policy and Regional Governance: The Case of Turkey”, European Political Economy Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, (Spring 2005) p.34.

[ix] Dulupçu, op.cit., pp. 105,106.

[x] Only exception to this is the South-eastern Anatolian Development Project (GAP) administration.

[xi] Miroslawa Czerny, “Uneven Urban and Regional Development in Poland”, European Urban and Regional Studies Vol.9, No. 1, (2002) p. 37.

[xii] Tomasz Grzegorz Grosse, “An Evaluation of the Regional Policy System in Poland: Challenges and Threats Emerging From Participation in the EU’s Cohesion Policy, European Urban and Regional Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, (2006) p. 153.

[xiii] Loewendahl-Ertugal, op.cit., p.29.

[xiv] Ibid., pp.27,28.

[xv] Loewendahl-Ertugal, op.cit., p. 45.

[xvi] Grosse, op.cit., p.152.