The Tenth Broadyard Workshop (博雅工作坊) of the Institute of Area Studies, Peking University (PKUIAS), on the theme “Turkey: Facing Historical Choices,” was held in the Department of History, PKU, on July 9. More than ten experts and academics from domestic universities and research organizations were invited to the conference, at which the recent elections in Turkey and their effect on Turkey’s domestic and foreign affairs were discussed from the perspective of politics, economy, security, the media and culture.
Qian Chengda, Director of PKUIAS, pointed out in his speech that, relatively speaking, Chinese academics’ studies about the world still lag behind those from some other countries, and the establishment of PKUIAS aims to push forward the cultivation of talents and academic research in the field of area studies at PKU, thereby promoting Chinese academics’ studies of different regions and countries in the world. He expressed his hopes that the discussion at the workshop could give impetus to Turkish Studies in China.
Turkey completed its presidential and parliamentary elections in June this year and successfully switched to a new era with the executive presidential system, with Recep Tayyip Erdogan becoming Turkey’s first executive president. As a major country in the Middle East, Turkey has an important influence on countries in the region in multiple areas, including politics, economy, culture and foreign affairs. And in terms its relationship with Europe, Turkey still faces the big issues of how to deal with the refugee crisis and its bid for EU membership. The focus of the discussion at the conference was how to analyze, study and estimate the development course of Turkey from a historical angle.
The academics expressed their opinion that the elections objectively reflected Turkish voters’ concerns over security and livelihood. After the elections, political polarization in Turkey will tend to get worse and Turkey’s conflicts with major Western countries will likely be hard to mediate in the near term. Generally speaking, the result of the elections favors Sino-Turkey relations, but at the same time, China should be on the alert for potential threats to local Chinese interests caused by Turkey’s political conflicts.
The result of the elections has pushed Turkey to a historic juncture. Several of the workshop participants also analyzed the course of Turkey’s development from the angle of the Turkish economy, military-government relationship, evolution of its constitution and national characteristics in culture, as well as articulated the opportunities and challenges Turkey will confront in the future. Their statements triggered heated discussion.
