JEOPOLİTİK STRATEJİ

Peninsular Europe has identifiable boundaries in the north (The Arctic Ocean), the west (The Atlantic Ocean) and the south (The Mediterranean Sea). Thus it is separated from the North Pole, America and Africa by the sea or ocean. Europe
itself is also surrounded by various peninsulas from north to south such as the Scandinavian and the Italian (the Apennine), and from east to west such
as the Balkanic and the Iberian as well as islands (Great Britain, Ireland in the northern Atlantic and Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia and others in the Mediterranean Sea).

Following physical geography logic, international borders are drawn using these
natural formations, while they provide a useful means in mountainous areas of separating one nation from another, as exemplified in southern, northern and central Europe by the Franco-Spanish, Swedish-Norwegian and Polish-Czech
and Polish-Slovakian borders in the Pyrenees, the Scandinavian and the Carpathian Mountains respectively.

In southeastern Europe, parts of the Maritsa River constitute the Turkish-Greek border.

The Danube River, Europe’s second longest, marks the borders between Slovakia-Austria, Slovakia-Hungary, Croatia-Serbia and Bulgaria-Romania along its course towards the Black Sea.

The Rhine River serves as the frontier on Switzerland’s borders with
Austria, Lichtenstein and Germany.

The EU was founded in the 1950’s by the original six member states which jointly constitute
the “core” of Europe. Since its foundation, the EU has grown from 6 to 28 members in successive enlargements and, as the legal basis of enlargement, the founding treaties stipulate that any European state can apply for membership.

The pace of EU enlargement has been slowed down since the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 because of enlargement fatigue. Indeed, only Croatia has been able to join the Union since then.

Partners in EU’s Neighborhood Policy: ten Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt,
Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria and Tunisia) and six Eastern countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine).

Currently it appears that the EU’s relations with President Donald Trump’s United States have been increasingly uneasy despite the fact that the United States is referred as the EU’s core partner in its 2016 Global Strategy document.

China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative, which was launched in 2013 under the new Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The major aim of the EU for developing relations with neighbors is stated in the Wider Europe Communication of the European Commission: “...to develop a zone of prosperity and a friendly neighbourhood – a ‘ring of friends’ – with whom the EU enjoys close, peaceful, and cooperative relations” (The European Commission, 2003: 4).

Its internal borders have been drawn based on various principles and theories such as natural borders or linearity and hydrofrontiers.

Its subregions differ geographically from each other and this has had serious geopolitical implications for the continent throughout history.

Its internal borders have been drawn based on various principles and theories such as natural borders or linearity and hydrofrontiers, while its external border areas have been the subject of imperial domination and competition since the days of the Roman Empire to the 20th Century. Despite its unique geography, Europe has rarely been a unified geopolitical actor. Today, the EU is expected to become such an actor on a regional and global scale, and it has developed policy tools such as enlargement and neighborhood to achieve this goal

In the post-Cold War era, the EU launched a new policy called the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership also referred to as the Barcelona Process, in an attempt to respond to the new geopolitical environment, while it decided to proceed with eastward enlargement in the face of successive accession applications by Central and Eastern European countries.

After the Cold War years when Europe was divided into two hostile parts, this geopolitical division ended and the geopolitical rivalry within and upon Europe seemed to disappear. Despite this however, it is possible to speak of a revival of geopolitics in the European context. This revival was not expected by many scholars, but was not surprising for Realist thinkers and political geographers. Actually the return of geopolitics was a response to the foreign policy identity crisis in many European countries. In some countries such as Russia, Italy, Turkey and France, this revival was quite obvious in many respects, but in others such as Germany, Sweden and the Czech Republic, this was not the case.

Enlargement and neighborhood policies were not part of the European integration project initially, but subsequently they have become the most important foreign policy tools of the EU. These tools have been developed in an effort to shape and integrate the geopolitical space surrounding the European core which consisted of the original six member states.

Enlargement and neighborhood policies were not part of the European integration project initially.

EU integration is currently encountering a great deal of state-based difficulties and challenges arising from the rise of nationalism, great power competition, and a lack of transatlantic solidarity, as well as non-state challenges including ISIS terrorism and illegal immigration.

Both China’s geopolitical ambitions under President Xi Jinping, and his Belt and Road initiative, and the Trump administration’s hostile America First attitude towards the EU will probably be a tough test for the EU’s foreign policy actorness in the near future.