Making of the Türkiye-EU Readmission Agreement and Visa Liberalization Deal: Internal Negotiations within the Turkish Executive

Abstract This article examines the intragovernmental negotiations among Turkish executive agencies that shaped Türkiye’s position in its negotiations with the EU on the Readmission Agreement and Visa Liberalization Dialogue (RA-VLD). The RA agreement required Türkiye to take back third-country migrants who had entered the EU through Türkiye, while the VLD agreement notably lacked a solid EU guarantee of visa liberalization for Turkish citizens as an incentive. Initially, Turkish bureaucrats and political leaders had criticized such proposals, arguing that they relegated the country to the status of a “border zone” between Europe and the Greater Middle East. However, this pessimism gradually gave way to a more optimistic approach between mid-2012 and the end of 2013. When the agreement was finally signed on December 16, 2013, the Turkish Foreign Minister hailed it as a diplomatic breakthrough that would grant Turkish citizens the long-sought-after visa-free travel within the EU. But how did Türkiye’s position shift so decisively? What explains this puzzle? We attempt to unravel this puzzle by examining the intragovernmental negotiations within the Turkish executive branch concerning migration and visa diplomacy. We argue that changes in migration and visa policies can largely be explained by the negotiation dynamics among various government agencies involved in the process. By analyzing the process as a loosely demarcated set of phases, we trace the roles of hard-line and soft-line agencies, policy entrepreneurship, horizontal and vertical shifts in decision-making authority, expanding interagency negotiation techniques, and soft-liners’ informal collaboration with external actors. Taking Türkiye as a “critical case,” this study employs rigorous document analysis along with first-time interviews with key bureaucrats involved in interagency bargaining during the period. It contributes to negotiation studies by exploring the relatively underexamined area of interagency negotiations. Finally, the article calls for more elaborate analysis of the impact of the recent wave of populist authoritarian governments on intragovernmental bargaining dynamics, including their effects on transparency, the quality of the decisions made, and groupthink dynamics.