Saturday, March 15, 2014
Congressional A (Omni Shoreham)
The construction of railroads, highways, pipelines, tunnels and bridges come as a result of a specific imagination and construction of an integrated Europe, known as infrastructural Europeanism. Currently being promoted as a bridge between Europe and Asia, Turkey champions infrastructural development projects envisioned to connect various regions it occupies. As part and partner in the EU’s Trans European Network agenda, Turkey receives financial support from the EU in the areas of transport and energy. Critics of the role of technological advancement in fostering social, economic, political and cultural integration between the centers and peripheries argue that many such projects remain as political dreamscapes instead of serving successful examples of transregional integration. Today, the idea of fostering region-wide transnational integration by means of infrastructural projects interconnecting states and peoples operates beyond sheer political economic calculation. Despite criticisms querying the viability of infrastructural Europeanism as a working means for transnational European integration, new political dreamscapes are open to new client networks from the European peripheries but their implications remain uncharted. This paper will examine some of these political dreamscapes on energy infrastructures under construction connecting Turkey to the wider European region.
