Doing migration diplomacy: How European diplomats navigate in the high-stakes Turkish arena, 2020–2024

This thesis examines how European diplomats navigated EU–Türkiye migration cooperation between 2020 and 2024, a period marked by geopolitical tension, implementation disputes and increasingly constrained room for manoeuvre. It argues that the space for diplomacy is shrinking in settings where cooperation with difficult yet indispensable partners remains necessary, but becomes politically costly, contested and difficult to sustain. The thesis introduces the concept of the high-stakes arena to capture these diplomatic settings.
Using a dual-lens approach that combines official EU discourse analysis with a practice-based study of diplomacy, the thesis shows how abstract EU policy language was translated into locally workable diplomatic scripts in Türkiye. It focuses in particular on diplomats from north-western EU member states and analyses the everyday practices through which they kept channels open, managed host-country sensitivities, coordinated with peers and preserved diplomatic flexibility under pressure.
The thesis argues that EU–Türkiye migration cooperation cannot be understood as a self-contained policy file, but formed part of a broader relationship shaped by interdependence, strategic restraint and high-maintenance diplomacy. It further develops a typology of diplomatic styles, showing how diplomats adapted to mandates, peer expectations and host-country conditions while also shaping EU leverage, external positioning and the limits of what could be said or done. By linking discourse, practice and diplomatic style, the thesis contributes a framework for studying how EU external action is made workable in politically sensitive and contested arenas.