Description
This paper examines how epistemic hierarchies and pluralities shape EU–Turkey relations by centering the knowledge practices of Turkey’s EU bureaucracy. Moving beyond political elite-centric analyses, it conceptualizes the bureaucracy as a site of epistemic negotiation, friction, and adaptation. Drawing on the concept of epistemic pluriversality, and and through 84 semi-structured interviews with bureaucratic elites, we examine how diverse—sometimes conflicting—forms of expertise and perspective are mobilized, marginalized, or instrumentalized within Turkey’s EU governance apparatus. Through a multi-level analysis, we identify epistemic enclaves formed through educational and professional trajectories (individual level), tensions between rhetorical collaboration and ministerial dominance (organizational level), and the centralization of decision-making that constrains epistemic diversity (governance level). These dynamics reveal how Turkey’s EU policy-making is shaped not by epistemic harmony, but by discord, asymmetry, and selective inclusions. Our findings show how bureaucratic actors function as both agents and constraints of epistemic plurality. Situating the Turkish case within global concerns about epistemic justice and institutional resilience, we argue that international cooperation relies not only on political alignment but on the contested infrastructures of knowledge itself. This research is supported by Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK Project No: 122K720).
