© picture alliance / AA Dursum Aydemir
© picture alliance / AA Dursum Aydemir
The Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) supports policy-oriented research on key questions related to Turkey’s domestic politics and foreign policy. Thanks to its Network, CATS also acts as a hub and curator of a European and transatlantic space of think tanks and research institutions.
Since its foundation in 2019, CATS has been distributing grants to applying institutions within its Network. Fostering joint research, exchange and a multiperspective debate on topics related to Turkey and its relations with the EU, these projects generated valuable insights and practical outputs for policymakers and the wider public.
This page presents an overview of the CATS Network projects, including information on partners and related publications and activities. The project funding within the CATS Network ended at the end of 2025, whereby the commitment to fostering high-quality research and dialogue continues.
Project Duration: Oct 2024 – April 2026
The project analysed Turkey's regional peacebuilding interventions, focusing on how its methods in conflicts such as those in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq influenced local and regional authoritarianism, affected humanitarian efforts, and shaped the emerging Middle Eastern security order, and provided policy recommendations for European and British collaboration with Turkey.
Project Duration: Oct 2024 – Dec 2025
This project examined Turkey's evolving relationship with Iraq, focusing on security, water management, and economic reconstruction. It explored Turkey's strategic objectives, Iraqi responses, and the broader implications for regional stability and Turkey-EU relations, and provided insights for policymakers.
Project Duration: Oct 2024 – Sep 2025
This project examined Turkey’s evolving relations with Iran through Iraqi, Syrian and Kurdish politics, focusing on their approach to regional connectivity, major initiatives, and the impact of ongoing developments such as the war in Gaza on EU, US and UK security policies.
Project Duration: Sep 2024 – Oct 2025
This project explored how political and ideological influences shaped youth values, how young people viewed democracy, and whether their stances were flexible or rigid across various socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. As nationalist, conservative and authoritarian narratives became more dominant, youth responses to these shifts held important implications for Turkey’s future direction.
Project Duration: Oct 2024 – Dec 2025
This project explored the nature of Turkey's efforts to balance integration with Western institutions, particularly the EU, with the simultaneous pursuit of closer cooperation with Russia and China in the aftermath of the domestic presidential transition, as well as the global pandemic and ongoing regional wars.
Project Duration: Dec 2023 – Dec 2024
This CATS Network project examined the political feasibility of the UNDP’s Türkiye Compact, aiming to assess the prospects of the EU, the UK and Switzerland adopting and implementing the Compact. While the UNDP’s economic feasibility study covered the EU, Canada and the United States, this research project focused on the EU, the UK and Switzerland.
Project Duration: Sep 2023 – Oct 2024
The project explored ways of enhancing cooperation between Turkey and European countries in the new security environment that had emerged following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It examined Turkey's aspirations for an autonomous foreign policy and identified avenues for rapprochement with its Western allies. It focused on using Turkey's strategic autonomy in the Black Sea region to promote constructive dialogue with Europe, addressing areas such as defence cooperation, maritime security, diplomatic engagement and energy security.
Project Duration: Sep 2023 – Nov 2024
This project examined the prospects for cooperation and competition between the European and Turkish defence industries, as well as the impact of defence industrial relations on the foreign policies of Turkey, the European Union (EU) and selected non-EU European countries.
Project Duration: Feb 2022 – Dec 2022
This project aimed to contribute to the political and public debate on whether to change the political system in Turkey. It first reflected on Turkey’s experiences with different political systems, as well as those of other countries, and then offered policy proposals and recommendations on the essential features and qualities that any new political system needed to have.
Project Duration: Feb 2022 - Dec 2022
The project aimed to discuss how the shift in power to Asia had occurred over the previous two decades, assess its impact on Turkey–Asia relations, and examine its consequences for Turkey–EU relations.
Project Duration: Feb 2022 – Dec 2022
This project aimed to investigate the sociopolitical dimension of the dynamics and patterns of urban climate change policy in Turkey. It sought to answer two research questions: first, whether different actors—including public officials working in national and local government, political parties, business communities and civil society groups—perceived and approached local climate change policy differently in Turkey; and second, how local climate change policy narratives related to each other.
Project Duration: Feb 2022 – Dec 2022
Organised by members of ELIAMEP’s Turkey Programme in collaboration with Medyascope, the ELIMED webinars and papers aimed to foster a more informed and nuanced debate in seven key areas. Topics under discussion ranged from the future of Turkish governance and media to the role of women in Turkey’s public life, and Turkey’s evolving policy towards Asia and Eurasia.
Project Duration: Feb 2022 – Dec 2022
The project aimed to explore the possibilities for and limitations of cooperation between Istanbul and comparably important German cities (such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne) that had already demonstrated effectiveness in addressing two common challenges: tackling climate change and protecting vulnerable groups, including refugees, women and those living below the poverty line.
Project Duration: Feb 2021 – Dec 2021
This research explored the potential for cooperation on environmental peacemaking and environmental geopolitics between the regional powers of the Eastern Mediterranean—namely Turkey, Egypt and Israel—in order to reduce tensions arising from potential conflicts and environmental degradation in the region.
Project Duration: Feb 2021 – Dec 2021
This research project aimed to identify the underlying biases shaping France’s foreign policy towards Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the way they might impact the EU’s external positions.
Project Duration: Feb 2021 – Nov 2021
Turkey–European Union relations had been fluctuating in recent years, leading to a relationship that appeared to be driven more by crisis management than to represent an equal partnership. In this context, Africa offered an underexplored area of research to examine the possibilities for such cooperation, as well as to identify points of contention.
This research project examined the ‘Africa strategies’ of Turkey and the EU in order to understand the extent to which North Africa—more specifically Morocco, Egypt and Algeria—could provide a venue for cooperation between the two actors.
Project Duration: Sep 2020 – Dec 2021
The central aim of this research was to examine and understand European and Turkish decision-makers’ perceptions of three dimensions of EU–Turkey cooperation in the Syrian crisis: the EU–Turkey Statement, Turkish politics vis-à-vis Syrian refugees in Turkey, and EU–Turkey cooperation as it related to the future of Syria.
Project Duration: Sep 2020 – Dec 2021
Until the start of this project, developments in Syria had added an extra layer to the already complicated relationship between the EU and Turkey. Cooperation and discord had mainly centred on two key issues: the refugee crisis and the threat of terrorism, which was associated with the phenomenon of European foreign fighters. This project aimed to identify opportunities and constraints for EU–Turkey cooperation in Syria.
Project Duration: Aug 2020 – Apr 2021
Carnegie Europe convened three off-the-record policymaker roundtables on Turkey in London, Berlin and Brussels. Each discussion engaged officials from national governments, key ministries and parliaments to review their country’s posture towards Turkey and policy options for the relationship moving forward. Due to the pandemic, the roundtables took place in a digital format.
Project Duration: Jul 2020 – Dec 2021
The state of play in EU–Turkey relations leading up to the start of this project reflected the state of the international order. While the de jure framework for relations between the EU and Turkey was the accession process, whereby Turkey had been a candidate for accession to the European Union since 2005 (although its candidature remained frozen), the transactional nature of the world order, as well as economic, social and political crises within a number of European states, had led to a significant crisis of trust between Turkey, the EU and its member states.
Project Duration: Apr 2020 – Dec 2020
The demographic futures of Turkey and Europe were entwined. The influx of nearly four million Syrians fleeing the civil war represented Turkey’s most significant demographic change in decades. The project aimed to develop a comprehensive strategy that addressed the key security questions in northern Syria and advanced a coordinated EU response in coordination with the United States in 2021.