Incorporating the Istanbul-Ankara high-speed railway into the Belt and Road Initiative: Negotiation, institutional alignment and regional development

Date

2021-05-01

Author

Schindler, Seth
Bayırbağ, Mustafa Kemal
Gao, Boyang

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

196
views

0
downloads

This article contributes to a small but growing body of multi-sited and multi-scalar research on the Belt and Road Initiative. We focus on relations at the national, regional and international scales, and present original research from China and Turkey, to show how the Istanbul-Ankara high-speed railway has served as a testing ground for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Its construction was initially funded by the European Investment Bank, but it is now part of the backbone of the Turkish Government’s Middle Corridor plan which enhances west-east connectivity and integration with the Caucasus and Central Asia. We show that in contrast to multinational corporations from the OECD that seek to remain footloose, Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) seek to adapt to, apprehend and ultimately shape local institutions. In the case of Turkey this proved difficult given its institutional alignment with the European Union. Thus, while the railway project was completed successfully by a consortium led by a Chinese SOE, Turkey’s dynamic and complex regulatory environment discourages Chinese SOEs in the infrastructure sector. We conclude that the Turkish and Chinese governments are currently pursuing complementary territorial visions yet their cooperation is project-based and pragmatic.

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85109046233&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/91427

Journal

Journal of Geographical Sciences

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-021-1869-1

Collections

Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Explaining regional differences in firm formation rates: how far are government policies important for entrepreneurship? Demirdağ, İsmail; Eraydın, Ayda (2020-07-01) Purpose - The growing number of studies shows that government policies and measures are critical in determining entrepreneurship levels of regions. Any changes in the government policies and measures are, therefore, expected to bring significant changes at the entrepreneurship levels. This paper aims to explore the importance of the government policies and measures, along with supply and demand-side determinants in regional entrepreneurship in Turkey and explains the convergence of entrepreneurship among tw...
Integrating Occupational Complexity Levels to Interest Assessments in Social and Enterprising Areas: Development of the Vertical Social Interest Scale Acikgoz, Yalcin; Toker Gültaş, Yonca (2019-02-01) With the goal of improving assessment of interests toward social and enterprising areas, we developed the Vertical Social Interest Scale (VSIS) by incorporating vertical differentiation between occupations in terms of authority and communication. Social and enterprising occupations, their complexity levels, and work activities were identified using the information in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and Occupational Information Network. Three studies (N = 515 total), two of which utilized students and ...
Fostering Turkish Early Childhood Teachers' Professional Growth about Education for Sustainability through Media Literacy Alici, Sule; Şahin, Volkan (2023-01-01) This article aims to document the findings of a professional development intervention study seeking to promote in-service preschool teachers' professional growth about education for sustainability (EfS) through media literacy (ML). The overall aim of this year-long action research project (based on the Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate or ADDIE approach) was to foster teachers' knowledge and awareness regarding EfS via a professional development program incorporating media literacy education....
Increasing walkability capacity of historic city centers : the case of Mersin Belge, Züleyha Sara; Akkar Ercan, Zübeyde Müge; Urban Design in City and Regional Planning Department (2012) Sustainability, livability and quality of life have become widely and in-depth discussed issues in the literature of urban zlanning and design. This study primarily aims to investigate the concept of walkability as a part of the literature on livability. To draw a wider theoretical framework for this study, it first seeks to answer the questions of what the terms of ‘livability’ and ‘quality of life’ mean, and what components they constitute. Then, it focuses on the concept of ‘walkability’ as one of the ma...
A web-based public procurement system Turan, Hamide Karahan; Bilgen, Semih; Department of Information Systems (2004) This study focuses on developing and implementing a web-based public procurement system. As one innovative way of enhancing public procurement, an attempt to develop and implement electronic tendering system is to be made. In designing the system, not only technological aspects but also issues related to public procurement process improvement are considered. As an analysis and design approach, object oriented methodology was chosen and UML was used. Java as a development language was preferred because the r...

Citation Formats

S. Schindler, M. K. Bayırbağ, and B. Gao, “Incorporating the Istanbul-Ankara high-speed railway into the Belt and Road Initiative: Negotiation, institutional alignment and regional development,” Journal of Geographical Sciences, pp. 747–762, 2021, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85109046233&origin=inward.