Political Documents and Bureaucratic Entrepreneurs: Lobbying the European Parliament during Turkey's EU Integration

The European Union's (EU) accession negotiations with Turkey attract a lot of attention from all over Europe to the European Parliament, which serves as a modern agora wherein interests, information, and influence frequently exchange hands. Fine negotiations over what is important to European publics and powerful interests in and outside of the EU are revealed in amendments to sequential drafts of parliamentary reports; these take place through formal and informal communicative channels via lobbying. Complementing ethnographic observations with analysis of EU documents at different stages, I argue that political documents are a means for and contribute largely to bureaucratic politics in both the EU and Turkey, and actors increasingly rely on them to sustain communication between otherwise reluctant parties while maintaining an enduring demand for their expertise.