Recently, the relationship between Germany, EU and Turkey appeared at crossroads. Global trends, diverging policies, populism in election campaigns, but also common responses towards joint challenges evoked the emergence of a “conflictual partnership” that is classified by the simultaneous experience of contention and high-level cooperation.

Against this backdrop, the 2018 Conference “New Political Challenges for Germany, Turkey and the EU – V” was designed to approach this triangle of actors by assessing con-temporary and current political dynamics being of special importance for their long-term evolution. Academics junior researchers, professors, students, civil society mem-bers and practitioners from Germany and Turkey joined the event that took place in Is-tanbul on 18th May 2018, jointly organized by the University of Cologne (UoC) and the Turkish-German University (TAU) for the fifth time.

The conference was generously funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF).