The impact of the European Union on Turkish politics

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Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey: Beyond the Narratives of Progress

Unpacking the core themes that are discussed in this collection, this article both offers a research agenda to re-analyse Turkey’s ‘authoritarian turn’ and mounts a methodological challenge to the conceptual frameworks that reinforce a strict analytical separation between the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ factors. The paper problematises the temporal break in scholarly analyses of the AKP period and rejects the argument that the party’s methods of governance have shifted from an earlier ‘democratic’ model – defined by ‘hegemony’ – to an emergent ‘authoritarian’ one. In contrast, by retracing the mechanisms of the state-led reproduction of neoliberalism since 2003, the paper demonstrates that the party’s earlier ‘hegemonic’ activities were also shaped by authoritarian tendencies which manifested at various levels of governance

Enlargement preferences and policy making in the EU: impacts on Turkey

European Union policy changed considerably towards Turkey between 1997 and 1999. This paper analyses the circumstances surrounding this change, focusing on (a) the modification in the overall enlargement strategy of the EU and (b) the effect of the change in particular member states' preferences with regard to Turkish candidacy. We contend that these two developments converged to produce a rather dramatic alteration in policy towards Turkey from one of exclusion to one of inclusion

Turkish foreign policy, its domestic determinants and the role of the European Union

This paper investigates whether Turkish foreign policy has changed in recent years, specifically in line with the EU accession process, and tries to uncover the main dynamics behind these changes. The main proposition in the paper is that domestic changes in Turkey have led to a reshuffling of foreign policy objectives with a renewed emphasis on improving relations with the country's neighbours. The paper investigates whether such a policy change is complementary to the Turkish goal of inclusion in the EU, and further proposes that the changes in Turkish foreign policy since 2002 involve an increased activism partly in line with the EU accession process and as a result of the changes in domestic politics

Turkish Parliamentarians' Perspectives on Turkey's Relations with the European Union

Discusses the results of interviews conducted on a sample of deputies in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, which addressed the lack of information on Turkish opinion regarding the European Union (EU). Background on the relations of Turkey with EU; Assessment of the nature of Turkey's negotiations with the EU, through the analysis of the attitudes of Turkish political elite; Perceived obstacles to Turkish membership in the EU; Factors that influence the incorporation of Turkey into the EU structure

The role of the European Parliament in Turkey-EU relations: A troublemaker or a useful normative actor?

The article analyzes the role of the European Parliament (EP) in Turkey–EU relations. More specifically, it explores the reasons why in practice EP’s role in promoting fundamental values of the European Union (EU) in Turkey remained largely limited. Drawing on the broader socialization literature, it concludes that a combination of factors related to the socializer (EP) and to the socializee (Turkey) limits the EP’s effectiveness to emerge as a normative actor in its relations with Turkey. In particular, the study points to the mismatch of values promoted by the EP and those embraced by the Turkish political elite as the real obstacle that prevents any socialization mechanism from being triggered.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The Pandora's box: democratization and rule of law in Turkey

A prominent question in the literature on democracy is concerned with the role of external factors in stimulating the process of democratization and uploading rule of law. This paper tackles the following questions: How does the political conditionality of an international organization—the EU in this case—stimulate democracy in third countries? Equally important, does conditionality always have a positive impact and could it be possible to witness the EU undermining democracy in an unexpected manner? This paper addresses these questions through an analysis of the Turkish democracy in the light of its accession to the EU and through an application of the EU membership conditionality by looking at rule of law in Turkey. The general contention in the political conditionality literature is that the EU enables an acceding country to adopt its democratic principles, and facilitates transition to democracy, while strengthening rule of law. However, the Turkish transformation seems to challenge this contention. This paper proposes that the EU’s political conditionality in bringing about political transformation in Turkey as a membership precondition unexpectedly illuminated the underlying anti-democratic tendencies and tensions in Turkish politics. The democratization process in Turkey since 1999, partly stimulated by the EU, has opened up a Pandora’s box releasing the conflict between the secularists and religious conservatives in Turkey that has long been suppressed. This paper analyzes these cleavages through the prism of EU political conditionality with regards to rule of law