turkish accession to the european union: identities, discourses, confrontations assist.prof.dr....
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TURKISH ACCESSION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION: IDENTITIES, DISCOURSES, CONFRONTATIONS
ASSIST.PROF.DR. BASAK ALPAN
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE & PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
ANKARA, TURKEY
09.12.2014
Turkish Accession to the EU
‘Funeral for a Friend’‘Love is a Losing Game’ ‘Love is a Rollercoaster’‘Love is an Open Door’‘Ain’t no Mountain High Enough’
Turkish Accession to the EU
Europeanisation attempts from the 19th century:
Selim the Third, the Ottoman Sultan who initiated the restructuring of the Ottoman army along European lines
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who clearly saw Europe as the embodiment of civilisation and constructed Turkish modernity on this premise
Turkish Accession to the EU
‘Europe’ in Turkish politics at 3 levels:
As a foreign policy discourseA civilisational discoursePolicy-based discourse
Turkish Accession to the EU
Helsinki European Council in 1999 official acceptance of Turkey as a membership candidate
Turkish Accession to the EUA new period in Turkish politics at 3
November 2002 general elections
the then recently established Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 34.4 per cent of votes and 365 seats in the parliament which provided the Party with an opportunity to form a majority government for the first time in Turkish political history since the 1987 parliamentary elections
Turkish Accession to the EU
AKP’s struggle to differentiate itself from National View movement
The aim of the AKP is to ‘transmit various demands and sensitivities to the political sphere by ‘embracing the society as a whole, not just the believers’ Discourse on ‘change’ conservative
democracy
The ‘Europe’ card!!!!
Politics of resentment articulation of “cosmopolitan discourse”(i.e. compatibility of Islam with neo-liberalism)
The AKP assumed the role of the patron of ‘the victimized, the excluded, and the oppressed’, filling a space that should normally have been occupied by leftist-social democratic parties
November 2002 elections Islamists’ peace with the regime-they had taken off the shirt of National View!
Turkish Accession to the EU
“Our first priority is to watch the EU accession period closely (…) We will leave Copenhagen with the best result possible (…) We are a party which is determined to accelerate the EU integration process and to execute an economic programme which would strengthen integration with the rest of the world”
Interchangeable use of modernisation with Europeanisation
Turkish Accession to the EU ‘Reform fatigue’ starting from 2005
It was after the Turkish-EU Joint Parliamentary Commission meeting of 3-4 May 2006 that the EU authorities started using terms like ‘slowing down’, ‘delay‘ and ‘halt‘
Enlargement fatigue Reform fatigue + enlargement fatigue
‘Euro-denialism’ (Alpan, 2014)
Very much fuelled by the leadership in ‘the region’
‘Europe’ lost its central role within political debates so that it was no longer the lingua franca of politics so that each and every political actor has to talk that language in order to assert its location within politics.
Turkish Accession to the EU
From ‘Conservative Democracy’ to ‘Advanced Democracy’
In this new period, which roughly starts with the second electoral victory of the AKP in the 22 July 2007 elections, with 47% of the votes, we see the disappearance of the signifier ‘conservative democracy’
Its subsequent replacement with ‘advanced democracy’ with an intense reference to leadership in the ‘region’ and a more exclusionary and authoritarian outlook ‘at home’.
Turkish Accession to the EU
‘In all friendly and brotherly nations from Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, Sarajevo, Baku and Nicosia…
[t]he hopes of the victims and the oppressed have won…Beirut has won as much as İzmir. The West Bank,
Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem have won as much as Diyarbakır. The Middle East, the Caucasus and the
Balkans have won, just as Turkey has won’ (Hürriyet Daily News, 13 June 2011).
Characteristic of ‘New Turkey’:
• a leadership claim in the ‘region’• diversification of the foreign policy options (‘We do
not need them. They need us’)• an aggressive and authoritarian tone• Erdoğan’s leadership cult
Turkish Accession to the EU
Claim: new Turkey is not so new.
• Turkey still claims leadership in the region through the use of ‘European’ discourse like democratisation, human rights and a well-functioning free-market economy.
• Europeanisation is not limited to the EU accession process.
Turkish Accession to the EU
Turkish Accession to the EU
Füle’s wish ‘to build new and stronger bridges between Europe and Turkey’.
A vivid public sphere?
Communication instead of conditionality!
Turkish Accession to the EU
After the meeting held between Erdoğan and Füle at the conference on the future EU-Turkey relations held on 7 June 2013, Füle stated:
‘I visited the Gezi Park. The people at the park were not looters. They were the children of Turkey who demanded peace, freedom, respect. They are just typical European kids who want to be heard’
Turkish Accession to the EU
Turkey is not the place it used to be, so is not Europe!
Indignados
People filling the squares aired similar demands to Taksim: ‘enough is enough!’
Another song perhaps?
‘You Can’t Deny What You Liked as a Child’
