Turkey’s Application for the Membership in the EU

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Focus of Research and Research Questions
Methodology and Information Sources
Argument
Literature Review
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Turkey’s application for the membership in the EU (1987) has brought the relationship between the two parties to the new stage. In 2005, Turkey was given the status of an official candidate for the EU membership, which made the prospect of accepting the country to the Union rather realistic.

Significant differences that relate to the fields of economy, politics and international affairs, culture, civil law and religion have predetermined strong interest to the initial conditions, peculiarities, possible outcomes, potential threats and benefits of the abovementioned union.

The rapid progress in the parties’ relationship corroborated the possibility of a quick positive outcome of the decades-long negotiation and seemed to reflect their opinion about the future union. At the same time, the last years were marked by a turn in Turkey-EU cooperation.

Turkey’s international policy shift from orientation to the West towards the strengthening sympathy for the Muslim Middle East identified the country’s international ambitions connected with its world recognition in the position of a strong independent state.

Correspondingly, the EU society found itself concerned about the capability of two different cultures to co-exist, integrate, and successfully interact. The rhetoric of the European countries leaders (Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel) indicated the shift in the EU society’s attitudes.

Today Turkey keeps the status of an official candidate for the EU membership. Both parties do not demonstrate the willingness to revise the prospects of the future cooperation, though not showing strong willingness to force the process. At the same time, it would be quite untimely to assume that both societies’ attitudes towards the potential union are homogeneous and coincide with Turkey’s and the EU’s official position.

This predetermines the significance of investigation of discussed topic for the further evolution of the Turkey-EU relationship and gies birth to a range of research questions in the field of social studies that require scholars’ and policy makers’ particular attention.

Focus of Research and Research Questions

The focus of this research is the attitude of the Turkish society towards the possible Turkey-EU union. The purpose of study is to detect the tendencies in the Turkish public opinion about the countries membership in the EU, which may clarify to what extent this prospect remains realistic and how the integration will progress in case Turkey is accepted.

In the course of study, the following research questions are expected to be answered:

What attitudes towards Turkey’s membership in the EU exist in the Turkish society?
What arguments do the proponents of each attitude provide to support their point of view?
What factors influence the Turkish public opinion? What information sources have the strongest authority with the Turkish population?
What is the official opinion of the Turkish government? Does it have significant influence on the attitudes of the population?
How do the Turkish people see their own future in case the country enters the European Union?
What parties of the Turkish society are the most interested in the EU entry?
What are the strongest potential threats of the Turkey-EU union? (economical, political, cultural, social, religious aspects)
How do the Turkish people want to see their country in the future? (internal condition, international arena)
How do the Turkish people perceive the attitude of the EU citizens and officials towards Turkey?
What alternatives to the EU membership do the Turkish citizens consider possible for their country?

Methodology and Information Sources

The study implies analysis of information sources devoted to the discussed topic. It is planned to get familiarized and compare the opinions of scholars and journalists who have been studying the public opinion of the Turkish population about the EU entry, as well as the opinions of the Turkish policy-makers.

The following sources will be used in the course of the study:

Monographs.
Articles in scholarly journals.
Turkish daily newspapers.
EU documents.
Interviews with Turkey officials: Egemen Bagis (the Minister of EU affairs in Turkey), Uluc Ozulker (ex-ambassador of Turkey to the EU).

Argument

The preliminary study of the given issue has demonstrated that the Turkish population is not homogeneous in evaluation of the outcome of Turkey’s EU membership. The tendency of opposition to the Turkey’s EU membership is expected to have been strengthening.

The Turkish citizens’ strongest concerns are expected to be connected with:

the role Turkey will obtain in the European community after joining the EU;
the impact of the union on the life of the ordinary Turkish people;
social, cultural and religious differences that will play a role of serious obstacles in the Turkey-EU integration.

Hypothesis: despite availability of the attitudinal factors that form resistance towards Turkey’s EU membership, the Turkey population has positive expectations about the potential union.

The literature review provided below is aimed at testing the abovementioned statements.

Literature Review

Study of Turkey population’s attitude towards the EU membership requires obtaining a background on the Turkish political process. Much has been said about the impact of Islam on the Turkish society. Arat’s (2005) is devoted to analysis of Turkish Islam as a power that influences the Turkish political process. The author also estimates the power of the Turkish women in politics.

Arat mentions the “serious polarization within society” (5) between the secularist and the Islamist poles. White’s work (2002) helps understand the roots and the process of evolution of Islamic politics in Turkey. Özyürek’s (2006) demonstrates that the secular and Islam issues actively interact and to the great extent oppose each other within the borders of Turkey’s political process.

The author states that the secularist tendencies have been strengthening in Turkey during the last few years. Andreson (2008) discusses the dynamics of the democratic process in the Turkish politics and “the warped dialectic between state and religion in the Turkey”. The democratic trends have been competing to the approach expressed by Erdogan, the AKP leader, ”When the feet try to govern the head, it becomes doomsday”.

Arikan (2008) marks that the principles of democracy and human rights are the basis of the “new European political order” (113). Turkish expectations about the EU membership are to the great extent connected with blossoming of these principles in the social life of the country.

On the other hand, the domination of the mentioned “new order” is perceived by some citizens as the invasion to the unique Turkish cultural space that has been forming for centuries. However, Carkoglu (2003) marks that “general attitudinal bases of resistance to EU membership- religiosity, anti-democratic attitudes and Euro-skepticism – do not form sources of EU refutation” (186).

The author argues that the Turkish elites are now in the state of polarization, and each force is able to find the necessary rhetoric and persuasion mechanism to “conquer” the population’s support through media (187). Paradoxically, the elites that resist to the EU membership are able to keep their electoral support (ibid.).

Carkoglu says that despite the dominating positive attitude towards the EU entry among the Turkish political elites, the legislative changes required by the EU are conducted quite slowly (ibid). Besides, they prefer to not emphasize the EU-related issues during the “electoral rush”.

To form a full understanding of Turkey’s attitude to the EU entry, it is necessary to study the opinion of different parties, such as (at least): officials, political organizations and social movements, media, different social groups. One of the most significant questions in the study of the Turkish public opinion about the EU entry is what parties are the most strongly interested in it.

In the abovementioned (2008), Anderson outlines the following, “In Turkey itself, as in Europe, the major forces working for its entry into the Union are the contemporary incarnations of the party of order: the bourse, the mosque, the barracks and the media. The consensus… is not quite a unanimity. Here and there, surly voices of reaction can be heard…

For the Turkish left, politically marginal but culturally central, the EU represents hope of some release from the twin cults and repressions of Kemal and the Koran; for the Turkish poor, of chances of employment and elements of welfare; for Kurds and Alevis, of some rights for minorities.

How far these hopes are all realistic is another matter”. It is necessary to mark that female participants of the country’s social and political life also demonstrate strong interest towards the issue of the EU entry.

Aybar et al (2007) who studied the ordinary Turkey citizens’ expectations about the EU membership argue that the union has been initially perceived by the Turkish women as a trigger of the women’s emancipation process. However, as Tunkrova argues in (2010), despite the legislative reforms, true democratization requires more time and the effort of the domestic actors (4).

However, some researchers share a pessimistic view on the capability of the Turkish society to accept the tendencies of the European new order. Particularly, Kösebalaban (2001) argues that the Turkish nation’s sympathy for the European values is not able to outweigh the Turkish domestic ideology.

On the “subconscious” level, says Kösebalaban, a union with Europe is perceived by certain parties as an invasion, an encroachment on Turkey’s independence and identity. However, at the moment, while Turkey has not faced the “challenge” of EU integration, this should not be equated with the “conscious level”: the overall attitude of the Turkish nation to the EU membership remains positive.

Conclusion

A set of factors has predetermined the polarization of the Turkish society between the sense of the national identity and socio-cultural autonomy, and the sympathy for the so-called “European new order” with its principles of democracy and human rights. At all levels, from the political elites to the ordinary citizens, there are proponents and opponents of the Turkey-EU union.

Despite the required legislative reforms and social changes progress quite slowly, the overall attitude towards Turkey’s EU membership is positive.

It is remarkable that the Turkish people understand that the EU entry will intensify the secularist tendencies in the society and lead to the changes at all levels, from legislation to the everyday life. Despite this fact, the support of the EU membership prospect is strong, which may mean that secularization itself is considered by the Turkey citizens a positive change.

Works Cited

Anderson, Perry. “After Kemal”. London Review of Books. 2008. Web.

Arat, Yesim. Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy Islamist Women in Turkish Politics. Albany: State University of New York, 2005.

Arikan, Harun. Turkey and the EU: an Awkward Candidate for EU Membership? Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.

Aybar, C. Bülent, et al. “Analysis of Attitudes of Turkish Citizens towards the Effects of EU Membership”. Turkish Studies 8.3 (2007): 329-348.

Carkoglu, Ali. “Who Wants Full Membership? Characteristics of Turkish Public Support for EU Membership.” Turkish Studies 4.1 (2003): 171-94.

Kösebalaban, Hasan. “Turkey’s EU Membership: A Clash of Security Cultures.” Middle East Policy 9.2 (2002): 130-46.

Özyürek, Esra. Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. 2006. Duhram, NC: Duke Uinversity Press, 2006.

Tunkrova, Lucie. “The EU Accession Process and Gender Issues: Central Europe and Turkey.” Report for the Fifth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, Porto, Portugal, 2010. JHUBC. Web.

White, Jenny. Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics. Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2002.

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