ABSTRACT
The Europeanization of Turkish politics and policies has become a popular subject in Turkish academia, but the literature has been mostly confined to the analysis of the period after Turkey was granted candidacy status by the EU in 1999. However, as is well known, Turkey’s relations with the EU date back to the late 1950s. During this period, neither academia nor the actors involved in Turkish politics thought or acted through the prism of Europeanization, i.e., the impact of the EEC/EC/EU. In the early years of relations, Turkish political actors interpreted relations with the EEC/EC through the prism of Westernization, not Europeanization. However, when one looks at the Association Agreement of 1963, it is easy to see that the EEC had laid down a long-term plan that explicitly aimed at influencing or changing politics and policies of a third country. Regardless, the concept was defined and delimited in the literature in the early 2000s, on the basis of the assumption that EU integration had by then reached a stage where its impact on the member states was visible and needed to be explored. This chapter aims to take a step towards filling a gap in the Europeanization literature by analyzing the preceding period in terms of the questions set out in the Introduction to this book on the mechanisms and outcomes of change. In light of the findings, though, the chapter problematizes the causal link between pressure from the EEC/EC/EU and changes in Turkish political life, which is crucial for the literature on Europeanization. Given the long history of these relations, it remains puzzling why the EEC/ EC/EU’s impact on Turkish politics and policies was so limited that Turkey could get official candidacy status only in 1999. This chapter argues that the perceptions of the EEC/EC/EU held by the main political parties and by interest groups, such as the industrialists and trade unions, were crucial factors that facilitated or limited the EEC/EC/EU’s impact on Turkey between 1959 and 1999.1 In other words, the degree of the EEC/EC/EU’s impact has been a function of domestic perceptions and developments in Turkish politics. The chapter will explore perceptions of the actors in two sub-periods in order to demonstrate the link between this factor and Europeanization before Turkey received EU candidacy status. First, the focus will be on the period between the application for associate member status in 1959 and the military coup in 1980, when the impact of the EEC was at its lowest. This was mostly because the main
actors involved in the relations either held positive views but had weak capacities or held ambivalent or negative views but had greater impact than their actual capacities.2 The perceptions of the actors remained stable during this period and EC pressure did not lead to any significant change in the Turkish economic, administrative or political structure. Therefore, the period can be characterized by inertia with regard to Europeanization. The second section of this chapter will explore the perceptions of the actors before and after turning points in relations between 1980 and 1999. These turning points are the Turkish membership application to the EC in 1987, the establishment of the customs union between Turkey and the EU in 1995, and the accordance of candidacy status to Turkey in 1999. Comprehensive reforms were made to Turkish economic policy in the mid-1990s in order to complete the customs union; however, it should be remembered that these took place in an environment where economic liberalization was no longer seriously questioned by any political actor. Changes in the perceptions of the actors involved in Turkish politics – particularly those of DİSK (the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions) and representatives of political Islam – on the other hand varied between accommodation and transformation during this period. However, in addition to defining the scale of changes, one has to ascertain the causal impact of the EU and mechanisms of change in the context of the Europeanization literature. When one tries to explain major changes, it appears that the role of the EU in changing actors’ perceptions and policies is not that of a trigger. The causal relationship between the EEC/EC/EU’s impact and changes in Turkey has been dependent on domestic perceptions and developments in Turkish politics between 1959-1999. Moreover, it appears that the mechanism of change was mostly learning by failure or experience. An overview of the factors which facilitated or limited the EEC/EC/EU’s impact on Turkish politics and policies will be presented in the conclusion of the chapter.
