Europeanization and EU–Turkey Relations: Three Domains, Four Periods

Abstract

Europeanization is deservedly one of the most popular yet most volatile buzzwords for Turkish politics and EU–Turkey relations. This chapter takes stock of the Europeanization literature and examines the EU–Turkey relationship by referring to particular mechanisms and variants of Europeanization. The main argument is that Europeanization is a versatile and complex process covering vast areas of policy, politics, and polity, intertwined with larger domestic, regional, and global processes, which is not limited to Turkey’s EU accession. The analysis refers to particular mechanisms and variants of Europeanization in four different phases between 1963 and early 2020: In the first period, ‘Europeanization as rapprochement’, Turkey’s age-old Westernization project was consolidated through Europeanization. In the second period, ‘Europeanization as democratic conditionality’, there has been strong interest in the impact of Europeanization on particular aspects of domestic issues through conditionality and the EU’s role as a ‘democratization anchor’. In the third period, ‘Europeanization as retrenchment’, and the fourth period, ‘Europeanization as denial’, ‘Europe’ was no longer the lingua franca in the Turkish political landscape, a trend that is also associated with a ‘de-Europeanization’ turn in the literature. This does not mean that ‘Europe’ completely disappeared from domestic policy orientations, political debates, and identity negotiations. Rather, Ankara used ‘Europe’ strategically to justify actions that were criticized by the EU.

In Search of Epistemic Justice in the EU’s Periphery

“…The coding process also benefitted from a periodisation as it reveals the way EU-Turkey relations have been studied in different periods, featuring distinct milestones, and maps the shifts and continuities in EU-Turkey studies. Accordingly, we systematically reviewed the sampling in three periods: 1996-2004 (positive turn in bilateral relations from the initiation of the EU-Turkey Customs Union to the EU decision to open the accession negotiations with Turkey); 2005-2012 (from the opening of accession negotiations to the gradual slow-down of Turkish accession process amid 'selective' Europeanization (Alpan 2021) in Turkey); 2013-2020 (formulation of EU-Turkey relations increasingly outside the accession context and growing trend toward conflictual relations between the EU and Turkey). (See similar periodisations in Reiners and Turhan 2021a.…”

Teaching EU Law in the periphery: Outlook in Turkey

“…These periods are defined as follows: Europeanisation as democratization (1999)(2000)(2001)(2002); proto-Europeanisation (2002-08) (see Griffiths and Özdemir 2004) and de-Europeanisation (2008 onwards). Starting from Turkey's first application for associate membership to the European Economic Community in 1959, Alpan (2021) proposes four time periods: Europeanization as Rapprochement ; Europeanization as Democratic Conditionality (1999Conditionality ( -2005; Europeanization as Retrenchment (2006Retrenchment ( -2011 and finally Europeanization as Denial (2011Denial ( -2020. Although our special emphasis is on the last (de-Europeanization) (Aydın-Düzgit and Kaliber 2016), or what Alpan (2021) considers Europeanization as Retrenchment and Denial, we admit that such periodization neither seeks to simplify the complex process of historical evolutions, nor aims to create artificial periods against continuity and change.…”

“…Starting from Turkey's first application for associate membership to the European Economic Community in 1959, Alpan (2021) proposes four time periods: Europeanization as Rapprochement ; Europeanization as Democratic Conditionality (1999Conditionality ( -2005; Europeanization as Retrenchment (2006Retrenchment ( -2011 and finally Europeanization as Denial (2011Denial ( -2020. Although our special emphasis is on the last (de-Europeanization) (Aydın-Düzgit and Kaliber 2016), or what Alpan (2021) considers Europeanization as Retrenchment and Denial, we admit that such periodization neither seeks to simplify the complex process of historical evolutions, nor aims to create artificial periods against continuity and change. The intention is simply to present how continuity and change in terms of the nature of bilateral relations have developed after the Helsinki Summit of 1999 and therefore to review the EU Law curriculum in Turkish higher education institutions in order to draw conclusions on the state of this curriculum as compared to the general EU courses.…”

“…For instance, the Turkish Grand National Assembly approved 34 constitutional amendments in this period, most in the areas of human rights, laws regarding Penal Code, and the anti-terror law. Consequently, the period of 1999-2002 was largely one of 'Europeanization as Democratization', or in the words of Diez et al (2005), of 'the political Europeanization', and/or Europeanization as Democratic Conditionality (Alpan 2021).…”

Europeanisation in the Field of Housing: Its Areas of Influence, Different Approaches, Mechanisms, and Missing Links

“…At the time of writing, there is a paucity of comprehensive understanding of the links between Europeanisation and housing studies. Europeanisation, a term used here to explain and organize existing theories, concerns the various aspects of the incremental process of influencing or being influenced by different levels of government within the EU (or beyond) (Radaelli 2000(Radaelli , 2004Radaelli and Exadaktylos 2008;Alpan 2021).…”