From AKP’s ‘Conservative Democracy’ to ‘Advanced Democracy’: Shifts and Challenges in the Debate on ‘Europe’

Rethinking Euroscepticism in Turkey: Government, Opposition and Public Opinion

“…The officials of the European Commission stated that the Commission would prepare its 'toughest' progress report on Turkey criticizing the government's authoritarian response to the Gezi demonstrations (Hürriyet Daily News, 2013). The AKP officials dismissed the EU officials' criticisms as 'unfounded' and accussed the EU of acting as a 'partner in crime' (Alpan, 2016;Aydın-Düzgit, 2016). In Erdoğan's speeches, the EP in particular, was dismissed as 'uninformed about Turkey', 'powerless/having no authority on Turkey', 'dishonest ' and 'insincere' (Aydın-Düzgit, 2016, p. 52).…”

“…55-56;Aydın-Düzgit, 2018, p. 22). At the same time, Europe has been categorized as Turkey's other and represented in the ruling party's discourses as 'unwanted', 'discriminatory', 'different' and 'inferior' (Aydın-Düzgit, 2016;Aydın-Düzgit, 2018;Alpan, 2016;Balkır and Eylemer, 2016). Aydın-Düzgit (2018, p. 22) particularly contends that the othering of Europe through the claims of moral superiority and the Sèvres syndrome had long been present in Turkey, but those representations became the official discourse of Turkey during the AKP government with a strong reference to the Ottoman past.…”

Foreign policy and identity change: Analysing perceptions of Europe among the Turkish public

“…In the initial years of AKP rule, between 2002 and the mid-2000s, the party’s official discourse on Europe was largely positive, yet pragmatic. As the declaration of Turkey’s EU candidacy in 1999 led to the start of accession negotiations in 2005, AKP maintained the Western-oriented Kemalist foreign policy vision and represented Europe as the ‘promised land’ of democracy and improved welfare/governance standards, as well as the ‘natural direction’ for Turkey (Alpan, 2016). Relations with the EU and the reform process also served to empower the party vis-à-vis its traditional adversaries, such as the secularist military and the judicial establishment (Noutcheva and Aydın-Düzgit, 2012).…”

“…The current literature highlights that the shift in Turkish foreign policy and the souring of Turkey–EU relations in the second half of the 2000s not only entailed a policy change but also a change in the crafted identity of the state at the elite level as distanced from Europe. The positive representations of Europe in AKP discourse gave way to negative representations, where the European Other was increasingly constructed as an ‘unwanted intruder in Turkish politics’, as an ‘essentially discriminatory entity’ with fixed civilisational (religious and historical) differences with Turkey, and as an entity that is ‘democratically/politically/morally inferior to Turkey’ (Aydın-Düzgit, 2016; see also Alpan, 2016; Balkır and Eylemer, 2016; MacMillan, 2013). For example, AKP leader Erdoğan’s speeches during his presidential campaign in August 2014 2 contained numerous references to Europe as intruding in Turkish politics and as essentially discriminatory and morally inferior to Turkey:A magazine in Germany published a special issue, in Turkish and in German … Why this effort to mess this country up all the way from Germany?…”

Legitimizing Europe in Contested Settings: Europe as a Normative Power in Turkey?

“…There is a consensus in the literature that the stalemate in accession negotiations along with mixed messages from the EU on the desirability of Turkish membership have significantly weakened the EU's credibility of conditionality vis‐à‐vis Turkey, thus leading to a weakening of the EU's democratic leverage and the loss of its appeal as a normative actor in the country (Müftüler‐Baç, ; Saatçioğlu, ). Scholars have demonstrated how the EU is no longer being framed by political parties as a normative actor promoting the consolidation of Turkish democracy (Alpan, ; Balkır and Eylemer, ) and how Euroscepticism is vocally espoused by the country's governing elite (Aydın‐Düzgit, ). Yet, with the exception of quantitative studies based on Eurobarometer and other survey data (Çarkoğlu and Kentmen, ; Kentmen, ; Yılmaz, ), there has been no empirical study to gauge the Turkish public's perceptions of the European project.…”