It’s the Economy, not European Identity: The Effect of European Identity and Economic Considerations on Public Support for EU Membership in Turkey and Central and Eastern European Countries

Abstract

Turkey has long been characterized as "too big, too poor, too Muslim" to be a European country. This assertion permeated the political debates regarding Turkey's accession to the Union in the early 2000s, leading to a Turkey versus the rest dichotomy: Other candidate countries are European, Turkey is not. A central dimension of this dichotomy was the juxtaposition of public attitudes toward EU membership in Turkey and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). A frequently evoked claim during the fifth enlargement of the Union was that the Turkish public supports EU membership due to its expected economic benefits while citizens in CEECs desire membership because they identify as European. In this article, I show that this claim was empirically false. Using data from the Eurobarometer survey for candidate countries, I statistically demonstrate that both Turks and citizens of CEECs supported EU membership for economic reasons. European identity played a negligible role in shaping mass support for EU membership in Turkey and other candidate countries alike. This study makes a central contribution to the existing literature by analyzing the relative impact of European identity and economic considerations on public support for EU membership in Turkey and CEECs. The results fill an important void in the existing scholarship and contribute to ongoing political debates on Turkey's EU membership.

Can participation in learning abroad mobility support pro-European Union attitudes among youth?

“…Among others, the utilitarian approach is the most studied within this field in the literature. Studies applying the utilitarian approach mainly focus on the following: the role of the Euro crisis (Braun and Tausendpfund, 2014); socio-economic inequalities (Simpson, 2019); perceived national threats and benefits (Arikan, 2012); educational attainment (Hakhverdian et al, 2013); perceived personal gains and loss (Tucker et al, 2002); expected economic gains (Bayram, 2015); low-level of transfer of sovereignty to the EU; and potential benefits for future generations (Tanasoiu and Colonescu, 2008) in promotion of the pro-EU opinions among people. By contrast, from an identity approach, scholars examine the role of values (Kuşdil and Simşek, 2008), emotional reactions (Vasilopoulou and Wagner, 2017), religious beliefs (Nelsen and Guth, 2003), religiosity, and religious identity (McAndrew, 2020) regarding public attitudes toward European integration.…”