Cycles of Europeanization in Turkey: The Domestic Impact of EU Political Conditionality

Abstract

This article deals with the underlying dynamics of the flux in the political reform process in Turkey, and the role of EU membership conditionality in triggering those dynamics within the conceptual borders of Europeanization. It argues that ups and downs in Turkey’s democratization process can only be grasped with the presence/absence of EU conditionality coupled with endogenous and exogenous factors that affect its operability. In other words, conditionality led to Europeanization between 2002-2005 when facilitating factors (i.e. member states’ as well as EU’s commitment to Turkish accession, the coherent accession strategy of the Union, support at the governmental, elite and societal level) interacted without any salience of one over another. On the contrary, in 2005, Europeanization in Turkey entered a reversed cycle with the absence or limited existence of the above-forces necessary to bring about any domestic change. Thus, this paper employs an understanding of the cycles of change in Turkish domestic politics through not only conditions-compliance dichotomy per se, but the interplay of domestic and European level forces that render conditionality conducive to Europeanization.