Europeanization, Framing Competition, and Civil Society in the EU and Turkey

In this article, we aim to examine the relationship between the European Union and Turkey from the specific angle of the process of Europeanization. We believe that economic or geopolitical arguments do not exhaust the debate on Turkey’s EU accession. A more comprehensive approach needs to be taken in order to understand the deep socio-political drives underpinning the Turkish bid for EU membership. From this perspective, understanding the broader process of Europeanization in political and social terms is crucial in order to capture the real drives of the European integration process in its entirety. In this vein, special attention needs to be paid to the ideational factors that shape the political discourse in Turkey concerning the attitude towards the EU. This is important not only in order to understand what push and pull factors are animating and perhaps transforming Turkish society, but also for two other reasons. First, it is important to correctly understand the debate in Turkey because only by doing that can the EU develop an effective discourse in its approach to Turkish political elites and society more broadly. Second, understanding the debate in Turkey also helps in understanding the debate within the EU, either through contrast or through illuminating the extent to which the EU debate is also influenced and reshaped by the debates in its neighborhood.