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The Nationalist Movement Party's Euroscepticism: Party Ideology Meets Strategy
Abstract
This article explores what conditions or what specific issues lead to shifts in the positioning of the Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) towards Turkey's European Union (EU) membership goal. The article first examines the MHP's background and characteristics and compares it with similar parties in Western Europe. Subsequently, the MHP's EU stance during 1999–2002 and in the post-2002 period is discussed. The article concludes that ideology matters for the MHP but that shifts in degrees of Euroscepticisim during particular periods can be explained by strategic considerations of the MHP, which respond to the party's electoral gains or losses, its position in the party political spectrum and whether it is in government, in opposition or outside parliament.
... Aşırı sağ ve solun bertaraf olduğu, askeri rejimden demokrasiye geçişin başladığı bu süreçte merkez partiler belirgin bir şekilde AB taraftarı bir yaklaşım benimsemişlerdir. 1995'li yılların ortalarından itibaren şüphecilik artmaya başlamasına rağmen 2002'de iktidara gelen Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) AB üyeliğini desteklediğini dile getirmiştir (Yılmaz, 2011;Öniş, 2007;Avcı, 2011). AKP'nin iktidara gelmesinde ekonomik küreselleşme tercihinin de büyük rol oynadığını söylemek yanlış olmayacaktır (Öniş, 2007;Gözaydın, 2008). ...
... CHP, AKP'nin üniter devlet yapısını zarara uğratacak şekilde AB reformlarını yönlendirdiğini iddia etmiştir. Bu hoşnutsuzluk CHP'nin 2002'deki Avrupa taraftarı tutumundan vazgeçerek yumuşak bir Avrupa şüpheciliğine geçmesiyle sonuçlanmıştır (Yılmaz, 2011;Celep 2011;Avcı 2011). Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP) de "ulusal hassasiyetler" üzerine dayalı bir Avrupa şüpheciliği ile hareket etmektedir. ...
... Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP) de "ulusal hassasiyetler" üzerine dayalı bir Avrupa şüpheciliği ile hareket etmektedir. 2007 yılından itibaren aşırı milliyetçi unsurların ağır bastığı parti, AB'yi tamamen reddetmese de yükselen milliyetçilik söylemleri üzerinden hareket etmeyi tercih etmiştir (Avcı, 2011). ...
... The scholarly literature is replete with analyses on eurosceptic politics in Turkey most of which either focus on one political party, compare two political actors or examine public opinion (Avcı, 2011;Başkan Canyaş and Gümrükçü, 2015;Baudner, 2012;Canefe and Bora, 2003;Celep, 2011;Dikici Bilgin, 2017;Gülmez, 2008Gülmez, , 2013a2013b;Güneş-Ayata, 2003;Öniş, 2007;Spiering, 2007;Tezcan and Aras, 2015). The seminal work by Yılmaz (2011) offers the most comprehensive account on euroscepticism observed in major Turkish political parties as well as public opinion. ...
... Europeanization has never been an objective for the MHP since party officials rather consider Turkey-EU relations as 'a matter of primarily economic and security-related alliances' (Canefe and Bora, 2003, p. 144). Therefore, the party remains strongly opposed to European integration through a complicated accession process (Avcı, 2011). Especially, its long-standing dismissal of Turkey's Kurdish problem and assumption that the EU-led reforms granting more rights to Kurds will ensure the partition of Turkey mainly structure its critical stance towards Turkey's EU accession process (Avcı, 2011, p. 441;Öniş, 2003, p. 45). ...
... Velmi podstatnou součástí výzkumu EU je také negativní postoj vůči evropské integracieuroskepticismus (Leconte, 2010;Hooghe a Marks, 2007;Kopeček, 2004;Szczerbiak a Taggart, 2000;Leruth, Startin, Usherwood, 2018). V posledních letech někteří badatelé analyzovali euroskepticismus zejména v souvislosti s odchodem Velké Británie z Evropské unie (Vasilopoulou, 2016;Usherwood, 2018;Carl, Dennison, Evans, 2018), jež jej posílila nejen v Británii ale i v dalších zemích (Usherwood, 2020;Corbett, 2016 (Büyükbay, 2016;Abusara, 2010), přičemž na konci prvního desetiletí nového milénia jeho růst dokládala řada studií (Gulmez,2013;Avci, 2011;Yilmaz, 2011). ...
The dissertation focuses on the changes of the Turkish political regime in the context of the EU. The goal of the dissertation is to analyse the changes of the Turkish regime during the rule of the AKP, from 2002 to 2023. The dissertation observes the European context of these changes, in particular, the role of the accession negotiations with the EU and its effect on the Turkish regime. The dissertation is mainly based on the theoretical approaches of A. Przeworski (1991) regarding liberalization processes in authoritarian regimes and their possible outcomes, as well as the theory of partial regimes by Ph. C. Schmitter (1992), and
S. E. Skaaning’s regime transitions theory (2006). The dissertation tests two basic
hypotheses. The first hypothesis is related to the core of the research. H1: The Turkish regime has been a hybrid regime for a long time; after 2002, it went through a short process of liberalization, which did not result in democratization; on the contrary, it moved towards the strengthening of authoritarianism. The second hypothesis evaluates the European context. H2: In the long term, the economic disadvantages of integration of Turkey with the EU became apparent, and the negative image of the EU in the eyes of Turkish society did not create sufficient pressure on the regime to continue liberalizing or even democratizing changes. While the first hypothesis is verified, based on the other two sub-hypotheses; the
second hypothesis, also based on the other two sub-hypotheses, was not onfirmed. The dissertation states that there has been a shift in the political regime in Turkey towards authoritarianism which currently represents an authoritarian situation (Skaaning). This shift was accompanied by a narrowing of the regime’s power base after the unsuccessful liberalization, and stabilization of power took place through the change of the partial regime (from parliamentarism to presidentialism). The dissertation did not confirm that the deviation from liberalization reforms was based on the economic disadvantages of cooperating between Turkey and the EU or the negative perception of the EU by Turkish citizens.
... V těchto letech strany vedly své předvolební kampaně za účelem co největšího úspěchu u veřejných voleb. Taggart, Szczerbiak (2013), Avci (2011) a Sitter (2002 popisují taktické projevy politických stran v předvolebních obdobích, kdy jsou strany ochotny za účelem dosaţení co největšího úspěchu u voleb, takticky změnit svou rétoriku o EU (např. strany se mohou v době volebního období odvrátit od svého proevropského přístupu a zaujmout pozici kritika EU). ...
... Following the 1980 coup d'état, the rise of PKK violence and the decline of communism reshaped the enemy image of the MHP, and separatism became their primary concern. The MHP adopted a more pragmatist approach under Bahçeli's leadership since the late 1990s, without losing their tone of Turkish nationalism (Avcı 2011). Despite conducting a harsh opposition against the AKP, the MHP supported the AKP's bill for the presidential system in the 2017 Referendum for the sake of protecting the state's survival (NTV 2017). ...
The rise of populist parties around the world raises concerns about liberal democracy. Amid the discussions on democratic backslid-ing, this study scrutinises populism in Turkey by using quantitative content analysis. For this goal, this article uses parliamentary group speeches of political leaders between 2011 and 2019 (N = 569) as raw data. The results illustrate that Erdoğan is significantly more populist than other leaders. Kılıçdaroğlu, on the other hand, appears as the least populist political figure. While Bahçeli exploits a Manichean discourse, Peoples' Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP)) instrumentalises anti-elitism. The overall results indicate that Turkish politics is stuck in the spiral of populism, which damages democracy in Turkey.
... Ne var ki bu çalışmalar genel olarak belirli politika alanlarına eğilerek, partilerin bu alanlarda nasıl bir duruş sergilediklerine odaklanmışlardır. Örneğin Avcı (2011a;2011b), Başkan ve Gümrükçü (2012), Kıratlı (2015) ve Dikici Bilgin (2017) seçim beyannamelerini veri olarak kullanarak partilerin Türkiye'nin Avrupa Birliği üyeliği hedefi çerçevesinde nasıl bir tutum aldıklarını ve bu tutumların zaman içerisinde nasıl değiştiğini incelemişlerdir. Benzer analizleri Tok (2012) eğitim politikaları alanında, Urul ve Sertesen (2015) yerel yönetimler alanında, Dikici Bilgin (2008) ve Yanık (2012) dış politika alanında, Atmış ve Günşen (2016) ise ormancılık politikaları alanında gerçekleştirmişlerdir. ...
... Not even the nationalist MHP can simply be categorized within hard Euroscepticism. 51 If one assumes that a key goal for any political party is gaining support in the next elections, how can one explain this pattern? Does the fact that a foreign policy issue has become a bureaucratic policy to force the political parties to ignore the electorate? ...
This paper focuses on the Turkish political parties’ attitudes towards the country’s European Union (EU) membership. It intends to analyse the concerns and demands of the political parties as the parliamentary debates shape government policies. The paper considers the parties’ positions in the parliamentary power matrix (incumbency or opposition), their ideological tendencies and electoral concerns; and their relations with the social classes, all of which influence the party strategies and policies. It begins with outlining the politicized social cleavages and the characteristics of the party system. Next, it discusses the foreign policy orientation of the parties, their perceptions on Europe and the EU, the preferred type of integration with the EU and the ways they interpret the policies of the EU towards Turkey’s membership. The paper finds that the secular social democratic parties have been the strongest supporters of membership mostly due to their historical pro-Western tendencies and their relations with republican big business. Their economic policies have been modelled on the European welfare state provisions. The nationalist parties have been consistently sceptical for cultural and nationalist reasons. The most interesting case emerges as the pro-Islamists, whose ideological reserve and scepticism disappear only temporarily and for practical reasons.
... Existing studies of minority nationalist parties and the EU span a number of strands including national identity and European integration (Carl, 2003; Marks & Wilson, 2000 ); ideology and party attitudes towards political union (Avci, 2011; Hakan, 2011); dual conceptions of citizenship; the EU, MNPs and environmental policy (Dawson, 2000); and EC directives on minority language rights (Pertot, Priestly & Williams, 2008). Against this backdrop, scholars have advanced the (albeit contested) notion of parties' 'Europeanization' (or the relationship between European integration and party programmes and practices) – in order to explain their adoption of a pro-Europe disposition (Gaffney, 1996; Mair, 2006). ...
Traditionally, minority nationalist parties (MNPs) have employed the notion of Europe
in order to advance an alternative to centralized administration within the unitary state. This study
examines whether earlier claims of MNPs’ repositioning on the European Union (EU) are supported
by a discourse analysis of manifestos in UK meso-elections. The findings confirm a significant shift in
MNPs’ framing of EU policy at the regional level; no longer advanced as a principal route to
autonomy, voters are latterly invited to view the EU more as a fiscal-support mechanism. The
wider significance of the findings is in pointing to post-devolution instrumentalism and an
ideologically fluid phase in MNP attitudes to the European project. In the wake of state
restructuring, meso-elections present new discursive opportunities for MNPs to seek a mandate to
build on the degree of self-government already attained through the (re)creation of regional
polities without principal reliance on the goal of ‘independence in Europe’.
This research aims to offer a valid answer to the question of how Turks and Europeans perceived each other in cultural and identity terms throughout history. With this purpose, it makes a thorough analytical review of the extant scholarly literature on identity relations between Turkey and Europe. There is an evident lack of scholarly attention on the evolution of mutual representations comparatively in the long durée . Most scholarly works focus on specific periods of time and investigate either how Turks view Europe or visa-versa. This systematic review provides the basis for an evolutionary analysis of mutual identity representations between Turkey and Europe over more than a two-hundred-year period.
The period under focus starts with the French Revolution (1789) triggering intensive identity debates between Ottomans and Europeans and lasts until mid-2010s when bilateral relations between Turkey and the European Union went into disarray. This long period has been divided into four shorter periods each starting and ending with a remarkable event in world politics or bilateral relations. The study examines each period in relation to four focal issues, namely, nationalism, civilization, status in international society, and state-citizen relations generating intensive identity discussions in both Turkey and Europe.
The article first presents the key findings of the relevant literature on European representations of Turkey and on Turkish representations of Europe in the four historical periods. Then it scrutinizes the extant literature on each period with respect to the four focal issues. Overall, the study, through a comprehensive literature review, demonstrates the ways in which mutual identity representations in Turkey and Europe have been contested over a two-hundred-year period.
Religious populism features prominently in the global political landscape. This contribution focuses on this particular type of populism, and the political strategies employed by religious populist actors, with a focus on the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) under the leadership of Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey. Although there is an established literature on religious populism, there are still dynamics that need to be studied further. How religious populists outflank their rivals, especially those with relatively conservative ideologies and understandings of nationalism, remains unanswered, for example. In this study, I investigate how the AKP, as a religious populist party, has competed with and distinguished itself from other mainstream and conservative Turkish political actors and movements, and their respective nationalist ideologies: (a) the secular political establishment, including the Kemalist Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party), (b) the tradition(s) the party was originally part of but is no longer viable, the Milli Görüş (National Outlook) movement, (c) other popular religious movements that have a claim to power (such as the Gülen, or Hizmet, movement), and finally (d) ultranationalist segments and parties such as the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Action Party), each of which has their own interpretations of citizenship and nationalism.
Although populism is a political phenomenon that originated out of Europe and emerged long before the start of European integration, in the post-World War II European context, it has developed in conjunction with Euroscepticism. Actually, since the creation of the European Union (EU) in the early 1990s, the two phenomena have gradually come to coincide. Nowadays, with few exceptions, all populist parties are also Eurosceptic and vice versa. This coincidence, far from being casual, can be explained by the core features of the populist (thin-centred) ideology and by the nature of both the integration process and the EU governance. Indeed, while populism has been commonly defined as an anti-elitist ideology, European integration and the EU system of governance are widely seen as quintessentially elitist. Under these conditions, opposition to/in the EU tends to be inherently populist. Nonetheless, this ‘populist/Eurosceptic compound’ can manifest itself in rather different shapes, depending on the types of populism (inclusive vs. exclusive) and the types of Euroscepticism (hard vs. soft) that are adopted by individual parties. The chapter highlights both conceptual and empirical overlaps between populism and Euroscepticism, also referring to intermediated concepts, such as ‘national sovereignty’ and ‘economic nationalism’, that work as traits d’union between the two phenomena.
While much has been written to explain the mutation of Islamic-oriented parties in Turkey from pursuing an Islamic ideological cause to embracing vote-seeking behavior and democratic processes, little effort has been made to explain why the far-right establishment – represented by the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) – still resists ideological change. This article argues that fortification of nationalism with Islam in the party, the party’s identification with Turkey’s national security issues, and the construction of personality cult around party founder Alparslan Türkeş restrict its ideological moderation. Nevertheless, the party benefits from this ideological immoderation to be a key player in Turkish politics. In other words, while ideological immoderation prevents the MHP from embracing a pluralistic political stance, it has also been functional to exert its nationalist ideology on the state without sharing governmental power.
Most scholarship on citizenship concentrates on macro level debates of policies, regulation and structural changes. This approach neglects the significant role of citizenship as national membership on individual understanding of ordinary citizens and their everyday practices. Turkish citizenship up to now has predominantly been analyzed through the status and rights of ethnic and religious minorities in terms of equal citizenship and most of those analyses studied citizenship on macro level through institutions. By 2016, with the announcement of the exceptional citizenship proposal as a plan to naturalize Syrian refugees which met with a strong backlash, the focus of the scholars has shifted in Turkey from minorities to non-citizens –namely, refugees. With this shift, Turkish citizenship has defined and practiced for the first time through outsiders who are non-citizens. Within the frame of this context, this thesis aims to examine the discursive construction of exclusion through citizenship in Turkey and to investigate the citizenship perception of citizens by adopting a people-centered, micro-level approach. By analyzing the party discourses, social media contents and interviews with 10 shopkeepers, this thesis demonstrates that the presence of the refugees has a renationalizing effect on citizenship by coupling it with national identity and it also reveals that citizenship perception of Turkish citizens is based on a combination of weak territorial membership and strong blood-based membership.
The European Union has traditionally played an anchoring role in Turkey, pushing the Republic towards the enhancement of fundamental rights and freedoms. However, the decreasing credibility of the project for EU membership after 2005 has gradually led to selective reforms being introduced, and most recently to de-Europeanization. Against this quickly changing background, this paper seeks to investigate the usages of Europeanization by domestic political actors during the discussions on the recently failed constitution-making process (2011–2013). It specifically focuses on deliberations over religious freedom, and argues that Europeanization has continued to serve as the normative context in constitution-writing.
The issue of minority rights is highly contested in both member and candidate states of the European Union. Compared with other policy areas, the Europeanization process in minority rights is much slower and more problematic. Turkey, though, differs from the majority of the member states by showing positive development, although admittedly it is still characterised by both accelerations and slowdowns. This book examines how minority protection, as a highly sensitive and controversial issue, is promoted or constrained in the EU’s neighbourhood, by focusing on the case of Turkey. It draws on current external Europeanization theories and suggests a rationalist model comprising both the role of the EU and also domestic factors. It integrates two models of external Europeanization provided by Schimmelfennig and Sedelmier (2005), i.e. the external incentives and lesson-drawing models, and the framework of the pull-and-push model of member state Europeanization by Börzel (2000), to derive a comprehensive model for external Europeanization. The book argues that the push by EU conditionality and the pull by domestic dissatisfaction are influential in promoting change. Without one or the other, domestic change remains incomplete, as it is either shallow or selective. Focusing on the Turkish case, the book enhances the theoretical understanding of external Europeanization by shifting focus away from EU conditionality to voluntarily driven change, and by providing a theoretical model that is applicable to other countries. It will therefore be a valuable resource for students and scholars studying minority rights and Turkish and European ethnic politics.
The Turkish foreign policy is a heated subject, studied widely by various scholars. In recent years, coupled with many domestic, regional and international developments, Turkey and its politics have become true topics of interests even beyond these said scholarly circles. Much scholars were giving attention to the Turkish foreign and domestic policy because of events such as Turkish-Israeli tensions, Turkish-Palestinian relations, EU accession question, Kurdish conflict, Arab Spring, the internal power struggle between Kemalist and Islamic political group as well as its involvement in the Syrian war. This dissertation delves into a much-neglected field of study with regards to the Turkish policy towards Israel and Palestine. Therefore, this dissertation mainly examines the governing period of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) from 2002 until 2016. The relationship between these three countries will be coined as the Turkish-Palestinian-Israeli triangle. This triangle forms of the pillars of Turkish foreign policy under AKP. The analytical and theoretical framework of this research proves that both material and idealistic interests formed the AKP government’s foreign policy. As a result, Turkey’s relations with these two countries has been used as a tool for both internal and external power manifestation and expansion for AKP. This thesis builds on the continuity and changes in the triangle relations, starting from the Jewish immigration to the Ottoman Empire until the attempted coup of 2016, with a predominant emphasis on the period 2002-2016. In this dissertation, it will be argued that during the first period, from 2002 until 2007, there was an internal and external expansion of the traditional Turkish foreign policy. This expansion was due to a harmony between AKP’s material and idealistic interests. During the periods of 2007-2011 and 2011-2015, the idealistic interests were prioritised in shaping the AKP’s foreign policy. The overuse of idealistic interests in the Arab Spring period harmed Turkey’s material interests. As a result, Turkey moved towards one of zero friends, more enemies and more isolation. After the middle of 2016, the AKP government attempted to find a harmony between its material and idealistic interests. Within this context, Turkey and Israel reached a normalisation agreement in June 2016 which served as a confirmation of Turkey’s recalculated policy position.
The article compares the EU accession discourses, during the 2002, 2007 and 2011 elections, of Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) with those of the two main opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), tracking the continuities and shifts in their discourses. In the light of Habermas’s distinction between pragmatic, ethical and moral justifications, the discourses are analysed on the basis of three explanatory logics – interests, rights and identity – by means of a theoretically guided qualitative content analysis of the election manifestos of these three political parties. These logics, emerging and shifting in line with periodical dynamics, have been instrumental to varying degrees in the discourses of Turkey’s political elites.
This book examines the construction of Euroscepticism in civil society discourse, focusing on Turkey's possible EU-mem-bership, the ongoing political struggles between different political camps in Turkey and general Western discourse. Applying semi-structured qualitative interviews with Civil Society Organisation leaders and Critical Discourse Analysis, the study shows how civil society leaders evaluate Europe and the European Integration of Turkey. It appears that there are multiple Eurosceptical argumentation strategies in the discourses varying according to ideological background and pro-government and anti-government positioning. © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2015. All rights reserved.
This article aims to contribute to the discourse of Euroscepticism in Turkish civil society by examining the underlying dynamics of the phenomenon among leftist groups. Methodologically, semi-structured qualitative interviews with and surveys of Civil Society Organisation (CSO) leaders and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are applied. Compared to business organisations, a large part of the trades unions have a cautious approach towards European integration. Generally, the leftist leaders do not perceive the EU process strategically or as a political opportunity structure to gain influence, but predominately more ideologically, as the spread of neoliberal free market policies that create an anti-labour environment.
Given the recent inertia in EU-Turkey relations in the midst of regional economic and political upheavals, Europeanization of Turkey takes a step back from the latest headlines to provide a comprehensive stocktaking of EU-inspired reform efforts in Turkey with an eye to understanding how effective or ineffective EU conditionality has been in making Turkey's key political institutions, actors and culture more compatible with European norms. In addition to contributing to the theoretical literature on the differential effects of Europeanization on the domestic realm, this volume also expands the existing scope of research to include questions of how socialization through the accession process operates under high levels of uncertainty about the attainability of European Union membership. Applying a uniform analytical framework and the methodology of process tracing, the authors in this volume assess the nature and degree of change that has occurred in various dimensions of Turkish domestic polity and politics in the context of Turkey's post-1999 EU accession. Engaging with important practical issues such as whether potential membership in the EU has brought about positive change, in which areas this change is manifest, and how significant this change has been, this book is an essential resource for students, scholars and researchers seeking to understand contemporary relations between the EU and Turkey.
Turkey has been experiencing a controversial path of Europeanization by the 1999 Helsinki Summit granting EU candidate country status to the country: a changing trend from progressing Europeanization to selective Europeanization and recently de-Europeanization. Such a puzzling process, especially considering the recent de-Europeanization, is explored in this article through critically discussing the role of the EU and domestic factors. The article argues that the process has been influenced by EU conditionality in the early period of Europeanization and by the preferences of the Turkish government at the later stages, which also determine the direction of the reforms (i.e., Europeanization, de-Europeanization).
Through a discourse analysis of the election manifestos of the centre-left, the Republican People’s Party, and the nationalistic-right, the Nationalist Movement Party, from 1965 to 2011, this article investigates whether economic and political cleavages affect party positioning on European integration in Turkey. The article tentatively concludes that even though both parties’ positions on Europe are structured by the traditional left-right axis and resemble their Western and Eastern counterparts, and the arguments and discourses that led to these positions fundamentally diverge from Western and Eastern European experiences of political contestation.
Despite the weakened push by the European Union (EU) conditionality across time, Turkey's Europeanization process continues in a number of areas selectively. Focusing on such a puzzling trend, this article critically examines the role of EU conditionality on Turkey's Europeanization and unpacks domestic drivers of change. The article explores the impact of grassroots actors −Turkish civil society organizations, business interest groups, media and political parties− on domestic change in the last decade and argues that continuing reforms in many areas in an era of limited EU-push are influenced by domestic actors.
The paper analyses the various ways in which Europe/the EU is represented as Turkey's Other in the discourse of the four main Turkish political parties. The analysis is carried out according to the definition of five forms of Othering in International Relations proposed by Diez (2005) and Manners (2006) as well as the conception of Other as superior proposed, for instance, by Zarakol (2011). In contrast to traditional Kemalist discourse, which tends to view Europe as both threat and civilisational model, AKP discourse in particular tends to frame Europe as inferior and as belonging to a different civilisation, thus revealing a more self-confident, inclusive and Islamist national identity discourse.
This article analyzes Turkey's relationship with the European Union (EU) against the background of the latest Turkish parliamentary elections in June 2011. The main argument is that Turkey's European transformation at home and abroad will continue under the third term of the Justice and Development Party rule, yet Turkish rulers will increasingly find it difficult to put EU membership issue at the center of this process. At present, it appears that neither is the EU eager and flexible as to offer Turkey credible membership prospects nor is Turkey's ruling party maintaining the same degree of commitment to the EU as it had during its first term in government. Rather than the dynamics of the accession process, the growing need to find a solution to the decade-long Kurdish dispute in a liberal-democratic fashion as well as Turkey's ability to deal with the rising foreign and security policy challenges in the context of the Arab Spring will shape Turkey's European transformation in years ahead.
This article aims to make a three-fold contribution to the study of Euroscepticism in the wider Europe. First, it presents a two-dimensional conceptualization of party positions on European integration in general, and of Euroscepticism in particular, distinguishing between diffuse and specific support for European integration (i.e. `support for the ideas of European integration' and `support for the EU'). Second, it analyses the location, type, and electoral strength of party-based Euroscepticism in the four candidate countries of East Central Europe - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Third, it contributes to the ideology vs. strategy debate, showing that ideology is the dominant explanation for both types of support, although strategy at times plays a role in explaining specific support.
Europeanization is a term used to describe the effects of European integration on the politics and policies of its member states as well as the process of enhancing European-level political institutions. Within this growing literature there is no systematic effort to incorporate the role of political parties. However, party analysis has only recently begun to acknowledge the EU as an environment that holds potentially significant consequences for parties. In this article, I attempt to begin systematic research on Europeanization and political parties by presenting a basic framework for analysis. Five areas are singled out: (1) policy/programmatic content; (2) organization; (3) patterns of party competition; (4) party-government relations; and (5) relations beyond the national party system.
How is contestation on European integration structured among national political parties? Are issues arising from European integration assimilated into existing dimensions of domestic contestation? We show that there is a strong relationship between the conventional left/right dimension and party positioning on European integration. However, the most powerful source of variation in party support is the new politics dimension, ranging from Green/alternative/libertarian to Traditional/authoritarian/nationalist.
The traditional spatial theory of elections has recently been challenged by alternative conceptualizations, which either dispute the role of euclidean distance in voting (directional theory) or argue that voter preferences are endogenous to the political process (mobilizational theory). In contrast to spatial theory, these alternative models predict that political parties will systematically adopt policy positions that are more extreme than those prevalent within their constituencies. Based on evidence from seven European countries and 37 political parties, this study lends support to the alternative hypotheses. Voters are attracted to parties presenting relatively “intense” policy positions, and some party elites appear to be actively engaged in public opinion formation. However, the study also shows that the centrifugal forces that pull parties away from their voters are checked by centripetal forces that can only be analyzed with the aid of spatial concepts.
Ultra-nationalist political parties of the far right have been an endemic feature of European politics in recent years. This article investigates the rise of the Nationalist Action Party (the MHP) in Turkey, a party that has a number of characteristics in common with its European counterparts. The objective of the article is to illustrate a paradox. These types of parties tend to display a considerable degree of adaptability and exhibit a tendency to move in a more moderate direction. They shed some of their violent and extremist leanings in the process as they try to transform themselves from closed communities or networks to mass parties of national standing. This apparent moderation should not disguise, however, the key underlying weakness of such parties, namely their limited commitment to the core values of liberal democracy and political pluralism. Indeed, such parties can continue to play an important negative role in terms of their ability to block the process of democratic deepening in nascent democratic regimes.
The South Atlantic Quarterly 102.2/3 (2003) 433-451
October 29, 1995, Republic Day; Istanbul, the center of the celebrations and the scene for an "olympiad" of Turkish nationalism. In line with the Olympic creed, "The most important thing is not to win but to take part," all existing types of nationalism were present: under the umbrella of the governorship's organization (or "impresarioship") and to the familiar strains of the Tenth-Year March, the nationalism of the state. Caught between the choices of taking shelter beneath that umbrella or opening their own umbrella, turned upside-down, and getting soaked in the meantime, "Kemalist" "left-wing" nationalism, with its "ability to interpret," tries to find an eave under which it can give meaning to the "pomp" of the ceremony by calling it secularism. Idealist nationalism with its triple crescent flags and its wolf's-head signs, now mixes with any crowd. "Neo"-nationalism, with its "modern" and ideology-free panorama, exhibits itself through the codes of the pop singer cult and the hedonism of urban youth. All these types of nationalism, since then, have increasingly interfused. In this article, I try to analyze the elements of this complexity, which ultimately reinforces the hegemony of nationalism.
Turkish nationalism gained momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This development took place parallel to the nationalistic wave rising throughout the world, and particularly in the triangle formed by the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, of which Turkey is the point of intersection. Globalization, in a way that is actually not at all paradoxical, encouraged or incited nationalism: because altering frontiers and military conflicts became possible again after the collapse of bipolarization; because minorities and human rights have become diplomatic issues; because transnational processes of economic—and geographical—deregulation have upset the structures of the nation-state. These factors have affected the ideology of Turkish nationalism in a way that ratifies and contemporizes its reactionary patterns; for modern Turkey, established during a grave crisis in which its very existence was threatened, has a nation-state tradition that subsequently perceived surrounding countries as a severe threat rectified by the Cold War. This condition regarding survival and threat had a considerable effect on the way in which Turkish nationalism and the Turkish national identity took shape. The fact that globalization challenges the nation-state can easily be perceived as the modern version of a centuries-old threat toward Turkey/Anatolia, thus reinforcing this mindset. The Kurdish issue no doubt plays the leading role in this perception of the challenge posed by globalization as a part of this ongoing process, which started with the Crusades and extended to the "Oriental Issue," the Western influence and Westernizing reform policies which caused the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, and the Treaty of Sevres, which—temporarily—buried the hope to found a new state that would rise from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
Another factor that afflicts the conscience of the Turkish nation is that the rise of the crisis regarding survival and threat occurred immediately after a course of self-confidence that was not properly enjoyed. Turkey had entered the 1990s with a boom of self-confidence. Capital accumulated thanks to the new right-wing economic policies in the 1980s, the progress made in merging with the flow of global capital, the fact that consumption had become modernized and widespread: all these fostered hopes of graduating economically to the "world's top league," as media commentators call it. By the end of the 1980s, when Turkey applied for full membership in the EU, the prevailing feeling was that the goal of attaining the "rank of modern civilization," cherished since the founding of the Republic, had finally been achieved—or at least this belief was shared by the pro-Western elite and the urban middle class. The neo-pan-Turkist perspective that focused on an economic "rationality" espoused by the Turkic republics, which had won their independence after the fall of the Soviet Union, reinforced this feeling. The historical and cultural legacy of the Turkic republics, regarded as a hinterland from the point of view of official...
This article analyzes the causes and consequences of the nationalist party politics in Turkey by focusing on the rise of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). The article identifies three interrelated processes to explain the MHP's rising status in 1999. First, neo-liberal economic policies of the early 1980s generated the formation of new opportunity spaces in media, education, politics, and market. Second, these opportunity spaces, in turn, empowered ethnic and religious groups to demand recognition and reconfiguration of the state ideology. Third, the failure of the ideologically rigid Turkish state to cope with these new identity claims prompted the military-dominated state elite to define the Kurdish and Islamic identity claims as existential threats to the core values of the state ideology. Being in a coalition, the MHP has given up its identity to become respectful in the eyes of the governing ossified military-bureaucratic elite.
We test competing explanations for party positioning on the issue of European integration over the period 1984 to 1996 and find that the ideological location of a party in a party family is a powerful predictor of its position on this issue. Party family is a stronger influence than strategic competition, national location, participation in government, or the position of a party's supporters. We conclude that political parties have bounded rationalities that shape how they process incentives in competitive party systems. Political cleavages give rise to ideological commitments or "prisms" through which political parties respond to new issues, including European integration.
Le propos de cet article est de clarifier le programme politique du parti Turc MHP (Milliyetci Hareket Partisi) qui depuis 1997 est le principal parti democratique de la Turquie. Il s'agit d'analyser en quoi ce parti se differencie d'une doctrine fasciste en etudiant minutieusement son programme nationaliste et conservateur fonde sur la revendication des principes fondamentaux de la Republique Turque. L'A. montre quel est le systeme de pensee de l'homme politique Aydinlar Ocagi, puis etudie les trois themes politiques du MHP (le nationalisme turc, l'economie et la famille) afin de montrer comment un mouvement politique presente un programme democratique qui combine de fait des elements fascistes avec un terrorisme militant.
This article revisits the age-old debate about elite—mass linkages in the European Union (EU) by examining the way in which political contexts shape individual differentiation in Euroscepticism. We argue that the growing uncertainties about the future of European integration among national publics are increasingly politicized by Eurosceptical elites on both the extreme right and left of the political spectrum. To analyse the cueing effects of these extremist parties, we employ a two-level hierarchical linear model which combines individual-level and contextual data. We show that Eurosceptic cues are, indeed, found on both extremes, but for different reasons. Whereas right-wing extremist parties oppose European integration with the defence of `national sovereignty' and successfully mobilize national identity considerations against the EU, left-wing extremist parties resist further integration in Europe on the basis of the neoliberal character of the project and effectively cue voters against the EU on the basis of economic insecurity arguments.
This paper asks where Euroskepticism can be found in the party systems of the European Union. The literature suggests that anti-European parties are generally parties of the opposition, on the ideological fringes, or relatively small. A cross-national analysis of party positions confirms that Euroskepticism is primarily a fringe phenomenon, concentrated on the ideological extremes and among opposition parties. The results suggest that the post-Maastricht decline in public support for the EU has not led to a general adoption of Euroskeptic positions by the major governing parties of Europe. Important exceptions to this generalization do, however, exist. Euroskepticism is unusually strong among the center-right parties in the UK, France, and Poland. Given that decisions in the EU are often made by procedures that permit single states, or fairly small coalitions, to block action, any introduction of Euroskepticism into the mainstream of any party system can have serious consequences for the entire union.Acta Politica (2007) 42, 153-172. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500189
This article focuses on the geographical distribution of electoral support across Turkish provinces in the April 1999 elections. Provincial election returns are divided into seven clusters and analyzed. Party system characteristics as well as socioeconomic development levels exhibit striking differences across clusters. The least developed eastern and southeastern provinces, where Kurdish separatist activities have been most effective, show a high degree of fractionalization and sizeable electoral volatility. Central Anatolian provinces that once heavily voted for Islamists shifted toward the ultra‐nationalists. The fact that all provinces other than the most developed western group predominantly support either anti‐systemic or ultra‐nationalist parties, is posited as the central puzzle of Turkish electoral politics
This article explains the positions taken by national political parties on the issue of European integration over the period 1984–96. Based on the theory of party systems developed by Lipset and Rokkan, we develop a cleavage account of party response to new political issues. We hypothesize that European integration is assimilated into pre-existing ideologies of party leaders, activists and constituencies that reflect long-standing commitments on fundamental domestic issues.
With the recent acceleration of the integration process of the European Union there has been a rise in political parties expressing either scepticism or outright criticism of the nature of the integration process. Using a four–fold differentiation between single issue, protest, established parties and factions within parties, the first part of the article presents an overview of Euroscepticism within EU member states and Norway. This reveals the diversity of sources of Euroscepticism both in ideology and in the types of parties that are Eurosceptical but with a preponderance of protest parties taking Eurosceptical positions. The second part of the article is an attempt to map Euroscepticism in West European party systems through a consideration of ideology and party position in the party system. The conclusions are that Euroscepticism is mainly limited to parties on the periphery of their party system and is often there used as an issue that differentiates those parties from the more established parties which are only likely to express Euroscepticism through factions. Party based Euroscepticism is therefore both largely dependent on domestic contextual factors and a useful issue to map emergent domestic political constellations.
Recent research on the European Parliament (EP) has neglected the idiosyncrasies of niche parties. Similarly, analyses of niche parties have not fully engaged the literature on the EP. This article builds on both literatures by analysing niche party behaviour in the EP as a distinct phenomenon. It is argued that niche parties will respond differently to institutional stimuli than parties more generally. To test this argument, Hix, Noury and Roland's work on EP party voting behaviour is replicated concentrating on niche parties only. It is found that participation in national government and institutional changes affect niche party legislators' voting behaviour, whereas they do not for legislators in the EP overall. These results have important implications for understanding both party behaviour in the EP and niche party behaviour more generally.
The paper focuses on party preferences of Turkish voters within the spatial model of voting that proved to be a successful explanatory framework in various other countries. The analysis is based on spatial theory of electoral competition and its statistical implementation using survey data. The paper aims at depicting the cognitive organization of voters' attitudes about issues and evaluations of political parties that compete for their vote. The spatial map derived from a survey of urban settlers show that the dominant ideological dimension sets secularists vs. pro-Islamists as expected from the center-periphery framework often used in Turkish electoral analyses. The second dimension reflects the impact of recent conflict involving the Kurdish minority on rising nationalist sentiments. Given a general depiction of the Turkish political space, we examine the impact of various demographic characteristics as well as issue evaluations on individuals' ideal positions in the space.
Ülkücü kardeşlerim hain tahrikler karşısında sokağa çıkmayacak
- D Bahçeli
Opposing Europe: Euroscepticism, opposition and party competition
- N Sitter