Yilmaz, Hakan. 2011. "Euroscepticism in Turkey: Parties, Elites, and Public Opinion". South European Society and Politics, iFirst article, 2011, pp. 1–24. more

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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. South European Society and Politics iFirst article, 2011, pp. 1–24 Euroscepticism in Turkey: Parties, Elites, and Public Opinion Hakan Yılmaz Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 After reviewing the emergence of Turkish Euroscepticism in the context of the evolution of Turkey– European-Union relations between 1963 and 1999, the paper analyses party and popular Euroscepticism after 1999. The Turkish case appears to confirm the Taggart – Sitter thesis concerning the strategic Euroscepticism of opposition parties. The exception of the Kurdish nationalists suggests that strategic Euroscepticism does not apply to ethnic minority parties. In Turkey there is both ‘soft’ Euroscepticism (centre-left parties) and ‘hard’ Euroscepticism (nationalist and Islamist parties), the latter usually based on identity. At the popular level, identity Euroscepticism revolves around four key issues: national sovereignty; morality; negative discrimination; and Europe’s alleged hidden ` agenda to divide and rule Turkey (the so-called ‘Sevres Syndrome’). Keywords: Turkey; Euroscepticism; West-scepticism; anti-Westernism; anti-Americanism; ` Sevres Syndrome; neo-nationalism; Islamism; Kurds A spectre is haunting Turkey today. This is the spectre of West-scepticism, with its twin streams of Euroscepticism and anti-Americanism.1 Euroscepticism and anti-Americanism have fed one another and together have led to increasingly powerful movements of West-scepticism, anti-Westernism, and national isolationism. West-scepticism has left its mark on almost all ideologies and movements of the left and the right, albeit to varying degrees. However, it has found an autonomous and authentic ideological articulation in the so-called ‘neo-nationalist’ current of thought, which in Turkey has come to be named ulusalcılık. Although ulusalcılık literally means ‘nationalism’ in Turkish, it has been used in place of the older and more popular Turkish term for ‘nationalism’, milliyetcilik, to put the accent on the West-sceptic and ¸ isolationist tendencies of the neo-nationalist movement. Moreover, while classical nationalism, milliyetcilik, has usually had Islamic overtones, neo-nationalism, ¸ ulusalcılık, has hailed secularism and emphasised the Turkish rather than Islamic dimension of national identity.2 ISSN 1360-8746 (print)/ISSN 1743-9612 (online) q 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13608741003594353 2 H. Yılmaz In recent years there has been an intense questioning of the country’s relations with Europe, America, and the Western world in general. The West has been blamed for a lack of understanding, a lack of respect, and in many cases a lack of friendship in its relations with Turkey. It has been portrayed as selfish, using Turkey when it badly needed the latter’s help during the Cold War, but subsequently forgetting all its past obligations, commitments, and promises. According to this West-sceptic narrative, the moment Turkey lost its value for the West, the latter did not waste a moment in reasserting historical claims threatening the territorial integrity and very existence of the Turkish state. Hence, Turkey has been pressured to acknowledge the Armenian genocide (and to comply with the financial and territorial compensation that would follow that recognition); to yield to Kurdish demands for regional autonomy and eventual independence; to recognise the establishment of Greek Cypriot authority over Cyprus; to allow neighbouring Iraq to be partitioned along ethnic and sectarian lines; to swallow humiliating remarks by European politicians that Turkey is not European and thus not fit for European Union (EU) membership; and to make all the reforms demanded by a patronising EU, without any assurances of membership in the foreseeable future.3 This West-scepticism, of which Euroscepticism is a constituent part, has grown particularly since the start of the accession negotiations with the EU in October 2005. Public support for EU membership fell sharply, from a peak range of 70– 75 per cent in 2003 –4 down to the 60–65 per cent interval in 2005, and then to 55– 60 per cent in 2006 –7 (see Figure 1). Even more alarming than the falling approval rates was the rise of Euro-rejectionism, partly owing to defectors from the Euro-supportive camp and partly owing to undecided voters moving to the Euro-rejectionist camp. Hence, the ratio of those would say no in an hypothetical referendum on Turkey’s EU membership rose from 15– 20 per cent in 2003 –4 to 30 per cent at the end of 2005 and has stayed around that level since (see Figure 1). The aim of this article is to illuminate the phenomenon of Turkish Euroscepticism by examining its development over time. Before proceeding to examine the Turkish case study, the article will begin by defining the theoretical framework. Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 The Turkish Case in Comparative Perspective This article, like the others in this special issue, adopts Paul Taggart’s definition of Euroscepticism as expressing an opposition, either qualified or unqualified, to the process of European integration (Taggart 1998, p. 366). It also adopts the categories of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Euroscepticism proposed by Taggart and Szczerbiak (2001). Unlike hard Euroscepticism, soft Euroscepticism does not take its criticism of European integration to the point of rejectionism, exclusionism, or isolationism. Soft Euroscepticism, however critical of the EU, keeps its criticisms at the policy level, without bringing into question the fundamental institutions and values of the EU, nor does it oppose Turkey’s integration into the EU. South European Society and Politics If tomorrow there were to be a referendum on Turkey's membership in the EU, would you vote in favor of or against it? 80 70 60 Opinion (%) 50 40 30 20 10 0 ay Ap r. . ct M M O 96 01 98 02 3 55 62 68 71 64 72 74 73 70 66 64 57 60 58 32 29 21 16 17 20 30 18 16 18 21 23 26 30 30 30 12 6 ay O 11 . ct 12 ay M 8 . ec Ju l D 6 y N 7 ov . Ju n 8 e ec D 6 . M 13 ay ec 10 . 10 02 03 04 04 06 D 06 20 20 03 19 20 19 20 20 20 20 05 05 20 20 Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 Polling Periods In favor Against No Opinion Figure 1 The trend of popular support for Turkey’s EU membership, 2001 –7. Sources: Data for April 1996, May 1998, June 2005, and May 2006 in Carkoglu and Kalaycioglu (2006); data for October 2001 in Eurobarometer (2001); data for May 2002 in Yilmaz (2005b); data for October 2002 in Eurobarometer (2002); data for May 2003 in Eurobarometer (2003); data for December 2003 in Yilmaz (2005b); data for July and November 2004 in Pollmark Arastirma (2004a; 2004b); data for December 2005 in Yilmaz (2006); data for December 2006 in International Republican Institute (IRI) (2006); data for September 2007 in Yilmaz (2007). Why do certain political parties oppose European integration? According to the hypothesis of strategic Euroscepticism initially formulated by Taggart (1998) and further developed by Nick Sitter (2001), at least in Western Europe, whether a party will adopt a Eurosceptic position or not is primarily dependent on whether it is in government or opposition. Thus, both left- and right-wing parties may adopt a Eurosceptic stance if they appear destined to remain in opposition with little chance of coming to power. The EU’s drive towards a super-state or a tightly knit federal state, that would stifle the independence of its member states, appears to be a second reason behind Euroscepticism (e.g. Goldstein 1999). A third motivation, to be found particularly among the left-wing parties of the Nordic countries, is a critical approach to a European unification process that allegedly supports the interests of domestic capital against domestic labour and the interests of European imperialism against the Third World (Wallerstein 2000). Yet another variant, which in Western Europe is specific to extreme right-wing parties, emphasises the need to protect national values and institutions in the face of the transnationalising influences coming from the European integration process (e.g. the Freedom Party in the Netherlands). 20 20 20 07 Se p. 4 H. Yılmaz ‘Identity Euroscepticism’ has been particularly influential in shaping the Eurosceptic mainstream in Eastern Europe, with an accent on abstract and symbolic themes, primarily national identity. Hence, many East European Eurosceptic movements underline the need to protect national identity, whose very survival is allegedly threatened by the values and life-styles imported from the EU and its ´ powerful member states (Taggart & Szczerbiak 2001, p. 16; Kopecky & Mudde 2002, p. 320). Thus, Nicole Lindstrom tells us that ‘national-populist’ Euroscepticism in Slovenia and Croatia claims that the EU poses a threat to national identity and threatens state sovereignty; that EU interests are opposed to national interests; and that national states should pursue paths of autonomous economic development, by resisting the domination of European and global capital over national economies (Lindstrom 2002). A similar current is represented by the Estonian Independence Party, which promoted a doctrine of ‘Estonia as a neoautarkic geopolitical space’ based on ideas of Estonian ‘exceptionalism’ and the necessity of remaining neutral between East and West (Ehin 2002). Identity Euroscepticism has also been particularly influential in the Turkish case. A key to understanding contemporary Turkish Euroscepticism is provided by the ` ` so-called ‘Sevres Syndrome’. The Treaty of Sevres, signed on 10 August 1920 by the victorious Allied powers (led by Great Britain and France) and representatives of the government of Ottoman Turkey, abolished the Ottoman Empire. The Turks were obliged to renounce all rights over Arab Asia and North Africa. Turkey itself was carved up among the Western powers and the Christian minorities collaborating with them, with provision for an independent Armenia, an autonomous Kurdistan, a Greek presence in eastern Thrace and on the Anatolian west coast, and Greek control over the Aegean islands commanding the Dardanelles.4 The basic assumption underlying the ` Sevres Syndrome is that the Europeans perceive the Turks as the illegitimate invaders and occupiers of European – Christian lands and the oppressors of European – Christian peoples. Consequently, it is claimed that the Europeans’ perennial aim is to remove the Turks and restore those lands to their rightful owners, i.e., the Armenians and the Greeks in the past and now the Kurds. According to the champions of the ` Sevres Syndrome, this historic ‘missionary struggle’ of Europe started with the Crusades in the Middle Ages. Scratch every European and you will find a Crusader is ` the motto of the disseminators of the Sevres Syndrome. ` The Sevres Syndrome thus refers to a certain mode of perception and a resulting code of operation which are rooted in a traumatic past experience with the West and have not been revised since, no matter how the real relationship with the West has changed over the years. ‘Memory’ is not always what we ‘remember’ as autonomous subjects, but what we are ‘reminded’ of by those in positions of authority, using institutions that produce and disseminate ideology, such as schools, textbooks, museums, the media, cinema, literature, etc. The current configuration of ‘memory’ is produced by and reflects a certain configuration of the balance of political forces and the hegemonic situation that exists at a certain moment in a given society. Following the Turkish National Liberation War of 1918– 22 and the foundation of the Turkish Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 South European Society and Politics 5 ` Republic in 1923, the Sevres Treaty itself was replaced by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. ` However, according to the advocates of the Sevres Syndrome, the Europeans and the Christian minorities inside Turkey have never given up the Crusaders’ mission. In this context, the EU’s seemingly innocent demands for individual and minority rights are seen as nothing but concealed attempts to gain by peaceful means what the Europeans failed to achieve by force of arms eight decades ago.5 In Turkey, identity Euroscepticism has traditionally been voiced by the radical right parties, the Turkish ethnonationalist MHP (Milliyetci Hareket Partisi—Nationalist ¸ Action Party) and the Islamist SP (Saadet Partisi—Felicity Party). For the MHP, EU demands for minority rights constitute a direct threat to the power of the Turkish state and the unity of the nation by continuing the centuries-old Western strategy of dividing the Turkish nation by creating ‘artificial minorities’, taking them under Western patronage and provoking them to rebel against the state (MHP 2005; Bahceli ¸ 2005; Kılıc 2005). Meanwhile, the classical Islamist view of the EU has portrayed it as ¸ an exclusive ‘Christian Club’, with no place for a Muslim country. In this view, Turkey has been for ages the bastion of the house of Islam, protecting the Islamic world against European Crusaders. For the traditional Islamists, the basic nature of this religious conflict is not different today. What Turkey needs is not more humiliation at the doors of Christian Europe but to become the leader of a union of Muslim nations (SP 2005; Kutan 2006). Both these political currents—the ethnonationalists and the traditional Islamists—have been characterised by hard Euroscepticism. In contrast, soft Euroscepticism has been a characteristic of the mainstream parties of both left and right, especially the centre-left. The article will now proceed to examine the major actors and issues of Turkish Euroscepticism over time. The establishment of formal relations between Turkey and the European Community (EC) dates back to the signature of the Ankara Agreement establishing an Association between the European Economic Community and Turkey in September 1963. A new chapter opened with the application for accession submitted in April 1987, while a third turning point came with the Helsinki European Council of December 1999, which recognised Turkey as a candidate for EU membership. These landmark events define the three chronological periods that will form the basis for the following analysis: the early years (1963– 87), the middle years (1987– 99) and the later period (1999 to the present). This chronological treatment will be followed by an analysis of both party and popular Euroscepticism since 1999. It should be noted that in the early years of the Turkey – EC relationship (1963–87), there were no field surveys showing the changing trends of Turkish public opinion regarding the EC. Hence, for the early years an indirect way to track the evolution of Turkish public opinion on the EC is to examine electoral preferences for Eurosupportive and Eurosceptic parties. Polling data on the EC issue continued to be very scarce in the middle years (1987– 99) too, except for a very few pioneering studies, such as Esmer (1996). The later period (1999 onwards), on the other hand, has witnessed an explosion of field surveys in Turkey, giving us invaluable data on public opinion concerning various aspects of EU – Turkey relations. Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 6 H. Yılmaz The Early Years: From the Association to the Accession Application, 1963– 87 The Turkish application for an Association with the EC, submitted on 31 July 1959, reflected the overall Western and European orientation of Turkish foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. Turkey was already a member of such critical Western and European organisations as the Council of Europe, the OEEC (Organisation for European Economic Cooperation) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Seeking links with yet another newly founded European organisation was only the normal thing to do. A second, and equally powerful, motive was no doubt the fact that Greece, Turkey’s regional rival, had made a similar application just weeks earlier. The relationship offered by the EC fell short of full membership in view of the less developed economies of the two countries. The Turkish Association, as laid out in the Ankara Agreement, envisaged a three-stage transition, with a preparatory stage and a transitional stage preceding the final stage of customs union. In addition, Article 28 of the Agreement envisaged that as soon as the operation of this Agreement has advanced far enough to justify envisaging full acceptance by Turkey of the obligations arising out of the Treaty establishing the Community, the Contracting Parties shall examine the possibility of the accession of Turkey to the Community.6 Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 The 1960s and 1970s were years of ideological radicalisation and political polarisation ˙ in Turkey. Radical left parties and movements, from the parliamentary socialist TIP ˙ sci Partisi—Workers’ Party of Turkey) to the various guerrilla-type ¨ (Turkiye I ¸ ¸ revolutionary groups, had come to establish a remarkable hold over university students and academics. By the early 1970s, the radical left’s influence was growing among the newly expanding industrial working class. Left-wing emancipatory agendas began to find echoes among the millions of new migrants living in the squatter areas of the big cities, as well as among major ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Kurds and the Alevis.7 Parallel to the rise of the radical left, the radical right was also on the rise throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It was represented in the political arena by two political parties: the MHP embodying Turkish ethnonationalism and the MSP (Milli Selamet Partisi—National Salvation Party) representing Islamism.8 Both the radical left and the radical right vehemently opposed Turkey’s relationship with the EC. In the parlance of the radical left, the EC was an appendage of American imperialism, from which they were trying to save Turkey. One famous leftist slogan of the day about the Common Market, as the EC was commonly known at that time, was that ‘they are the “commons” or “partners” and we are the “market”’. In the eyes of the Islamists linked with the MSP, the EC was nothing but a ‘Christian Club’, sponsored and maintained by the Vatican, in which a Muslim Turkey would have absolutely no place. The ethnonationalists of the MHP, on the other hand, while adopting both the ‘anti-imperialism’ of the radical left and the ‘anti-Christian-Club’ discourse of the Islamists, emphasised that joining the EC would offer the European states a historic opportunity to meddle in Turkey’s internal affairs with the purpose of weakening the South European Society and Politics 7 Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 state structures, provoking the minorities and ‘over-Westernised Turks’ to rebel against the Turkish state and finally dividing the country under their own rule. Although the radical right parties did not have a mass electoral following, they were strong enough to weaken the major centre-right party AP (Adalet Partisi—Justice Party), to the point that the AP could form a government only by accepting the two radical right parties as coalition partners.9 As participants in the so-called ‘Nationalist Front’ governments of 1975 –77, and then as parliamentary supporters of an AP minority government in 1980, the radical right parties exerted enormous influence on the government’s domestic and foreign policies, effectively blocking any meaningful attempt to move Turkey closer to the EC. The radical left parties and movements did not play a similar role with respect to the main centre-left party, the CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi—Republican People’s Party).10 However, the CHP leadership, no doubt influenced by the rising popularity of left-wing anti-imperialist ideas in public opinion, adopted a radical left position in foreign policy matters, maintaining a distance from both the United States (US) and the EC. It was under the CHP government that Turkey in October 1978 unilaterally suspended its obligations towards the EC under the Association, on the grounds that trade liberalisation and the lowering of import tariffs was diminishing much needed foreign currency revenues. Ten years were to pass before the Turkish government, in December 1989, offered the EC a timetable to reassume its responsibilities under the Association. In the meantime, the EC formally suspended the Association during 1982 –86 as a response to the military coup of September 1980. Towards the end of the 1980s, a new era in Turkish– EC relations appeared about to open. The recent Greek, Spanish and Portuguese accessions to the EC and the positive role the EC accession process had been playing in consolidating democratic-civilian rule and market economy in these Southern European countries were the main factors pushing the Turkish government to move in the same direction. The Middle Years: From the Membership Application to the Recognition of Candidate Status, 1987 –99 Turkey submitted its formal application for EC membership on 17 April 1987. It took nearly two years for the European Commission to draft its Opinion on the Turkish application, which was published on 18 December 1989. These were fateful years in the history of Eastern Europe, where the communist regimes started to crumble one after another. Thus, while Turkey was trying to catch the South European train, it was suddenly left behind by an unexpected and fast-moving East European one. In its Opinion, while reiterating Turkey’s eligibility for membership in principle, the European Commission declared that neither Turkey nor the EC was ready to start membership talks. However, the membership application put Turkey back on the EC agenda and, much more importantly, brought Europe back into the public debate in Turkey. 8 H. Yılmaz Domestically, the 1990s were years of severe electoral volatility, governmental fluidity, and political instability. Three general elections (1991, 1995, 1999) produced nine governments, all weak coalitions with low capacities for cooperation and high levels of mistrust. Perhaps the most important facet of politics in the 1990s was the politicisation of identities. This began with the emergence of political movements organised around Kurdish, Sunni Muslim, and Alevi identities, quickly followed by political and civic movements attempting to mobilise their followers through an appeal to gender, region, and age, as well as to feelings and attachments such as lifestyle and sexual choice. In line with this politicisation of identities, the 1990s saw the decline of pro-systemic and centrist parties and the rise of anti-system and radical politics.11 While the combined electoral strength of the centrist parties of left and right fell from 83 per cent to 57 per cent in 1991 –99, that of the radical parties rose from 17 per cent to 42 per cent during the same period. Perhaps a more dramatic expression of the rise of radical politics can be seen if we contrast the electoral performance of the centre-right with that of the parties of the radical right, of both nationalist and Islamist varieties. While the former’s total vote fell steeply from 51 per cent in 1991 to 26 per cent in 1999, the latter doubled their electoral support from 17 per cent to 34 per cent. The radical left parties, whose vote rose from 0.2 per cent in 1995 to 1.3 per cent in 1999, remained a minor force, while the electoral base of the Kurdish nationalist parties showed a small increase, from 4.2 per cent in 1995 to 5.6 per cent in 1999. The first tangible achievement of the 1990s, in terms of Turkey – EU relations, was the move to customs union at the beginning of 1996. Both before and after the signing of the customs union agreement, left and right parties, and some business associations and corporations, came forward with critical ideas concerning the potentially detrimental effects of the customs union on Turkish industrialisation and economic development.12 For the Turkish government, the customs union was the first step towards full EU membership. However, for many European leaders, particularly among Christian Democrats, it represented the end-point of Turkish – EC relations. The preference to keep Turkey closely linked to but outside the EU was reflected in the December 1997 Luxembourg Council decision not to include Turkey on the list of candidate countries for EU membership, a decision that was reversed two years later at the Helsinki Council in December 1999. The Later Years: Candidate Status and Beyond, 1999 onwards During the initial three years of the Turkish candidacy, some important steps were taken with the purpose of bringing Turkey closer to the EU, but the political will to give relations a much needed boost was simply not there. Between December 1999 and November 2002, the country was governed by a tripartite coalition of the centre-left DSP (Demokratik Sol Parti—Democratic Left Party), the nationalist MHP and the centre-right ANAP (Anavatan Partisi—Motherland Party). The outlook of both the MHP and the DSP was coloured by nationalism on issues related to national sovereignty and identity. These two parties were simply not ready to go ahead with the Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 South European Society and Politics 9 nationally sensitive reforms that were required for the Turkish regime to meet the Copenhagen political criteria for EU entry. Only the most junior coalition party, the centre-right ANAP, embraced the EU cause enthusiastically, but could not overcome the resistance of its senior partners. Despite this and the major economic crisis of 2001, the DSP–MHP– ANAP government initiated two significant reform packages in 2001 and 2002, including the abolition of the death penalty and the legalisation of the public use of Kurdish and other minority languages.13 For all practical purposes, the Europeanisation of Turkey’s foreign and domestic ˘ policy started with the November 2002 elections, which brought Tayyip Erdogan’s 14 AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—Justice and Development Party) to power. From the day of its electoral victory, the AKP leadership committed itself to the cause of bringing Turkey into the EU. The pro-EU turn of the new generation of Islamists started as a tactical choice to seek European protection against the repressive policies of the Turkish secularist establishment. However, it rapidly evolved into a strategic choice, formed along two dimensions. The first concerned the desire for a rupture with a defunct political Islam, which since 1970 had been represented in the political arena ¨ ¨¸ by Necmettin Erbakan and the so-called Milli Gorus (National Outlook) parties he led. The second dimension involved Europeanising the public sphere so it could accommodate the performances of Islamic identity, including the wearing of the headscarf. Here the claim concerned the compatibility of Muslim identity and European modernity. For Turkey’s new governing party, the Kemalist nationalist understanding of modernity was deemed to be too restrictive, too exclusionist, and too ‘modernist’ for the desired integration of Islamic identity and modernity. Hence, a new, more liberal, more inclusive—one could say a more ‘post-modern’—definition of modernity, such as that implemented in the EU member states, would offer much better ground for that integration to take place. The first three years of AKP rule became the golden period of pro-EU political and economic reform.15 In this short time span, eight ‘EU harmonisation legislation packages’ were passed by Parliament, including sweeping changes in the Constitution and other laws and regulations. This reform performance was recognised by the European Commission, which noted in its October 2004 progress report that Turkey sufficiently met the Copenhagen Criteria for EU entry and that accession negotiations could be opened. As already noted, the opening of negotiations in October 2005 marked the beginning of a new phase of Euroscepticism in Turkey. An important contributory factor concerned the serious obstacles that arose at the political level. The first concerned the Cyprus question, and the second the declarations by some European leaders—including Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the France—that Turkey, for reasons of geography, history and culture, did not belong within the EU and instead should be offered a special partnership short of full membership. The exclusionist statements of Sarkozy, Merkel and their allies, as well as the setbacks faced in the Cyprus question, exposed the AKP government to the claims of the nationalist opposition that the EU would never make Turkey a member, that its hidden agenda was to divide and rule Turkey, that the EU was a ‘lackey’ of the Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 10 H. Yılmaz Greeks, and that the AKP government was ‘selling out’ Turkey’s dearest national interests to the Europeans. At this point, a few remarks on the impact of the Cyprus problem on Turkey’s EU process are in order. The AKP government boldly changed the official Turkish policy on Cyprus, which had been in place since 1974, running the risk of being labeled traitorous by the nationalist circles in Turkey and in the Turkish Cypriot part of Cyprus. There were even rumours that a number of high-ranking generals were about to stage a coup against the AKP, blaming the latter for compromising national interests. The first radical move of the AKP government was to stop giving unconditional support to Rauf Denktas, the renowned nationalist leader of the ¸ Turkish Cypriots of northern Cyprus. Soon after he lost Ankara’s support, Denktas was ¸ defeated in the presidential elections by his opponent, Mehmet Ali Talat, and his party lost its parliamentary majority. The new Turkish Cypriot president and government, in line with the AKP government in Ankara, firmly stood behind United Nations (UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan’s plan for a solution to the Cyprus problem, and they mobilised the Turkish Cypriot population to say yes to the Annan Plan in the referendum of April 2004. While the Turkish Cypriots gave their overwhelming support to the Plan, the Greek Cypriots rejected it by an even larger majority. Days later, to the dismay of the AKP government and Turkish Cypriots, the Republic of Cyprus, representing only the Greek Cypriot side, formally entered the EU, while the trade embargo imposed by the EU on northern Cyprus continued intact. In early 2006, the EU Council took a decision to make the opening of eight major chapters of Turkey’s accession negotiation conditional on Turkey’s opening its air and sea ports to Cypriot vessels, as part of its obligations under the customs union. The first outcome ¨ of these setbacks in the Cyprus problem was that the AKP’s almost naıve trust in the EU underwent a rapid erosion. The AKP government continued to support the EU cause, but adopted a more realist stance towards the EU. The net effect of the setbacks in the Cyprus problem, coupled with the Turcosceptic and rejectionist policies of countries like France and Germany, meant that the AKP lost much of its initial zeal and determination regarding Turkey’s EU accession, which resulted in a dramatic slowdown of the whole reform process from 2006. Party Euroscepticism in Turkey: Changing Trends The 1980s and early 2000s can be seen as the heydays of Eurosupportiveness. In the 1980s this was because Turkey was just emerging from a military regime. Radical parties and movements of all types and varieties had been heavily suppressed, and the centrist parties of both left and right supported a rapprochement with Europe to consolidate Turkey’s fragile democracy. It was in this context that the Turkish government submitted its application for EC membership in 1987. Then, as shown in Figure 2, the Eurosceptic vote rose steeply in the 1990s, reaching its highest point in 1995. The 1990s, very much like the 1970s, was a decade of ideological polarisation and political radicalisation, coupled with intense political violence and Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 South European Society and Politics 11 Euroskeptic and Eurosupportive Votes, 1987-2007 100 90 80 70 Votes (%) 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1987 Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 89 83 69 63 79 57 35 30 17 10 20 40 1991 1995 1999 2002 2007 General Election Years Euroskeptic-ALL EuroSupportive-ALL Figure 2 Votes for Eurosceptic and Eurosupportive parties, 1987 – 2007. Sources: TUIK (Turkish Statistical Organization) website, www.tuik.gov.tr, for the election outcomes between 1987 and 2002. direct or indirect military intervention in the political process. But while the polarisation of the 1970s followed a left– right axis, the polarisation of the 1990s was between Islamism and secularism on the one hand, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalism on the other. The hard Euroscepticism of the radical right parties was somewhat moderated in practice when they were in power in the 1990s. The MHP was an important partner in the ruling coalition from mid-1999 until late 2002. This was the period when the coalition government, following Turkey’s recognition as a candidate for EU membership, promised to introduce reforms in the field of minority rights, abolished the death penalty, and provided non-Turkish speaking minorities with broadcasting and limited educational rights in their own languages. Similarly, the Islamist SP’s major forerunner, the RP (Refah Partisi—Welfare Party), when the major governing party from early 1996 to mid-1997, did not implement its pre-election promise to ‘tear down’ the customs union with the EU, which had gone into effect at the beginning of 1996, but instead largely played the game according to the rules. Its only radical move was the attempt to form a club of the major Islamic countries, the D-8, an organisation that continues to exist on paper but has failed to gain substance. Hence, one can safely argue, in line with Sitter’s observation (2001), that even an identity-based Eurosceptic stance can become ‘softer’ when the party in question participates in power and has to behave more responsibly, and becomes ‘harder’ when it is in opposition with no apparent chance of bouncing back to power. 12 H. Yılmaz Following the recognition of Turkey’s candidate status in December 1999, the vote base of the Eurosceptic parties started to shrink again, dropping to around 20 per cent in November 2002. The key factor here was the AKP’s adoption of a pro-EU stance. However, the period following the 2002 election saw the emergence of new elements in the picture of party Euroscepticism, apparently offering further confirmation of the strategic Euroscepticism thesis. In particular, the Kemalist-secularist CHP, which emerged as the main opposition, after fighting the 2002 election on a strongly pro-EU platform, gradually shifted to soft Euroscepticism. This shift became particularly notable after the opening of the accession negotiations in October 2005, reflecting the fact that the EU flag had been taken over by the Islamic-conservative AKP and that opinion polls made it clear that the CHP did not stand a chance of winning the next elections. In line with its new-found Eurosceptic credo, the CHP started to accuse the AKP of giving in to every EU demand, to the detriment of Turkey’s national interests. The CHP has also been waging an identity war against the AKP, accusing it of challenging the unitary character of the Turkish nation and pursuing a hidden Islamist agenda behind its pro-European face. Hence, the CHP leaders have claimed that the AKP has abused the EU-related democratic reforms to ‘soften’ the military and other forces of the secularist establishment, thereby clearing the ground to realise their final goal of putting an end to the secular order and Islamicising the Turkish state and society.16 Abandoning its liberal approach, the party adopted a hard-line nationalist discourse on such hot issues as the Cyprus and Kurdish questions. Even in the case of the illiberal Article 301 of the Penal Code, designed to punish those who denigrate ‘Turkishness’—the article under which many well-known writers, including Nobel-Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted—the CHP vehemently opposed any changes in the wording of the article in the name of protecting the honour and dignity of the Turkish nation.17 This article has become a major issue in the context of the EU-sponsored political reform process. The increasingly anti-EU stance of the CHP leadership encouraged a similar tendency among its electorate. Hence, as can be seen in Table 2, the proportion of CHP voters who would support Turkish EU membership dropped steeply, from 83 per cent in mid-2002 to 60 per cent (four points below the national average) in early 2006 and to 59 per cent (one point higher than the national average) in September 2007. In the July 2007 elections, the total vote for Eurosceptic parties rose to about 40 per cent from around 20 per cent in November 2002. Despite the strong showing of the AKP with a record 47 per cent, the combined votes for the pro-EU parties fell to about 57 per cent from around 79 per cent in the previous elections. This was due less to a rise in hard Eurosceptic votes (represented by the Islamic and Turkish nationalist parties) than to the CHP’s move to soft Euroscepticism. However, the theory that a party apparently locked in unending opposition tends to become Eurosceptic also appears to be confirmed in the case of most of the other opposition parties. While the voters for the traditionally Eurosceptic MHP had never looked upon the EU with favour, their support for the EU dropped from 54 per cent in May 2002, a time when Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 Table 1 Electoral strength of the major hard and soft Eurosceptic parties, 1987 –2007 Ideological orientation Islamic Turkish nationalist Islamic-Turkish nationalist 1987 7.2 2.9 10.9 1991 16.9 Election year and percentage of votes Type of Euroscepticism Eurosceptic—hard Eurosceptic—soft Eurosceptic—hard Major Eurosceptic parties RP: Refah Partisi—Welfare Party MCP: Milliyetci Calisma Partisi—Nationalist Work Party Total Eurosceptic votes RP and MHP: Refah Partisi—Welfare Party and Milliyetci Hareket Partisi—Nationalist Action Party common electoral platform Total Eurosceptic votes Islamic Turkish nationalist Islamic Turkish nationalist Islamic Turkish nationalist Turkish nationalist Turkish nationalist Islamic Kemalist-secularist Turkish nationalist RP: Refah Partisi—Welfare Party MHP: Milliyetci Hareket Partisi—Nationalist Action Party Total Eurosceptic votes Eurosceptic—hard Eurosceptic—soft Eurosceptic—hard Eurosceptic—soft Eurosceptic—hard Eurosceptic—soft Eurosceptic—soft Eurosceptic—hard Eurosceptic—hard Eurosceptic—soft Eurosceptic—soft FP: Fazilet Partisi—Virtue Party MHP: Milliyetci Hareket Partisi—Nationalist Action Party Total Eurosceptic votes SP: Saadet Partisi—Felicity Party GP: Genc Parti—Young Party MHP: Milliyetci Hareket Partisi—Nationalist Action Party Total Eurosceptic votes South European Society and Politics 13 MHP: Milliyetci Hareket Partisi—Nationalist Action Party SP: Saadet Partisi—Felicity Party CHP: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi—Republican People’s Party GP: Genc Parti—Young Party Total Eurosceptic votes 16.9 1995 21.4 8.2 29.6 1999 15.4 18.0 33.4 2002 2.5 7.2 8.4 18.1 2007 14.3 2.3 20.8 3.0 40.5 Sources: Website of TUIK (Turkish Statistical Organisation), www.tuik.gov.tr, for the 1987 – 2002 election results; newspapers for the 2007 election results. Notes: RP, FP, and SP (Welfare Party, Virtue Party, and Felicity Party) are successor parties of the Islamist Milli Gorus (National Outlook) tradition. One replaced the other whenever a party was closed down by the Constitutional Court on charges of anti-secular activities. MHP is the successor party to MCP. 14 H. Yılmaz Table 2 Party constituencies and support for Turkey’s membership in the EU, 2002 – 7 2002 Turkey AKP supporters (Islamic and centre-right) CHP supporters (Kemalist and centre-left) MHP supporters (far-right; Turkish ethnonationalist) DYP supporters (centre-right) HADEP– DEHAP –DTP supporters (Kurdish nationalist) 64 52 83 54 63 90 2003 75 71 86 60 79 85 2005 64 72 60 47 54 93 2007 58 66 57 44 NA 75 Sources: Data for 2002 May in Yilmaz (2005b); data for 2003 December in Yilmaz (2005b); data for 2005 December in Yilmaz (2006); data for 2007 September in Yilmaz (2007). Those who said they voted for a party in a previous general election and chose the option ‘in favour of ’ when responding to the following question: ‘If there were to be a referendum tomorrow on Turkey’s membership to the EU, would you vote in favour of or against it?’ In May 2002, AKP voters were potential supporters and not actual voters. Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 the party was still in power, to 47 per cent in December 2005 and then 44 per cent in September 2007. Meanwhile, support for the EU among voters of the centre-right DYP ˘ (Dogru Yol Partisi—True Path Party), which had been the main coalition partner when Turkey joined the customs union, fell from 63 per cent in mid-2002 to 54 per cent in late 2005. An exception to this rule, however, concerns the Kurdish nationalist DTP (Demokratik Toplum Partisi—Party for a Democratic Society, the successor party to the People’s Democracy Party [HADEP] and Democratic People’s Party [DEHAP]), whose supporters continued to give almost unconditional support to the EU. This deviation from the rule can be explained with reference to a complementary hypothesis: that parties representing ethnic minorities tend to be more supportive of the European cause, because they believe that minority rights will be best served in an EU context.18 The result of this new constellation of Eurosceptic and Eurosupportive forces was that after the 2007 elections the Muslim-conservative AKP and the Kurdish nationalist DTP were the only pro-EU parties in Parliament, facing the hard Euroscepticism of the nationalist MHP and the soft but increasingly hardening Euroscepticism of the Kemalist-secularist CHP. Popular Euroscepticism Core Issues This section will examine the most salient Eurosceptic issues in today’s Turkey. The basic data will be drawn from a nationwide opinion survey, conducted in October – November 2003 as part of a research project led by the author (Yılmaz 2005a). This research project was the first attempt to obtain an empirical measure of the acceptance of Eurosceptic themes and issues by the general public. Though some of the questions asked in the 2003 survey were repeated in subsequent research, the original survey has remained unique to this day in terms of its coverage of and exclusive focus on Turkish South European Society and Politics 15 Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 Euroscepticism. The survey used a nationally distributed, multi-layered, random sample of 2,123 people aged 18 and above. The respondents were selected from 17 provinces and the three big metropolitan areas (Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir). 68 per cent of the interviews were conducted in urban and 32 per cent in rural areas, reflecting the rural– urban division of the Turkish population. As a first step of the analysis, five general categories—composite variables—of Euroscepticism were created, by running a factor analysis over 23 individual variables measuring different aspects of popular Euroscepticism.19 Table 3 shows these categories and the degree of their acceptance in public opinion. As can be observed from the table, concerns about national sovereignty topped the list (52 per cent of respondents). In the context of national sovereignty, the individual variables registering the highest degrees of concern were those related to symbols of sovereignty such as the national anthem and flag. In other words, what people cared about most were not so much ‘real’ issues of sovereignty, such as sharing power with Brussels, but ‘symbolic’ ones, such as the anthem and flag, that they saw, heard, and touched in their daily lives. However, a significant proportion of respondents (39 per cent) did not display Eurosceptic tendencies over the issue of sovereignty. Finally, it should be noted that almost everybody had an opinion, one way or another, on this issue, only a low 10 per cent not giving an answer to the sovereignty questions. The second major area of Euroscepticism is the fear of losing Turkish moral values as a result of increasing interaction with the EU and, more generally, with Europe. Here too, the overwhelming majority (all but seven per cent) expressed an opinion. A high proportion of respondents (48 per cent) had Eurosceptic concerns regarding morality issues. However, an almost equally large group (45 per cent) did not believe Europe would have a corrupting influence on Turkish moral values. Meanwhile, the Table 3 General categories of Euroscepticism in Turkey (rounded percentages) Yes: Eurosceptic 1. National sovereignty: Will EU membership have a negative impact on Turkish national sovereignty? 2. Moral values: Will increasing relations with Europe have a negative impact on Turkish moral values? 3. Negative discrimination: Does the EU treat Turkey with double standards and does it negatively discriminate against Turkey, particularly on religious grounds? ` 4. Sevres Syndrome—current fears: Are the European states now trying to divide Turkey? 5. Sevres Syndrome—historical memory: Did the European states in the past try to divide Turkey and are they attempting to do the same thing now? 52 48 45 No: nonEurosceptic 39 45 22 No answer/ no opinion 10 7 33 38 35 42 20 19 46 Sources: Yilmaz (2005b); data from the author’s Turkish Euroscepticism survey in December 2003. 16 H. Yılmaz idea that Turkey is subject to negative discrimination in its dealings with the EU is a very common theme of elite-level Euroscepticism in Turkey. Forty-five per cent of the Turkish public seems to have shared this concern as opposed to 22 per cent who did not think the EU had been unfair towards Turkey. It is remarkable that onethird of our sample (33 per cent) did not express any opinion on this popular issue. This may be explained by the fact that many people in Turkey were not sufficiently informed about the EU or EU– Turkey relations to reach a judgment on whether the EU treated Turkey fairly or unfairly with respect to other candidate states. ` The Sevres Syndrome, the belief that European states have attempted in the past and are still trying now to divide Turkey by supporting ethnic separatism, is perhaps the most common and the most intensely mediaticised dimension of elite-level Euroscepticism in Turkey. In our analysis, the Sevres Syndrome is represented by two variables. The first (‘Sevres Syndrome—Current Fears’) offers a measure of public perceptions regarding alleged EU and European support for the ethnic fragmentation of Turkey now, without directly invoking historical memory. Thus, when asked about their fears regarding the divisive policies that the EU and the European states are said to be applying towards Turkey, 38 per cent of the respondents said they shared such fears. However, an even greater proportion of the respondents, 42 per cent, turned out not to be influenced by this narrative. Nineteen per cent of our sample chose not to answer the questions that were meant to measure the level of ‘Sevres Syndrome—Current Fears’. The second variable (‘Sevres Syndrome—Historical Memory’) provides an indicator of the popular acceptance of the nationalist narrative that current EU policies should be understood as a continuation of Europe’s historical mission, dating back to the Crusades, to end the Turkish presence in Istanbul and Asia Minor. Table 3 shows that while 20 per cent of respondents did not buy this narrative, it found an echo among 35 per cent. The most important observation is that close to half the respondents (46 per cent) chose not to answer the questions asking them to pass a judgment on European—Turkish relations based on historical memory. The reason for the very high rate of those who did not express an opinion on the issues invoking historical memory may be that many respondents did not feel sufficiently informed about historical events to be able to form a sensible opinion about them. Core Groups Having examined the most salient issues of Euroscepticism, the next step is to identify the social, economic, cultural and political groups with the highest Eurosceptic tendencies. For each of the five composite Euroscepticism variables, each of the three dimensions (Yes—Eurosceptic, No—Non-Eurosceptic, No Answer/No Opinion) was cross-tabulated with the following 15 independent (explanatory) variables: i. Age ii. Gender Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 South European Society and Politics 17 iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. x. xi. xii. xiii. xiv. xv. Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 Geographic Region Income (Monthly Household Income) Knowledge of European and Other Foreign Languages Level of Education Level of Nationalism (Self-Placement on the Nationalism Scale) Level of Religiosity (Self-Placement on the Religiosity Scale) Local Languages Spoken in Daily Life Occupation Political Party Voted for in the General Elections of 3 November 2002 Self-Declared Level of Information about the EU Self-Placement on the Left—Right Scale Living in an Urban or Rural Settlement Visits to a European Country The resulting cross-tabulations were then driven through the following operations. First, for each list a red line was drawn, by adding the average and the standard deviation (SD), that separated the list into two groups, the first one being above the red line and the second one below. Second, for all lists, the number of times a given group remained above the red line (frequency of its occurrences above the red line, which is the sum of the average and standard deviation) was calculated. Third, for each list, the ‘distance’ of a group from the red line was determined, by dividing the percentage of that group by the SD. Fourth, a total distance for each group was computed, by simply adding up its distances in each list. Finally, in order to form an overall index for the ‘intensity’ of Euroscepticism for each group, its total frequency and total distance were multiplied by each other. This rough index was intended to answer the question of how many times a given group has remained well above the average for each of the five main Euroscepticism variables and also to indicate how ‘high’ a group was placed in the Euroscepticism or non-Euroscepticism rankings. As can be readily inferred from Table 4, by far the most Eurosceptic group in Turkey consisted of those who said they had voted for the Turkish ethnonationalist MHP in the November 2002 elections. MHP voters were followed, after a considerable gap, by the voters for the Islamist SP. Other groups with meaningful yet relatively much smaller doses of Euroscepticism were residents of the Black Sea region, voters for the centre-right ANAP, voters for the left-nationalist DSP, white-collar workers, and voters for the populist-nationalist Genc Parti (Young Party, GP). All in all, high intensities of ¸ Euroscepticism could almost exclusively be explained by one factor, i.e. politicisation along the lines of Turkish ethnonationalist and Islamist parties. Socioeconomic and cultural factors, such as gender, occupation, income, and education, did not appear to play a role in bringing about high Eurosceptic tendencies. Meanwhile, the leading non-Eurosceptic group, as shown in Table 5, consisted of the 2002 voters for the Kurdish ethnonationalist HADEP– DEHAP. Thus, while the Turkish ethnonationalist MHP ranked first among the Eurosceptic groups, a Kurdish ethnonationalist party (HADEP– DEHAP) led the way among the non-Eurosceptics. 18 H. Yılmaz Table 4 Most intensely Eurosceptic groups in Turkey Most intensely Eurosceptic groups MHP voters SP voters Black Sea Residents ANAP voters DSP voters White-collar workers GP voters Right-wing people Highly religious people Central Anatolia residents Izmir residents Retired people Professionals Eastern Anatolia residents Intensity of Euroscepticism (total frequency £ total of distances) 238 98 24 23 20 20 18 6 6 6 5 5 5 4 Over 100 100 41 10 10 8 8 8 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 Sources: Yilmaz (2005b); data from the author’s Turkish Euroscepticism survey in December 2003. This overlap between extreme Turkish nationalism and extreme Euroscepticism, on the one hand, and extreme Kurdish nationalism and extreme non-Euroscepticism, on the other, signals a rather dangerous potential for the European project to polarise Turkish society along ethnic lines. A second observation was that in contrast to the most Eurosceptic groups, which were headed by the MHP, among the most non-Eurosceptic groups there was no overwhelmingly dominant leader. DEHAP voters were closely followed by people with high levels of self-declared information about the EU, and those who placed Table 5 Most intensely non-Eurosceptic groups in Turkey Most intensely non-Eurosceptic groups HADEP– DEHAP voters High info about EU Barely religious University and above CHP voters Southeastern Anatolia Student Speaks English, French or German Barely nationalist Speaks other foreign languages Left Upper middle income (YTL750 or more per month) Arabic speaker Intensity of non-Euroscepticism (total frequency £ total of distances) 496 457 451 163 161 159 154 152 129 122 108 103 86 Over 100 100 92 91 33 32 32 31 31 26 25 22 21 17 Sources: Yilmaz (2005b); data from the author’s Turkish Euroscepticism survey in December 2003. South European Society and Politics 19 themselves on the low end of the religiosity scale. A third observation is that, while the most Eurosceptic groups consisted almost exclusively of party followers, among the high-ranking non-Eurosceptic groups one could find a number of socioeconomic and cultural variables. Besides the two just mentioned, these included people with a university-level education, students, those speaking major West European languages, and those belonging to the upper income echelons. Thus, while high levels of Euroscepticism were determined largely by politicisation by the Turkish nationalist and Islamist parties and socialisation into the dominant values of certain geographic regions (mainly the Black Sea, and to a lesser extent central Anatolia and eastern Anatolia), non-Euroscepticism appeared to be more dependent on socioeconomic, informational, and educational status. Future Prospects Turkish Euroscepticism leaves us with a puzzle: although the general public appear to be influenced by many of the identity-based Eurosceptic claims of the Turkish nationalist and Islamist radical right parties, they still want Turkey to join the EU. As can be observed from Figure 1, in 2006– 7 popular support for EU membership seems to have stabilised in the 55–60 per cent range, while the popular opposition came to orbit in the 30– 35 per cent interval. There appears to be a sharp discrepancy between the relatively widespread and still widening ideological influence of the radical right parties and their limited political strength. Turkish people seem to think radical but vote moderate. In the 1970s and 1990s, radical parties could substantially increase their share of the votes, and accordingly of political power, only in times of political crisis, often coupled with severe political violence. Following Juan Linz (1978), a political crisis can be characterised as a situation in which there occurs an ‘unsolvable’ problem—unsolvable, that is, by pro-system mainstream parties of left and right. Only then, when mainstream parties prove powerless and hopeless, can radical parties present themselves to the public as a credible alternative and gain public approval. In the light of these observations, a rational strategy for radical parties is to engage in what may be called ‘crisis engineering’, that is, selecting certain problems and trying to convince the public that these cannot be solved by the pro-systemic forces, whereas the radical parties have a quick and effective solution for them. This is what radical parties in today’s Turkey are trying to do. Two issues have the potential to become unsolvable problems: the Kurdish and Cyprus questions. An increase in Kurdish separatist violence would immediately call into question the validity of EU reforms in the area of minority rights. Similarly, an EU policy favouring the Greek Cypriots over the Turkish Cypriots and punishing Turkey for not yielding to EU demands in that regard would also play directly into the hands of Turkish radicalism. So far, the typical reaction of Turkish mainstream parties of both left and right, when faced with the rising public influence of the radical parties, has been to adopt radical rhetoric themselves, with the purpose of pre-empting their radical opponents. Radicalisation of the mainstream parties at the rhetorical and to some extent policy levels was a significant feature of the 1970s and Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 20 H. Yılmaz 1990s. The net outcome of this strategy of being plus royalist que le roi was just the opposite of what the mainstream parties had expected: by adopting a radical rhetoric, they legitimised the position of the radical parties in the eyes of the public, thus strengthening their own opponents. In 2006 –7, with the radical parties deep into the business of crisis engineering, the mainstream parties—the governing AKP and particularly the opposition CHP—gave strong signals they were about to fall, once again, into the radical trap described above. The continuation of Turkey’s Europeanisation process therefore largely depends on the mainstream parties’ avoiding competition with the radical parties on the latter’s terms. Meanwhile, the Europeanisation of Turkey will be an extremely difficult task if it falls only on the shoulders of the former Islamists (AKP) and the Kurdish nationalists (DTP), while the Turkish nationalist MHP and Kemalist-secularist CHP continue to oppose it. The MHP is unlikely to diverge from its hard Eurosceptic position, which paid off well in the July 2007 elections, in which the party’s vote rose to 15 per cent (from eight per cent in 2002). Thus, the key actor would appear to be the CHP. As indicated above, Euroscepticism is relatively new to the CHP constituency and has not yet become a firm and fixed characteristic of this group. A September 2007 survey of the Turkish middle classes (Yılmaz 2007) found that 57 per cent of CHP voters (just one point below the national average) would support Turkey’s EU membership in a referendum, while 39 per cent would oppose it (seven points above the national average). The proportion of CHP supporters feeling they had benefited from the EU-inspired reforms of recent years was 63 per cent, i.e. four points higher than the national average. This suggests that the CHP leadership could return to a pro-EU position with minimal electoral cost. Following the MHP’s return to Parliament after the July 2007 election, the nationalist flag has been reclaimed by its true owner and the CHP will have to look for other insignia to distinguish itself from the MHP. The cause of secularism alone would limit the party’s appeal to a small portion of the population. Hence, it might be rational for the party to add other items to its policy mix, including a pro-EU orientation. A CHP turn to a clear, albeit critical, pro-EU position would no doubt create a sufficiently wide political consensus to carry out the challenging tasks of the accession process. In contrast, a potential CHP drift to a harder Eurosceptic position would leave the AKP alone on the pro-EU wing of the Turkish party system. The risk-averse, indecisive, and sometimes openly reactionary stance that the AKP has already demonstrated after 2005 on issues evoking heightened nationalist emotions might then dramatically slow down or even block meaningful advances in the accession negotiations. Thus, it would appear that the country’s European prospects are closely linked to the future development of Turkish Euroscepticism. Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 Notes [1] See ARI Movement (2005) for survey data on the issues, varieties, and intensities of anti-Americanism in Turkey today. [2] See Bora (2003) for an analysis of old and new nationalist discourses in Turkey today. South European Society and Politics 21 ˙ [3] See Cerci (2002), Ilhan (2003), and Manisalı (2001) for leading examples of West-sceptic and ¸ ¸ Eurosceptic thinking in Turkey. ` [4] ‘Sevres Treaty’, Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite. ˘ [5] Kılıc (2005) and Pehlivanoglu (2005) provide examples of an interpretation of contemporary ¸ ` European – Turkish relations in the light of the Sevres Treaty. [6] The text of the Ankara Agreement, as published in the Official Journal of the European Communities (No. L 361/1) is available online at: http://www.avrupa.info.tr/Files/File/EU& TURKEY/e-ankara_ENG.rtf [7] For an examination of the radical left movements of the 1960s and 1970s, see Samim (1981). [8] For an analysis of the radical nationalist and Islamist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, see ¨ Akgun (2002). [9] For a review of the AP’s policies in the 1960s and 1970s, see Levi (1991). [10] For a study of the policies of the CHP in the 1960s and 1970s, see Tachau (1991). ˘ [11] See Kalaycıoglu (2005) for a review of the ‘culture wars’ of the 1990s. For the revival of Islamic ¨ ˘ identity see Gole (1997) and Tugal (2002). Mutlu (1996) analyses the situation of the ethnic Kurds and Vorhoff (1998) examines the revival of the Alevi identity. ¨ [12] Sinan Aygun, the vocal Chairman of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, emerged as one of the leading critics of the customs union. For an example of his critical statements see: http://www. atonet.org.tr/turkce/bulten/bulten.php3?sira¼337. An academic critique of the customs union can be found in Manisalı (1996). See Esmer (1996) for a study of the general public mood in the 1990s regarding Turkey’s EU membership. [13] See Hughes (2004) for a detailed account of internal political developments and the EU-related reforms between 1999 and 2003. On the Turkish reform process, see also the websites of the Secretariat General for EU Affairs (http://www.abgs.gov.tr), the Delegation of the European Commission to Turkey (http://www.deltur.cec.eu.int), and the Economic Development Foundation (http://www.ikv.org.tr). ¨ ¸ [14] For analyses of the November 2002 elections, see Onis and Keyman (2003) and Carkoglu (2002). ¸ ˙ [15] On democratisation under the first AKP government, see Insel (2003). [16] As an example of the CHP’s critical stance on the EU policy towards the Kurdish and Alevi problems, see the speech by the party president, Deniz Baykal, on 16 January 2006 (Baykal 2006). In his speech, Baykal accused the EU of trying to create ‘artificial minorities’ in Turkey. [17] On the CHP’s position regarding Article 301 of the penal code, see the statements by the party ¨ vice-president, Onur Oymen (2007). On the CHP’s position regarding EU policies towards the Kurdish and Cyprus questions, see the speech by Deniz Baykal (Baykal 2006). [18] See Table 2. [19] In the factor analysis, the extraction method used was the principal component analysis. The results were rotated by using the varimax rotation method with Kaiser normalisation. The rotation converged in seven iterations. Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 References ¨ Akgun, B. (2002) ‘Twins or enemies: comparing nationalist and Islamist traditions in Turkish politics’, Middle East Review of International Affairs, vol. 6, no. 1, available online at: http:// meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue1/jv6n1a2.html ¨ ARI Movement (2005) ‘Turk Kamuoyunun ABD’ye ve Amerikalılara Bakısı Arastırması’ [Research ¸ ¸ on Turkish public opinion on America and the Americans], field survey conducted in May– June, available online at: http://www.ari.org.tr/index.php?option¼ com_content& task¼view&id¼165&Itemid¼ 83 22 H. Yılmaz Bahceli, D. (2005) ‘Genel Baskanımız Sayın Dr. Devlet Bahceli’nin Genel Merkez’de Yapmıs ¸ ¸ ¸ ¸ Oldukları Basın Toplantısı Konusma Metni’ [Text of a speech by Dr. Devlet Bahceli at a press ¸ ¸ meeting in the MHP headquarters], 10 December, available online at: http://www.mhp.org.tr/ ˘ ˘ ¨ ˘ ¨ Baykal, D. (2006) ‘Ortadogu’yu Dagıttılar, Turkiye’yi Dagıttırmayalım, Turkiye’ye Sahip Cıkalım’ ¸ [They divided the Middle East, we won’t let them divide Turkey], speech, 16 January, available online at: http://www.chp.org.tr/KonusmaArsivDetayi.aspx?SpeechID¼ 8 Bora, T. (2003) ‘Nationalist discourses in Turkey’, South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 102, nos 2 – 3, pp. 433 –451. ˘ Carkoglu, A. (2002) ‘The rise of the new generation pro-Islamists in Turkey: the Justice and ¸ Development Party phenomenon in the November 2002 election in Turkey’, South European Society & Politics, vol. 7, no. 10, pp. 123– 156. ˘ ˘ ¨ ¨ ¨ Carkoglu, A. & Kalaycıoglu, E. 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(2001) ‘Crossing Europe: patterns of contemporary party-based Euroscepticism in EU member states and the candidate states of Central and Eastern Europe’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 29 August. ˘ Tugal, C. (2002) ‘Islamism in Turkey: beyond instrument and meaning’, Economy and Society, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 85– 111. Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 24 H. Yılmaz Vorhoff, K. (1998) ‘“Let’s reclaim our history and culture!”—imagining Alevi community in contemporary Turkey’, Die Welt des Islams, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 220 –252. Wallerstein, I. (2000) ‘The politics of Euroscepticism’, Commentary, no. 49, available online at: http:// fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm Yılmaz, H. (2005a) ‘Swinging between Eurosupportiveness and Euroscepticism: Turkish public’s general attitudes towards the European Union’, in Placing Turkey on the Map of Europe, ed. H. Yılmaz, Bogazici University Press, Istanbul, pp. 152– 181. Yılmaz, H. (2005b) ‘Indicators of Euroscepticism in Turkish public opinion by the end of 2003: basic findings of a survey’, in Placing Turkey on the Map of Europe, ed. H. Yılmaz, Bogazici University Press, Istanbul, pp. 182– 185. Yılmaz, H. (2006) ‘Major variants of conservatism in Turkey’, field survey conducted November– December, main findings, available online at http://hakanyilmaz.info/ Yılmaz, H. (2007) ‘In search of a Turkish middle class: economic occupations, political orientations, social life-styles, moral values’, field survey, September 2007, main findings, available online at http://hakanyilmaz.info/ Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 23:27 17 February 2011 Hakan Yılmaz is Professor at the Department of Political Science and International ˘ ¸ Relations, Bogazici University, Istanbul. He received his Ph.D. from the Political Science Department of Columbia University. He has published works in the areas of contemporary Turkish politics, the culture and identity dimensions of EU-Turkey relations, and the international context of democratization.