ARENA Report 07/2007
Joakim Parslow
Turkey’s relations with the European Union (EU) are at a critical juncture. As of 2002, the process of adapting Turkey’s legal framework to the EU’s political membership criteria began in earnest. The legislative amendments carried out in this respect amount to one of the largest, most wide-ranging reform processes Turkey has ever experienced. In order for these amendments to be passed, the reforms must be continuously justified vis-à-vis key constituencies. In this respect, the reforms are not only interesting from the perspective of EU-Turkey relations. They come at a crucial time in Turkey’s domestic politics, and pose a challenge to some of the most fundamental divisions in the country’s political party system. This report addresses the question of how representatives of Turkey’s largest political parties have framed the reforms in public discourse. The analysis finds that they have distanced themselves from the antagonistic ideologies with which they have been associated in the past. In general, all of the parties – with the clear exception of the far-right Nationalist Action Party, whose representatives see the reforms as a threat to Turkey’s unity – have moderated their antagonistic discourses, and have emphasized the inherent and universal validity of the norms underlying them.
ARENA Report 07/2007 (pdf)
ISBN 978-82-93137-56-6 (online) 978-82-93137-06-1 (print)