Eu Enlargement and Socialization: Turkey and Cyprus by Stefan Engert

Author:Stefan Engert [Engert, Stefan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Public Policy, Diplomacy, Social Science, Political Science, Sociology, Economic Policy, General
ISBN: 9781135168094
Google: bqeMAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17577462
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

8

Turkey’s progress towards compliance

After having returned from the EU Council at Helsinki (1999), Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ismael Cem declared: ‘Turkey is not just any candidate. Turkey has a different identity and a very different historical experience to the others.’1 The country has two unique cultural particularities and one of the questions to be investigated in this chapter is whether Kemalism and Muslim faiths in any way influence compliance. Although 99 per cent of the population holds Muslim faith, Turkey is a secular country in which the role of religion is reduced to the private sphere and subordinated under strong control of the state (Mango 2000: 122). While religion is thus a less likely cultural factor to impact on compliance, ‘Kemalism’, the dominant ‘leitmotif’ of all Turkish politics since 1923, is partially based on values alien to those of Western liberal democracy (Yavuz 2000: 33). Although Atatürkçülük incorporates various European elements of the Swiss civil law, the Italian penal code, the German military code as well as traditions of French centralism and laicism (Akkaya et al. 1998: 8), it has aimed at emulating early twentieth century Europe and is therefore a rather conservative raison d’état – seen from today’s point of view. Indeed, Kemalism stresses ‘republicanism over democracy, homogeneity over difference, the military over civilian, and the state over society’ (Yavuz 2000: 34; cf. Kubiçek 2002: 763). As a result, Ankara’s policy practices often didn’t fit with the EU’s more liberal notion of democracy and human rights on a wide range of issues. Of the range of conflicts that could be discussed, this analysis focuses on the abolition of the death penalty, the protection of minorities (in particular the Kurdish people) and civilian-democratic control over the military.

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