Turkey and the European Union

Processes of Europeanisation

Yonca Özer, Çigdem Nas, Çigdem Nas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317006008
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Políticas europeas

The accession of Turkey to the EU presents a fascinating case study for all those with an interest in europeanisation. Officially recognised as a candidate for full membership in 1999 Turkey's negotiations with the EU have been protracted and highly controversial. Turkey and the European Union: Processes of Europeanisation offers a coherent and focussed account of Turkey's recent relations and accession negotiations with the EU. Europeanisation as an explanatory tool is used to review how the EU has successfully induced change in Turkish policies and institutions whilst careful analysis is also conducted into where europeanisation has failed and explores how it may even have inadvertently contributed to forming a backlash against accession. Authoritative local and International contributors provide in-depth analysis as to why the process has had such a varied impact across a range of policies and institutions and ask, given the high costs of joining the EU and decreasing incentives, if europeanisation can still exert an influence in the future. Despite Turkey's unique geographical and political position between East and West the relationship with the EU is not a case sui generis. This book offers valuable insights on the effectiveness of europeanisation for all those within and without the framework of the European Union.

Chapter 1 Europeanisation Meets Turkey. A Case Sui Generis?

Tanja A. Börzel

DOI: 10.4324/9781315549569-2

Introduction

Research on Europeanisation and domestic change is thriving. With the borders of the European Union (EU) having moved south-eastwards, we have been given yet another real-world experiment on the domestic impact of the EU. Together with the Western Balkan countries, Turkey obtained an accession perspective. Whether the ‘golden carrot’ is big enough, however, to draw Turkey closer to Europe, is still an open question as EU demands for political and economic reforms are greater than they were in the case of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC). The EU has exerted much less pressure for adaptation on the Turkish government and the accession perspective granted in 1999 is losing credibility. Moreover, like in case of the Western Balkans, both the willingness and the capacity of the Turkish government to implement the acquis communautaire are more limited.

The contributions in this volume clearly show that the transformative power of the EU has indeed been limited in Turkey as in the Western Balkans (Elbasani 2012a). For students of Europeanisation, this should not come as a surprise given the combination of high costs, decreasing incentives and limited reform capacities. At the same time, the various chapters do find instances of EU-induced domestic change. Thus, the real puzzle is why there is Europeanisation despite these unfavourable conditions and why the domestic impact of the EU has been differential, i.e. varies across policies and institutions.

Can Europeanisation approaches account for the differential impact of the EU on Turkey we find in this edited volume? The chapter explores whether the Europeanisation literature travels south east. I will start by summarising the main findings of research on ‘External Europeanisation’ focusing on factors that have limited or at least qualified the domestic impact of the EU in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Western Balkan (WB) accession countries. The second part of the chapter will discuss to what extent the Europeanisation approaches need further qualification when applied to Turkey, which squares even on democracy with the WB (with the exception of Croatia) but whose statehood is less limited. As a result, Turkey has greater capacities to introduce domestic reforms required by the EU than most of the WB candidates. With regard to its willingness, the size and credibility of EU incentives have become insufficient to reward Turkey for its progress. I will argue that the selective and differential domestic changes the contributions to this edited volume find are largely related to the extent to which EU conditionality helps domestic actors gain or hold political power. The Europeanisation literature has identified differential empowerment as a key scope condition for the EU to induce domestic change (Cowles et al. 2001, Börzel and Risse 2003, Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005, Vachudova 2005). The case of Turkey shows that it is not only pro-Western, liberal reform coalitions that can use the EU to advance and legitimise their political agenda. The chapter will conclude with summarising the major implications Turkey has for Europeanisation approaches and discussing why Turkey is not a case sui generis.

Reaching Out? From Membership to Accession Europeanisation

Membership Europeanisation works to a large extent through legal coercion. EU member states are subject to policies and institutions diffused by the case law of the European Court of Justice or European directives harmonising national legislations (Börzel and Risse 2012a). Yet, the shadow of hierarchy cast by the supremacy and direct effect of EU Law also provides incentives, e.g. in the form of legal sanctions (Börzel 2003) and arenas for socialisation and persuasion (Panke 2007). For the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe, EU infringement proceedings and the Control and Verification Mechanism substitute accession conditionality as major incentives for post-accession compliance (Sedelmeier 2012, Spendzharova and Vachudova 2012). During the accession process, the EU casts at best a weak shadow of hierarchy and largely relies on positive and negative incentives for making candidate countries adopt and implement the acquis communautaire. The current candidate countries are even more subject to such accession conditionality than their CEE predecessors (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2004). Yet, accession credibility is declining given the EU’s enlargement fatigue and the enormous changes many of the Western Balkans and Turkey still have to undergo in order to qualify for the next steps in the accession process – so far, Croatia is the only candidate that will join the EU in the near future (Noutcheva and Aydın-Düzgit 2012, Elbasani 2012a). While Turkey’s capacities to implement domestic reforms are less limited than in most of the WB candidates, its perspective as well as its own enthusiasm for membership has been fading.

The literature on Accession Europeanisation has identified misfit and membership conditionality as two factors that decisively shape the effectiveness of the EU’s transformative power in the Central and Eastern European accession countries (Kelley 2006, Lavenex 2004, Schimmelfennig and Trauner 2010). If low and non-credible conditionality combines with high policy or institutional misfit, EU-induced domestic change is unlikely to occur because costs are high and the EU offers little to pay them off (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2004). Yet, despite high misfit, substantial costs and few incentives, the chapters in this edited volume find ample evidence for the EU’s influence on both institutional and policy change. The domestic impact of the EU on Turkey may be patchy, often shallow but certainly not spurious. While the EU is usually not the only game in town and Turkey is not merely down-loading EU policies and institutions, this edited volume demonstrates that the EU has influenced domestic change even where its shadow of hierarchy and conditionality is weak or non-existent. At the same time, the various chapters find significant variation. To what extent can existing approaches of Europeanisation and domestic change account for the differential impact of the EU on Turkey?

Beyond Misfit and EU Pressure for Adaptation: Factors Mediating Accession Europeanisation

The misfit between European and domestic policies, institutions and political processes is a necessary condition for domestic change. To what extent such misfit translates into change depends on domestic institutions, which mediate or filter the domestic impact of Europe (on the following see Börzel and Risse 2003, Börzel and Risse 2007).

Rational choice institutionalism argues that the EU facilitates domestic change through changing opportunity structures for domestic actors. In a first step, misfit between the EU and domestic norms creates demands for domestic adaptation. It takes agency, however, to translate misfit into domestic change. In a second step, the downloading of EU policies and institutions by the member states is shaped by cost/benefit calculations of strategic actors, whose interests are at stake. Institutions constrain or enable certain actions of rational actors by rendering some options more costly than others. From this perspective, Europeanisation is largely conceived as an emerging political opportunity structure which offers some actors additional resources to exert influence, while severely constraining the ability of others to pursue their goals. Domestic change is facilitated, if EU incentives discourage domestic actors to veto adaptation to EU requirements (veto players) or if, on the contrary, they empower domestic reform coalitions by providing them with additional resources to exploit the opportunities offered by Europeanisation (formal supporting institutions).

Sociological institutionalism draws on a normative logic of appropriateness to argue that actors are guided by collectively shared understandings of what constitutes proper, socially accepted behaviour. Such collective understandings and intersubjective meaning structures strongly influence the way actors define their goals and what they perceive as rational behaviour. Rather than maximising their egoistic self-interest, actors seek to meet social expectations in a given situation. From this perspective, Europeanisation is understood as the emergence of new rules, norms, practices, and structures of meaning to which member states are exposed and which they have to incorporate into their domestic rule structures. If there is such a misfit, it also takes agency to bring about domestic change. But the ways in which domestic actors engage with reforms are different. Norm entrepreneurs such as epistemic communities or advocacy networks socialise domestic actors into new norms and rules of appropriateness through persuasion and learning, a process through which they redefine their interests and identities accordingly. The more active norm entrepreneurs and EU allies are and the more they succeed in making EU policies resonate with domestic norms and beliefs, the more successful they will be in bringing about domestic change. Moreover, collective understandings of appropriate behaviour strongly influence the ways in which domestic actors download EU requirements. For example, a consensus-oriented or cooperative decision-making culture helps to overcome multiple veto points by rendering their use for actors inappropriate. Such consensus-oriented political culture allows for a sharing of adaptational costs which facilitates the accommodation of pressure for adaptation.

How do these two approaches fare in accounting for the differential impact of the EU on accession countries? In the accession process, misfit combines with conditional incentives in the pressure for adaptation the EU exerts. For the CEE, ‘reinforcement by reward’ (Schimmelfennig et al. 2003, cf. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005) was strong enough to overcome the resistance of veto players against the substantial costs entailed in compliance with the Copenhagen Criteria and the adoption of the acquis communautaire (Jacoby 2006, Vachudova 2005, Andonova 2003, Grabbe 2006, Pridham 2005). Europeanisation has empowered CEE reformists and moderates over nationalist forces to push through domestic reforms. If domestic veto players have mattered, they delayed rather than forestalled compliance with EU requirements (Vachudova 2005, Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2006). At the same time, formal veto players helped lock-in institutional changes induced by the EU if these changes no longer fit government preferences (Sedelmeier 2012). Hence, the mediating effect of both informal institutions and veto players is more ambivalent since they may facilitate as well as impair Europeanisation.

While the rationalist mechanisms of ‘differential empowerment through conditionality’ have dominated Accession Europeanisation, socialisation and social learning have played a role, too (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005, Kelley 2004, Kubicek 2003). Next to financial and technical assistance and the substantial reward of membership, the EU provides elites in accession countries with the necessary legitimacy to enact domestic change. The strong domestic consensus in favour of EU membership in their ‘return to Europe’ allowed CEE decision-makers to silence domestic veto players inside and outside government, despite the considerable costs incurred by EU policies. Moreover, the Copenhagen Criteria strongly resonated with the ongoing reform agenda and large parts of the societies in the CEE countries supporting political and economic transition started by the ‘velvet revolution’ of 1989. The legitimacy of the EU generated sufficient diffuse support through the identification with Europe that often trumped cost/benefit calculations in the adoption of and adaptation to the package of enlargement conditionality. It also facilitated access and influence of (trans-) national norm entrepreneurs who had little difficulties in invoking the resonance of EU requirements with domestic norms and values as to increase their acceptance and promote their internalisation. While it did not forge completely new identities and beliefs, EU accession reinforced the identification with Europe (Risse 2010).

Existing Europeanisation approaches did a fairly good job in accounting for the differential impact of Accession on the CEE. They require some serious adjustments when applied to the Western Balkans. While the CEE had made steady progress towards bec...