Turkey and the EU: Euroscepticism Gone Mainstream?

Turkey’s record on EU reforms (after the onset of negotiations) is mixed and the causal pathway is rather unclear, given the large number of blocked negotiation chapters and a weak EU membership perspective. This paper investigates whether the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) government’s rhetoric and record on reforms in Turkey are driven by political self-interest, ideology, or socialized norms. The paper draws on a comparative analysis of patterns and the sequence of reforms during the three different AKP government periods and argues that with a declining EU membership perspective, the AKP is increasingly compelled to make ‘ideological’ choices and selections in reform, focusing in particular on those that will provide electoral gains.  Consequently, the paper suggests that one of the outcomes of an ambivalent candidacy grid is that domestic actors proactively use the EU solely for electoral purposes and the EU membership target -for the time being- becomes more of an ‘enabling’ mechanism rather than the usual catalyst for Europeanization. The inevitable result is that Euroscepticism is moving from the fringes to the ‘centre’ of Turkish politics.