Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Insight Turkey > Articles |

The European Union and Political Cleavages in Turkey

This article examines how the Turks’ views of the European Union align with notions of a center-periphery cleavage in Turkish politics. Traditionally, pro-European views have been associated with the more prosperous, better-educated “center,” whereas the rural, less educated and more religious Turks of the “periphery” have been less supportive of aspects of Europeanization. Examination of 2002 survey data finds that more religious voters were less supportive of the EU. However, analysis from a similar survey done in 2006 finds the religious factor to be insignificant whereas education, typically associated with the “center,” is now related to negative feelings toward the EU. This turnabout is reflected as well in the positions of Turkey’s two major parties and can be attributed to how each side of this cleavage views the benefits of closer ties to the EU.

 

Turkish alignment with the West is not limited to strategic and diplomatic considerations. It is the outward expression of a profound internal change extending over a century-and-a-half of Turkish history, and resulted from a determined and sustained attempt to endow the Turkish people with those freedoms, economic, political, and intellectual, which represent the best that our Western societies have to offer.1

As an economically developing country spanning two continents and having a history grounded in both the West and the East, Turkey represents a dramatic case of a “torn” country,2 possessing several types of political and social cleavages. Borrowing terminology and insights from the seminal work on social cleavages of Lipset and Rokkan, Şerif Mardin argued over three decades ago that political life in Turkey was defined by the differences between a more modern, centralizing, secularized, and Western-oriented “center” and a poorer, more traditional and Islamic “periphery.”3 Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the Turkish center has frequently fought against what it views as the backward, traditional ways of Ottoman Anatolia and has sought to Westernize Turkey. Turkey’s drive to join the European Union (EU) can be seen through this lens as the “culmination of a perennial quest for participation in European political and social space.”4

Already have an account? Sign In.
Print Subscription
4 Print Issues
Subscribe
Digital Subscription
4 Digital Issues
Subscribe
Premium Subscription
4 Print Issues
4 Digital Issues
Subscribe

Labels »  

We use cookies in a limited and restricted manner for specific purposes. For more details, you can see "our data policy". More...