Turkey’s Journey from Democratization to De-democratization: External Democracy Promotion versus Domestic Political Competition

Democratic reform processes of candidate countries of the EU have been widely explained from a rationalist external incentives perspective. So, until recently, Turkey had been seen as a textbook example of how effective a conditionality strategy could be. However, Turkish responses to EU conditionality have displayed significant fluctuations over time, even under the same government. This article will argue that the current literature on the Europeanization of candidate countries suffers from an overriding focus on the external impact of the EU upon Turkey and its democratization process. In response, this article instead focuses on the role of political parties as active agents of change by evaluating the validity of these claims in light of a qualitative analysis of Turkish democratization since 2005. Building on the emerging literature that focuses on domestic factors in Turkey’s de-Europeanization, this article contributes to this literature by presenting these domestic factors in the theoretical framework of constructivism. It argues that EU demands do not represent inherent costs or benefits. Instead, their perception as costs or benefits matter in the context of Turkish politics. This means that outcomes are contingent on the nature of contestation and power balance among competing parties in Turkey.