Europeanization through EU conditionality: understanding the new era in Turkish foreign policy

Abstract

Since October 2001, Turkey has embarked upon a process of wide-ranging political reforms through harmonization packages to redress its shortcomings visa-vis the Copenhagen criteria. The Turkish economy has already undergone substantive changes to become a fully functioning market economy and acquire the capacity to cope with competitive pressures. Alongside political and economic changes, Turkish foreign policy (TFP) is also experiencing a transformation as a result of European conditionality. Since the EU’s acceptance of the Turkish candidacy in 1999, TFP has been profoundly altered. For instance, without the prospects of EU accession, it would have been difficult to imagine Turkey opening the doors to internal debate on the ‘Armenian issue’ or the shift in the dialogue on Cyprus from a confrontational line to a ‘win–win’ discourse. Similarly, there was a distinct contrast between Turkey’s attitudes towards Syria in 1998 and Greece in 1999 in response to their support for Abdullah Ocalan. While Syria faced troop mobilization on its border and threats of war should it not expel the leader of the separatist Kurdish group PKK from Damascus, the latter only received a diplomatic reprimand— and not a very strong or sustained one—when it was revealed that Ocalan had been sheltered in the Greek Embassy in Nairobi. What followed in both cases was a ‘spring’ in relations, the former achieved by coercive methods and the latter by a gentle push towards embarrassment. This paper examines TFP in the framework of Europeanization, to find out to what extent this approach is helpful in understanding change in the course of the last decade. First, it offers a brief discussion of the concept of Europeanization as understood in European integration studies, focusing on its domestic dimension. Second, it analyzes modes of change in the foreign policy domain of EU member and candidate countries, showing that foreign policy Europeanization of wouldbe members takes place through the conditionality provided in the CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy) acquis. Third, it introduces mechanisms of EU conditionality for foreign policy change in Turkey with specific references to institutional issues, traditionally sensitive foreign policy problems and the neighbouring region of the Middle East. The paper argues that while Europeanization is the major framework for understanding the recent changes