Changing Portrayals of Europe: an Analysis of Parliamentary Minutes in Turkey in the Justice and Development Party Era

Turkey is the longest running candidate to the European Union (EU). In almost twenty years that passed since the start of accession talks, relations between the EU and Turkey have been an undulant roller-coaster ride. This period also coincides with the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) first electoral success and its ongoing sixteen-year rule. Literature on Turkey and the EU mostly interprets their relations within a Europeanization versus de-Europeanization spectrum. Europeanization refers not only to the influence of the EU on the societies, politics, and institutions of the EU member and candidate states, but also to the national and European actors’ discourses that shape the institutional, normative, and ideational structures of Europe . Thus, the interpretations, representations, and uses of Europe and the EU by national actors, such as the political elite, have a defining role on the extent of Europeanization. De-Europeanization, on the other hand, is about the lack of Europeanization, and a turn away from Europe, which comes as a consequence of increasing skepticism and the lessening appeal of European policies, norms and values. Against this backdrop, this research asks: In the era of AKP, is there an observable change in how the Turkish parliament talks about Europe? To explore this issue, I use qualitative content analysis. I employ an original analytical dictionary in Turkish, that allows me to measure and follow the saliency of the discourse on Europe and the EU. I then employ this dictionary to the text corpus consisting of ~1500 minutes of the plenary sessions of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, issued between November 2002 and December 2017. Also the context, such as national and/or the EU-level significant events that have likely led to the peaks and dips in the data, is taken into consideration. Consequently, this research should provide a more nuanced perspective on Turkey’s turning away from Europe and the EU, and the grounds behind the current state of relations, as well as on institutional and policy changes thereby introduced.