Masarykova univerzita V brně Fakulta sociálních studií

2.7 Summary

In sum we can claim that all these actors and their institutional structure were influenced by Europeanization, however the extents vary depending on the different periods and of course on the particular institutions. Generally, we can assume that in all examined cases the EU impulse and consequent adaptational pressures forcing the domestic actors to a change are present, thus that the process of Europeanization can be observed in all examined areas. However, when we look on the topic by way of more theories, we can state that in the question of attitudinal or behavioural changes we can see noticeable differences.

In the first period the changes concerning government and to a certain level also the parliament, were happening more in the formal than behavioural level, the actors adopted the needed legal transformations but we can not see such accord from the identity point of view. Here, the conditionality from the EU side and the credibility of prospect membership evocated the formal changes (also we can call it EU-ization), but another motion was needed to raise the extent of overall influence by the process of Europeanization.

This came at the beginning of another period, strongly influenced by the fact of single party government in power. At this time, EU-related issues were more publicly promoted, and they became perceived as a part of domestic democratization change. The government as well as parliament changed besides the formal way also in their attitudinal way.

In the last era, however, the level of involvement of both actors into EU-driven changes decreased, most probably because of lack of credibility of the EU membership among the political elites.

The institutional structure was changed more on the governmental than on parliamentary level, as the main role of negotiating with the EU lies still on the government. In the parliament the changes were made more for the purpose of being able to deal with the administration and communication brought along the EU-related changes.

The public administration was affected in the sense of broader decentralisation and gaining more competences.

The case of the National Security Council is rather different from the examples of government and parliament. Its functioning and structure is affected considerably by the traditional position in the political system, thus the changes require specific approach. It was not affected much differently in various periods, its change – mainly the structural change – has been considerable during the whole examined period (even though the EU still expects more changes to be done in this case). However, as we can observe from various statements, the changes are also more on the formal than attitudinal level.

Generally, when we want to indicate the result of the process of Europeanization in the sphere of polity, we could speak partially of absorption, when the structures are flexible and absorb the changes which are not fundamental, and partially of transformation which implies the principal changes of political behaviour, which happened just with some of the actors in some periods – government and parliament after 2002.

3. Europeanization of politics

This chapter deals with Europeanization in the area of politics. In this context we can understand the process of Europeanization as extending or limiting the capacity or potential of the main actors as political parties, interest groups or civil society. For the purpose of this thesis (and also considering its scope) I chose to examine in detail just the political parties, the party system, electorate and elections. Examining these issues is closely related to the findings in the other two chapters and by concentrating on one group of actors we can observe more closely the relations with the relevant actors of other spheres.

Firstly, I will introduce the main political parties, their position in the political spectrum and their parliamentary representation. Afterwards in more detail their attitude to European integration analyzing to what extent is the European Union issue considered as significant for particular parties, in their programs and rhetoric As the party system was highly fragmented until the elections of 2002 and none of the parties of the previous era won representation in the parliament in the latter elections, I will just dwell on the parties that were/are present in the parliament after the elections in 2002 and in 2007.³⁵.

Then we will proceed to the party system, I will examine its main characteristics and afterwards the electorate and elections, and afterwards try to find out if we can observe important changes of these elements and if so, what were the main reasons for these changes.

The problem which we meet when trying to analyze the political parties’ approach to the EU is the lack of primary resources in English. The Republican People’s Party and National Action Party do not have the English versions of their programs or basic principles at all, Justice and Development Party has an English site but last time updated in February 2007, which means before the last Parliamentary elections. Yet these facts can tell us something about significance the parties put on the EU issue or their effort to make the international environment understand their priorities. Therefore in my analysis I was mainly dependent on the secondary resources, as well as on the translations of the parties’ programs.³⁶

3.1 Republican People’s Party (CHP)

As its principles, the party basically took the six founding principles of the Turkish Republic – republicanism, secularism, populism, nationalism, statism and reformism. The former four CHP adopted in 1927, the latter two in 1931 (Korab-Karpowicz 2008: 91). This meant for example implementing a series of significant reforms designed to disassociate Turkish society from its historical roots in the Islamic world (like forbidding the religious orders, enforcing “Western” dress codes, adopting Latin alphabet). These principles altogether brought a tendency to conceive of social change as state-led projects and because the primary goal of these projects was to create a modern, unified nation, the CHP could claim to represent the whole of Turkey, regardless of class, ethnicity, or creed.

After the 1980 coup we can observe a decisive break in the CHP’s tacit alliance with the army. With the coup, the army wanted to refashion the party system through legal engineering, and to a large extent it seems to have succeeded. All the existing political parties were dissolved, and their leaders were prohibited from participating in politics. In addition, to prevent fragmentation, a national 10% threshold was established.

During the interim multi-party periods in between the military coups of 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997, CHP was regarded as being social-democratic, state nationalistic and secular. Since the CHP was allowed to re-open in 1993, it has struggled to regain its former place in the party system. Due to its association with Atatürk, it is still perceived by many as being the most authoritative party representative of Kemalism (Parslow 2007: 32).

At the present time it represents a centre-leftist political party with traditional ties to middle and upper-middle classes. But as it is quite distanced from many leftist grassroots, it has shifted from political left to an authoritarian base.

In the 2002 Parliamentary elections, the CHP with 19,4% of votes and 177 seats became the only opposition party in the Turkish Grand National Assembly³⁷ (Erdem 2008: 19) and second biggest party in Turkey. At the 2007 general election CHP ran in alliance with Democratic Left Party. With the result of 20,85% 112 candidates were elected to the parliament.

When concerning the CHP’s attitude to the EU, we can say that generally the party does not oppose the idea of the EU and Turkey’s membership in the Union either. However, they do not put large effort for helping the government on the way to the membership. The significant point is also that the EU topic is not implicated in CHP’s political programs, neither in the particular policies sections, and there is no information under the section of foreign policy.

CHP members say that they support the forty-years lasting membership process, sarcastically expressing that although they support the EU membership, it has been too long time since Turkey applied and is still not a member. Recently the party has started to take more important position in the EU process (for example they sent a representative to Brussels to lobby for Turkey’s membership but it is not a permanent representative). However, they do not exercise any proactive policy for the candidacy process to be accomplished.

In CHP election program of 2007 we can read that the party will continue for the full membership goal and will not accept an inferior status that is proposed. The party wants to accelerate the reforms and concentrate on integration to the EU in every sense. They say that they will only continue to cooperate with the EU if the EU member states will respect the decision-making power of Turkey and only if Turkey will have equal conditions with the member states in the security issues. The CHP criticize EU about the Cyprus issue and they condition the membership by necessity to solve this problem. In a separate paragraph of the program they state that their EU aim depends on equality among Turkey and EU and the respect for Turkish integrity and sovereignty.

At the international level, the CHP is an associate member of Party of European Socialists, and a member of Socialist International.