Masarykova univerzita V brně Fakulta sociálních studií

3.4.2 Electorate and the elections

When concerning the determinants of support, the first and clear result was the existence of a low-knowledge versus high expectations situation in Turkey, but regardless of the level of knowledge, the support for membership remained high. It was also shown in the analyses that Turkish public had the highest level of expectations from the EU membership and believed that both their personal lives and the country would benefit very positively with the accession (Şenyuva 2008: 96; Yılmaz 2007: 83).

One interesting finding coming from the researches is the fact that in Turkey we can find several levels of Euro-skepticism but almost no refusal is present, in the sense that we can observe in other candidate and member countries. We can see strong, moderate and soft EU supporters, but no group openly and decidedly standing against the EU membership. As was already mentioned, most of the people expect improving of their life conditions in Turkey as a part of the EU, which implies that there exist different levels of Euro-optimism but not a Euro-pessimism of a high significance. Another point that corresponds to these assignments is that Turkish public in principle is not against sharing the sovereignty with the EU authorities.⁴⁸ The fact that in Turkey exists no significant group refusing the EU is in incisive contrast with the ever-growing European exclusionism and open aversion to Turkey’s membership in the EU (Yılmaz 2007: 83).

The results of national surveys, presented in paper of E. Kalacıoğlu⁴⁹ show us the above mentioned ups and downs in the public meaning depending on actual character of Turkish-EU relations as well as the trend of the last three years. This recent development could be characterized by stable retrenching of the public support (and growing opposition at the same time) without the former abrupt changes in the level of support. Whereas in December 2005 the support of membership was one of the highest in history – 70% and opposition 24%, until July 2007 the support decreased to 50% and the adverse opinion grew to 33%. Such a development can have several explications. The public meaning was probably influenced by the impacts of implementation of reforms adopted in order to fulfill the requirements from the EU side, mainly the Copenhagen criteria. These impacts were not so perceptible in the years 2002-2004 when actually most of the reforms took place, but rather in the above mentioned subsequent period. It could also be caused by loss of credibility of the EU membership (the accession negotiations were started in October 2005, but the date of accession itself still is not assigned which may impose this kind of public perception) or the feeling that the EU stipulates more and more conditions (or even obstacles) for Turkey’s membership and even if she fulfills all of them, the membership would be refused by member countries.

Another interesting observation concerns the question whether or to what extent the EU membership and related issues played a role in the sequential elections of 2002 and 2007.

In the preceding elections, the identity of the actors involved was “national” in nature and limited to the political parties and the state. On the contrary, the 2002 elections constituted a specific and peculiar moment in Turkish politics in so far as it involved not only the political parties competing with one another, but also economic pressure groups, civil society organizations and international or supranational organizations such as the IMF and the EU. Not only these non-state organizations have influenced the strategies of political parties themselves but have also helped to shape public opinion directly by emphasizing the need for a strong and stable government (Keyman, Öniş 2007: 225).

We could then suppose that they were influenced by the developments on the EU front taking place in the Parliament just short time before the November 2002 election. The most striking development came with the unexpected passage of an impressive EU adjustment package from the Parliament.

The surveys made before and aftermath election, show that economic problems occupy the top three slots among answers. With the forming of AKP single party government, political instability and uncertainty has significantly dropped in shares they occupy in the answers. While the economic instability and crisis, unemployment and inflation topped the list, the EU and related foreign policy issues came to occupy the most important problem in the minds of only about 1 percent of the electorate.⁵⁰ Despite the fact that in the aftermath of the election, the AKP leadership had worked on the issue of EU membership, no significant change is observed with respect to EU and related foreign policy issues in the aftermath of the elections. Hence we can believe that despite the hearted debates in early August and just prior to the Copenhagen summit in December 2002, the electorate continued to see EU and related foreign policy issues as of minor importance of the country (Çarkoğlu, Kalaycıoğlu 2007: 51).

ANAP, The Motherland Party, was the new laws’ main advocate, hoping it would lead to electoral support and the EU’s agreement to advance Turkey’s membership application. ANAP’s hopes that voters would reward it for acting on the EU issue were not realized. It assumed that the expectant EU institutions would also be pleased. The expected EU support that would push the positive economic expectations upward was also not realized since any action by the EU bureaucracy would only take place after the election. Similarly, public opinion was little affected since not only the measures would not be implemented until later, but also the salience of the EU in the minds of the voters was not as high as ANAP leadership had hoped. ANAP’s campaign was not effective in pushing this issue since the party organization was falling apart on the expectation that it would not survive the 10 percent nationwide threshold. This could also be one important reason for such a decline of attention on EU reforms and the persistently low salience of EU and related issues – the failure of the political elite to push these issues forcefully in the public realm. In addition to the force with which these issues are used in election campaign, it may also be the case that whatever use there was of the EU issues in the election campaign this basically lacked consistency and coherence for the electorate to easily comprehend and evaluate them (Çarkoğlu, Kalaycıoğlu 2007: 53).

Another reason for the decline of attention on and salience of EU related issues could be due to the emergence of major populist/nationalist threat from the GP⁵¹ and the MHP. While both parties´ constituencies favored EU membership, their elite ideology was staunchly nationalist in the case of MHP or populist in the case of GP. Both parties were also highly anti-EU in their rhetoric and policy stands. Both seemed to prefer to be the only party of the Euro-skeptics and thus carry high enough support behind them to pass the ten percent threshold (Çarkoğlu 2003: 191). Although both GP and MHP failed to mobilize sizeable constituencies against the EU, they nevertheless were successful in deterring the other major parties, especially the two likely winners (AKP and CHP) from being pro-active on the EU front (Çarkoğlu 2004: 35).

In short, the party campaigners in the AKP as well as CHP have most likely diagnosed that there were not much attention being paid to the EU issue and they were equally deterred from using the EU related issues for fear of being attacked by the nationalist as well as populist circles. As a result, the EU cause remained abandoned in the election campaigns. Neither CHP facing GP, nor AKP facing MHP could afford to push EU related issues beyond the mere subtle linkage to various reform debates. In consequence, the anti-European front was not confronted publicly in any public debate and the two largest parties kept the EU issues at low salience. At the same time, the Euroskeptic front was conveniently kept divided into smaller party constituencies thus helping to waste their representation by keeping them out of the parliament not getting the ten percent threshold (Çarkoğlu 2003: 192) As a result, we can see that the EU issues did not exert a determining effect on the 2002 election.

In the following elections, as we can observe from the particular party programs, the EU issue was presented as a topic in itself. The parties devote to it a separate section in their programs. However, only the AK Party incorporated the issue also to other policy dimensions like economic or social policies. According to the members’ statements besides the program their intention is to continue the social and economic reforms in any case and independently on the EU requirements, for the good of the country.

On the other hand, none of the parties made the EU issue its leading topic for the elections. As we have seen earlier, the support for the EU membership was decreasing in the recent years, thus probably the parties did not dare to emphasize the issue above a certain level, in order not to loose the voters. C. Oğuz shows quite interesting findings on this situation. He asked several politicians, from the opposition parties as well as from AKP whether Turkey’s EU prospects played an influential role in voters’ eventual decision (in other words whether the elections might indeed be considered, as claimed by some Turkish journalists and intellectuals, a referendum on Turkey's EU bid) and none of them said they agreed. Those from the AKP even argued that they tried to avoid the grave consequences of domestic discussions revolving around the EU process during the election campaign.

Thus, the results of the elections show us a paradox of anti-Western Turks’ pro-Western electoral choice, when the overwhelming majority of the Turkish voters chose to vote for allegedly the most pro-U.S. and pro-EU political party in the country, the Justice and Development Party (Oğuz 2007).

Hence, if we believe these statements, but also if we look on the level of emphasis the parties put in their election programs and in promoting the EU or membership, we could claim that the EU issue did not influence the 2007 elections significantly. These elections were as well as in 2002 strongly influenced by the contemporary political situation, therefore the people decided to show the support to the actual ruling party and to the policies it carried on. Here we could see an indirect influence of Europeanization – when the voters support the party which executes reforms required by the EU, they support in a certain way this party’s attitude to the EU issue, thus, giving it assent to pursue these policies in the future.