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Identity Politics and the Domestic Context of Turkey's European Union Accession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Necati Polat
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Abstract

This article observes a transformation in the largely essentializing, decontextualized form of identity politics that long defined political cosmology in Turkey, now in the process of negotiating accession to the European Union (EU). Accordingly, identity politics – not only the bread and butter of both Kurdish nationalism and Islamism, but also a justification for exhortations towards a limited, authoritarian democracy by Kemalists, the major power holders – is receding in favour of a civic, non-divisive political culture enabled by the EU anchorage. In danger of losing the longstanding centre–periphery configuration in an enhanced, participatory democracy and, concomitant with it, the periphery clientelism created by the waning identity politics, Kemalist nationalists, Islamists and Kurdish separatists appear to have stopped squabbling among themselves and joined forces against Turkey's EU bid.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , 2006 , pp. 512 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2006

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