Europeanization of Public Debates and Civil Society in Turkey: The Kurdish Question

Europeanization of Public Debates and Civil Society in Turkey: The Kurdish Question内容摘要：

Europeanization of Public Debates and Civil Society in Turkey: The Kurdish Question Paper to be presented at the 2nd European Workshops in International Studies organized by European International Studies Association (EISA) Gediz University, Izmir/Turkey 21-24 May 2014 Dr. Alper KALIBER Istanbul Bilgi University European Institute Alper.kaliber@bilgi.edu.tr Work in progress. Please do not quote without the author’s permission. 1 Turkey’s centuries-long and ambivalent integration with Europe delivered a historical breakthrough when its candidacy status was formally recognised in the European Union’s (EU) Helsinki summit of 1999. In the post-1999 era, Turkey experienced two markedly distinctive periods of EU-ization/Europeanization and de-Europeanization. In the first period, (2001-2005) for the vast majority of Turkish society, Europe in general and the EU in particular turned out to be a new political, normative context, where the demands to democratise and liberalise the domestic regime have been articulated and justified. Turkey’s strengthening integration with Europe in this period coincided with fierce ideological, political and economic public debates flourishing in every segment of the society (Kasaba and Bozdoğan, 2000: 19). These public deliberations have continued in the second period (2007-up to now), which are characterized by the retreat of Europeanization or deEuropeanization. These debates which have been re-shaping both Turkey’s domestic politics and the trajectory of Turkey’s relations with the EU/Europe have mainly revolved around two major issues: the rise of political Islam and Kurdish identity claims. Civil society organizations (CSOs) from all segments of the political spectrum have been heavily involved in these public deliberations dominating Turkish politics and polarising the society. This has represented a recent phenomenon for Turkey, where the development of an autonomous and plural civil society was deemed as a threat to state-centric and elite-directed (Keyder, 1997) modernization. Yet, the intensifying and deepening impact of EU-ization/Europeanization and the subsequent democratization within the last decade widened the political space available for civil society in Turkey. The legal harmonization packages and constitutional reforms passed by Turkish governments to meet the Copenhagen Criteria accelerating in the years between 2001 and 2004 lifted restrictions against freedom of assembly and opened up new spaces for the actors of Turkish civil society. As another manifestation of deepening impact of Europeanization, Europe in general and the EU in particular have become ‘a common reference point increasingly referred to in domestic debates’ (Diez et al., 2005: 2) by political and civil society actors. The CSOs, who are actively involved in large public debates, have formulated their political demands and deliberative positions by making reference to specific European norms, policies and institutions. Particularly the debates on the Kurdish question, political Islam/secularism, and major foreign policy issues, i.e. the Cyprus conflict have been informed by distinct perceptions and representations of Europe: Europe either as a source of democratization and improvement of civil and political rights or as a source of insecurity threatening Turkey’s territorial integrity, and/or the core characteristics of the regime. This study focuses on CSOs particularly vocal on the Kurdish question and political Islam/secularism debates and on their distinctive perceptions of EU/Europe. It is not the task of this article to engage in detail with the complex definitional debates about the meanings of civil society, which have been summarized effectively elsewhere (Keane, 1998; van Rooy, 1998; Parekh, 2004). Yet, for the purposes of the current contribution, the phenomenon of civil society was defined as ‘the coming together of free individuals of their own volition’ (Yerasimos, 2000: 15) in a national and or global scale with the aim of influencing the sociopolitical, economic and cultural agenda in accordance with the pre-defined collective 2 objectives. The scholarship on Turkey-EU relations and Turkish civil society often assumes that strengthening of Turkey’s integration with Europe has facilitated the development of pluralist and democratic civil society (Kirişçi, 2007: 17; Göksel and Güneş, 2005; Yerasimos, 2000). However, a more nuanced account of the issue suggests that the intensifying