Disappointment or New Strength: Exploring the Declining EU Support Among Turkish Students, Academics and Party Members

Abstract

Is the decline of Turkish public support for the European Union (EU) membership better explained by a disappointment about the EU approach to Turkey or by the new self-confidence of the country? This question is relevant because frustration about the accession process could be overcome with more positive signals from the EU. However, if the second factor plays a significant role, this would be an indicator for an enduring alienation between Turks and the EU. This article presents the results of an exploratory study based on an online survey and personal interviews. For one-third of the 618 respondents to the survey, the most important reason for waning EU support is the new strength of Turkey as a rising regional power. In contrast, the interviewed parliamentarians and local party officials consider Turkey's proactive foreign policy approach in its Eastern neighborhood as a complementary and not alternative strategy to Turkey's EU accession.

Acknowledgements

This study received support from the Scientific Research Projects Committee of Izmir University of Economics (grant number A0901001). The author would like to thank Defne-Erzene Bürgin, Pelin Köklü and Funda Sarıcı for their translation work during the interviews.

Notes

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Students, academics and business people represent 85 percent of the respondents. In addition, around ten percent of the respondents used the category “other” and further specified their profession. The categories “unemployed,” “journalist,” “politician” and “governmental official” account for the remaining five percent of the respondents.

Ten percent of the respondents voted for AKP, 7 percent for MHP, 4 percent for other parties and 17 percent of the respondents said that they did vote not in the general election in 2007.

For distortions in the citizens' political judgments, see: James H. Kuklinski and Paul J. Quirk, “Reconsidering the Rational Public. Cognition, Heuristics, and Mass Opinion,” in Arthur Lupia, Matthew McCubbins and Samuel L. Popkin (eds.), Elements of Reason, Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 41; Martyn Denscome, The Good Research Guide for Small Scale Social Research Projects, 3rd edn. (London: Open University Press, 2007), p. 154.

Pew Global Attitudes Survey, “Most Muslim Publics Not so Easily Moved. Confidence in Obama Lifts US Image Around the World” (July 23, 2009).

Taşpinar (2011), pp. 15, 16.