Europeanisation and Administrative Relations in Turkey in the Post-Helsinki Era

ABSTRACT

After the Helsinki Summit of 1999, Turkey faced the impact of Europeanisation in the context of regional policy and structural funds. This impact challenged the long-established statist tradition of the Turkish administrative structure and led to the need for reforms in order to bring its regional policy in line with European Union (EU) standards. The polity effect of Europeanisation in Turkey in the post-Helsinki era has been a change in administrative relations between three different territorial tiers: supranational, national and subnational.

KEYWORDS:

• Turkey
• Europeanisation
• multi-level governance
• EU regional policy
• administrative relations

Notes

¹ The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) is a geo-code standard for referencing the subdivisions of countries for statistical purposes. The standard is developed and regulated by the European Union, and thus only covers the member states of the EU in detail. The NUTS is instrumental in the European Union’s Structural Fund delivery mechanisms.

² The term de-Europeanisation is taken from Düzgit and Kaliber (2016).

³ For further details regarding the numbers and functions of the municipalities in Turkey, see http://www.tbb.gov.tr/belediyelerimiz/belediyeler/

⁴ Kemalism, an ideology of reform named after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the former chairperson of the Turkish Grand National Assembly and the first President (1923-38) of the new state that embraced positivism, as well as the nationalist and solidarity components of the statist-centralist thought of the previous decade (Köker 1995).

⁵ These regional plans include the Eastern Marmara Project, Çukurova Region Project, Antalya Region Project, Zonguldak–Karabük-Bartın Regional Development Project, Eastern Anatolia Project (DAP), Eastern Black Sea Development Project (DOKAP), Yeşilırmak Basin Development Project and Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP). Rural development projects completed or still being prepared are the Çankırı-Çorum Rural Development Projects, Erzurum Rural Development Project, Bingöl-Muş Rural Development Project, Yozgat Rural Development Project and Ordu-Giresun Rural Development Project.

⁶ For examples of these administrative reforms, see Neumark Report in 1949; Barker Report in 1950; Martin and Cush Report in 1951; MEHTAP in 1960; the Report of the Administrative Reform Consultation Board in 1971; and KAYA in 1990. Furthermore, nine development plans were promoted by the State Planning Organisation (SPO) after its establishment in 1960.

⁷ The Turkish Grand National Assembly approved 34 constitutional amendments in this period, most of them in the areas of human rights, laws regarding the Penal Code, and the anti-terror law.

⁸ The three main tenets of the new public management model are the use of market-type mechanisms, organisational restructuring and a focus on performance.

⁹ So it was stated in the AKP’s 59^th Government Programme, announced by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Turkish Grand National Assembly on 18 March 2002. Nevertheless, many scholars call the AKP an Islamic Democrat or Muslim Democrat Party.

¹⁰ For instance, in one of his speeches, PM Erdoğan publicly explained that “a state cannot be built upon fears” (http://www.posta.com.tr/siyaset/HaberDetay/Erdogan–Korku-uzerine-ulke-insa-edilemez.htm?ArticleID=8633).

¹¹ At the beginning of 2003, as an extension of the AKP’s promises, a series of official reports regarding a comprehensive reform package was produced by the Public Administration Basic Legislation Working Group. One of the most important ones was ‘Change in the Administration for Managing Change’. This report, conducted by one of the most prominent AKP proponents, Ömer Dinçer, while he was a head consultant for the prime minister, in 2003, pointed at the strong central tutelage over the local administrations and their lack of financial capabilities.

¹² A policy of deconcentration is often considered to be the weakest form of decentralisation and is used most frequently in unitary states: the central government disperses a number of its functions, such as planning and finance, from the centre to regional branch offices while still retaining overall control.

¹³ The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu slammed President Erdoğan’s election campaign rhetoric for the 31 March 2019 elections, saying that discriminating citizens according to their ideological affiliations is not right (Hürriyet Daily News 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ali Onur Özçelik

Ali Onur Özçelik is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Eskişehir Osmangazi University, Eskişehir, Turkey.