European integration policy in Turkey: a comparison of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), 1965–2011

Abstract

Through a discourse analysis of the election manifestos of the centre-left, the Republican People’s Party, and the nationalistic-right, the Nationalist Movement Party, from 1965 to 2011, this article investigates whether economic and political cleavages affect party positioning on European integration in Turkey. The article tentatively concludes that even though both parties’ positions on Europe are structured by the traditional left–right axis and resemble their Western and Eastern counterparts, and the arguments and discourses that led to these positions fundamentally diverge from Western and Eastern European experiences of political contestation.

Keywords:

• EU accession
• Turkey
• political parties
• cleavage theory
• European integration
• party politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The election manifestos analysed in this study are from the 1965 (CHP only), 1969 (MHP only), 1977, 1995, 2002, 2007 and 2011 elections.

2. Unfortunately, one of the main cleavages in Turkey, the ethnic cleavage, in particular the Turkish-Kurdish one, is beyond the scope of this paper for several reasons: first, due to the endless waves of lawsuits for closure, the life-cycle of Kurdish parties has been very short so far, and this significantly limits the possibilities of a longitudinal research on Kurdish party politics. Second, because these parties have traditionally been issue-oriented, European integration is mostly neglected or at best, briefly touched upon in their discourse. Finally, due to weakness in party institutionalization, the great majority of relevant party manifestos and programmes are inaccessible for purposes of academic investigation.

3. In Taggart and Szczerbiak’ formulation, ‘hard’ Euroscepticism implies ‘…outright rejection of the entire project of European political and economic integration and opposition to their country joining or remaining members of the EU’, whereas ‘soft’ Euroscepticism refers to the ‘… contingent or qualified opposition to European integration’ (2002, 27–8).

4. Bahçeli’s opening speech at the Sixth Ordinary General Congress, 5 November 2000, available online at: http://www.mhp.org.tr/htmldocs/genel_baskan/konusma/322/index.html