Attitudes of Political Parties and Voters in Turkey Towards the European Union
Synopsis
Turkey’s desire to become a full member of European Union had started in 1959. It was one of the most important phases of reaching the goal of westernization and specifically to become Europeanized. Following the application for full membership in 1987, Turkey was given the candidate status in December 1999 Helsinki Summit. Together with beginning of the negotiation process in October 2005, full membership process of Turkey seems to have entered the last phase. This long process of full membership has been evaluated differently in Turkey and a common public opinion related to the European Union could not been created. Among the most important reasons for this, political parties and voters prefer rather than following a fundamental policy towards the issue that they have chosen to act in accordance with the conjuncture in the country. Certainly, different units in Turkey have some defective approaches related to the issue but it is not possible to say that European Union, which is constantly suggested Turkey to be patient, is intimate. In this study, approaches of political parties and voters’ towards the European Union will be examined in the lights of 2007 general elections in Turkey. Parallel with this in our study, after the conceptual introduction, approaches of political parties towards European Union after 1980 will be examined in the second chapter. In the last chapter voters’ perception about European Union will be held in detail together with the results of the field study which is made in Turkey generally.