Turkish EU Accession: The Influence of the Far Right

Gregory Stryker

OAI: oai:digitalcommons.ursinus.edu:int_sum-1008

Samuel Huntington's concept of 'a clash of civilizations' is used more frequently by some in the EU to explain the question of why the EU is seemingly stalling Turkey from becoming a full member state of the EU. Scholars offer many other possible reasons to explain the attempts from the EU to delay or even prevent Turkish accession based around arguments of identity, economics, or human rights, among others. This paper takes a different approach from other scholarly works by examining the domestic politics in the countries that have delayed Turkey from progressing with the accession negotiations. I argue that center right parties in various European countries who have faced electoral competition have chosen to delay the accession negotiations to attract the base supporters of the far right within their own countries. The research will use two different countries as case studies: Germany and France. This concept that domestic politics are delaying or preventing EU enlargement raises the question of if the EU enlargement process must be reformed so that it is not used to score political points in domestic politics.

European Union enlargement electoral competition Euroscepticism anti-multiculturalism Christian Democratic Union Le Front National Alternative fur Deutschland Union Pour un Movement Populaire Cyprus Comparative Politics International Relations