This paper aims to analyze how the current major political parties in Turkey, namely the AKP, the CHP, the MHP and the BDP, perceive the EU project and asks whether the political parties give a place to a systematic and coherent EU policy in their party discourse as well as in their actions. On the other hand, departing from the fact that the last three governments all took a favorable approach towards the EU accession process, the paper seeks to find out how being in the government affects the political parties’ approaches to the EU project. The 2002 parliamentary elections in Turkey are taken as the starting point of the analysis in this paper since the outcome of those elections created a party system which has considerably different basic characteristics than the party system that prevailed in Turkey during the last decades which can be characterized by minority or coalition governments. In the 2002 elections the number of parties in the parliament reduced and the Justice and Development Party came to power as single-party majority government. In order to analyze the EU policy of the parties, the paper employs existing political party theories in the literature with profound qualitative research methods. In this respect, mainly the party publications between 2002 and 2010 were benefited for a discourse analysis. Apart from this, in December 2010 a questionnaire which was responded by 120 members of parliament was held in the Turkish Grand National Assembly and in depth interviews with five prominent deputies of four major parties were made. The data collected from the interviews and surveys were combined with a discourse analysis of the party publications and formed the basic argument of this study. Accordingly, the paper argues that the major political parties in Turkey do not have comprehensive and consistent structuring in their policies on the issue of EU accession. When party publications are examined, it is observed that their commitment level to the EU membership goal, which became part of the state’s foreign policy over the years, depends on the political conditions inside and outside the country and the expectations of their electoral base. The lack of consistent policy is sometimes in contradiction with their traditional ideological basis as well.

The European Union (EU) changes states and societies. That is not only true for those countries directly involved in the European integration process, but also for the numerous states in its neighborhood. While most of European integration research focuses on the European impact on EU member and accession states, this paper offers an actor-centered approach to analyze EU impact on domestic change where it is more unlikely to be found; in Europe´s southern neighborhood. How did the European Integration process affect domestic change in its southern neighboring countries? This question gains even more importance for the Mediterranean Region in light of the current democratic up-rise in Northern Africa. The paper argues that the diffusion of regional integration is not limited by state borders but by the capabilities and orientation of the involved domestic actors in the partner countries. Combining former research on processes of domestic change within the EU (Börzel/Risse/Caporaso 2001) with actor-centered Institutionalism (Mayntz and Scharpf 1995), the theoretical framework applied emphasizes the role of domestic actors, rather than solely the independent impact of institutions on political outcomes. Taking political and societal actors in Morocco as an empirical instance, the paper is based on a qualitative case study combined with an in-depth process tracing of the EU environmental and economic policy outcomes towards Morocco during different stages of EU-Moroccan cooperation as its major research strategy. Data has been collected from documents, newspaper articles and statements by decisive political and societal actors within Morocco. Expert interviews and further field research in Morocco will be concluded before the paper presentation at the MESA annual meeting 2011. For the diffusion process of European integration beyond its borders, it is puzzling that without a membership perspective and despite all pitfalls of former cooperation, MPCs adjust to European ideas in some aspects more readily than in others. With the focus on the role of actors and their ability to promote and constrain different external impacts of EU integration on their domestic systems, this paper contributes pivotal aspects to the debate on diffusion of regional integration as well as new empirical insights about processes of domestic change in Morocco. Furthermore the paper sheds light on the role of European Union in the current democratic up-rise in the Mediterranean region and the presumably calm situation in Morocco.

Drawing on primary and secondary sources and interviews conducted in Turkish, Azerbaijani, and English, this paper explores Turkey‘s present and future role in promoting European Union (EU) climate change policy objectives within the EU neighborhood, defined as those countries encompassed by the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiatives. Specifically, I argue that Turkey’s pursuit of a domestic climate regime is helping to foster the development of climate policy within the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Turkey’s relationship with Azerbaijan in this respect is used as a case study. Since becoming party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2004, Turkey has made strides in developing its national climate change policy, and has become closely engaged in international climate negotiation efforts. There are both practical and political reasons why Turkey has chosen to put climate change higher on its policy agenda. Practical reasons include that urban development in Turkey is located on its coastlines, and is thus susceptible to sea level rise. In both coastal and inland regions, massive investment in infrastructure systems will also be needed to withstand the effects of extreme weather events. Changes in precipitation are expected to induce both droughts and floods, and also have the potential to aggravate Turkey’s historic water disputes with neighboring countries. Yet from a political perspective – which is the primary focus of this paper – a major catalyst for Turkey’s engagement in both domestic and international climate policymaking is the EU accession process. Given that climate change is of the highest priority in the environmental agenda of the European Union, Turkey is striving to be in line with EU climate change policy. As Turkey seeks to align itself with EU climate policies, it is also positioning itself to help the EU attain its climate change mitigation policy objectives within the European neighborhood, the countries of which share many of the same physical and political concerns as Turkey regarding climate change. Building upon a theoretical basis found in academic literature on environmental regime change, epistemic communities and organizational learning, this paper discusses the various mechanisms and extent to which Turkey’s involvement in climate change policymaking promotes EU climate policy objectives within the European neighborhood. I conclude with discussion of how Turkey’s institutional relationships with these countries are laying the groundwork for greater cooperation on environmental and energy policy initiatives in the future.

Turkish foreign policy is coming under increasing scrutiny since the election of the ruling Justice and Development Party in 2002. Critiques state that Turkish foreign policy is becoming 'neo-Ottoman' or 'Islamist', arguing that Turkey is moving closer to the Middle East than Europe. Such critiques explain that Turkey's new foreign policy identity derives from its religious identity. This proposed paper however, argues that Turkey's foreign policy is not becoming more Islamist; it is becoming more British. Indeed, those that are not familiar with the British school of international relations and more specifically the ‘regional security complex theory’ (RSCT) miss the constructivist and identity-based rationality model it foresees for a post-Cold War unilateral global system. RSCT asserts that, with the end of the bipolar rivalry of the Cold War, emphasis on the system level power structure (dominant in international relations theory since the rise of neorealism in the late 1970s) has declined. One of the most interesting theoretical developments to have emerged in this context is Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT). Like neorealism, RSCT focuses on security. How- ever, the rationale behind early Security Complex Theory was that for the majority of states, the most relevant scale for conceptualising military and political security functioned at the regional rather than the system level? RSCT has now opened the analysis to a wider range of sectors--including economic, societal and environmental security--and the tendency to refer to 'units' rather than 'states' acknowledges the importance of agencies other than the state in terms of security. Nevertheless, the central idea remains that because most threats travel most easily over short distances, security interdependence is normally patterned into regionally based clusters, called security complexes. Turkish foreign policy’s identity dimension therefore, becomes increasingly apparent as Turkey deals with its immediate neighborhood in security and energy affairs. This proposed paper will argue that Turkish foreign policy is not becoming more ‘Middle Eastern’ or ‘Islamic’, but following a pattern of external affairs in which identity is becoming increasingly more pronounced.