The Europeanization of MÜSİAD: Political opportunism, Economic Europeanization, Islamic Euroscepticism

This article examines MÜSİAD’s economic and political Europeanization from 1994 to 2008. Europeanization is demonstrated to be an interactive process generating changes in a domestic actor’s policy preferences, styles, resources, and discourses. MÜSİAD’s Europeanization is then shown to be part of a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dilek Yankaya
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Association pour la Recherche sur le Moyen-Orient 2015-03-01
Series:European Journal of Turkish Studies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/3696
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article examines MÜSİAD’s economic and political Europeanization from 1994 to 2008. Europeanization is demonstrated to be an interactive process generating changes in a domestic actor’s policy preferences, styles, resources, and discourses. MÜSİAD’s Europeanization is then shown to be part of a social learning process resulting from its members’ exposure to European business practices and culture. Furthermore, Turkey’s EU accession process led to a creative adoption of European norms and their reinterpretation with regard to the association’s concerns about religious issues, giving birth to an Islamic rhetoric expressing criticism of the EU and challenging the Turkish secular regime’s policies towards religiously conservative demands. However, this Islamic Euroscepticism not only jeopardizes MÜSİAD’s support for Turkey’s complete compliance with secular universal norms but also reproduces the clash of civilizations thesis that Turkey’s accession project to the EU initially aimed to obliterate.
ISSN:1773-0546