ABSTRACT
Europeanisation of political parties is a contested term since the EU does not foresee a political party system to be adopted by its member states. In this respect there is no such thing as adaptation to a European political party system. The political parties are mainly organised at national level, pursue their ideological discourse in a national context and aim to communicate with their electorate at a national level. The EU membership, however, requires a redefinition of the concepts like the nation, sovereignty and the role of the state by the political parties, which necessitates not an organisational but an ideational Europeanisation process. Due to the fact that many domestic political agendas are affected by the EU, the political party agendas and debates end up being highly involved in the Europeanisation process of a country, making it possible for political parties to Europeanise at an ideational or discursive level. Additionally, the EU experience has urged the national political parties to cooperate beyond national boundaries and to form EU wide organisations of political parties like the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Party of European Socialists (PES) as the umbrella organisations of Christian democrats and social democrats, respectively (Geddes 2006). This chapter firstly explains how European integration influences national parties in theory and in practice, thus enabling us to discern what is to be expected in Turkish political parties and what is not. Secondly, it displays the positions of Turkish political parties towards EU accession and related issues through a historical perspective of party traditions since 1950s, when necessary.
