Europeanization or endogenous institutional change? The case of Turkey

The Europeanization literature has successfully highlighted the effects of the EU impetus on Turkish domestic actors’ incentives and ability to pursue democratizing reforms. Given the on-going institutional transformation despite the loss of the EU momentum and limited internalization of democratic norms, it is argued that explaining institutional change would greatly benefit from an analytical framework fit to account for both phases of Turkey’s transformation. This study uses a rationalist analytical framework to explore the on-going process of institutional change, focusing on Kemalism as a primarily endogenous institution. Acknowledging the link between the Helsinki Summit and the launch of institutional reform, the evolution of an analytically defined Kemalism is traced and explained in terms of anti-Kemalist collective action facilitated by the instrumentally motivated AKP government.