Critical analysis of the Republican People Party's EU policy

Under the scope of EU-Turkish relations, the EU stance of the Republican People's Party has been scrutinized under the two party leaders: Baykal and Kılıçdaroğlu. After giving basic information on rotation of the EU-Turkish relations, the CHP's historical development and party ideology have been discussed. It is argued that the CHP classifying itself as a European social democratic party today, until recently under Baykal's leadership has maintained its traditionalist, authoritarian and nationalist (TAN) feature and employed a euro-skeptic stance in several cases. However, it is claimed that under Kılıçdaroğlu's leadership, the party has gained a more green, alternative and libertarian (GAL) identity. With respect to this, first it has been researched that if the party's euro-skeptic stance has changed, and respectively it has been found out that except for some endogenous factors (national cost benefit calculations regarding the EU membership), the party's hard line stance has not been influenced with this shifting of the party ideology. After arriving to this point, the research continues with the critical analysis of this euro-skeptic stance of the CHP. Under most of endogenous and all of exogenous (EU's extra conditionality regarding Turkey's membership) factors, the critical stance of the party seems to have valid and legitimate ground. At the end, the results show that the EU's pragmatic legitimacy has eroded in the eye of CHP. This is founded to be related with the effects of EU-led reforms increasing governing party AKP's authoritarianism and the EU's extra conditionality treating to Turkey's membership as a 'second class' membership and prolonging the accession period to an open date.