Post-2005 turbulent journey towards democracy

Abstract

Turkey-EU relations have been very unstable over the last decades. Since 2005 the leverage power of the European Union started to reveal signs of stagnation or lack of effectiveness. Simultaneously, Turkey’s democratic performance has tangibly weakened. This article postulates that Turkey has worsened its democratic performance since 2005 due to an internal dynamic of a growing authoritarianism and the subsequent drifting apart from the EU. In other words, the Erdoğanisation of Turkey hindered its Europeanisation and democratisation processes. In order to assess the validity of this statement, methods such as literature review, official documents’ analysis and quantitative analysis will be used. It will be privileged a hermeneutical approach that underlines the phenomena’s interpretation through a hypothetical-deductive reasoning strategy. In terms of structure, this article will be divided as follows: a first section will be devoted to briefly revise Turkey-EU relations, especially considering the breaking point of 2005; the second part will focus on an analysis of the evolution of Turkish democratic performance, including a quantitative approach; and the third section, before the final considerations and reflections, will introduce the concept of Erdoğanisation, attempting to understand its role in the country’s developments over the last decade.