Turkish Identity Politics and EU Accession.

Since October 2005, Turkey's path towards full membership in the European Union (EU) has become official. Though practical and political obstacles in Turkey and the EU could still prevent eventual membership, the relationship in the years to come will be cast under the auspices of membership negotiations. As with previous rounds of EU enlargement, the negotiation process reveals underlying fissures in national polities of accession countries. Regarding Turkey's accession, this paper intends to examine the consequences of concurrent negotiations on Turkish identity politics.In conceptual terms, the Turkish debate mirrors the European controversy over the Union as such: striving to reconcile the particularistic identities of its constituents with a universalist political project. However, whereas Europe struggles to balance regional and national identities with an idealistic, supranational vision, Turkey's battle is between its unitary nation-state identity and its pluralistic reality. This paper will examine thisbattle by explaining the rise of pluralistic identities in the context of the construction and subsequent decline of Kemalism, the forces of globalization and the direct impact of the EU accession process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]