Five Phases of AKP Identity Politics and how it affects Turkey-EU Relations

FEUTURE Online Paper No. 31 (2019)

The main question of this paper is what direction the AKP’s identity-politics is likely to drive Tur-key-EU relations into the 2023 timeframe of the FEUTURE research project. Following a few initial methodological, conceptual and historical preliminaries, this paper traverses five phases of AKP identity politics with a view to identifying the underlying drivers that are likely to pertain into 2023. The upshot is that both common traits to all five phases and traits more particular to the most recent phases hold a conflictual potential for Turkey-EU relations. Elements of pragmatism em-bedded in AKP identity-politics and the possibility that identity-related drivers of Turkey-EU rela-tions will see a drop of salience hold out a silver lining for the relationship. The paper concludes with a few initial recommendations.