Focus of Identity and Motivation About the Integration of Turkey into the European Union

Abstract

The integration of Turkey into the European Union (EU) is a major political issue, and an interesting psychological object with motivational and identity-related aspects. This article examines whether the structure of some young French people’s motives can be used to predict the acceptability of Turkey’s integration into the EU. It was hypothesized that Apterian metamotivational states ( Apter, 2001 ) would structure the pro and cons of the acceptability of Turkey’s integration. In each of two studies, a questionnaire was designed and administered to assess the motives, either pro or con, for Turkey’s integration. Acceptability ratings were also collected. Factorial analyses provided two series of components that were simple to interpret in a reversal theory structure. Four components were common to both studies: individual paratelism, individual telism, sympathy for the Turks, and European mastery. Path analyses were conducted to predict acceptability with the components as predictors, and benefit and risk judgments as intermediate variables. The fits were good and the models explained 72.1% (pros) and 64.2% (cons) of the overall variance in acceptability. Of particular interest is an unexpected finding that was replicated in both studies: Each component loaded a collection of items centered on only one of three possible positions on what interests were at stake: European people’s interests, Turkish people’s interests, or participants’ own interests.